Abstract
Given that there is already a large secondary literature on the life and work of C Wright Mills, what does this collection of essays and personal reflections offer that is new? In my view, there are two main things that set it apart from the crowd. First, it contains two very moving pieces by Kathryn Mills (Wright’s daughter from his second marriage to Ruth Harper) that provide important insights into the biographical context of Mills’ work; and second, the collection contains a number of excellent essays that together remind us why it is worth returning to Mills today. For those with even a passing interest in Mills’ sociology, this collection is essential reading.
The book opens with a foreword by Kathryn Mills in which she reflects on her relation to her father’s work. She recounts reading The Power Elite when she was 16 years old: ‘I learned about the importance of maintaining a healthy respect for complexity and nuance and, at the same time, a great capacity for outrage at injustice. I was impressed by my father’s ability to be energetically analytical and sceptical – and simultaneously – deeply engaged’ (p. x). This sense of engagement, which has animated several generations of readers since Mills’ death in 1962, is perfectly illustrated by Kathryn in her second contribution to this collection, in which she recalls the position on Cuba taken by her father in Listen, Yankee: that the Castro regime, with its ‘promises of literacy campaigns, universal health care, and improved education and human services’, ‘offered Cubans their best available hope’ (p. 206). Taking such a position, which ran counter to the views of the US media, put Mills on the radar of the CIA, who later identified him, alongside ‘Herbert Marcuse and Frantz Fanon, as one of three principle [sic] leaders of the international Left’ (see Summers, 2000: 10). It also came at great personal cost as in December 1960 Mills suffered a heart attack shortly before he was due to participate in a debate about Cuba on national television. But Mills was not afraid to take risks and to take a principled stand wherever necessary. Kathryn Mills cites the following letter he wrote to EP Thompson about his involvement in the debate over Cuba: ‘I have to do it: it’s my god damned duty, because nobody else will stand up and say shit out loud …’ (p. 207). In many ways this is a blueprint for a public sociology in the Millsian vein: one that should not be afraid to find and assert its own voice, which, increasingly, must fight to be heard.
Many of these points resurface in some of the stand-out essays in this collection. The chapter by Krishan Kumar is particularly important as it uses the work of Mills to rethink the ‘uneasy’ relationship between history and sociology. This is a pressing task, for, on one hand, sociology that is informed by a deep sense of history is, it seems, increasingly rare, while on the other, Kumar observes that today ‘historians, for their part, are in headlong retreat from sociology and social theory’ (p. 30). Kumar argues that Mills can play a role in remaking the case for historical sociology, for while he did not write a dedicated study of this genre of sociology, his work ‘is shot through and through with historical understanding and explanation’ (p. 32). This question of history resurfaces in a following chapter by Ann Nilsen and Julia Brannen on what they call the ‘history-biography dynamic’. Through the course of this chapter, they ask an important question: is it ‘a lack of attention to history and to specific historical change that has put the “individual” centre stage in much general sociological research over the past 30 years?’ (p. 95). They observe that this tendency to privilege the agency side of the ‘agency–structure divide’ coincided with the emergence of neoliberal governmental policies in the UK and US in the 1980s which promoted individual enterprise and the deregulation of finance. Is, then, contemporary sociology of this type in some way complicit with neoliberal forms of reasoning? If so, Mills’ attempt to connect agency to social structure, biography to history is more important than ever, not least because it refuses to cut adrift the individual from the social and to leave them to their own entrepreneurial devices. For Mills, it is the task of the sociologist to make and remake these connections between individual biographies and broader social structures; indeed, this capacity lies at the very heart of what he calls the sociological imagination.
This, in turn, raises the question of the continuing political resonance of Mills’ sociology; something addressed by Michael Newman in his chapter on ‘Mills, Miliband and Marxism’. Newman reminds us that the central concern of Mills’ work on power elites was to explore the ways in which US society was ‘dominated by the three interlocking elites of economic, political, and military power’ (p. 109). One wonders what has happened to the ambition of this big structural sociology, especially in the wake of the recent financial crisis, through the course of which new economic and political elites and alliances have emerged. Indeed, today, just over 50 years after Mills’ death, how have these economic, political and military powers aligned and re-aligned themselves? Who, we might ask, are the new men and women of power today?
In putting such questions on the sociological agenda, this collection makes a strong case for (re-)reading the work of Mills. No one makes this case more eloquently than Kathryn Mills in the foreword to this collection, where she states that ‘one reason for the continuing appeal of Wright’s books is the combined results of mind, heart, and courage – speaking truth to power, urging people to develop and honour their human potential and to engage in the world’s pressing issues, while navigating away from the dangerous undertow of conformity and apathy’ (p. xi). This beautiful statement captures the very essence of Mills’ sociology, and sets a benchmark for any sociology that seeks to be truly ‘public’ in orientation. It is a powerful reminder that sociology can be more than just an academic exercise; it is a discipline that can make timely interventions into the worlds in which we live. What could be more important at a time when, post-crisis, individualistic economic and political philosophies are placing the ‘social’ under renewed attack?