Toward a Sociological Imagination

Bridging Specialized Fields
Collecting revisions of papers from August of 2000 research conferences associated with the American Sociological Association, this volume is presented in the hopes of building on the ideas of an approach to a scientific sociological method presented in C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination
Toward A Sociological Imagination builds on the ideas C. Wright Mills expressed in The Sociological Imagination for an approach to the scientific method broad enough to open up to the full range of knowledge within the sociology discipline. In this book, nine sociologists and one philosopher provide detailed tests of the utility of the approach within diverse substantive sociological areas. These areas include, deviance and anomie, stratification and occupational mobility, the origins of capitalism, combining narrative sociology with modeling, racial and ethnic relations, unacknowledged emotions within the psychiatric interview, the genesis of violence, and the impact of moving from a vernacular to a theoretical approach to language.