Charles Wright Mills (August 28, 1916 – March 20, 1962) was an American sociologist, and a professor of sociology at Columbia University from 1946 until his death in 1962. Mills was published widely in popular and intellectual journals. He is remembered for several books, such as The Power Elite, which introduced that term and describes the relationships and class alliances among the US political, military, and economic elites; White Collar: The American Middle Classes, on the American middle class; and The Sociological Imagination, which presents a model of analysis for the interdependence of subjective experiences within a person's biography, the general social structure, and historical development.
Mills was concerned with the responsibilities of intellectuals in post–World War II society, and he advocated public and political engagement over disinterested observation. Mills's biographer, Daniel Geary, writes that Mills's writings had a "particularly significant impact on New Left social movements of the 1960s era." It was Mills who popularized the term New Left in the US in a 1960 open letter, "Letter to the New Left".
Den amerikanske sociolog og samfundsdebattør C. Wright Mills’ hovedværk Den sociologiske fantasi fra 1959 er et opgør med samtidens sociologer, der efter Mills’ mening stod for en alt for teoretisk og abstrakt – det vil sige fantasiforladt – måde at
bedrive videnskab på. Ifølge Mills bør de, der bedriver samfundsvidenskab, udover at besidde teoretisk indsigt og metodisk bevidsthed navnligt belyse vekselvirkningen mellem individ og samfund. Det er nødvendigt at være opmærksom på forholdet mellem individuel biografi og kulturel historie, for derved vil man kunne forstå og forklare sammenhængen mellem sociale og individuelle problemer.
C. Wright Mills’ Den sociologiske fantasi er en bog, der opfordrer til at lære af fortiden for at udfordre nutiden med henblik på at
forbedre kvaliteten af menneskelivet i fremtiden.
Den sociologiske fantasi er blevet en sociologisk klassiker, og nu foreligger så andenudgaven af den danske oversættelse fra 2002 med nyt forord af professor i sociologi Michael Hviid Jacobsen.
Bogen vil forhåbentligt fortsætte med at inspirere nutidige og kommende generationer af samfundsforskere.
Oversat fra amerikansk efter The Sociological Imagination af Tom Havemann.
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