Abstract
C. Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination (1959) represents one of the most influential texts of postwar American sociology. The title has become a catchphrase that stands for a style of thought that transcends both theoretical dogma and the constraints of mere methodological rule following. This article sets out to show that Mills’ vision of the sociological imagination had more in common with the then dominant lines of scholarship than his broadside against Parsonian grand theory and Lazarsfeldian abstracted empiricism in the main part of the book would suggest. Among the tools that Mills introduced as fostering the sociological imagination were 2 × 2 tables. The article traces the use of such tables over time and across scholarly communities and shows that, contrary to Mills’ own estimate, these tables describe a common nexus between his own work and that of Parsons and Lazarsfeld. All three scholars made ample use of this formal tool to construct sociological arguments at central places of their oeuvre. Given its shared use across otherwise divergent schools, the 2 × 2 table is a prime example for what historians of science have called paper tools, i.e. statistical formulas, algorithms, tables, diagrams, graphs, etc., that structure scientific research across different schools of thought and theoretical approaches. Drawing on the notion of paper tools, the article advances a post-Kuhnian perspective on the history of sociology that shifts the research focus from substantive ideas to formal tools and demonstrates elements of commensurability among presumably incommensurable schools of thought.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the organizers and participants of the New Voices in the History of Sociology Symposium at the 115th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association for helpful comments and suggestions.
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Bargheer, S. Paper Tools and the Sociological Imagination: How the 2 × 2 Table Shaped the Work of Mills, Lazarsfeld, and Parsons. Am Soc 52, 254–275 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09497-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09497-x