The Sociological Imagination Group

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Bernard Phillips, Harold Kincaid and Thomas J. Scheff--with the help of David Christner and a number of sociologists--formed the Sociological Imagination Group just prior to 9/11. We were deeply influenced by escalating problems throughout the world, and we were appalled by the failure of sociology to live up to what C. Wright Mills called "the promise of sociology." We were equally appalled by the failure of other social scientists to live up to their own promise of penetrating very deeply into the complexities of human behavior and human problems.

Yet it was C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination (1959)--voted by the International Sociological Association as the 2nd most influential book for sociologists published during the entire 20th century--that succeeded in stimulating our own efforts. A short bio of Mills is on this website. These words of his illustrate not only his breadth but also the broad direction required to penetrate human complexities:

The sociological imagination . . . is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another—from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry.

We have developed in our ten published books what we are convinced is a fundamental breakthrough in the social sciences that we believe fulfills Mills' vision. Introductory matrial from our latest book, Revolution in the Social Sciences: Beyond Control Freaks, Conformity, and Tunnel Vision, is on this website received this review from S. M. Miller (Boston University emeritus, co-author of Respect and Rights):

This challenging book opens up possibilities in dire days. Bernard Phillips and David Christner offer "realistic optimism" and roads to "personal evolution." They weave wide-ranging social science, literary, and philosophical writings into a tapestry of human possibilities that connects head (analysis), heart (commitment), and hand (action). Readers will be changed by this book.

Our previous book, Saving Society, received this review from Choice by T. M. Chester:

Phillips (Boston Univ.) and Christner take on the daunting task of updating the sociological imagination for present times. They succeed. By targeting the bureaucratic way of life and the tendency towards specialization, compartmentalization, rationalization, and efficiency underlying industrial and postindustrial societies, the authors bring attention to the epistemological barriers that inhibit real progress in resolving society's most pressing problems. Phillips and Christner are most persuasive when they reflect on the shortcomings of the social sciences themselves. By emphasizing methodology over results, or specialization over integration, the social sciences far too often form a barrier to "learning what is going wrong in today's world and determining how to correct it." This book is not, however, a treatise on utopian thinking, as the authors demonstrate a realistic understanding of how progressive societal change can and does occur. . .their analysis renders actionable insights that can realistically form a basis for progressive social change. This type of realism is what the sociological imagination is all about. Mills would be pleased. Summing Up: Highly recommended.

Over the past decade we have held nine research conferences in the U.S. and Canada. Three of our books are edited volumes that collect 30 papers presented at those conferences. Our ten books are:

Phillips, Bernard. Beyond Sociology's Tower of Babel: Reconstructing the Scientific Method. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2001.

Phillips, Bernard, Harold Kincaid, and Thomas J. Scheff (eds.). Toward a Sociological Imagination: Bridging Specialized Fields. Lanham, Maryland: Univ. Press of America, 2002.

Phillips, Bernard (ed.). Understanding Terrorism: Building on The Sociological Imagination. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2007.

Phillips, Bernard, and Louis C. Johnston. The Invisible Crisis of Contemporary Society: Reconstructing Sociology's Fundamental Assumptions. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm, 2007.

Knottnerus, J. David, and Bernard Phillips (eds.). Bureaucratic Culture and Escalating Problems: Advancing the Sociological Imagination. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm,, 2009.

Phillips, Bernard. Armageddon or Evolution? The Scientific Method and Escalating World Problems. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2009.

Ulsperger, Jason S., and J. David Knottnerus. Elder Care Catastrophe: Rituals of Abuse in Nursing Homes & What Your Can Do About It. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2011.

Knottnerus, J. David, Ritual as a Missing Link: Sociology, Structural Ritualization Theory and Research. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2011.

Phillips, Bernard, and David Christner. Saving Society: Breaking Out of Our Bureaucratic Way of Life. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2011.

Phillips, Bernard, and David Christner. Revolution in the Social Sciences: Beyond Control Freaks, Conformity, and Tunnel Vision. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2012.

The key problem that those books confront was illustrated by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis in this excerpt from their 1939 poem, "Upon this age, that never speaks its mind":

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric. . . .

Yet it is indeed possible for each one of us to move toward solving this problem of tunnel vision or narrow specialization with limited communication by learning to use a broad scientific method in our everyday lives. This is suggested by C. Wright Mills' vision of "the sociological imagination" as well as by our books.

Our focus on how the individual can learn to use the scientific method in everyday life points toward the idea of "deepening democracy." We see a worldwide movement toward democracy illustrated by the American and French revolutions, the ending of colonialism, the civil rights, women's and gay-lesbian-transgender movements in the U.S., the East European velvet revolutions, the Arab spring revolutions in the Middle East, and the Occupy Wall Street movement. We follow Jane Addams' statement that "The cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy."

Martin Luther King had a dream that he revealed at the civil rights march in Washington on August 28th, 1963: "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood." We have a dream that:

there will be a future for our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren.

one day we will all learn to see ourselves as children who are only just beginning to understand ourselves and our world, and we will also learn to dream about our infinite possibilities and move toward those visions one step at a time.

one day we will all learn to pay close attention to the accomplishments of all peoples throughout history as well as to our own personal accomplishments, and we will also learn to pay close attention to the failures of the human race and to our own personal failures.

one day we will be able to bring to the surface and reduce our stratified emotions like fear, shame, guilt, hate, envy and greed, and we will learn to express ever more our evolutionary emotions like confidence, enthusiasm, happiness, joy, love and empathy.

one day we will see peace on earth and fellowship among all humans.

one day we will no longer look down on any other human being.

one day we all will learn to be poets, philosophers and scientists.

Two of us, Bernard Phillips and David Knottnerus, are co-editors of a series of books with Paradigm Publishers, "Advancing the Sociological Imagination." That series includes--in addition to several books from the above list of ten books--Goffman Unbound! (Scheff, 2006), Postmodern Cowboy (Kerr, 2008), Struggles before Brown (Van Delinder, 2008), and The Treadmill of Production (Gould, Pellow and Schnaiberg, 2008). We invite anyone interested in writing a book for that series to contact either one of us at bernieflps@aol.com or david.knottnerus@okstate.edu Given the huge social problems throughout the world, we are nevertheless optimistic about the potential of us human beings. Indeed, we are convinced of the power of optimism that is also realistic. For we can all learn to use the broad scientific method envisioned by C. Wright Mills within our everyday lives. And as a result we can learn not only to confront those problems ever more effectively, but also to move far beyond the solution of those problems to develop ourselves and our world in ways that we can scarcely imagine.