When White-collar People Get Jobs, They Sell

What We Experience In Various And Specific Milieux, I Have Noted, Is Often Caused By Structural Changes. Accordingly, To Understand The Changes Of Many Personal Milieux We Are Required To Look Beyond Them. And The Number And Variety Of Such Structural Changes Increase As The Institutions Within Which We Live Become More Embracing And More Intricately Connected With One Another. To Be Aware Of The Idea Of Social Structure And To Use It With Sensibility Is To Be Capable Of Tracing Such Linkages Among A Great Variety Of Milieux. To Be Able To Do That Is To Possess The Sociological Imagination

Seldom Aware Of The Intricate Connection Between The Patterns Of Their Own Lives And The Course Of World History, Ordinary People Do Not Usually Know What This Connection Means For The Kind Of People They Are Becoming And For The Kind Of History-making In Which They Might Take Part.

The Sociological Imagination Enables Us To Grasp History And Biography And The Relations Between The Two Within Society. This Is Its Task And Its Promise.

What Ordinary Men Are Directly Aware Of And What They Try To Do Are Bounded By The Private Orbits In Which They Live; Their Visions And Their Powers Are Limited.

The Professional Celebrity, Male And Female, Is The Crowning Result Of The Star System Of A Society That Makes A Fetish Of Competition. In America, This System Is Carried To The Point Where A Man Who Can Knock A Small White Ball Into A Series Of Holes In The Ground With More Efficiency Than Anyone Else Thereby Gains Social Access To The President Of The United States.