Hitlers Shadow

1

• Hitlers Shadow
• Robert Michels Iron Law of Oligarchy
• C. Wright Mills Sociological Imagination

2
We have been thinking in Hitlers shadow for
forty years. (Collins Makowsky, p. 206) What
do Collins and Makowsky mean by this?
3

• Robert Michels the iron law of oligarchy
  attempts to explain
• why organizations tend to become undemocratic
  over time
• why this results in the subversion of the
  organizations original goals
• The second, equally-important point is often
  ignored

4
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)

• the angry rebel of postwar American sociology
• Critiqued the conservatism and abstract
  character of Parsons thought but also the
  methodological obsessions and narrow vision of
  empiricists
• Rejected both grand theory and abstracted
  empiricism

5
Textual Analysis Excerpts from The Sociological
Imagination
http//www.camden.rutgers.edu/wood/207socimaginat
ion.htm
6
The Sociological Imagination remains sociologys
most influential manifesto

• Sociology as a form of imagination
• biography and history
• personal troubles and public issues
• a rejection of both overly-abstract theorizing
  and narrow empiricism
• controversially a politically-engaged sociology

7

• Mills deepened sociologists knowledge and
  appreciation of both Marx and Weber
• both introduced Marxist tradition to
  sociological audience and infused his work with
  Marxs critical spirit
• engaged in the translation wars with Parsons
  over the interpretation of Weber

8

• The Power Elite (1956)
• a scathing critique of U.S. democracy that rings
  true to many today
• a challenge to pluralist theory of U.S. politics
  that begins a long-standing debate that continues
  today
• Alan Wolfe a blend of social criticism and
  social science that we desperately need more of
  today. Mills almost certainly U.S. sociologys
  greatest public intellectual