ABSTRACT
So now we reach the search for the Holy Grail: the sociological imagination. Just how are we to develop ways to think and understand and make sense of this enormously complex, ever changing, politically laden flow of human social life – or at least some parts of it? What ‘frames of mind’ need to be developed and what critical questions posed? C. Wright Mills’s influential book The Sociological Imagination has inspired several generations of sociologists, and I use his idea to frame this chapter, widening it ultimately to raise twelve critical challenges (see pp. 176-7).
