The Socio(b)logical Imagination

Chris Uggen on February 7, 2008

At Orgtheory, Kieran Healy uses C. Wright Mills’ classic essay On Intellectual Craftsmanship to explain how “writing a blog can be a endless black hole of self-absorbed wittering — or, it can cultivate a capacity to stay interested in things and to write about them fluently in the course of everyday life.” On balance, Professor Healy suggests that “keeping an adequate blog” can stoke the sociological imagination.

Comments 1

doug5 — February 14, 2008

In the Mills quote,
A blog(journal) to capture “fringe thoughts" seems like an interesting way to frame it. Thoughts are ephemeral things. Concretizing them to allow them to be organized, blended, synthesized, analyzed, seems sensible. Some people talk to themselves aloud to concretize, some write scrap notes, others diaries and blogs. But I've noticed that some blogs don't expect or don't want comments; that goes back to the talking to oneself model, and why post something that's meant to be private like an old-fashioned diary with a lock and key. Is it meant to be found? For what purpose.