C. Wright Mills in the Shopping Mall

Yesterday we took a light-trail (www.metrotransit.org/rail/index.asp), and drove all the way down to Mall of America, possibly the largest shopping heaven (or hell) in the US. I would not like to comment on that experience, but in there I had to ask myself, is another world possible? Will there ever be a ‘consumption fatigue’, and a revolt inside the consumption machine? I guess not. And we were rocking like anyone else by buying Mac mini, and C. Wright Mills’ Power Elite that I did not had before (!). The book is truly marvelous in its visionary look to our age.

Even the very first lines of the first chapter "The Higher Circles" strike by their straightness and clarity:

“The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family, and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern. 'Great changes' are beyond their control, but affect their conduct and outlook nonetheless. The very framework of modern society confines them to projects not their own, but from every side, such changes now press upon the men and women of the mass society, who accordingly feel that they are without purpose in an epoch in which they are without power.”

In his Afterword for the new edition Alan Wolfe states that there is two books or, as I would say, two authors in Power Elite. Whereas first eleven chapters represent well-documented social science, the remaining chapters are social criticism. Wolfe seems to prefer Mills’ as objective social scientist; I would praise his talent as provocative social critic. To say the least, to me this makes the author, and the book interesting, and might even explain its enduring popularity. A good social critic puts her interpretations and visions first, and calmly waits the empirical guarantee for the insights whereas a good social scientist collects her data, and perhaps later gets an interpretative vision.

There are plenty of sites in the net for C. Wright Mills so if you wish, please read few more excerpts of the book from www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Book_Excerpts/PowerElite.html

Today we managed to score two official things: first to ISSS, International Student and Scholar Services, to sign us in the system, and then to Office of Human Resources to decide my taxing. In OHR we suddenly found out that Anna Sofia had left her bag to Gopher Student Union restaurant – Sims 2 in it! Luckily we still found it, and saved the day.