THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION
apartment with private garage under it in the heart of the city,
and forty miles out, a house by Henry Hill, garden by Garrett
Eckbo, on a hundred acres of private land. In these two controlled
environments—with a small staff at each end and a private
helicopter connection—most people could solve many of
the problems of personal milieux caused by the facts of the city.
But all this, however splendid, does not solve the public issues that
the structural fact of the city poses. What should be done with this
wonderful monstrosity? Break it all up into scattered units, combining
residence and work? Refurbish it as it stands? Or, after
evacuation, dynamite it and build new cities according to new
plans in new places? What should those plans be? And who
is to decide and to accomplish whatever choice is made? These
are structural issues; to confront them and to solve them requires
us to consider political and economic issues that affect innumerable
milieux.
In so far as an economy is so arranged that slumps occur, the
problem of unemployment becomes incapable of personal solution.
In so far as war is inherent in the nation-state system and
in the uneven industrialization of the world, the ordinary indi*
vidual in his restricted milieu will be powerless—with or without
psychiatric aid—to solve the troubles this system or lack of system
imposes upon him. In so far as the family as an institution turns
women into darling little slaves and men into their chief providers
and unweaned dependents, the problem of a satisfactory marriage
remains incapable of purely private solution. In so far as
the overdeveloped megalopolis and the overdeveloped automobile
are built-in features of the overdeveloped society, the issues
of urban living will not be solved by personal ingenuity and
private wealth.
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