1. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender1 SYA 3010 Sociological Theory: Charles Horton Cooley

2. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender2 Charles Horton Cooley z1864-1929 zBorn in Ann Arbor, MI zEducation yUniversity of Michigan xEngineering 7 years

3. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender3 Charles Horton Cooley zHis father was a member of the Michigan Supreme Court yHe struggled living under the shadow of his famous father yHe once wrote to his mother: “I should like as an experiment to get off somewhere where Father was never heard of and see whether anybody would care about me for my own sake.”

4. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender4 Charles Horton Cooley zHis dissertation was titled “The Theory of Transportation,” a pioneering study in human ecology yHe later moved away from the human ecology area of sociology and became more interested in the psychological element within sociological phenomena

5. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender5 Charles Horton Cooley zHe taught at the University of Michigan yHe was concerned with many social problems and issues of the day, but clearly preoccupation with the self--his own self-- remained paramount to him. yHe did become independent of his father-- but his experience caused a desire to study the self and its relationship with society. This desire to observe behavior was later applied toward his own children.

6. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender6 Charles Horton Cooley Assumptions zFalls within the framework of the pluralist paradigm zClearly, a vision of ambivalence, a portrait of duality marks his thought

7. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender7 Charles Horton Cooley zOn the question of will, he argued that while people make choices, these are not entirely free yCooley unified both the sociable and “self- assertive” sides of human character x“Competition and the survival of the fittest are as righteous as kindness and cooperation, and not necessarily opposed to them: an adequate view will embrace and harmonize these diverse aspects.” (1909:35 Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind)

8. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender8 Charles Horton Cooley zCooley perceived the mind as the center of the human universe, as the definitive maker of our being. yIt is both an organic whole and the context for all human interaction. yCooley’s supremely mental social world distinguishes his sociology from the attempts of Mead to assign primacy to social behavior. yThe mind above all, is seen as modifiable, and it emerges only in relations with members of primary groups.

9. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender9 Charles Horton Cooley zIn Social Organization Cooley asks: What makes society possible? yCooley does not completely accepts Rousseau’s idea of social contract (a foundational philosophical view of the pluralist paradigm). yHe views that society is a process, continuing to form and reform via individuals, groups, patterns, and institutions.

10. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender10 Charles Horton Cooley Thus in making the self, society is born.

11. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender11 Charles Horton Cooley Self and Society are Twin-Born Cooley (1962:5) Cooley, Charles Horton. 1962. Social Organization. New York: Schocken.

12. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender12 Charles Horton Cooley They are “distributive and collective aspects of the same thing.” Cooley remained consistent in his position on causation. Individuals, he argued, do not make societies nor do societies make individuals. They are “distributive and collective aspects of the same thing.” zThe individual has no existence apart from others. zThere is no society not constituted of individuals.

13. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender13 Charles Horton Cooley Cooley argued that a person’s self grows out of a person’s commerce with others. The social origin of his life comes by the pathway of intercourse with other persons (Cooley 1964:5). Cooley, Charles Horton. 1964. Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Schocken.

14. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender14 Charles Horton Cooley self The self, to Cooley, is not first individual and then social; it arises dialectically through communication. One’s consciousness of himself is a reflection of the ideas about himself that he attributes to other minds; thus, there can be no isolated selves. There is no sense of “I”... without its correlative sense of you, or he, or they (Cooley 1964:182).

15. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender15 Charles Horton Cooley In his attempt to illustrate the reflected character of the self, Cooley compared it to a looking glass: Each to each a looking-glass Reflects the other that doth pass. (Cooley 1964:184)

16. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender16 Charles Horton Cooley As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be, so in imagination we perceive in another’s mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it. (Cooley 1964:184)

17. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender17 Charles Horton Cooley Three Elements of the Looking Glass Self zThe imagination of our appearance to the other person zThe imagination of his judgment of that appearance zSome sort of self-feeling yPride yMortification

18. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender18 Charles Horton Cooley An Example by Cooley zThe real Alice, known only to her maker zHer idea of herself y“I [Alice] look well in this hat” zHer idea of Angela’s idea of her y“Angela thinks I look well in this hat”

19. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender19 Charles Horton Cooley zHer idea of what Angela thinks she thinks of herself y“Angela thinks I am proud of my looks in this hat” zAngela’s idea of what Alice thinks of herself y“Alice thinks she is stunning in that hat”

20. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender20 Charles Horton Cooley Society Society is an interweaving and interworking of mental selves. I imagine your mind, and especially what your mind thinks about my mind. I dress my mind before yours and expect that you will dress yours before mine. Whoever cannot or will not perform these feats is not properly in the game. (Cooley 1927:200-201) Cooley, Charles Horton. 1927. Life and the Student. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

21. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender21 Charles Horton Cooley Primary Group Emphasis on the wholeness of social life led Cooley to focus his analysis on those human groupings that he conceived to be primary in linking man with his society and in integrating individuals into the social fabric.

22. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender22 Charles Horton Cooley By primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate face-to-face association and cooperation. They are primary in several senses but chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of individuals. The result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one’s very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a “we.” (Cooley 1966:23) Cooley, Charles Horton. 1966. Social Process. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

23. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender23 Charles Horton Cooley Using the terminology of Cooley, …a mother does not mind doing unrewarding labor…it benefits the “we.”

24. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender24 Charles Horton Cooley family play group of childrenthe neighborhood The most important groups in which the intimate association characteristic of primary groups have had a chance to develop to the fullest are the family, the play group of children, and the neighborhood. These, Cooley believed, are practically universal breeding grounds for the emergence of human cooperation and fellowship.

25. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender25 Charles Horton Cooley In these groups men are drawn away from their individualistic propensity to maximize their own advantage and are permanently linked to their fellows by ties of sympathy and affection.

26. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender26 Charles Horton Cooley In these [primary groups] human nature comes into existence. Man does not have it at birth; he cannot acquire it except through fellowship, and it decays in isolation. (Cooley 1962:30) How does this concept (“we”) apply to the importance of Christian fellowship?

27. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender27 Charles Horton Cooley Remember the Law of Human Progress... Cooley’s social philosophy was grounded in the idea that human progress involves the ever-widening expansion of human sympathy so that primary group ideals would spread from the family to the local community, to the nation, and finally to the world community.

28. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender28 Charles Horton Cooley secondary groups In other forms of association (which are now referred to as secondary groups, though Cooley himself never used that term) men may be related to one another because each derives a private benefit from that interchange or interaction. In such groups the other may be valued only extrinsically as a source of benefits for the self; by contrast the bond in the primary group is based upon an intrinsic valuation of the other as a person, and appreciation of others does not result from anticipation of specific benefits that he or she may be able to confer.

29. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender29 Charles Horton Cooley Public Opinion (as a Social Process) zIn Cooley’s view society consists of a network of communication between component actors and subgroups; therefore, the process of communication, more particularly its embodiment in public opinions, cements social bonds and insures consensus. zCooley saw public opinion as “an organic process,” and not merely as a state of agreement about some question of the day.

30. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender30 Charles Horton Cooley zConsider “public opinion” within the church body….think of it as a process: yDivorce yMovies yDancing yDating practices yUnwed mothers and the offspring raised by unwed mothers yHomosexuality

31. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender31 Charles Horton Cooley Sociological Method sympathetic understanding The difference, Cooley argued, between our knowledge of a horse or a dog and our knowledge of man is rooted in our ability to have a sympathetic understanding of a man’s motives and springs of action.

32. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender32 Charles Horton Cooley For example... zThe sociology of a chicken yard could only be based on descriptions of the chicken’s behavior, since we can never understand the meanings that chickens attach to their activities. zBut the sociology of human beings can pursue a different strategy, since it can probe beneath protocols of behavior into the subjective meanings of acting individuals. This is the heart of the pluralist paradigm!

33. Friday, October 16, 2015 © 1998-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender33 Charles Horton Cooley disjunction between the mind and society Cooley was successful in breaking the idea of “disjunction between the mind and society.”