Journal of Classical Sociology

http://jcs.sagepub.com The Foundation of Pragmatic Sociology: Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead
Hans-Joachim Schubert Journal of Classical Sociology 2006; 6; 51 DOI: 10.1177/1468795X06061284 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/1/51

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Journal of Classical Sociology

Copyright 2006 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi Vol 6(1): 5174 DOI: 10.1177/1468795X06061284 www.sagepublications.com

The Foundation of Pragmatic Sociology

Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead

HANS-JOACHIM SCHUBERT University of Potsdam, Germany

ABSTRACT Charles Horton Cooley was, according to George Herbert Mead, an idealist or mentalist for whom imaginations and not symbolic interactions are the solid facts of society. Contrary to Meads critique, Cooley breaks through the Cartesian bodymind dualism in disagreement with idealism and behaviorism. His objective was to develop a theory of communication and understanding as the foundation of pragmatistic sociology. Communication is the decisive starting point of Cooleys and Meads sociological theory of social order and social change as stages in the process of action. In conict with each other actors must dene the meaning of the objective, subjective, social and symbolic world. To overcome problems of action actors create generalized perspectives such as human nature values (Cooley) or a logical universe of discourse (Mead) which guarantee socialization or social order and individualization at the same time. KEYWORDS action theory, communication theory, pragmatism, symbolic interactionism, theory of social order and social change

George Herbert Mead counts today at a time of the renaissance of pragmatism as one of the classics of sociology. The work of Charles Horton Cooley receives less attention, despite the fact that Cooley explicitly pursued the goal of using the pragmatic method to construct a general sociological theory of social action, of social order and of social change, a project he eventually accomplished with his trilogy: Human Nature and the Social Order (1964 [1902]), Social Organization (1963 [1909]) and Social Process (1966 [1918]). Mead came to pragmatism late and thought of himself as a philosopher and social psychologist. In any case, he hardly spoke about sociology. A few references to theory and the subject matter of sociology are found in his essay Cooleys Contribution to American Social Thought (Mead, 1964 [1930]). There Mead criticizes Cooley severely.

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Meads Critique of Cooley

To begin, I will discuss the question of whether Mead, in his critique, is able to establish a superior position with respect to Cooley. It must be said beforehand that Mead did not produce a didactic masterwork with his Cooley essay. His charge is that Cooleys conception of society is mental rather than scientic, that society has a psychical nature (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxviii). Therefore, Cooley was not able, in Meads view, to adequately determine either the solid facts of society (1964 [1930]: xxvii) the goal of sociology or to explain the process of individuation. According to Cooley, the self would also lie in the mind, being psychical selves and not, as in Meads own social psychology, an objective phase of experience (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxivv). How does Mead support this mentalist or idealist charge against Cooley? The genesis of the criticism is Meads assertion that Cooley adopted the psychophysical parallelism of ordinary psychology, conventional at that time, according to which consciousness is an inside experience of the life of the external organism (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxii). Cooley could not, therefore, show how the conscious (mind) and the meaning of things (body) evolve in the action process. According to Mead, the structures of society and of the self are founded neither on the mind or conscious nor on material environmental surroundings or biological conditions, but rather on social action, on the process of symbolic interaction. Nevertheless, Mead raises the mentalistic charge against Cooley having hardly mentioned it stating that in advance of Baldwins and Tardes and even of Jamess doctrine, Cooley has shown that the self is not an immediate character of the mind, the mind being, for Cooley, not rst individual and then social. In the individual, the mind arises through communication (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxix). Based on a theory of communicative action, the self would not have resided in the mind (the self lying in the mind), and the locus of society would not be in the mind (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxvi); rather, Cooley would clearly have broken through the body mind parallelism of the then-prevalent psychology. The self , like society, would not have been a prior mental characteristic of the communication process. In spite of this, Mead reiterates his parallelism criticism of Cooley a few pages later, maintaining that he begins from a parallelism between sensations, perceptions, emotions, volitions, and so forth, and physiological processes, and for him selves and others lie inside of the consciousness of ordinary psychology and would not arise through the communication process. Cooleys parallelism, according to Mead, is not a parallelism between states of processes in two different realms of metaphysical being, as in Cartesian thinking; rather, for Cooley, body and mind identify an outside and an inside view of the same reality, namely of the communication process. Although Mead suspends his parallelism charge against Cooley a second time, following this revision, he immediately continues, saying that Cooley is lodging the self and others in consciousness and thus he accepts the parallelism of ordinary psychology. However, Mead con-

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tinues, Cooley succeeded in avoiding the segregation of the animal organism from social and so, moral, experience typical for the dualistic philosophy of the mind by merging the life process and the social process in a universal onward evolution (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxiiiii). With this, we come to the heart of Meads criticism of Cooley: The Cartesian bodymind dualism is dissolved because, so says Mead, Cooley recognized an evolutionary transition from the natural to the cultural: In the evolutionary process, the physical (i.e. outer environmental conditions or nature) would lose determining power in favor of the mental (understanding or nurture). The crucial point for Mead is that Cooley had no normative theory at hand with which he could evaluate and critique the empirical and historical change from nature to nurture. Cooley had a profound faith in evolution, which for him was a philosophy and a faith rather than a method (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxiiiiv). His sociology was in a sense an account of the American community to which he belonged, and pre-supposed its normal healthful process. This process was that of the primary group with its face-to-face organization and co-operation. Given the process, its healthful growth and its degenerations could be identied and described. Institutions and valuations were implicit within it. The gospel of Jesus and democracy were of the essence of it, and more fundamentally it was the life of the spirit. (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxvi) According to Mead, a normative theory must be founded on anthropology and ethology. Lacking that approach, Cooley could only develop an ethnocentric position. Because he is unable to trace and verify the reality of the gospel of Jesus (there is no evidence in Cooleys writings for a Christian viewpoint) and to trace democracy back to the dim beginnings of human behavior, he cannot establish the origins of the social patterns that are responsible not only for the structure of society but also for the criticism of that structures evolution. Only anthropological and ethological research, according to Mead, can reconstruct the normative meaning and evaluative power of a logical universe of discourse (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxvivii). Devoid of this anthropological dimension, Cooleys sociology cannot reach beyond a presentation of the American community. This criticism of Cooley is in error, for two reasons. First, Cooley, contrary to what Mead believes, represented not a mentalist and parallelist but a pragmatic point of view, anchored in the theory of communication, socialization and primary group. Second, this view provided the foundation of a universalistic theory discriminating between facts and norms. Mead, on the other hand, in his criticism of Cooley, maintained that a normative theory must be based anthropologically or ethologically (Mead, 1964 [1930]: xxxvii). This suggestion is not convincing, given that anthropology and ethology can only show that communication is the distinguishing factor that separates

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humans from animals and is common to all humans (therefore, universal), but not expose the normative core of communication. From an anthropological viewpoint it remains unclear what characteristics or what social meanings (Cooley, 1969a [1894]: 61) are inherent in the process of communication, giving it its normative power and meaning that can be used to evaluate social facts and historical changes. Such a measure cannot in any case be determined through anthropological or ethological reasoning. Cooley suggests another way to establish his normative point of view. He shows (as does Mead in other places in his work) that human society (social order) and subjectivity (the self) evolve through understanding in the process of communicative action. Understanding and sympathy are for Cooley (1964 [1902]: 1367) universal moral norms that have their factual reality in the basic structure of the primary socialization process. On the one hand, understanding and communication are preconditions for the development of the self because an autonomous self comes only from the synthesis of disparate judgments. On the other hand, the evolving self must be entangled in a communicatively structured social environment that opens perspectives for the socialization process. Mutual understanding (Cooley, 1963 [1909]: 10) in primary groups is a prerequisite for individuation, for successful integration into the social environment, and for the reproduction of the general social order. The normative power and meaning of communication are founded on the fact that, without understanding and communication in primary groups, socialization and individuation could not take place. Cooley does not, then, dene primary groups, as Mead maintains, through particular social norms and cultural values peculiar to the American community. Cooley realized, instead, that the basic means for creating communities is communication in the form of dialogues.1 He is, in the rst place, interested in articulating the universal rules that simultaneously enable both socialization and individuation. This conception of continuity between personal identity, primary group (or community) and social organization (or society) is altogether unprecedented. Ferdinand To nnies, whose term Gemeinschaft (community or primary group) provided a focus of orientation for Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, for example, differentiated in a dualistic way between Gemeinschaft (group) and Gesellschaft (society). He denes Gemeinschaften as thick, organic unities, characterized by hierarchies, habits, moral orientations and emotions. Gesellschaft is, in every sense, just the opposite of Gemeinschaft: Gesellschaften are controlled by conventions, laws and public opinion. It is not possible to subsume Cooleys ideas within this European scheme. To nnies dualism which was motivated by a philosophical dualism between British natural right theory and attempts to historicize German idealist philosophy is accompanied by a similarly dualistic theory of action. Gemeinschaften are organized by normative action. Gesellschaften are integrated by rationality of means and ends. However, for Cooley, whose concept of primary group was motivated, above all, by the new social psychological theory of William James and James Baldwin the basic mode of action

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which underlies Gemeinschaften and Gesellschaften or primary groups and social organizations is communication. The difference between Cooleys and To nnies respective conception of community leads to very different social-political theories. Cooley analyzed the deep-rooted democratic aspects of primary groups. In his theory, the enlargement of primary-group ideals involves by necessity the enlargement of democracy, whereas no theory of democracy derives from To nnies conception of Gemeinschaft. Cooleys examination of primary-group communication reveals the intrinsically social nature of humankind and does not, as Mead believes, model the structure of the American community. Primary groups are only in part molded by special traditions, and, in larger degree, express a universal nature. The religion or government of other civilizations may seem alien to us, but the children of the family group wear the common life, and with them we can always make ourselves at home. (Cooley, 1963 [1909]: 278) Cooley reformulates the postulates of enlightenment, freedom, equality, solidarity and justice not as natural rights, and not as popular impressions, but as sure and sound sentiments based on experiences available to every member of a primary group. According to Cooley, primary groups are the place where actors can experience the ideals of enlightenment as characteristics of the action process. This involves the postulation of freedom because in primary groups actors constantly face conicts with signicant others; to make a decision, they must synthesize disparate views into their own judgment, thus developing freedom and autonomy from others. Actors experience the meaning of solidarity and equality not only because survival can only be assured through cooperation with others, but also because individuation can only succeed on the basis of common views; only through sympathetic introspection and through understanding of others can actors create their own perspectives. Finally the idea of justice is based on primary-group experiences because the generalization of subjective views is dependent on the recognition of others, a recognition that can only be had when communication partners accept an assertion because it is correct and fair. If it is true that human nature is developed in primary groups which are everywhere much the same, and that here also springs from these a common idealism which institutions strive to express, we have a ground for somewhat the same conclusions as come from the theory of a natural freedom modied by contract. Natural freedom would correspond roughly to the ideals generated and partly realized in primary association,

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the social contract to the limitations these ideals encounter in seeking a larger expression. (Cooley, 1964 [1902]: 47) These communicative preconditions of the socialization process can, of course, be concealed in particular non-communicative norms; potentially, however, they are basic to all primary groups because without understanding, individuation and socialization cannot occur. Through non-communicative interaction, already-present attitudes and structures can be reproduced, but to create a new perspective or identity unfamiliar meanings must be understood, tested and synthesized. Therefore, new group and identity structures can only develop through understanding and sympathy and not in interactions based on delimitation. In primary groups individuals gain social competencies and experience normative ideals that are a prerequisite for social democratization. Democracy is, therefore, for Cooley, not a regime, but rather a form of life that is grounded in primary-group experience. Democracy is endangered when democratic options are hidden beneath non-democratic cultural traditions and social norms in the primary group. Cooley gathers his normative perspective not, as Mead believes, in a na ve belief in evolution of the American community, but rather through the reconstruction of universal communication prerequisites and characteristics of the socialization process (Cooley, 1963 [1909]: 27). Why Mead ignores the universalistic and normative demand of Cooleys communication and primary-group theory continues to be inexplicable.2 Cooley and Mead founded a pragmatic social theory; both came to it through a disagreement with idealism and behaviorism. While Meads social psychology was more strongly marked by a discussion with behaviorist positions, the young Cooley was clearly inuenced by American transcendentalism and idealism (cf. Noble, 1958; Schubert, 1995, 1998; Schwartz, 1985). Possibly Meads critical stance vis-` a-vis Cooley can be explained by their different starting points. However, in their principal writings, both Cooley and Mead share a common trajectory: breaking through Cartesian bodymind dualism in developing a theory of communication. I shall provide a comprehensive presentation of pragmatic communication theory created by Mead and Cooley, their theory of social order and social change as sequences in the process of action and communication, and the theory of meaning and value proposed by Mead and Cooley, before, in conclusion, returning to Meads criticism of Cooley. My aim is to show that Mead (logical universe of discourse) as well as Cooley (human nature values) offered a universalistic and normatively useful perspective based on a theory of symbolic interaction. Differences between Mead and Cooley are consequently not based on theory, but rather on a different approach to subject matter. While Mead worked above all in the elds of social psychology, philosophy of science, ethics and

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political philosophy, Cooley moved closer to the area of sociology, investigating the development of social micro (looking-glass self), meso (primary group and ideals) and macro structures (public opinion, democracy, classes, institutions, social disorganization) (see Cooley, 1998: 155214).

Cooley and Mead on Communication or Understanding

Mead and Cooley share an anthropology-based communication and action theory: we are determined neither by environmental nor by biological conditions but inherit only lines of teachability. According to Cooley; however, human nature provides no instinctive reportoire with which to solve environmental problems without reection and recourse to generalized social meaning. The attraction scheme of the animal world gives way to the plasticity of human nature (Cooley, 1963 [1909]: 28) and human reaction is thus based on openness to the environment. This standpoint is extremely important: the limitation of action inherent in it the delayed reaction to environmental attraction gives rise to the objective need for permanent reconstruction and experimental solutions of action problems as a basic characteristic of human action, as well as a condition for the development of the mind (Cooley, 1998: 81130; Mead, 1973: 10040). For Cooley, as for Mead, the mind is not a predecessor characteristic for the action process, but rather appears only when conicts limit habitual actions such that the meaning of situations (subjective attitudes and objective values) must be newly dened. New understanding is gained not, as Descartes (cogito ergo sum), the founder of philosophy of the mind, believed, through solipsistic introspection or contemplation, but rather through sympathetic introspection in the process of symbolically mediated interaction. According to Cooley, Descartes should have said cogitamus rather than cogito. On the other hand Meads reproach of mentalism is not unfounded; it refers to such statements by Cooley as society is mental, imaginations are the solid facts of society, or we know persons as imaginative ideas in the mind. However, Cooley was not a mentalist; he describes in detail, in Human Nature and the Social Order, his understanding of mind and imagination. Imagination is not a force isolated from the empirical world, but rather an intersubjective communication. Mind is not a solipsistic capacity, but an inner experience, created in conjunction with the outside world. The mind, according to Cooley, lives in perpetual conversation, and the life of the mind is essentially a life of intercourse. Cooley insists that society is mental because the human mind is social (Cooley, 1964 [1902]: 97, 81). If human action is determined neither by the mind nor by nature, the question arises as to how social order is possible, that is, how individual actions can be coordinated. The answer that Cooley and Mead give is: actors can dene, generalize and communicate meanings of the subjective, social and objective world with help of signicant or standard symbols such that they can adjust

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their actions to the virtual reactions of the other. Communication and speech is for Mead (1912) and Cooley (1963 [1909]: 64; 1969a [1894]: 61)3 the deciding instrument of social organization. The path to an interactionist sociology led Cooley to reject introspective methods and the philosophy of mind, on the one hand, and biologistic and behavioristic approaches such as eugenics, criminology, mass psychology, the theory of imitation and the psychology of instinct, on the other. To establish itself on a rm theoretical foundation, Cooleys sociology needed to determine the mechanism of social integration. Cooley was not able to proceed beyond the futile alternatives of heredity and environment, imitation and innovation and suggestion and choice key terms in his early thinking until he discovered the basic elements of his envisioned theory: communication and understanding. The basic medium of social integration, according to Cooley, is not the mental mechanism described by mass psychology (Gustave Le Bon), nor imitation (Gabriel Tarde), nor instincts (William McDougall), nor social control in the form of habits (Edward A. Ross), and neither is it a consciousness of kind (Franklin H. Giddings) but, rather, communication based on standardized symbols. Human beings have to understand each other to create both a manifest social order and autonomous selves. Only if symbols are available which can be understood independently of single situations by all interacting participants in the same way can a common orientation toward a generally valid pattern of behaviour be achieved. Nevertheless, symbolic meanings offer no generally failsafe security of action; the meanings must be permanently dened, if only because meanings neither are objectively inherent in things nor do they give a universal presentation of the mind.

Cooley and Mead on Social Order and Social Change as Stages in the Act
For Cooley and Mead, communication is the basic term with which to describe the phenomena of social order and social change. Social order cannot be inferred either empirically from the social or natural environment or nominally from the transcendental mind. Social change is neither the result of an unconsidered adaptation to the environment nor the development of an autonomous mind. Forms of social change and social order are, on the contrary, the other side of the communicative process. Thus, Meads and Cooleys interactive theory of social order and social change lies in the tradition of American pragmatism, as established by Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce arranges the action process in four phases. The starting point for action is the habits of action and beliefs: according to Peirce, we cannot begin with complete doubt, but rather only with all the prejudices which we actually have, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Our prejudices can be dealt with not through a maxim, as, according to Peirce, in Descartess initial scepticism, but rather only through living doubt, when our

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beliefs are confronted with an outward clash. Only then do meanings, such as social rules and individual goal-setting, lose their validity and clarity (Peirce, 1996c: 156, para. 5.264). Only in this second phase of limitation of action or crisis is it, according to Peirce, realistic to criticize the sense of meanings; only then will meanings be recognized at all. The doubt stimulates the mind to an activity (Peirce, 1996d: 253, para. 5.394), so that the phase of the limitation of action is followed by the reconstruction phase, creative experimentation, in which, by resorting to old values, new ideas and hypotheses are invented. In a fourth phase, those ideas that have proven worthwhile will be incorporated in the form of new rules and habits. At the center of pragmatism lies the phase of reconstruction, the abductive development of new hypotheses. In his pragmatism lectures of 1903, Peirce declared that the question of pragmatism is nothing other than the question about the logic of abduction (1996b: 121, para. 5.196). The logical order of the world, for Peirce, derives not from the deductive of generalized norms and not from the inductive of single cases, but rather from the abductive in the context of discovery as a construction process of hypotheses. Mead developed his theory of a circular connection between order and change in the communicative process with John Dewey. The Deweyian statement, according to Anselm Strauss, . . . here somewhat simplied, points to a sequence of action: ongoing, blocked, deliberating about alternative possibilities of action, and then continued action. Mead of course elaborated this action scheme in more explicitly sociological directions. These include his formulation of stages in the act, his radical conception of the temporal and complex and potential exibility of any act, his elaboration of social interaction, his detailing of self as process, his greater emphasis on the body in action, his elaboration of mind as mental activity, and his development of crucially important perspectival view of temporality and interaction. It has seemed to me that some version of this general theoretical stance underlies virtually all Chicago interactionist research and conceptualization. (1994: 4) Also for Cooley, habitual forms of social order are a starting point for the four-stage action process: So long as an idea is not contradicted, not felt to be in any way inconsistent with others, we take it as a matter of course (1964 [1902]: 67). Actors must rst begin from generalized meanings when they enter into social relationships with others; only under these prior conditions can A offer a sensible connective action for B. Habits and suggestions, the stream of thought, provide the material for the communicative process and for the development of individual goal orientation. Any choice that I can make is a synthesis of suggestions derived in one way or another from life in general; and it also reacts upon that life, so that my will is social as being both effect and cause

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with reference to it (Cooley, 1964 [1902]: 54). Nevertheless, second, limitation of actions occurs regularly in the action process because actors do not immediately react to generalized meanings, and have different experiences in the ow of life that lead to conicts. Precisely as the conditions become intricate, are we forced to think, to choose, to dene the useful and the right, and in general, to work out the higher intellectual life (Cooley, 1964 [1902]: 53). The destabilization of values follows, third, a phase of reconstruction and experiments in which new hypotheses are discovered that provide a view to overcoming conicts. We get on by forming intelligent ideals of right, which are imaginative reconstructions and anticipations of life, based upon experience. And in trying to realize these ideals we initiate a new phase of the social process, which goes on through the usual interactions to a fresh synthesis (Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 358). For Cooley, social order is a process whose starting point lies in habitualized actions that confronted with action problems must be reconstructed in experiments and phases of search so that fourth new action customs and social rules can be established. Indeed it would seem that the struggles of the age have given us at least one principle, namely, that life itself is a process rather than a state; so that we no longer expect anything nal, but look to discover in the movement itself suf cient matter for reason and faith. (Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 377) Most signicant for Cooley is the tentative process, the phase of imaginative reconstruction. In the modeling of utopias and ideals through a creative synthesis (Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 353) of experiences lies, for him, the option of reason of human action, thus the construction of new individual goals and new social norms and cultural faith. Cooley habitually resorts to the hallmarks of originality or creativeness as a frame of reference (Levin, 1941: 21629). The deciding point is that social order is not guaranteed either through the inner drive or outer nature (behaviorism and empiricism) or through the internalizing of social norms (normativism), nor is it reected in a transcendental mind (idealism) or in rational individual action (utilitarianism); rather it derives from constant interpretations and reconstruction of generalized meanings (pragmatism). Social order is, for Cooley, not a state, but a process of creative and experimental action. For Cooley and Mead, social action is created not as the rational result of clear goals and not in the execution of social norms. The pragmatic social theory underlies homo oeconomicus and homo sociologicus because it shows how individual goal-setting and generalized behavioral expectations are constituted and stabilized through creative action. Thus, in the view of Cooley and Mead, the basic motive for action is not, as in utilitarianism, given goals that the actors want to maximally realize, nor social norms that channel the actions of the actors, but

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rather problems of action and conicts that must be overcome through experimental action. Accordingly, Cooley labels the dynamic of conict between individuals as hostile sympathy (1966 [1918]: 266), since deceptions, animosities and conicts do not simply threaten social certainties; they are also the condition for the reaction of new patterns of behavior and of the individual mind. Actors consequently coordinate their actions to overcome uncertainty of action or conicts and not because of sanctions or a meansends calculation. Social order is not a consistent condition of the balance of individual interests and not an autonomous normative structure determining the range of individual action, but a process of permanent imaginative reconstruction of social, subjective and objective meanings. Cooley and Mead represent neither a nominalist (mind) nor an empiricist (body) dual theory of meaning; rather they assume that meanings are dened in a tripolar situation of interaction. It is decisive that Cooleys approach is based not on a theory of the mind or knowledge but on a theory of symbolically mediated interaction, showing how social knowledge derives from the communicative process. Therefore Cooleys work belongs to pragmatism and not to the sociology of knowledge.4

Cooley and Mead on Meaning and Valuation

A central sign of pragmatism as it was developed by Charles Sanders Peirce is, in contrast to all the varieties of idealism, nominalism or mentalism, on the one side, and of empiricism, realism, behaviorism and materialism, on the other side, a genuine theory of value and meaning. From a pragmatic view, the value of objects and ideas cannot be separated either from the realm of the mind (res cogitans) or from the world of things (res extensa). The objective, social and subjective worlds gain meaning in the communicative process or in usage situations. The truth of statements comes consequently not from structures of the mind and not from empirical qualities, but rather is constructed tentatively in discourses. Thus, pragmatism does not assume either the human mind or the worth of objects; rather it examines how the mind and meaning come to be in the process of symbolic interaction. The tripolar, or tri-relative, meaning theory rst developed by Peirce offers a theoretical background for Mead as well as for Cooley. Therefore, I will reconstruct briey the position of Peirce in contrast to the empiricism of David Hume, on the one hand, and to the idealism of Immanuel Kant, on the other, to show in conclusion that Mead and Cooley directly represent Peirces position, and to make clearer the common, basic structure of sociological pragmatism. According to Peirce, values and meanings result from semiotic mediation of signs, interpretations and objects. Semiosis, for Peirce, means an action, or inuence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative inuence not being in any way

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resolvable into actions between pairs (1996e: 332, para. 5.484). Meaning results from the tripolar relationship among sign, object and interpretant. Generalized meanings (M) are dened by interpretants (I) based on the use of objects (O) with help of signs (S) (see Figure 1). FIGURE 1.
Charles Sanders Peirce Sign (S) Meaning (M) Interpretant (I)

Object (O)

The meaning-critical realism of Peirce sets itself against David Humes image of bipolar realism (in general against empiricism and materialism), which merges the constituent meaning levels of interpretation and believes that objects of the external, social or subjective world can be represented by signs (theories) or at least correspond to these. According to Hume, the human mind is like a container that is lled, in that the outer world is taken into the inner world through psychological mechanisms of association. Even abstract terms or complex ideas such as government, church, negotiation, conquest, can, according to Hume, be traced to simple ideas that are images of empirical objects, even though we seldom spread out in our minds all the simple ideas, of which these complex ones are composd. Despite that, empirical experience is the only method of recognition for Hume (Hume, 1985 [173940]: 70; see Figure 2). FIGURE 2.
David Hume: Category of understanding Subject Recognition of outer world Object

For Peirce also, objects are provided outside our thinking. In contrast to empiricism, the pragmatic view of the outer world is not modeled through the psychological mechanism of association; rather, objects (O) gain meaning (M) for subjects when they are dened and interpreted in practical situations of action (I) and are declared with the help of sign carriers (S). On the other side, Peirce disagrees with Immanuel Kants nominalistic theory of meaning (and with all varieties of idealism and mentalism). In idealism

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transcendental categories of the mind are the only prerequisites of meaning, without considering the interpretive mediation of experience through signs as a constitutive for a theory of cognition (Figure 3). FIGURE 3.
Immanuel Kant: Category of understanding Subject Recognition of outer world Object

Naturally, Kant also sees that reason (thoughts or interpretations) and the empirical world (objects) are related to each other in the recognition process: Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind (Kant, 1787: 93). Nevertheless, for Kant, generalized meanings are not the product of experience. Pure reason takes precedence; only it can reduce the manifold of our representations and empirical perceptions to a general and uniform notion signifying heterogeneous objects. With Kant, we can therefore only speak of an object, because the logic of reason as conditio sine qua non of recognition and all truth guarantees the unity of objects. The concept of an object . . . has to be distinct from all our representations. The unity which the object makes necessary can be nothing else than the formal unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifold of representations. It is only when we have thus produced synthetic unity in the manifold of intuition that we are in a position to say that we know the object. (Kant, 1929 [1787]: 135) With this quotation the difference between idealism (or mentalism) and pragmatism is clear. With Peirce, in place of Kants postulated a priori structures of the mind, interpretation processes (I) are set in motion through action problems, in whose wake signs (S) are dened, and which establish the meaning (M) of objects (O). According to Peirce, . . . a sign has, as such, three references: rst, it is a sign to some thought which interprets it; second, it is a sign for some object to which in that thought it is equivalent; third it is a sign, in some respect or quality, which brings it into connection with its object. (1996c: 169, para. 5.283) Mead, as well, derived his theory of meaning and value in opposing Immanuel Kant. Above all, he differentiated his theory of communication from the dualistic attractionreaction model of behaviorism. The meaning of social

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objects comes neither from understanding nor human nature, but rather is a result of a three-sided social action process. Meaning is thus a development of something objectively there as a relation between certain phases of the social act; it is not a physical addition to that act and it is not an idea as traditionally conceived. A gesture by one organism, the resultant of the social act in which the gesture is an early phase, and the response of another organism to the gesture, are the relata in a triple or threefold relationship of gesture to rst organism, of gesture to second organism, and of gesture to subsequent phases of the given social act; and this threefold relationship constitutes the matrix within which meaning arises, or which develops into the eld of meaning. The gesture stands for a certain result of the social act, a result to which there is a denite response on the part of the individuals involved therein; so that meaning is given or stated in terms of response. Meaning is implicit if not always explicit in the relationship among the various phases of the social act to which it refers, and out of which it develops. And its development takes place in terms of symbolization at the human evolutionary level. (Mead, 1973: 76; see Figure 4) FIGURE 4.
George Herbert Mead Gesture subjective world Meaning Response social world

symbolic world

Resultant objective world

In the end, Cooley created his theory of meaning and value above all in an explanation of economic theory (1912, 1913a, 1913b; see Jacobs, 1979). He separates himself on one side from the historical school of national economics (Gustav Schmoller); their methods are, for him, too empirical to hold out much prospect of an adequate doctrine of process (Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 367). His chief opponent is nevertheless the rational model of the aspiring marginal utility theory (Alfred Marshall and Carl Menger). The neoclassics abandoned the question of the origin of values, reducing the subject matter of economics to

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examining the relation between given values or ends and alternative means. The economic theorist appears, says Cooley, like a man who should observe only the second hand of a watch: He counts the seconds with care, but is hardly in a position to tell what time it is (1966 [1918]: 367). Unlike the historical school of national economy, which attributed subjective value orientation to objective, social and cultural structures, and, unlike neoclassical marginal utility theory, for which individuals randomly create objective values, Cooley developed not a dual but a tripolar theory of value: It would seem that the essential things in the conception of value are three: an organism, a situation, and an object. The organism is necessary to give meaning to the idea; there must be worth to something. It need not be a person; a group, an institution, a doctrine, any organized form of life will do; and that it be conscious of the values that motivate it is not at all essential. . . . The situation is the immediate occasion for action, in view of which the organism integrates the various values working within it and meets the situation by an act of selection, which is a step in its own growth, leading on to new values and new situations. Valuation is only another name for tentative organic process. (Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 2845; see Figure 5) FIGURE 5.
Charles Horton Cooley Organism subjective world Value Situation social world

symbolic world

Objects objective world

According to Mead and Cooley, generalized values or meaning are dened in a three-part interaction situation. When an actor or organism indicates with a gesture (subjective world) (1) an object or the resultant of the social act (the objective world), (2) and when in a social situation a response or interpretation (social world) (3) is answering that claim, step by step values and meanings get generalized and nally expressed in signicant or standardized symbols (symbolic world) (4). Communication is the mechanism creating the autonomy, as well as the heteronomy, of the four entangled worlds:

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(1) Meanings of the objective world are traceable neither to empirical structures of the outer world nor to nominal structures of the mind. The meaning of objectives is generalized in contextual use, in the process of coordination of action. Objects of action or the resultant of the social act (Mead) gain generalized meaning when actor A indicates an object with a gesture and actor B through his or her reaction or interpretation of the gesture signals agreement or expresses disagreement, so that A can again react to Bs gesture, modifying his or her position until a general agreement is reached. According to Cooley, a hammer-value, a grainvalue, but also a stock value or a value of books, of pictures, of doctrines occurs when interpreters, through the use of these objects or stocks of knowledge, dene their meaning in practical situations. The value of objects is institutionalized and habitualized through their workability in standard situations (Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 2845; see Cooley, 1912). (2) In practical situations of interaction, meanings of the social world develop simultaneously in the form of social roles, norms and structures. The social status of actors is dened in a struggle for recognition of economic, political, social and cultural capital and competencies important for creating and reproducing problems of social order. Different from the meanings of the objective world (spatial knowledge), social norms (social knowledge, see Cooley, 1998: 11030) did not have a valid basis outside of the communication process. Actors can anticipate the reaction of the social world to their subjective demands against a background of symbolically generalized expectations of behavior; they must, however, count on the contingent reactions of others. The social process of taking into account of taking into account is a phenomenon of immersion and cannot be reduced either to the combining of subjective intentions or psychic objects (individual level) or to the inuence of the objective world or social facts (structural level). (3) In the process of communication between A and B, not only do social orders and social structures develop, but also meanings of the subjective world of the actors. Because the value of an object and the social position of actors to each other are not determined, action problems continuously arise in practical interaction situations; actors must therefore develop their own perspective on the social and objective world to be at all able to make a decision and to coordinate actions. The self (Mead) or looking-glass self (Cooley) arise in reaction to action problems through the abductive integration of social, cultural and subjective demands or perspectives.5 (4) Generalized meanings of the subjective, objective and social world can be expressed through the use of signicant or standardized symbols. Because symbols arise from concrete action situations, a symbolic reference structure, a symbolic world, develops that gains autonomy from subjective intentions, social rules and objective validity and can exercise its own inuence on the meanings of this world,

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even when the effect and meaning of symbols remain dependent on the interaction process and cases of problems of understanding must be newly dened. In that the word usually goes before, leading and kindling the idea we should not have the latter if we did not have the word rst. This way says the word, is an interesting thought: come and nd it. And so we are led on to rediscover old knowledge. Such words, for instance, as good, right, love, home, justice, beauty, freedom are powerful makers of what they stand for. (Cooley, 1963 [1909]: 69)

The Theory of Perspective Change

Combined with the theory of meaning and value, pragmatism gains a genuine theory of validity. With this, I return to my consideration of Meads criticism of Cooley. Cooley had not, according to Mead, developed a universalistic, normative perspective that is necessary to critique empirical facts of social order. In response to this accusation, I will show that Cooley within the tradition of American pragmatism created a universalistic perspective subsequently to his theory of communication and socialization. According to Peirce, the truth or validity of a claim about the objective, social or subjective world will be tentatively established in an open-ended interpretation process. The idea of an indenite community of communication regulates the claim for objective truth, according to Peirce. The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would nally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without denite limits, and capable of an indenite increase of knowledge. (Peirce, 1996a: 398, para. 2.654) The prerequisite for objective knowledge lies, for Peirce, in the potential agreement of an indenite or logical community of communication, a counterfactual supposition that nevertheless makes an objective judgment thinkable and which can also be used as regulative idea or moral norm to evaluate social facts, actions and structures. The logic is founded, according to Peirce, on a social principle (1996f: 13555, para. 5.22537). The logical conclusion is a semiotically brokered, social process; thus the validity of a logical close is dependent on the agreement of the discursive community. Cooley and Mead created the normative perspective of the logical universe of discourse (Mead) or human nature values (Cooley) reconstructively from the circular relationship of individuation and socialization (see Figure 6). In

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FIGURE 6.

Human Nature Values Universal solidarity Charles Horton Cooley

Institutionalized Values Primary Ideals

Self

Playmate Great Man Ideal Person Play Game Discourse

Significant Others

George Herbert Mead

Generalized Others

Logical Universe of Discourse

the socialization process, children at play (1) acquire the perspective of others (Mead), of the members of the primary group or of imaginary playmates (Cooley); thereby differences between the judgments of signicant others arise (A, B, C, D), such that those being socialized (2) are motivated to break through the perspective of the signicant other in favor of the generalized other (Mead, 1925), of institutional values or of great and famous men as symbols (Cooley, 1966 [1918]: 285; 1964 [1902]: 341). Therefore, they learn to understand rules that coordinate individual actions, enabling children through games to take different and even opposing positions. In the continuation of the socialization process, actors experience that general rules and social norms of different spheres of action, societies or historical periods contradict each other such that ideas of the logical universe of discourse (Mead) or of human nature values or an ethical self (Cooley) can break through in favour of group conventions.6 Finally, the self (4) for Mead and Cooley, as for Peirce (1996f: 13555, para. 5.22537), is the result of an abductive or synthetic conclusion that is driven

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by the process of socialization. When contradictions occur in the social world of the actors, they realize the power to dene the situation and to gain freedom and autonomy from social constraints. On the other side, not only freedom of action but also the social order is generalized through the inclusion and integration of differentiated perspectives.7 Autonomous action results, for Cooley and Mead, not in the rational selflimitation in favor of social necessity, as with Weber and Durkheim, but rather in communication with others, where new perspectives can be designed in the objective, social and subjective world. For Cooley and Mead, the differentiation of societal structures and rules, on the one side, makes possible new forms of individuation because it increases the chance (or the demand) to take new perspectives and to integrate conicting expectations, so that, on the other side, individuals are motivated toward generalized and synechistic accomplishments, provoking participants in the process of action to differentiate structures of action, therefore leading to the establishment of new social norms and institutions. In this communicative process of interaction between the person and society, individuals nd autonomy from social rules and expectation through the increasing broadening of perspectives, and social structures are generalized through the denition of standardized symbols signifying institutionalized values and situations of actions.

Notes
1. The following denition of a social group or community is found in Cooleys private notes: Although group, in ordinary usage, often denotes a mere assemblage of persons or things it is commonly understood in sociology to mean a social group, that is a number of persons among whom is some degree of communication and interaction. Moreover this must be reciprocal and not in one direction only. . . . Evidently the conception is a very general one, and groups may vary indenitely in size and character. Any two persons conversing make a group, and, on the other hand the word might be applied in some connections to the whole population of the earth, since there can be few persons, if any, who do not directly or indirectly receive and give inuence. Some groups are intimate, lasting and separate, like a family on an ancestral farm, others so . . . as to be hardly observable. The conception of the group is complementary to that of the person. Every normal person has his being in a complex of groups, and even those who are apparently isolated are hardly an exception, since they usually continue the social habit in imaginary intercourse (conversations). Without groups there would be no persons, just as without persons there would be no groups: they are aspects of the same human complex. (Charles Horton Cooley Collection, index card, Bentley Historical Library, Ann Arbor, Miscellaneous Papers, Box No. 3) 2. Meads objection has been adopted by many critics. Philip Rieff maintains: Cooley represented a limited constituency, with a limited history. His small-town doctrine of human nature may appear as archaic now as that of the philosopher-aristocrats of Greek culture, in the context of Greek political theory and institutional practice. The

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intelligent and gentlemanly Cooleyan symbolic of human nature White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant and Liberal may no longer serve to build up that controlling consensus which once constituted the specic genius of American culture. It is not yet clear what the new symbolic is, nor whether, in a technologically advanced and bureaucratically organized mass society, a controlling consensus, in the classical mode, is required for social order. (1964: xvii) Lewis Coser repeated this criticism: Cooleys benign optimism, his somewhat romantic idealism, are likely to appear antiquated to modern observers who view the world through lenses ground by harsh historical experiences from which the sage from Ann Arbor was spared (1977: 309). According to Roscoe C. Hinkle, Cooley is an exponent of one form of sociological romanticism or romantic idealism (1966: xii). Extremely critical of Cooley is C. Wright Mills: Cooley took the idealists absolute and gave it the characteristics of an organic village; all the world should be an enlarged, Christian-democratic version of a rural village. He practically assimilated society to this primary-group community, and he blessed it emotionally and conceptually. (19434: 175) In contradiction to that critique is John W. Petrass more positive interpretation of Cooley: Cooley did not believe that the traditional primary groups of family and neighborhood would remain the most inuential controls upon the individuals behavior. This mistaken conception has, in turn, contributed to the belief that his theory was implicitly antiprogress. But, progress and the ability to adapt oneself to a changing and complex social order are the dening characteristics of human nature. In actuality, it appears that the emphasis Cooley placed upon the role of the primary group in the life of the individual was in large measure due to his recognition of the passing of the folk culture mystique in modern American society. In short, the stabilization process which many critics see as the essential characteristics of the primary group takes the form of adaptability to change. It is upon this foundation that the moral systems of both the individual and society are to be based in modern society. The horrors of civilization result from a lack of fullment of human nature, and human nature is plasticity. (1968: 20) 3. Communication, according to Cooley in his autobiographical retrospective of 1928,was thus my rst real conquest, and the thesis a forecast of the organic view of society I have been working out ever since (Cooley, 1969b [1928]: 8). Harvey A. Farberman (1970, 1985) and Ellsworth R. Fuhrman (1980) place Cooley in the sociology of knowledge in a line from Alfred Schutz and Karl Mannheim, whereas R.S. Perinbanayagam (1975) separates Schutz from Cooley and Mead. David Franks and Viktor Gecas show that Cooleys term looking-glass self is marked by four qualications: The rst is that reected appraisals of others are actively interpreted by the actor. The second qualication is that actors, to a large extent, select whose appraisals will affect them. Third, Cooley discussed the importance of a relatively stable, traditional sense of values that allow the person autonomy from the immediate appraisals of others. Fourth, in his writings on appropriative behavior, Cooley argued for a relatively autonomous, yet social dimension of self-formation based on feelings of efcacy. (Franks and Gecas, 1992: 50; see also Gecas and Schwalbe, 1983)

4.

5.

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6.

Cooley uses the term ideal person or the ethical self, similar to Meads generalized other. This was not noted in the literature on Cooley. Shrauger and Schoeneman maintain: Meads lookingglass self is reective not only of signicant others, as Cooley suggested, but of a generalized other, that is, ones whole sociocultural environment (1979: 550). Harvey A. Farberman believes that Cooley only reconstructed the relationship between persons and society mentalistically, whereas Mead did it interactively: James rst conceived the self as emanating from an indwelling structure of interests that carried a priori dispositions and was resolutely subjectivistic. Cooley then inserted this notion of self into the social process via the crucible of highly charged primary group relations but left in the realm of mental imagination. Finally, Mead revolutionized this entire line of theoretical development by reconceptualizing the origins, nature, and consequences of self. Self did not emanate from innate biological endowments and migrate to the outside world; it developed from primitive gestures and symbols in the outside world of already on-going joint functional action. Self is not psychical; it is functional and behavioral, and located in an objective phase of experience. (1985: 27) David D. Franks und Viktor Gecas have, on the other hand, concluded that based on Cooleys term understanding or sympathetic introspection, the appearance of the self is interactivistic and not mentalistically explained: There is no reason to think that Cooley considered reected appraisals to be the only source of self-knowledge or self-regard. As attribution theory stressed . . . important information about the self is recorded from the consequences of the actions we ourselves bring forth onto the world, i.e. we come to know ourselves from the products and effects of our actions. (1992: 578) Donald C. Reitzes also rejects the accusation of mentalism against Cooley: Cooley presents a picture of an active individual inuencing the perceptions of others in the process of being inuenced by their perceptions. The reciprocal relation between individual and others is vital to an understanding of Cooleys social self, and this reciprocity has not received attention commensurate with its signicance. (1980: 637) The self arises, according to Cooley, through the creative synthesizing of the social environment, not, as Talcott Parsons (1968) attempted to show, through the internalization of normative structures.

7.

References
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Cooley, Charles Horton (1964) Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Schocken. (Orig. pub. 1902.) Cooley, Charles Horton (1966) Social Process. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press. (Orig. pub. 1918.) Cooley, Charles Horton. (1969a) The Theory of Transportation, pp. 17120 in Sociological Theory and Social Research: Selected Papers of Charles Horton Cooley, ed. Robert Cooley Angell. New York: Kelley. (Orig. pub. 1894.) Cooley, Charles Horton (1969b) The Development of Sociology at Michigan, pp. 316 in Sociological Theory and Social Research: Selected Papers of Charles Horton Cooley, ed. Robert Cooley Angell. New York: Kelley. (Orig. pub. 1928.) Cooley, Charles Horton (1998) On Self and Social Organization, ed. HansJoachim Schubert. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Coser, Lewis (1977) Charles Horton Cooley, pp. 30530 in Masters of Sociological Thought. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Farberman, Harvey A. (1970) Mannheim, Cooley, and Mead: Toward a Social Theory of Mentality, Sociological Quarterly 2: 313. Farberman, Harvey A. (1985) The Foundations of Symbolic Interaction: James, Cooley, and Mead, Studies in Symbolic Interaction Supplement 1: 1327. Franks, David D. and Viktor Gecas (1992) Autonomy and Conformity in Cooleys Self-Theory: The Looking-Glass Self and Beyond, Symbolic Interaction 15(1): 4968. Fuhrman, Ellsworth R. (1980) Charles H. Cooley, pp. 186211 in The Sociology of Knowledge in America. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Gecas, Viktor and Michael L. Schwalbe (1983) Beyond the Looking-Glass Self: Social Structure and Ef cacy-Based Self-Esteem, Social Psychological Quarterly 46(2): 7788. Hinkle, Roscoe C. (1966) Introduction, pp. xilxiv in Charles Horton Cooley, Social Process. Carbondale, IL and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Hume, David (1985) A Treatise of Human Nature, Harmondsworth: Penguin. (Orig. pub. 173940.) Jacobs, Glenn (1979) Economy and Totality: Cooleys Theory of Pecuniary Valuation, Studies in Symbolic Interaction 2: 3984.. Kant, Immanuel (1787) Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith. Electronic edition: http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/ Levin, S.M. (1941) Charles Horton Cooley and the Concept of Creativeness, Journal of Social Philosophy VI(3): 21629. Mead, George Herbert (1912) The Mechanism of Social Consciousness, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientic Methods 9: 4016. Mead, George Herbert (1925) The Genesis of the Self and Social Control, International Journal of Ethics 35: 25177.

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Mead, George Herbert (1964) Cooleys Contribution to American Social Thought (Foreword), pp. ixxxxviii in Charles Horton Cooley Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Schocken. (Orig. pub. 1930.) Mead, George Herbert (1973) Mind, Self, and Society. London and Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mills, C. Wright (19434) The Professional Ideology of Social Pathologists, American Journal of Sociology 49: 16580. Noble, David (1958) Charles Horton Cooley: The Transcendentalism of Social Science, pp. 10324 in The Paradox of Progressive Thought. St Paul: University of Minnesota Press. Parsons, Talcott (1968) Cooley and the Problem of Internalization, pp. 4868 in Albert J. Reiss (ed.) Cooley and Sociological Analysis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Peirce, Charles Sanders (1996a) The Doctrine of Chances, pp. 389414 in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vol. 2. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Books on Demand, Bell & Howell. Peirce, Charles Sanders (1996b) Pragmatism and Abduction, pp. 11234 in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vol. 5. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Books on Demand, Bell & Howell. Peirce, Charles Sanders (1996c) Some Consequences of Four Incapacities, pp. 15689 in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vol. 5. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Books on Demand, Bell & Howell. Peirce, Charles Sanders (1996d) How to Make Our Ideas Clear, pp. 24871 in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vol. 5. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Books on Demand, Bell & Howell. Peirce, Charles Sanders (1996e) A Survey of Pragmatism, pp. 31745 in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vol. 5. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Books on Demand, Bell & Howell. Peirce, Charles Sanders (1996f) Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man, pp. 13555 in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vol. 5. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Books on Demand, Bell & Howell. Perinbanayagam, R.S. (1975) The Signicance of Others in the Thought of Alfred Schu tz, G.H. Mead and C.H. Cooley, Sociological Quarterly 16: 50021. Petras, John W. (1968) Social-Psychological Theory as a Basis for a Theory of Ethics and Value: The Case of Charles Horton Cooley, Journal of Value Inquiry 2: 921. Reitzes, Donald C. (1980) Beyond the Looking-Glass Self: Cooleys Social Self and Its Treatments in Introductory Textbooks, Contemporary Sociology 9(5): 63140. Rieff, Philip (1964) Introduction, pp. vxx in Charles Horton Cooley, Human Nature and Social Order. New York: Schocken.

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Schubert, Hans-Joachim (1995) Demokratische Identita t: Der soziologische Pragmatismus von Charles Horton Cooley. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Schubert, Hans-Joachim (1998) Introduction, pp. 131 in Charles Horton Cooley, On Self and Social Organization, ed. Hans-Joachim Schubert. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schwartz, Barry Emerson (1985) Cooley and the American Heroic Vision, Symbolic Interaction 8: 10320. Shrauger, J. Sidney and Thomas J. Schoeneman (1979) Symbolic Interactionist View of Self-Concept: Through the Looking Glass Darkly, Psychological Bulletin 86(3): 54973. Strauss, Anselm L. (1994) From Whence to Whither: Chicago-Style Interactionism, Studies in Symbolic Interaction 16: 38.

Dr habil. Hans-Joachim Schubert, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Potsdam, is the editor of Charles Horton Cooley: On Self and Social Organization (University of Chicago Press, 1998). Address: PD Dr. Hans-Joachim Schubert, University of Potsdam, Allgemeine Soziologie, August-Bebel Str. 89, 14439 Potsdam, Germany. [email: hjschub@rz.uni-potsdam.de]

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