Charles Horton Cooley Essay ⋆ Sociology Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Charles Horton Cooley was a prominent member of the founding generation of American sociologists. Named a full professor of sociology at the University of Michigan in 1907, he was then elected president of the American Sociological Association in 1918. It was his aim and achievement to apply the ideas of pragmatism to the development of a sociological theory of social action, social order, and social change, which he ultimately accomplished with his trilogy: Human Nature and the Social Order ([1902] 1964), Social Organization ([1909] 1963), and Social Process ([1918] 1966).

In Human Nature and the Social Order Cooley examines the ”distributive aspect of the relationship between self and society, namely the development of the self through symbolically mediated interaction. A ”looking-glass self, according to Cooley has three ”principal elements : first the imagination of our appearance to the other person; second the imagination of his judgment of that appearance; and third some sort of self-feeling, such as ”pride or mortification (Cooley [1902] 1964: 184).

In Social Organization Cooley defines the ”collective aspects of social action (primary group, public opinion, democracy, social classes and institutions). Organizations are, over time and space, expanded structures of action such as ”enduring sentiments, beliefs, customs and large institutions such as ”the government, the church and laws, but also micro-societal ”apperceptive systems. ”Organized attitudes are resources for individuals and, simultaneously, they also limit their activities. ”The individual, according to Cooley, ”is always cause as well as effect of the institution (Cooley [1909] 1963: 313—19).

In Social Process Cooley set up his conception of social change as a creative search and experiment process. Individual actions have their origin in ”habits of the social world. But those generalized meanings never provide complete answers to specific situations; they must therefore continuously be reconstructed in tentative trial phases. Most significant in the sequence of action (habit, conflict, experiment and new habit), is the experimental stage of ”imaginative reconstruction. The ”test of intelligence is the power to act successfully in new situations” (Cooley [1918] 1966: 351—8).

Bibliography:

Cooley, C. H. (1964) [1902] Human Nature and the Social Order. Schocken, New York.
Cooley, C. H. (1963) [1909] Social Organization: A Study ofthe Larger Mind. Schocken, New York.
Cooley, C. H. (1966) [1918] Social Process. Southern Illinois Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL.