Charles Cooley
Charles Horton Cooley ( born August 17, 1864 in Ann Arbor, Michigan; † May 7, 1929 same place ) was an American sociologist. He was the eighth president of the American Sociological Association.
Lewis A. Coser took Cooley under the "Masters of Sociological Thought " on.
Life
His father Thomas McIntyre Cooley made during the first 27 years of Charles ' life outstanding career as a judge at the Michigan Supreme Court, dean of Michigan Law Department, first chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission and as the author of numerous legal treatises. The family residence was located opposite the University of Michigan.
Charles Cooley traveled widely 1882-1892, before working as an academic teacher. Among other things, he studied in Munich. He began studying as an engineer in mechanics and economics and then worked for two years engaged in a study on the prevention of railway accidents on the Interstate Commerce Commission and the social significance of trams for the Bureau of the Census. In 1890, he married Elsie Jones, daughter of the Dean of the Homeopathic Medical College. After six months holiday in Italy Cooley began his career as an academic teacher in the field of economics to Ann Arbor. With the support of Henry Carter Adams, Head of the Department, he expanded his 1894-5 course offerings to the field of sociology from. In the meantime he had taken his doctorate in Economics with a dissertation on The Theory of Transportation.
From 1894 to 1929 Cooley has successively expanded its range of courses in sociology. In 1913, Warren Thompson, known by population studies, a second sociologist added. Until the death Cooley's eight full-time positions were available at the University in the field of sociology; but the sociology nevertheless always remained the Faculty of Economics assigned.
Mental conception of society
Most of what Cooley had taught, became an integral part of the American conception of sociological theory. The most controversial point was his thesis (following social psychological preparatory work of William James, John Dewey and James Mark Baldwin ) that the individual is mentally ( mental) was already a social being; the conceptual comparison of individual / society is misguided metaphysics. Society he took also on mental, insofar as it consists of the intellectual ideas that grow out of social interactions and communication.
" So far as the study of immediate social relations is Concerned the personal idea is the real person. That is to say, it is in this alone did one man exists for another, and acts Directly upon his min. My association with you evidently Consists in the relation in between my idea of you and the rest of my mind If there is something in you did is wholly beyond this and makes no impression upon me it has no social reality in this relation. The immediate social reality is the personal idea; nothing, it would SEEM, could be more Obvious than this. Society then, in its immediate aspect, is a relation among personal ideas. "
In contrast, George Herbert Mead has emphasized the idea that mental and social processes take place on the basis of objective reality. Only such a perspective, imagine a connection to theories of behavioral research.
" The Looking Glass Self"
This is a concept for which Cooley is primarily known. He cites this Goethe, one of his favorite authors:
"Man knows himself only in man, only life teaches everyone what he was. "
The analogy of the mirror image is intended to represent that everyone builds his self-image in and through social interactions with others:
( 1) The person imagines how it appears to the others.
( 2) She imagines how her appearance is valued by others.
( 3) This results in a correspondingly positive or negative self-esteem.