C harles H orton C ooley, Pragmatist or Belletrist? The Complexity of Influence and the Decentering of Intellectual Traditions

This essay treats recent attempts to identify symbolic interaction ( SI ) founding theorist C harles H orton C ooley as a pragmatist sociologist exemplifying, and even influenced by, the pragmatism of C harles S aunders P eirce, as an example of the A merican exceptionalist character of SI . Beginning with C ooley's creative approach to conceptualizing the social, these attempts are scrutinized and measured against the contention that C ooley's thought can be equally if not more understood as a product of influence of the literary essay tradition. A close reading is given of the concordance of his personal journal with a selection of his published writings concerning the influence of members of C ooley's essayistic “genre matrix” – E merson, M ontaigne, and W alter P ater – on the development of his intellectual self and thought. Further substantiation is supplied by an analysis of the essayistic influence on C ooley's rigorous treatment of qualitative methodology. It is concluded that a decentered positioning of C ooley's work is preferable to a single‐origin one.