On the Edge of Rapprochement: Was Durkheim Moving toward the Perspective of Symbolic Interaction?

On the Edge of Moving toward Interaction?

Rapprochement: Was Durkheim the Perspective of Symbolic

GREGORY P. STONE, University of Minnesota, and HARVEY A. FARBER- MAN, State University of New York at Stony Brook

AFTER the publication in 1912 of The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Emile Durkheim turned almost at once to the epistemological problems raised by that work in a series of lectures on “Pragmatism and Soci- ology,” delivered at the Sorbonne in 1913 and 1914.l Durkheim’s concern with pragmatism (especially the work of Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey) shortly before his death in 1917 is almost patent evi- dence of the direction his theoretical development was taking at the culmination of his sociological inquiries2 However, he was unable to make the full transition which, indeed, would have required a revolu- tionary transformation of his ontological position.

This article will focus on the development of Durkheim’s thought in the direction of symbolic interaction. In addition, some attention will be paid to objective and metaphorical barriers blocking the transition. In accomplishing these things, the notion of metaphor will be central to our a r g ~ m e n t . ~ Moreover, we shall not be concerned here with any substantive exegesis of Durkheim’s works. We presume substantive knowledge on the part of the reader.

Every sociological theory or perspective implies some image of man, communication, society, and their interrelations. Our contention is that the development of Durkheim’s sociological thought was marked by significant metaphorical changes, particularly in respect to the image of man. Two additional metaphors proved less yielding and provided powerful obstacles to thoroughgoing theoretical reformulation: first, the image of

1 The first five and the thirteenth and fourteenth lectures, reconstructed from student notes, have been translated by Charles Blend in Kurt H. WOE (ed. ), Essays on Sociology and Philosophy by Emile Durkheim et al. (New York): Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 386436.

2 The account of Durkheim’s theoretical development in Talcott Parsons, Struc- ture of Social Action (Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press, 1949), pp. 301470 remains the best exegetic treatment available. Obviously we question Parsons’ interpretation of the development as moving inexorably toward an impasse with idealism. In all fairness, it should be noted that Pragmatisme et sociologie did not appear until 1955, eighteen years after Parsons had completed his study.

On metaphor, see inter alia Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change (Indian- apolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), pp. 94-96.

‘49

150 THE SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

communication as interaction or action in parallel; of society as a container of communication and individual contents.

second, the image

Metaphorical Development of Durkheim’s Theory TO deal with the metaphors of man, society, and communication which are presupposed by any sociological theory is to carry critical analysis into a highly debatable area. For metaphors are frequently iniplicit in theory, and, in the final analysis, implications are always made by the critic. Confronted by the explication of his presuppositions, the theorist may well deny them, or, acknowledging them, may alter his theoretical statement in a fundamental way so that they no longer obtain. In Durk- heim’s case, metaphors became more explicit as his thought developed, until, in The Elementary Form of the Religious Life, critical confronta- tion with the presuppositions underlying his thought produced a crucial philosophical impasse. Our treatment of the metaphorical development in Durkheim’s theory, then, is a kind of tour de force and necessarily oversimpli6ed. Questions will undoubtedly be raised by the reader, but, hopefully, this will lead to a necessary re-examination of Durkheim’s contributions by symbolic interactionists.

A further caveat must be entered before our treatment begins. To assert that some image of man is presumed by a sociological theory is not to assert that individual men are the theorist’s central objects of inquiry. Dmkheim was always centrally concerned with the nature of society or the nature of the social bond. Yet, the implicit view of man and its progressive alteration had a critical impact on his conceptualization and study of society. The more Durkheim began to understand that the fabric of society-collective representations-was a creation of man, the more he altered his image of man and, consequently, his image of society.

The development of Durkheim’s thought can be interpreted as an elaboration on the mechanistic metaphor, changing from a view of man as a moving particle, to a conductor of societal energy, to a transformer of society itself. Until the very end of this development, society is seen as a container and energizer of these individual particles. It is a reality sui generis and made up of materials distinctively its own, collective representations or social facts exterior to and constraining of its individual contents. So is any container distinguished from the things it contains.

The Division of Labor. Key terms in this work-density, volume, and dynamic or moral density-suggest the metaphorical raiment which cloaks and disguises genuinely social phenomena in a vocabulary more

4 On this view, “symbolic interaction” is a misnomer, and we would prefer to return to Mead’s original designation of the perspective as “social behaviorism.” How- ever, since the former phrase has so much currency in sociological circles, we will use it, explicitly recognizing its inadequacies. On the distinctions among “self action,” “interaction,” and “transaction,” see John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley, Knowing and the Known (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), pp. 103-43.

Durkheim and (Symbolic Interaction 151

appropriate to physical energy systems. If a bounded area (the container) is overpopulated in such a way that the enclosed moving particles cannot avoid colliding with one another, something must give-some new process must be set in motion. What occurs is a progressive differentiation of the particles and their movements in an increasing division of labor. At one time (under conditions of mechanical solidarity) particles are alike, their movements relatively undifferentiated, and they have access to all “cor- ners” of the container’s space. They collide relatively infrequently with one another, given their small numbers and the relatively large volume of the container. With increasing numbers and density, the container, in a metaphorical sense, must expand and develop internal compartments to minimize collisions and facilitate the “existence” of the whole.5

To be sure, mere material density is not enough, The concentrated population must engage in communication as well as collision. Density, therefore, has a moral or social dimension, and Durkheim recognizes that “there are particular, exceptional cases . . . where material and moral density are perhaps not entirely in accord.” Nevertheless, the moral dimension of density is decidedly underplayed when Durkheim states his central proposition in the main text of the Division of Labor:

The division of labor varies in direct ratio with the volume and density of societies, and, if it progresses in a continuous manner in the course of development, it is because societies become regularly denser and generally more vd- uminous.7

The image of man as a particle persists, as individuality, per se, becomes merged with the changing character of the container induced by the progressive differentiation of the contents. Thus, “individuality is something which the society possesses.” Later, discussing the weaken-

5 This image of society persists through the Elementary Formr, e.g., “Society supposes a self-conscious organization which is nothing other than a classification. . . . To avoid all collisions, it is necessary that each particular group have a determined portion of space assigned to it: in other terms, it is necessary that space in general be divided, differentiated, arranged, and that these divisions and arrangements be known to everybody.” Emile Durkheim, The Elementary F o r m of the Religious Life, translated by Joseph Ward Swain (New York: Collier Books, 1961 ), p. 492 (hereafter cited as Elementary Forms). Yet, on the very next page, Durkheim writes: “Conse- quently things can no longer be contained in the social moulds according to which they were primitively classified; they must be organized according to principles which are their own, so logical organization differentiates itself from the social organization and becomes autonomous.” Ibid., p. 493. Italics ours. Here our main point is anticipated. It becomes increasingly difficult for Durkheim to maintain his image of society as a container. As most readers will know, Hughes has also seen the problems posed by Durkheim’s metaphor, or “mechanistic vocabulary.” However, Hughes, like Parsons, sees these difficulties leading Durkheim into an idealism. This, of course, is farthest from our mind, and, we think, Durkheim’s. See H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), pp. 278-87.

Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, translated by George Simp- son (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1947), p. 260, note 11. Italics ours.

Ibid., p. 262. sIbid., p. 130.

152 T H E SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

ing of the collective conscience (the “walls” of the container) brought on by the emergence of organic solidarity, Durkheim observed:

This is not to say that the [collective conscience] is threatened with total dis- appearance. . . . There is even a place where it is strengthened and made more precise: that is the way in which it regards the individual. As all the other beliefs and all the other practices take on a character less and less religious, the individual becomes the object of a sort of religion. We erect a cult in behalf of personal dignity which, as every strong cult, already has its superstition^.^

Even as man approaches a condition where he can feel more actor than acted upon, he reaches that condition precisely by being acted upon by external and constraining forces.

If in the Division of Labor Durkheim maintained a consistent image of man, his conception of society must be said to have vacillated. In explaining the transition to organic solidarity, the moral dimension of society was de-emphasized. Yet, at the end of this major work, Durkheim turned to the “abortive” forms of the division of labor. This led him once again to a consideration of variations in containers-the moral dimension. Compartmentalization may proceed in a disjointed way, as in the anomic division of labor. Compartments may be sealed too tightly as in caste societies. Finally, the container may become overcompartmentalized so that particular motion is so severely constricted that it may be brought to a standstill.

The Rules. Reconsidering his magnificent effort in the Division of Labor, Durkheim emerged filled with unbounded enthusiasm and perhaps somewhat starry-eyed. He had discovered what social facts were and felt he had a firm grasp on their method of study. Sociology as a science could at last be clearly distinguished from philosophical specu- lation.

His conception of social facts as exterior to and constraining of individual conduct led him back to a reconsideration of societal variation- the moral dimension. Moral density, as “dynamic density,” had replaced material density in Durkheim’s conceptualization of the necessary conditions for the proliferation of the division of labor.1° He specifically ac- knowledged his error: “We made the mistake, in our Division du travail, of presenting material density too much as the exact expression of dynamic density.” l1 Durkheim, thus, was led to a recasting of the metaphor of society as a generalized container-a return to the moral dimension. There were many societies; many varieties of containers. Individual acts, however, remained irrelevant-constrained by the character of the

Ibid., p. 172. I0Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, translated by Sarah A.

Solovay and John H. Mueller and edited by George E. G. Catlin (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1938), pp. 113-15.

llIbid., p. 115, note 22.

Durkheim and (Symbolic Interaction 153

container: “When . . . the sociologist undertakes the investigation of some order of social facts, he must consider them . . . independent of their individual manifestations.” l2 What better test, then, of sociological method than to investigate the “ultimate” individual act-the suicide?

Suicide. In Suicide, Durkheim’s view shifts from a conception of man as the thing contained, the moving particle, to man as a conductor. Society is no longer seen as purely a container, but as an energizer of individual conduct. Different societies “energize” man in different ways.13

Subsequently, communication is viewed by Durkheim as exchange: ‘‘. . . conversation and all intellectual communication between men is an exchange of concepts.”14 On this view also, man may be seen as a kind of conductor of the energy generated by society. Pushing the metaphor almost to the absurd-absolutely rhetorically-we might conceive ego- istic suicide as a consequence of “overloading” the conductor; altruistic suicide as implying a short circuit-the faulty conductor must be replaced in the interest of maintaining an efficient generator. Anomic suicide is the mark of a defect in the generator. With no more current, the conductor atrophies, rusts, or otherwise falls into disuse.

But not all individuals in societies or social segments characterized by faulty circuits or power-losses commit suicide. Durkheim, then, reviews the extreme position he assumed in The Rules. In the Preface to the second edition, written in 1901, four years after the publication of Le suicide, he observed:

Because beliefs and social practices thus come to us from without, it does not follow that we receive them passively or without modification. In reflecting on collective institutions and assimilating them for ourselves, we individualize them and impart to them more or less personal characteristics. Similarly, in reflecting on the physical world, each of us colors it after his own fashion, and different individuals adapt themselves differently to the same physical environment. It is for this reason that each one of us creates, in a measure, his own morality, religion, and mode of life. There is no conformity to social convention that does not comprise an entire range of individual shades. It is nonetheless true that this field of variations is a limited one. It verges on non-existence. . . .15 Although he tried, Durkheim could not wish the individual away. The stage, at last, was set for him explicitly and directly to confront his for- merly implicit views of man, society, and communication.

lzlbid., p. 45. 13 Parsons’ interuretation is auite compatible on this point: “Instead of the cow

science collective being contrasted with organic solidarity, there now are two types of influence of the conscience collective, and set over against both of them the state where its disciplining influence is weak, at the polar extreme altogether absent. In so far as this weakening of discipline is present, the state of anomie exists.” Parsons, op. Cit., p . 336.

l4 Elementary Fmm, p. 482. l5 Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, p p . lvi-lvii, note 7. Italics ours.


The Elementary Forms. In the concluding section of The Elemen- tary Forms of the Religious Life, when Durkheim attempts to secure the foundation of religious experience in society, the culmination and sub- sequent erosion of the mechanistic metaphor occur. Man is seen as a transformer of reality,16 for Durkheim notes clearly that, with respect to religious experience, “it does not follow that the reality which is its foundation conforms obiectiveZy to the idea which believers have of it.” l7 From this point on, the metaphor of society as a container cannot be maintained, for Durkheim begins to see the contained as the creator of the container. The force of collective definition, when universalized and objectified through symbolization, comes to the fore. The collective representation, itself, even though it is impersonal and exterior and may take a religious form, is a precipitate of collective action and formulation.ls Indeed, the religious cosmos is no more than a magnified, transformed, and dramatized image of ordinary life. As Durkheim suggests, “Men alone have the faculty of conceiving the ideal, of adding something to the real.”19 Why does man idealize the real? Because, in the throes of religious passion, “man does not recognize himself; he feels transformed and consequently he transforms the environment which sur- rounds him.” 2o

We find that Durkheim’s metaphor of man has shifted from that of a particle-in-motion to a conductor, to a particle physiochemically transformed and transforming, to a creative human transformer of the world around him. Man has, in his collective existence, become the source of reality, The consequences for this sociological epistemology seem bold and clear to us, and Durkheim asks the pertinent question, “what has been able to make social life so important a source for the logical life?” 21

The answer focuses on the development of concepts in society. Concepts are depicted as impersonal, fixed, and immutable-of themselves, static.

16 In his preface to the second edition of The Rubs, Durkheim specifically recognizes the transforming character of human association: “Whenever certain elements combine and thereby produce, by the fact of their combination, new phenomena, it is plain that these new phenomena reside not in the original elements, but in the totality formed by their union. . . . What we say of life could be repeated for all possible com- pounds. The hardness of bronze is not in the copper, the tin, or the lead, which are its ingredients and which are soft and malleable bodies; it is in their mixture. The fluidity of water and its nutritional and other properties are not to be found in the two gases of which it is composed but in the complex substance which they form by their association. Let us apply this principle to sociology.” The Rubs of Sociological Method, pp. xlvii-xlviii. However, the transformation remains physical-biological and chemical. In The Elementary Forms, Durkheim’s view of the transforming function of communication undergoes a profound change.

l7 Elementary Forms, p. 465. Italics ours. l8 As Durkheim says, “This is because society cannot make its influence felt un-

less it is in action, and it is not in action unless the individuals who compose it are assembled together and act in common.” Ibid., p. 465. Note the persistent conception of “communication” as parallel action and not transaction.

l9 Ibid., p. 469. Italics ours. *O Ibid. 211bid., p. 480.

Durkheim and Symbolic Interaction 155

If a concept changes, “it is not because it is its nature to do so, but because we have discovered some imperfection in it; it is because it had to be rectified.” 22 By implication, the collective representation is becoming the internalized concept rather than the exterior and constraining social fact. It becomes part of the content of society rather than the material from which the “walls” of society are constructed. This signals a fundamental change in Durkheim’s conception of society, but the reformulation is given no definitive statement. The concept is seen as a tool of collective existence-if it is imperfect or not useful, we change it.23 It is only by thinking with concepts, moreover, that the realm of impersonal and stable ideas is reached-the realm of truth. Once man becomes conscious of this realm of ideas,

and, in so far as he believes that he has discovered their causes, he undertakes to put these causes into action for himself, in order that he may draw from them by his own force the effects which they produce; that is to say, he at- tributes to himself the right of making concepts.24

So man does more than formulate concepts; he passes collective judg- ment on their acceptability:

It is not enough that they be true to be believed. If they are not in harmony with the other beliefs and opinions, or, in a word, with the mass of the other collective representations, they will be denied: minds will be closed to them; consequently it will be as though they did not exi~t.~5

Although Durkheim saw truth as characterized by “stability” and “im- personality,” he could not but acknowledge that it was a collective formulation, hence, temporally and societally specific. “To be sure,” he writes, “we cannot insist too much upon the different characteristics which logic presents at different periods in history; it develops like the societies themselves.” 26 In his statement on the method he used for in- vestigating religion, he writes, “social facts vary with the social system of which they form a part; they cannot be understood when detached from Clearly Durkheim has apprehended the temporal and locational relativity of truth. Thus, we are not surprised when he muses:

In a word, the old gods are growing old or already dead, and others are not yet born. , . , There are no gospels which are immortal, but neither is there any reason for believing that humanity is incapable of inventing new ones.28

Obviously Durkheim has placed the realm of the gospel (or truth) squarely within the domain of human intervention. The metaphor of

22 Ibid., p. 481. Italics ours. 23 At this point, Durkheim falls squarely in the camp of social pragmatism, as op-

posed to the subjective pragmatism of James and, occasionally, Dewey. This is a major distinction to which we shall return.

25 Ibid., p. 486. 24 Ibid., p. 485. 28 Ibid., pp. 475-76. It is difficult to refrain from the observation that, today, more

26 Ibid., p . 487. 27 Ibid., p. 113.


society as a container is no longer compatible with the main thrust of Durkheim’s intellectual thought.

The Problem of Truth In what may be his most radical statement, Durkheim analyzes the rhetorical power of both science and religion down to the base of collective faith. In effect, the truth value of a concept is guaranteed less by its objective reference than by the faith that it mobilizes:

Today it is generally sufficient that [concepts] bear the stamp of science to receive a sort of privileged credit, because we have faith in science. But this faith does not differ essentially from religious faith. . . . science continues to be dependent upon opinion at the very moment when it seems to be making its laws; for, as we have already shown, it is from opinion that it holds the force necessary to act upon opinion.29

There can be no doubt then that Durkheim apprehended truth as a function of a larger consensus. In his opinion the ultimate insurance against irrational elements in truth was the emergence of a new form of inter- societal, cosmopolitan life. Much in the way Mannheim’s relational conception of truth rested on the surmounting of barriers by divergent groups in communication, so Durkheim saw the depreciating importance of the social segment and the concomitant upsurge of the transnational life as a filter for the elimination of “bias.” 3o The greater its dispersion in collective opinion, the more autonomous the development of truth; or the wider the societal base of truth, the less is the emergence of truth inhibited by society. But, alas, the flow of humanity is the 0aw of trag- edy: “Really and truly human thought is not a primitive fact; it is the product of history; it is the ideal limit towards which we are constantly approaching, but which in all probability we shall never succeed in reaching.”31 As Mead might well have said, we premise our acts on a future of which we are certainly uncertain.

than a half century after Durkheim made these remarks, some segments of Christianity seem to be catching up with the past. We refer to the “Is Cod dead?” controversy.

Zgfbid., pp. 48687. The reader ought really to compare this conception of science with the conception stated in The Rules. For Durkheim, science, just as religion, develops as a cult based on faith. We cannot help but observe at this time that the “new left” is precisely a cult without faith, and, if we may, we hope wistfully that science will be a faith without cults.

3O It seems almost unnecessary to point out Mannheim’s profound distinction between relativistic and relationistic conceptions of truth. See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, translated by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1963), pp. 78-80. Mannheim’s epistemology is premised on a dialectic, and this is precisely the process that Durkheim misses. For Durkheim, cosmopolitan- ism is accomplished when collective representations “spill over the walls” of the container and engulf the world at large. Suddenly, the fabric of the “walls of the container” becomes its content. This is an additional flaw in the transition of Durkheim’s metaphor that ought, one day, be examined by the critical theorist.

slIbid., p. 493.

DurWleim and Symbolic Interaction 157

Given the general direction of his statements at the conclusion of the Elementary Forms, it is not surprising that Durkheim turned immedi- ately to a consideration of the pragmatic reaction against the classical conceptions of truth, mind, and reality. He had already consulted and cited James’s Varieties of Religious Experience and Principles of Psy- chology in the concluding sections of the Elementary Forms.

Truth and Pragmatism In his lectures on pragmatism and sociology, Durkheim had arrived at the seminal insight that “today’s truth is tomorrow’s error” 32-a proposition which confounded most of the assumptions of nineteenth-century European philosophy and which forced him to look elsewhere for an epistemology consonant with his theoretical advances in sociology. He turned to pragmatism. Not only was Durkheim already familiar with the work of James, but James had a spokesman and critic who had the ear of European intellectuals, namely the Englishman, F. C. S. Schiller. Moreover, both Durkheim and James were influenced, if in different ways, by Charles Bernard Renouvier-Durkheim as a student and James through careful reading of Renouvier’s works. Each must have been impressed with Renouvier’s rejection of the Kantian dichotomy between noumena and phenomena-James settling on the notion of truth as ex- periential, Durkheim on the notion of “presentations” as facts.

In his review of pragmatism, Durkheim observed that Peirce, James, Schiller, and Dewey were in agreement: no exterior, impersonal, and complete truth, irrespective of its source (intellection or sensory percep- tion) could be a living and compelling truth without taking the realm of goals, means, and choices (the reaIm of human purpose) into account. In fact, to conceive truth as “given,” i.e., “out there,” divorces it from human life and action.

Any conception which makes truth independent of the intervention of man, as the argument goes, implies a theory of mind (and reality) which eliminates man as an agent of influence on truth. For, if the best that mind can do is merely to describe the out-there-given truth, then man becomes a passive recorder of an established and impinging universe. This image is, of course, unacceptable to pragmatism which postu- lates the inextricable connection of thinking and living or of mind and existence. Hence, in the early statements of James, truth must be conceived as having a “personal character,” and this conception persists throughout the work of James.

To root truth in existence, is to place it in the realm of means, ends, and choices. From this perspective, truth is seen as a matter of @cacious choice with respect to an end-in-view which itself is dictated by human

32 Emile Durkheim, “Pragmatism and Sociology,” in WoB (ed.), op. cit., p. 409.


interest. Truth, then, devolves around the matter of assessing the efficacy of means, and its detection requires an examination of consequences. More important to our argument is the fact that, for James, the detection of truth also requires an examination of the personal psychology of any individual who asserts the truth value of his statements. Truth becomes a very personal and, by implication, pluralistic affair. There is the further implication that, to the degree individual interest (or consciousness) lends relevance (for the individual) to certain aspects of reality by bringing them into a means-end schema, mind must be conceived as an addi- tive principle. In searching for solutions, mind converts unformulated sensuous experience into formulated reality, but, for James, reality is personally f0rmulated.3~ It was against such a position, no doubt, that Bertrand Russell was reacting when he proclaimed that, at least James’s work “is only [another] form of the subjective madness which is charac- teristic of most modern philosophy.” 34

Russell’s criticism, however, echoed a far earlier one; for, after con- sidering the major alternatives offered by the pragmatists in opposition to the classical position, Durkheim said rather decisively, “Pragmatism . . . claims to explain truth psychologically and subjectively.” He went on to argue in the same passage:

. . . the nature of the individual is too limited to explain by itself alone all things human. Therefore, if we envisage individual elements alone, we are led to underestimate the amplitude of the effects that we have to account for. . . . But men have always recognized in truth something that in certain respects im- poses itself on us, something that is independent of the facts of sensitivity and individual impulse.35

What Durkheim was reacting to in the pragmatic resolution was the persistent strain of subjective nominalism embodied in a psychological,

33 Durkheim clearly understood the fundamental distinction between experience and formulated reality: “Sensual representations are in a perpetual flux; they come after each other like the waves of a river, and even during the time that they last, they do not remain the same thing. . . . We are never sure of again finding a percep- tion such as we experienced it the first time; for if the thing perceived has not changed, it is we who are no longer the same. On the contrary, the concept is, as it were, outside of time and change; it is in the depths below all this agitation; it might be said that it is in a d8erent portion of the mind, which is serener and calmer. , . . It is a manner of thinking that, at every moment of time, is fixed and crystallized.” See EEenwntary Forms, p. 481. It is at this point that Durkheim cites James. However, as we shall see, Durkheim could never conceptualize the concept as personal. The distinction, of course, persists in pragmatism and has received its most extensive formulation in Dewey’s Experience and Nature. For a fundamental reformulation that brings the distinction squarely into the perspective of symbolic interaction, see Harry Stack Sullivan, “The Illusion of Personal Individuality,” in Helen Swick Perry, Mary Ladd Gawel, and Martha Gibbon (eds.), The Collected Works of Harry Stack Sul- livan, I1 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964), pp. 198-226, especially p. 214.

34Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), p. 818.

s5 Durkheim, “Pragmatism and Sociology,” in WOE (ed.), o p . cit., pp. 42930.

Durkheim and ,Symbolic Interaction 159

as opposed to a sociological, conception of mind. With a purely individ- ualistic theory of mentality, one could hardly arrive at a phenomenon “that is independent of the facts of sensitivity and individual impulse.” And this is precisely the position that Durkheim had already developed in his extensive analyses of collective representations. A purely psychologistic perspective could never account for a collectively established universal. Hence, while Durkheim appears extremely sympathetic to the pragmatic rejection of the classical views and, indeed, seems to resonate, if ambivalently, not only with the notion of a living truth but also with an instrumentalistic formulation of mind as well as an emergent conception of reality, he could not resonate with an atomistic or elementaristic psychology. He was literally forced to reject the subjective pragmatism of James.

Durkheim required a social theory of mind which could be built on a conception of society as a “synthesis of human consciousness.” 36 Such a theory would apprehend concepts as collectively established representations somewhat free from, but not insensitive to, the fact of individual percipience. Truth, in this way, while neither a detached given nor a simple consequence of individual adjustment, could be conceived as an emergent collective reconstruction.

Possibilities of Convergence with Symbolic Interaction The social theory of mind which Durkheim was on the edge of discern- ing, but for which no support was forthcoming in the subjective pragmatism available to him at the time, appears full blown in the work of George Herbert Mead. In Mead’s work, we fmd a socia2 pragmatism based on a conceptualization of mind which accounts, by way of a theory of significant symbols, for the linkage between any particular commu- nicative act and universal meaning. The heart of Meads work rests on the proposition that mind develops out of and sustains itself within an objective phase of experience. This objective phase of experience is, of course, what is captured in Mead’s concept of the significant symbol or universal and Durkheim’s concept of a collective repre~entation.~~ In each case the symbol (or representation) is an objectification and uni- versalization of particular experiences. Neither Mead nor Durkheim confused the universality of the symbol with its generality. For each, the objective meaning of the symbol is universal in the sense that it has currency within some social circle. As Durkheim put it:

This universality of the concept should not be confused with its generality: they are very different things. What we mean by universality is the property

sG Elementay Forms, p. 479. 37 Roscoe C. Hinkle, Jr., has incisively established the relationship between the

significant symbol of Mead and the collective representation of Durkheim. See his, “Durkheim in American Sociology,” in Wolf€ fed.), op. cit., pp. 278-79.


which the concept has of being communicable to a number of minds, and in principle, to all minds; but this communicability is wholly independent of the degree of its extension. A concept which is applied to only one object, and whose extension is consequently at the minimum, can be the same for every-

This idea is pervasive in Mead, and it seems unnecessary to provide cited examples of the distinction.

Although Durkheim speaks of the property of concepts as being communicable, the main force of his argument leads him away from this conception. In the first place, while any particular symbol objectifies experience, it may be replaced by any other symbol in that more than one symbol may evoke the objectified experience:

. . . as far as religious thought is concerned, the part is equal to the whole; it has the same powers, the same efficacy. The debris of a relic has the same virtue as a relic in good condition. The smallest drop of blood contains the same active principle as the whole thing.39

More important, the symbol, per se, is irrelevant. “Surely,” Durkheim writes, “the soldier who falls while defending his flag does not believe that he sacrifices himself for a bit of cloth.” And Mead also insists on the irrelevancy of the concrete symbol or object: . . . one has a nail to drive, he reaches for the hammer and finds it gone, and he does not stop to look for it, but reaches for something else he can use, a brick or a stone, anything having the necessary weight to give momentum to the blow. Anything that he can get hold of that will serve the purpose will be a hammer. That sort of response which involves the grasping of a heavy object is a universal.41

In short, the meaning or relevance of symbols for both Mead and Durk- heim was not in the character of the symbols themselves but in the responses that they mobilized.

The concept is universal, or at least capable of becoming so. A concept is not my concept: I hold it in common with other men, or, in any case can com- municate it to them. It is impossible to make a sensation pass from my consciousness into that of another; it holds closely to my organism and personality and cannot be detached from them. All that I can do is to invite others to place themselves before the same object as myself and leave themselves to its action.42

boay. . . .38

On this point, Durkheim becomes explicit:

38 Elementary Form, p. 482, note 9. Here Durkheim remains attached to the metaphor of the symbol, or collective representation, as a thing. On this point, he vacillates, and the vacillation is never resolved.

39 Ibid., p. 261. Although he was speaking of religion, as we have shown earlier (pp. 156-57), we may generalize the implication to all knowledge.

401bid., p. 260. 41 George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago

42 Elementary Form, pp. 481-82. Press, 1934), p. 83.

Durkheim a d Symbolic Interaction 161

Here, we see that Durkheim is, indeed, on the edge of apprehending Mead’s profound conceptualization of a universe of discourse:

This universe of discourse is constituted by a group of individuals carrying on and participating in a common social process of experience and behavior, within which all these gestures or symbols have the same or common meanings for all members of that group, whether they make them to other individuals, or whether they overtIy respond to them as made or addressed to them by other individuals. A universe of discourse is simply a system of common or social meanings.43

And for Mead, the meaning of the “hammer” is in its use, or the meaning of the symbol in the response that is made to it.

In such a way, Durkheim comes to the very edge of conceiving society as a universe of discourse, but he can not move over that edge. He holds up the symbol and awaits the action of others, and their action is construed as common or parallel. Above all, he does not inquire into his own action-how he might respond to the symbol he holds up as he waits on the action of others. Durkheim has no notion of concert, transaction, or role-taking.

Obstacles to Convergence Although James asserted, in effect, that we have as many selves as we have group affiliations, this statement seems not to have influenced his psychologistic conception of mind. Consciousness, for James, was instrumental for bringing the individual into a more serene adjustment to the problematics of his existence. Thought was an instrument of individual existence. James did not speak of maintaining concerted, ongoing trans- actions. In other words, the means-end schema was not anchored in the transactive context. To repeat, this subjective pragmatism was unacceptable to Durkheim. It is our contention that he could easily have accepted Mead’s social pragmatism, had it been made explicit to him at the time. Social pragmatism conceives consciousness as instrumental for the maintenance of concerted conduct. Mind is social, shared, and objective. It acts to bring individuals into a more serene adjustment to the problematics of their existence. But mind, for Mead, is never epiphenom- enal. It is a conversation rooted in action. Thus, the pragmatic truth is the conception that keeps the conversation going or permits the conversation to overcome temporary interruptions. Even pragmatic truth for the person emerges from the dialogue-the dialogue between experience and formulation, or, as Mead would have it, the dialogue between the “I” and the “me.”

In the final stages of his sociological inquiry, Durkheim would almost assuredly have accepted the position of social pragmatism, even down to

43 Mead, op. cit., pp. 89-90.


the rooting of personal truth, OT faith, in the internalized conversation between the “I” and the “me.” How else could he have secured the foundation of scientific knowledge in the bedrock of faith? 44 Such a conception of truth transcends the subjective perspective. This transcendence, however, can never be detached from the individual response, for the representative symbol or the objective phase of experience is established ultimately in the concerted response in which the individual, of course, plays a part. As Durkheim barely hinted in his discussion of the genesis of concepts: “The general only exists in the particular; it is the particular simplified and impoverished.” 45 This is a formulation of the universal which Mead elaborates in his discussion of meaning:

Meaning is that which can be indicated to others while it is by the same process indicated to the indicating individual. In so far as the individual indi- cates it to himself in the role of the other, he is occupying his perspective, and as he is indicating it to the other from his own perspective, and as that which is so indicated is identical, it must be that which can be in different perspectives. It must therefore be a universal, at least in the identity which belongs to the different perspectives which are organized into the single perspective. . . .*6

Hence, the universal is not in the stimulus but in the collective response. As soon as we consider the response, however, we are in a position to see the essential difference between Mead and Durkheim.

As a social psychologist concerned primarily with the emergence of mind and self, Mead began from a process orientation; as a worried sociologist concerned with explaining solidarity or the moral value of social life, Durkheim worked from an “entity” orientation. For Durkheim a collective representation was a social “fact”-a thing-which in its symbolic form existed outside of man and constrained him into using it, like money or language. While it is true that it emerges out of collective life, any given individual is constrained by it. Mead, however, looks at symbols rather than the language that they comprise. Such symbols are im- plemented in an ongoing conversation and may be altered-indeed, they are always in the process of becoming-as responses are played back upon them by individuals. This implies that the individual is entirely capable of transforming the collective dialogue by making crucial unanticipated responses to symbols that have become conventionally established. Such unanticipated responses arise out of the individual’s self- indicative or interpretive capacities.

44 See p. 156, above. Durheim speaks of “collective faith,” but the conversation between the “I” and the “me” is precisely one’s participation in a collective dialogue. Any resolution of the dialogue places one in a universe of discours-a social circle,

Elementary Forms, p. 480. Again, this marks a transformation of Durkheim’s metaphorical view of the individual, since he speaks of the concept “impoverishing” individual experience. Literally, Durkheim has “discovered” the individual and doesn’t h o w what to do with him!

46 Mead, GQ. cit., p. 89.

Durwleim and Symbolic Interaction 163

Although Durkheim also allows for modification of the collective representation, such changes are seen as nonprocessual or mechanistic. Durkheim notes that in assimilating (not producing!) concepts, one must

assimilate them to himself, for he must have them to hold intercourse with others; but the assimilation is always imperfect. Each of us sees them after his own fashion. There are some which escape us completely and remain outside of our circle of vision; there are others of which we perceive certain aspects only. There are even a great many which we pervert in holding, for as they are collective by nature, they cannot become individualized without being re- touched, modified, and consequently falsified. Hence comes the great trouble we have in understanding each other. . . .47

What Durklieim is referring to are sources of ambiguity. Notice that these sources have a spatial and locational tone which removes them from the social process. Mead takes the opposite tack. Ambiguity, for him, is part and parcel of the social process. Individuals because of their interpretative capacities may misformulate the conceptual meaning of any given symbol. More important is Mead’s core distinction between the “I” and the “me.” This distinction takes into account the fact that an individual can never be certain of his own next action. If the “I” is interpreted as a principle of pure, hence meaningless, experience, an individual can not know what he is doing until he has done it. In other words, one must have an experience before one can formulate it by referring it back to a conceptual framework-a universe of discourse or the collective conscience. If every activity sequence contains an element of un- certainty, or unpredictability, then each act, whether in mental, verbal, or physical form, becomes a source of change. The ongoing conversation is always in motion.

Now Durkheim could not comprehend such an ontology. For him, as we have shown, “communication” was either collision, chemical synthesis, or action-in-parallel. Durkheim never grasped the essence of communication as conversation or transaction. Moreover, society was implicitly viewed as a constraining container of its individual human particles. The walls were made of collective representations, symbols, or social facts. Men might be variously attached to them, energized by them, or cement them more &mly together as they exchanged them. When Durkheim finally came to see that the particles made the symbols or that the symbols themselves were the “things contained” and threatened to spill out over the walls that had been built by the symbols, he was confounded and groped for a new epistemology and, implicitly, a new ontology. The classical European solutions had already been transcended, and the new American pragmatism had not been fully enough developed

47 Ebmentary F o m , p. 484.


to provide him convincing solutions-solutions in which he could have faith. He was certainly on the edge of symboIic interactionism, but he died in 1917, perhaps disenchanted by the death of his only son in World War I. At any rate, all the essentials were there, and he could not grasp them. In our view no social theorist had ever come farther over the course of his lifetime.

Documents

On the Edge of Rapprochement: Was Durkheim Moving toward the Perspective of Symbolic Interaction?