Carl J. Couch

Collective Behavior: An Examination of Some Stereotypes

Current conceptualizations of the acting crowd are heavily influenced by LeBon, particularly those aspects of LeBons formulation that emphasized the pathological and bizarre nature of crowd behavior. An examination of the characteristics imputed to the crowd indicates that many of them are not empirically valid. Further, many of the characteristics assigned to crowd behavior do not differentiate it from the behavior of other social systems. Sociologists have overstressed the “cultural” factors, and de-emphasized interaction in their studies of social conduct. One consequence of this emphasis has been to look to the characteristics of crowd members to account for the behavior of crowds. It is suggested the crowd be studied as a social system.

Mass communications and state structures

Abstract Many analyses of media seek a global variable that can be used to explain human consciousness and social behavior. In contrast, this article provides an analysis of media as used and contextualized by human beings to either maintain various state structures or to provide alternatives to extant state structures. Specifically, this article demonstrates that while autocratic state authorities use and contextualize print and electronic media to strengthen the state, the use and contextualization of the print medium in the marketplace erodes autocratic authority. Conversely, the use and contextualization of electronic media by either autocratic or market centered representatives promotes the development of charismatic authority; and in turn, erodes representative-constituent relationships—or the foundations of a representative democracy. These themes will be documented by analyzing the evolution of print in Western societies; the use of radio in the 1930s by Germany, Great Britain, and the United States; and the rise of television broadcasting. Hitlers dictatorship employed to perfection technology to dominate its own people. By means of such instruments as the radio and public-address systems, eighty million persons could be made subject to the will of one individual.

The Third Party Standpoint, Postmodernism, and the Study of Social Transactions

The development of generic principles is advocated as the goal of sociology. Recent postmodern concerns with particularistic and local explanations are compared with the New Iowa Schools commitment to uncovering generic forms of social life. While postmodern theorists such as Denzin, Ellis, Richardson, and Seidman advocate an epistemic approach that denies an interest in the development of generic principles, their analyses belie this epistemic commitment. The New Iowa School advocates the development of generic principles of social life and offers a methodological standpoint to achieve this goal—the third party standpoint.

Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Supplement 2, 1986 (Parts A & B): The Iowa School

This two-volume contribution to the Studies in Symbolic Interaction Series provides a summary of the decade of contributions of the so-called ‘Iowa School’ to interactionism since the publication of Constructing Social Life (Couch and Hintz, 1975). In a rather more coherent and guided manner than its forerunner the current Supplement outlines the distinctive nature of the Iowa approach to interactionism.