In my view, Carl Couch was to sociology what Albert Einstein was to physics.  Einstein’s early work was introduced to a discipline dominated by an incomplete understanding of its phenomena.  Newton’s mechanics consistently failed to explain a significant portion of the natural world.  Einstein offered a shift in perspective that helped physicists realize that the reason they’d been getting the wrong answers was because they’d been asking the wrong questions.  In a similar way, Couch’s early work in human behavioral sciences was introduced to a discipline dominated by positivist psychology.  By focusing on the individual rather than the social, researchers in human behavior were ignoring a significant portion of human life.  Couch provided a shift in perspective that illuminated the human condition.  In doing so, he legitimized sociology as a true and authoritative science of human behavior.

Couch’s genius sprang from his commitment to the idea first suggested by G. H. Mead that the smallest unit of human behavioral study is the dyad.  Humans are, by their nature, social creatures.  Human qualities will not and cannot emerge in a newborn human who is not properly cared for by other humans.  There simply is no humanity without the dyad.  So any science of human behavior that posits the individual human as the basic unit of study will only ever take into account a portion of the true picture (and end up with generalizations that distort the true picture).

Couch was also influenced by the work of Georg Simmel who helped him understand that a proper human behavioral science ought to be concerned with forms of human interaction.  Couch often asserted that sociology should be modeled after the branch of biology that studies forms of speciation and evolution.

Drawing on this work from Mead and Simmel, Couch realized that the key to understanding human behavior was to observe it in the lab.  This wasn’t an innovation by itself.  Behavioral psychologists had already been doing lab experiments with humans.  But to a typical behavioral psychologist it was often important that the human subjects of a given experiment not know what the experiment was actually measuring.  After all, if the subjects knew what was being studied, they might just behave in whatever way they presumed the researcher wanted them to rather than behaving “naturally”.   Couch, by contrast, noticed that a subject’s ability to behave in the way the researcher wanted was an interesting phenomenon by itself.

So in his experiments he merely asked subjects to engage in the particular kind of interaction he was interested in studying.  If he wanted to watch two people haggle, he simply asked one person to act like she or he was selling fruit in a market and he asked the other person to try to get the best price for the fruit.  It didn’t matter if either one of the subjects had ever had actual experience selling or buying or haggling.  They were human beings.  They knew how to engage in a range of social interactions as surely as they knew how to express a wide variety of ideas using human speech.  Nobody taught them their native language or “how to be social”.  They just knew how, the abilities having emerged within the process of becoming human.  They were calling on the very same tendency that the behavioral psychologists were attempting to suppress by using (sometimes unethical) deception in their lab studies.

Couch was doing his lab work in the ‘70s when video cameras and equipment were just beginning to show up in schools and universities.  He pioneered the use of such equipment in the sociology lab by recording subjects and making transcripts of the footage.  The transcripts recorded not only what the subjects said, but also other utterances and body language.  The video tapes and the transcripts became the data whereby forms of human interaction would be isolated.

Through his laboratory and theoretical work, Couch uncovered the processes that allow humans to become social; revealed the importance of temporal structures and the “universes” of touch, discourse, and appearance in human interaction; isolated the six elements of sociation, the eight forms of sociation, and the nine forms of social relationships;  and demonstrated how information technologies (beginning with human speech) are what drive social innovation and evolution (including the agricultural and industrial revolutions of Western Civilization).

Perhaps Couch’s most important finding was that the form of sociation called “cooperation” is the foundation of human life.  To understand how he arrived at this conclusion, we need to understand how the forms of sociation emerge from the elements of sociation.

Let’s use the form of sociation “conflict” as an example.  Conflict emerges out of the following elements of sociation (notice that the list of elements actually describes a process):

1. Copresence  -- the interactants are within one another’s perceptual fields.
2. Reciprocal attentiveness -- each is making the other the “priority object” within their perceptual fields.
3. Social responsiveness -- each is behaving with respect to the behaviors of the other.
4. Parallel-but-incongruent projected identities -- each expresses to the other a similar agenda, or intent, but it’s this very similarity that will put the two at odds with one another.
5. Other focused -- each is focused on the other (as opposed to them having a shared focus).
6. Incongruent objectives -- each wants the opposite result as the outcome of the interaction (as opposed to them, say, having a social objective).

The other forms of sociation have the same elements, except with some or all of them adjusted slightly.  For example, “the chase” is very much like “conflict” except that the interactants are bilaterally responsive from beginning to end… that is, the one being chased does one thing, the pursuer responds, then the pursued does something else, and so on.

Cooperation is unique compared to all of the other forms of sociation in that all of the elements are fully present in the activity.   It emerges from copresence, reciprocal attentiveness, social responsiveness, congruent functional identities (shared intent), shared focus, and a social objective.  As the form where all the elements are fully present, cooperation serves as a kind of baseline for human sociation.  It is the form of sociation that actually establishes what the elements of sociation are, and from there we can describe the other forms by how they contrast with cooperation.  That is, because we can establish “congruent identities”, “shared focus”, and “social objective” in cooperation, we can see how conflict emerges when identities, focus, and objectives AREN’T congruent, shared, or social.

This finding flies in the face of classical behaviorist psychology.  The behaviorists would insist that individual self-interest… avoiding pain and increasing pleasure… is the foundation of human behavior.  Couch suggested, rather, that cooperation is the hallmark of humanity.

Now, make no mistake… Couch wasn’t asserting anything like “the fundamental goodness of humanity”.  In fact, Couch’s personal views seemed to have been overwhelmingly against that kind of notion.  No, it was merely a fact of evolution that the capacity of human beings to work with one another (rather than simply with respect to one another) was the key to giving humans exceptional evolutionary success.  Furthermore, cooperation would be a key to humanity’s future evolutionary successes.  None of this presented a moral imperative as far as Couch was concerned.  It was just the way nature worked.

But Couch’s work wasn’t generally accepted by the greater sociological community.  Aside from his rejection of “behavioral positivism” as he called it, there was much discussion in Couch’s work about emergence.  To say something emerges (as the forms of sociation emerge from the elements of sociation) is not the same as saying it is caused.  We can’t say that cooperation is caused by the elements of sociation.  Rather, it springs forth from them.  Grows from them, if you will.  In many ways, the activity of cooperation is greater than the sum of its parts, as is often the case with emergent phenomena.  With many tasks, two people working together can actually accomplish more than if they’d been working separately.  There’s nothing particularly mystical about this.  Evolutionary biologists and ecologists understand emergent phenomena in nature and speak of it often in their scientific literature.  However, some scientists who insist only on clean causal links reject the concept of emergence as “teleological”.  That is, they believe “emergence” presumes a purpose in nature that we have no empirical reason to believe exists.

So, even today Couch’s work is considered obscure.  However, as other fields begin to make discoveries that independently give credence to his work, I’m confident that one day he’ll get the credit that his genius deserves.

For the sake of reference, here are all eight forms of sociation:

• Autocratic Activity
• The Chase
• Conflict
• Social Competition
• Social Panic
• Accommodation
• Mutuality
• Cooperation

Couch also discovered composite forms that “mix and match” elements of sociation.  For example, “negotiation” is a form that, not surprisingly, appears to combine the elements of cooperation and competition.

Here I’ll list the nine forms of human relationships as discovered by Carl Couch.  These were also composed of certain elements, including the symmetry (or asymmetry) of accountability, the extent of shared pasts and/or futures, and the manner in which such relationships can be formed or broken:

• Parental
• Solidary
• Accountable
• Authority
• Romance
• Exchange
• Charismatic
• Tyrannical
• Representative

I also offer below a brief narrative, following Couch’s lead, of the development of human civilization as driven by information technologies emerging in specific social structures (Temple, Palace, or Market structures).  Couch agreed with thinkers like Marshal McLuhan and Harold Innis that the dominant information technology of a given age had an impact on the way the users of the technologies thought about and interacted with their world.  While based on Couch’s work, this narrative doesn’t follow his precisely.  It’s also highly simplified… I’m really just looking to share the gist of it here:

• Oral Age (songs used to preserve information; evocative, community-oriented cultures)

Human speech is the first information technology.  It led to innovation in tool design which led to certain raw materials being highly prized which led to geographical locations rich in said materials becoming more valuable.  Mining was a result.

Mining led to the first markets where food was exchanged for raw materials or even for finished weapons.  The markets were sedentary.  Trade dynamics encouraged the domestication of plants and animals.  Resulting trade imbalances led to raids that led to the building of walls around markets… the first cities.  In all of this new divisions of labor were emerging and various forms of interaction and relationships were increasing in frequency and influence.

Cities grew.  Calendars and other forms of distal time-keeping became more important.  Monuments that kept track of astronomical events were built.  Material surpluses became unmanageable.  Canals were built to move huge quantities of materials and possibly people.  Hash-marks were adopted to keep track of all the "stuff" and the basis for mathematics and writing was born.

• Script Age (individualistic, reflective nature of reading and writing changes consciousness of some)

As writing evolves, time and space continue to be quantified.  Science and empires emerge.  Phonetic writing, bookkeeping, and rational inquiry prove powerful forces in making the new empires rich.  The spread of agriculture brings prosperity, but there is also much war.  As empires grow, rapid transportation over great distances and advantages in battle become more important, and both needs are well met by the domestication of the horse (creating possibilities in mobility not offered by canals).  Machines of war are built.

After thousands of years of battles and intrigues, a new kind of machine emerges:  the printing press.  If we count the earliest wood-block presses as “printing”, then the first press was actually pictographic and sequestered in a Palace social structure in Asia, so its cultural impact was slight.  But hundreds of years later a phonetic, “interchangeable type” press would be invented within a Market structure in Europe, changing forever that part of the world.

• Print Age (impact of writing spreads to the masses; trends in science and individualism enhanced)

Phonetic print was easy to learn to read, so a phonetic press in a Market structure created a great demand for books and yellow journalism.  Martin Luther tacked his 95 Theses on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg on All-Saints Eve, 1517, with no intention of them ever to be seen by anyone other than clergy.  But some enterprising printer thought it looked like good copy and… well, the Protestant Reformation soon followed.

Much social revolution came after, including the beginning of colonialism, which amounted to aristocracy searching for new groups of people to exploit since, thanks to the journalists, their locals were wise to them.  North America was colonized and the United States was eventually born.

Machine innovations and colonialism helped bring about the Industrial Revolution.  The most significant contribution of industrialism to the empire builders was quicker transport.  The locomotive would give the new empires the same edge the domesticated horse had given empires of old.

It was becoming clear that the most valuable commodity of all was information, and moving it quickly was of supreme interest to any empire.  In 1844, enter the telegraph controlled by corporate interests (which conformed to Couch's description of the Palace structure rather than the Market), paving the way for all future broadcast media to be monopolized by large corporations or governments.

• Electronic-Broadcast Age (a re-introduction of orality)

The telephone, radio, and television are accompanied by a new kind of middle class in the US and the first realistic threats of world annihilation.  Radio and television in particular are created and mass-marketed in the US under the direction of businesses that wish to use the devices to place ads for their products directly into American homes.  More factories and widespread use of credit move more people in the US and Europe away from the primary means of production (farming, personal home construction, personal clothing production) and into a dependence upon businesses to supply basic needs in return for labor.

The factory assembly line reinforces the alienation that individualism had already long begun.  The automobile and the airplane replace the horse and largely displace the locomotive.

Between 1844 and 1944, the last huge leaps in scientific knowledge and electronic engineering occur.  Making the best use of these advances (for the benefit of academia AND commerce) requires processes that demand intensive calculations.  Digital computers are called upon to help.   This leads to greater innovation in computing.  Following the success of other electronic devices in households, personal computers are created and marketed to American businesses, schools, artists, and consumers.

• Digital Age (evocative AND reflective; narcissistic, but with a sense of being constantly connected)

Digital manipulation of information opens up possibilities previously unknown.  The ability to create virtual worlds and run realistic simulations in them transforms science, engineering, and art.

The Internet and the World Wide Web turn text into “hypertext”.  Interactivity in media becomes valued (rendering all text into hypertext wherever possible).  Personal computers become so powerful that regular folks can create fanciful, cinematic stories where the digitally generated characters look perfectly real.  A “democratizing effect” is evident … celebrated by many, feared by those it threatens.

Wireless technology renders every device interactive and enhances the feeling of constant connection that the Internet started.   The “global village” predicted in the Broadcast Age appears to be on its way, except that the individualism that has become deeply driven into the Western psyche tends to lead the new technologies into empowering narcissism rather than community.  Of the two, of course, narcissism works best for the imperialists so it’s encouraged.  The democratizing affect of the medium is also combated by the use of trace protocols, spyware, and other technologies that allow governments and corporations to keep tabs on ordinary folk.

In cyberspace the final battle between the average person and imperialists (corporate and government) is fought.  In the first decade of the twenty-first century, with some notable exceptions, imperialism wins.  However, this is mostly due to the influence of Palace structures carrying over from the Broadcast Age.  As mobile devices become more powerful and affordable, they will more fully represent a modern "printing press" that occupies a Market structure almost by necessity.  (Even though these devices will be developed and sold by corporations, which are Palace structures, the entire value of these devices is contingent on their relative mobility, versatility, and processing power.  Even if only a few device manufacturers and wireless service providers are competing for customers today, they're creating an information technology that is almost inherently anarchistic, possessing a high potential to ultimately undermine the existence of the very corporations that brought the devices into being.)  If a Market structure does, in fact, prevail with these technologies, then it will likely usher in a new age.  It could be called “the Mobile Age”, but I prefer the more fanciful “Cyborg Age”, as I think it paints a more accurate picture as to how the mobile is impacting humanity while it also offers a tantalizing suggestion regarding where information technologies will go next.

(This narrative is not meant to suggest that information technologies like writing... or, indeed, innovations like mathematics... required the emergence of urbanism.  Nor is it meant to suggest that globalist agendas are necessary for technological advance.  While it must be acknowledged that oral technologies are much more sophisticated than sometimes thought, it's not impossible to imagine other reasons for them to be supplanted by literate technologies eventually.  It just so happens that, on our planet, urbanist and globalist agents have made the most effective strategic use of emerging technologies.  Of course, the Reformation is only one example of how the rank-and-file has also harnessed the power of these technologies in powerful ways, and we have yet to see if the "little people" will ultimately halt the globalist march with the use of the Internet.  In the meantime, I tend to think that all of the technologies we enjoy today, and perhaps even all of the cities and countries we know, would still be with us by other means even if urbanism and globalism had never caught on.  Only those technologies would have come about without exploitation.  And the cities wouldn't sprawl or pollute and no indigenous people would have been forcibly displaced when the countries began.  The "predator/prey" model of looking at the universe would have been abandoned long ago, replaced by a more progressive and productive "friend/friend" model and, overall, we could feel much better about where we are today.  Who knows what wonders we might have wrought by now if our evolution for the past 40,000 years hadn't been held hostage by a mindset that actually locks us back in the epoch of base instinct?  But... across our little blue globe the "predator/prey" model has dominated almost everywhere.  Maybe someday humanity will grow out of it.  We can always hope.)

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Thanks for taking time to read this modest and humble memorial to my mentor and friend.  Please note the sub-categories to this post where I address some implications of Couch’s work that I think are important but that, to my knowledge, aren’t being seriously explored by sociologists today.