The Primary Group: A Reappraisal

treatment. Since Cooley's time a number of students have attempted to clarify the concept. To illustrate, Faris, as early as 1932, tried to detach from the concept of the primary group the element of faceto-face association that was part of Cooley's definition.2 Building upon Faris' discussion, Davis ' and Broom and Selznick 4 have elaborated on the notion that it is the character of the relationship that is the central component in the definition. The latter suggest that the distinguishing attributes such as smallness or face-to-faceness, while facilitating the development of the primary group, are not per se the major defining characteristics. Moreover, they indicate that such groups as the family, the neighborhood, the play group of children, which for Cooley were the prototypes of the concept, are not necessarily primary in character. Despite these and other explications of Cooley's formulation, the concept remains unclear; this becomes especially apparent when one attempts to use the concept in research. In fact, this paper is an out-