  We show that in atomic gases cooperative effects like superradiance and
subradiance lead to a potential between two atoms that decays like $1/r$. In
the case of superradiance, this potential is attractive for close enough atoms
and can be interpreted as a coherent mesoscopic effect. The contribution of
superradiant pairs to multiple scattering properties of a dilute gas, such as
photon elastic mean free path and group velocity, is significantly different
from that of independent atoms. We discuss the conditions under which these
effects may be observed and compare our results to recent experiments on photon
transport in cold atomic gases.
