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Book No. – 25 (Sociology)
Book Name – Masters of Sociological Thought
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1. THE WORK
1.1. THE SELF IN SOCIETY
1.2. THE GENESIS OF THE SELF
1.3. THE “I” AND THE “ME”
1.4. MEAD AS A PATHSETTER
2. THE MAN
2.1. MEAD AT CHICAGO
3. THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT
3.1. THE HERITAGE OF PROTESTANTISM AND THE FRONTIER
3.2. EVOLUTIONISM
3.3. GERMAN IDEALISM
3.4. THE FELLOWSHIP OF PRAGMATISTS
4. THE SOCIAL CONTEXT
4.1. MEAD’S AUDIENCE AND COLLEAGUES
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LANGUAGE
George Herbert Mead
Chapter – 9
Table of Contents
THE WORK
- John Dewey described George Herbert Mead as having “the most original mind in philosophy in the America of the last generation,” though this may have been an exaggeration.
- There is general agreement among philosophers that Mead ranks among the forefront exponents of pragmatism in America.
- Mead was a modest man who published relatively little; Dewey noted that although he was an original thinker, he had no sense of being original.
- Mead’s work was not recognized during his lifetime as being on the same level as that of William James or John Dewey, his teacher and intimate friend.
- Posthumous publications of Mead’s lectures and continued interest in his work have established his central position in philosophical thought.
- Mead linked the themes of William James and Charles Pierce with the philosophical concerns of Dewey, Whitehead, Bergson, and Santayana.
- The account is mainly based on Mead’s posthumous Mind, Self and Society and some of his earlier papers in social psychology, now found in Selected Writings.
- The focus here is on Mead’s contribution to social psychology, with only a tangential mention of his broader philosophical works such as The Philosophy of the Present, The Philosophy of the Act, and Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century.
THE SELF IN SOCIETY
- Social psychology for Mead studies the behavior of individuals within the social process, emphasizing that individual acts are part of larger social acts involving the whole social group.
- Earlier social psychology focused on individual psychological experience, but Mead suggested it should be viewed from the standpoint of society, particularly through communication as essential to the social order.
- Mead’s social psychology contrasts with Watsonian behaviorism, focusing on experience as shaped by the individual’s connection to a social structure and order.
- Mead argued that there can be no self apart from society, and no consciousness of self or communication without society.
- Society must be understood as a structure emerging through ongoing communicative social acts and interactions between mutually oriented persons.
- Gesture is key to social acts. Mead distinguished between nonsignificant (unself-conscious) gestures in animals and significant (self-conscious) gestures in humans.
- On the animal level, gestures involve an immediate response to stimuli (e.g., dogs reacting to each other’s growls).
- Human communication involves significant gestures, where individuals take the role of others and predict their actions, a capacity that animals lack.
- Significant gestures in humans are based on linguistic symbols that carry shared meanings for different individuals.
- Thought arises in humans when symbols, especially vocal gestures, evoke a response in the individual, guiding later conduct.
- In symbolic interaction, humans interpret each other’s actions and react based on the meaning they derive, a process that involves continuous adjustments and redefinitions.
- Blumer highlighted that symbolic interaction involves interpretation and definition—interpreting others’ actions and conveying how they should act.
- Consciousness, following William James, is understood as a thought-stream shaped by dynamic relationships between a person and their social environment.
- Mental phenomena cannot be reduced to physiological mechanisms or reflexes as behaviorists suggest, nor can they be understood in terms of the isolated Cartesian ego.
- Experience is not first individual then social, but is continuously shaped by joint enterprises with others, forming and shaping the mind.
- Consciousness is emergent, not pre-existing.