George Herbert Mead
Dr Syed Mehdi Abbas Zaidi
Department of Sociology
Shia PG College, Lucknow
George Herbert Mead
(February 27, 1863 – April 26, 1931)
✓American philosopher, sociologist,
and psychologist, primarily affiliated
with the University of Chicago, where
he was one of several distinguished
pragmatists.
✓He is regarded as one of the founders
of symbolic interactionism and of what
has come to be referred to as the
Chicago sociological tradition.
Mead’s Major Works
Mead’s works were assembled
posthumously
from lecture notes and unpublished papers by several of his students;
these comprise his major works:-
❖ 1932. The Philosophy of the Present.
❖ 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. (Ed. By C. W. Morris).
❖ 1936. Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century. (Ed. by C. W. Morris.)
❖ 1938. The Philosophy of the Act. (Ed. by C.W. Morris, et al.)
❖ 1964. Selected Writings. (Ed. by A. J. Reck).
[includes articles Mead himself prepared for publication.]
❖ 1982. The Individual and the Social Self: Unpublished Essays by G. H. Mead.
(Ed. by David L. Miller).
Mead as a Social Behaviorist & Pragmatist
❖ The meaning of things is rooted in everyday practical conduct, the uses that
are made of these things as individuals go about constructing their behavior.
❖ In the process, a “thing” becomes an object because of what we do with it,
how we behave toward it and how it “behaves” back…
❖ Thus the world is not something “out there” to be experienced by the subject,
but is rather “a task to be accomplished.”
❖ Furthermore the world is not something “out there” that can be experienced
directly, but is only available through the filters of our biological physiology,
our individual mental processes, our position (roles and statuses in the social
structure) and the culture and sub-cultures in which we are embedded.
CONCENTRIC CULTURAL
CIRCLES of KNOWLEDGE…
CONCENTRIC ANTHROPOLOGY
PHYSIOLOGICAL
CULTURE SOCIOLOGY
WHAT EVER’S ‘OUT HERE’
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
SOCIAL
PSYCHOLOGY
NEUROLOLGY
PHYSIOLOGY
BIOLOGY
GENETICS
STRUCTURE
… for UNDERSTANDING
HUMAN BEHAVIOR
MIND
• The first component in Mead's trilogy is termed mind. Mead's conception of
mind is a "social phenomenon--arising and developing within the social
process, within the empirical matrix of social interactions."
• The mind emerges through such exchanges, thus its nature is that of an
internal process of communication grounded in the utilization of significant
symbols. Therefore, the mind is processually formed through self-
conversation and interactions with others. Shared symbols, dominate the
process. Our most vital and distinctive symbolic communication is
language. In Mead's words, "out of language emerges the field of mind.“
• For Mead and later symbolic interactionists, language is the distinguishing
criterion for being human.
• Mead believed that if one's actions evoke the same response in others, then
the meaning of symbols is no longer private but a behavioral reality that
can be studied.
SELF
• The second component in Mead's trilogy is termed self. The self also "arises
in social experience" and can be thought of as "an object to itself,"
possessing a "social structure". Individuals can conceive of their own being
and convert that identity into a form of consciousness. So conceived, the self
can be the recipient of both definition and emotion. Symbolic
communication is crucial to the development of answers to the question
Who am I? Mead argued that the self is best thought of as a process, and he
traced its genesis developmentally.
• The development of the self is dependent on learning to take the role of
the other. Role taking requires that we imagine how our behavior will be
defined from the standpoint of others (as in Cooley’s “looking-glass self”).
For Mead, role taking occurs throughout the developmental process by
which the self is constructed and refined. This process consists of three
distinctive phases. From a period of imitation without meaning for infants,
through the play-acting world of children, and finally to the phase of the
generalized other, the self expands, changes, and comes into being.
SELF, continued
❖ For the very young, role playing is simply a matter of doing what
others do (Imitation). In time, however, the child begins to play
"pretend" roles such as parent, sibling, even the imaginary friend. In
the course of switching identities and imaginary conversations, the
self through play becomes both separate and defined. The child is
learning to see a unique self from the various perspectives of other
role players (Role Playing).
❖ When egocentric play gives way to the rules and "teamwork" of
games, the individual learns that the behaviors of other players are
somewhat fixed, impersonal, and predictable. In playing the multiple
and interlocking roles of the game, and other organized endeavors,
self-control emerges. Through such play, one develops and
internalizes a group of perspectives on the self that Mead termed the
“Generalized Other." As this collective frame of reference matures,
the player becomes a social being who will demonstrate some
consistency in future behavior. Thus, the "inner voice" of the
generalized other continues to whisper the complex requirements of
being "human."
THE MEANING OF OBJECTS IS LEARNED
THRU TAKING THE ROLE OF THE SIGNIFICANT OTHER
SIGNIFICANT OTHER
Rattle
Is for to shake
Vase
Riley
Is for to look at
Chuck
Is for to pet
The symbolic meanings of these
objects – including the meaning of
who Chuck is – are already present
in the mind of the Significant Other.
SELF:
the only object
Chuck inhabits
and is able to
put into effect
directly.
SOCIETY
❖ Society is the third component in Mead's system. It is little more
than an extension of his "organized self." More precisely, through
interaction the self takes on "generalized social attitudes" toward a
wider environment. Such references are beyond the immediate
spheres of personal relationships, intimate groups, or
communities.
❖ For Mead, the institution of society consist of "common
responses" rooted in such attitudes by which "the modern
civilized human individual is and feels himself to be a member
not only of a certain local community or state or nation, but also
of an entire given race or even civilization as a "whole."
❖ Society is thus maintained by virtue of humans’ ability to
role-take and to assume the perspective of generalized other.
GEORGE H. MEAD’S MODEL
MIND
INTERNALIZATION -
ROLE TAKING: ascertaining
the intentions of others
SOCIETY
OBJECTIVATION –
SOCIETY: social
consensus via
significant
shared symbols
SELF
EXTERNALIZATION -
ROLE PLAYING: adapting
to the intentions of others
-ala Peter Berger
THE EMERGENCE OF THE SELF (ME & I)
THE EXTENDED
STATUS SET
▪ Imitation (mimicry) = ECONOMICS
PRESTIGE
OCCUPATION
EDUCATION
role taking INFLUENCE INCOME
▪ Play (taking turns) = SES
role-making RELIGION
▪ Games (rules) =
ABLENESS
role-playing
▪ Society/Generalized Other = NATIONALITY
normative order, ETHNICITY
conscience collective RACE
▪ Mind = AGE
internalized conversation
SEXUAL ORIENTATION
SEX/GENDER
AND THE ROLES WE PLAY SELF IMAGE
Summarizing GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
❖ His treatment of human society took the form of showing that human group life was the
essential condition for the emergence of consciousness, the mind, a world of objects,
human beings as organisms possessing selves, and human conduct in the form of
constructed acts
❖ He reversed the traditional assumptions underlying philosophical, psychological, and
sociological thought to the effect that human beings possess minds and consciousness as
original “givens, “ that they live in worlds of pre-existing and self-constituted objects, that
their behavior consists of responses to such objects, and that group life consists of the
association of such
❖ reacting human organisms.
❖ Mead saw the self is a process and not as a structure:
❖ The human being is an object to him or her self…and thus a self-referential symbol with
which we each interact in the activity of minding, of carrying on an internal
conversation….
Summarizing GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
❖ The individual experiences oneself as such, not directly, but only
indirectly, from the particular standpoints of other (significant)
individual members of the same social group…
❖…or from the generalized standpoint of the social group as a whole to
which one
belongs…
❖…and one becomes an object to oneself only by taking the attitudes of
other
individuals reflexively back toward oneself.
❖ Society consists of the generalized social attitudes that continually
emerge through coordinated interaction between individuals and
groups.
❖ Social order is continually emerging through the ongoing activities of
individuals who are reflexively taking the attitude of others and
attempting to make sense of (i.e., define) and navigate the situations
in which they collectively find themselves.
Thankyou
