George Herbert Mead (February 27, 1863 – April 26, 1931) was an American
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
,
sociologist, and
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
, primarily affiliated with the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
, where he was one of several distinguished
pragmatists. He is regarded as one of the founders of
symbolic interactionism
Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence w ...
and of what has come to be referred to as the
Chicago sociological tradition.
Biography
George Herbert Mead was born February 27, 1863, in
South Hadley, Massachusetts
South Hadley (, ) is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 18,150 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area.
South Hadley is home to Mount Holyoke Colleg ...
. He was raised in a
Protestant
Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
, middle-class family comprising his father, Hiram Mead, his mother,
Elizabeth Storrs Mead
Elizabeth Storrs Mead (''née'' Billings; May 21, 1832 – March 25, 1917) was an American educator who was the 10th President of Mount Holyoke College from 1890 - 1900. She taught at Andover Seminary and Oberlin College, before becoming the fir ...
(née Billings), and his sister Alice. His father was a former
Congregationalist pastor from a lineage of farmers and clergymen and who later held the chair in Sacred Rhetoric and Pastoral Theology at
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...
's theological seminary. Elizabeth taught for two years at Oberlin College and subsequently, from 1890 to 1900, serving as president of
Mount Holyoke College
Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States.
...
in
South Hadley
South Hadley (, ) is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 18,150 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area.
South Hadley is home to Mount Holyoke Colleg ...
, Massachusetts.
In 1879, George Mead enrolled at the
Oberlin Academy
Oberlin Academy Preparatory School, originally Oberlin Institute and then Preparatory Department of Oberlin College, was a private preparatory school in Oberlin, Ohio which operated from 1833 until 1916. It opened as Oberlin Institute which beca ...
at Oberlin College and then the college itself, graduating in 1883 with a
Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
. After graduation, Mead taught grade school for about four months. For the following three years, he worked as a surveyor for the
Wisconsin Central Railroad Company
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michi ...
.
In autumn 1887, Mead enrolled at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, where his main interests were
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
and
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
. At Harvard, Mead studied with
Josiah Royce
Josiah Royce (; November 20, 1855 – September 14, 1916) was an American objective idealist philosopher and the founder of American idealism. His philosophical ideas included his version of personalism, defense of absolutism, idealism and his ...
, a major influence upon his thought, and
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
, whose children he tutored. In 1888, Mead left Harvard after receiving only a B.A. and moved to
Leipzig, Germany
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the Germany, German States of Germany, state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's L ...
to study with psychologist
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (; ; 16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, known today as one of the fathers of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and ...
, from whom he learned the concept of "the gesture," a concept central to his later work.
In 1891, Mead married Helen Kingsbury Castle (1860–1929), the sister of Henry Northrup Castle (1862–1895), a friend he met at Oberlin.
Despite never finishing his dissertation, Mead was able to obtain a post at the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
in 1891. There, Mead met
Charles H. Cooley and
John Dewey
John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...
, both of whom would influence him greatly. In 1894, Mead moved, along with Dewey, to the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
, where he taught until his death. Dewey's influence led Mead into educational theory, but his thinking soon diverged from that of Dewey, and developed into his famous psychological theories of mind, self and society.
No detached philosopher, he was active in Chicago's social and political affairs; among his many activities include his work for the
City Club of Chicago
The City Club of Chicago is a 501 (c)(3) nonpartisan, nonprofit membership organization intended to foster civic responsibility, promote public issues, and provide Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois with a forum for open political debate. The ...
. Mead believed that science could be used to deal with social problems and played a key role in conducting research at the settlement house in Chicago.
He also worked as treasurer for Chicago's Hull House.
Mead died of heart failure on April 26, 1931.
Theory
Pragmatism and symbolic interaction
Much of Mead's work focused on the development of the self and the objectivity of the world within the social realm: he insisted that "the individual mind can exist only in relation to other minds with shared meanings."
[Mead, George Herbert. 1982. ''The Individual and the Social Self: Unpublished Essays by G. H. Mead'', edited by D. L. Miller. Chicago: ]University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...
. The two most important roots of Mead's work, and of
symbolic interactionism
Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence w ...
in general, are the philosophy of ''
pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...
'' and ''social'' ''
behaviorism
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent (behavioral psychology), antecedent stimuli in the environment, o ...
''.
Social behaviorism (as opposed to
psychological behaviorism
Psychological behaviorism is a form of behaviorism — a major theory within psychology which holds that generally human behaviors are learned — proposed by Arthur W. Staats. The theory is constructed to advance from basic animal learning princi ...
) refers to Mead's concern of the stimuli of gestures and social objects with rich meanings, rather than bare physical objects which psychological behaviourists considered stimuli.
Pragmatism is a wide-ranging philosophical position from which several aspects of Mead's influences can be identified into four main tenets:
# True reality does not exist "out there" in the real world, it "is actively created as we act in and toward the world."
# People remember and base their knowledge of the world on what has been useful to them and are likely to alter what no longer "works."
# People define the social and physical "objects" they encounter in the world according to their use for them.
# If we want to understand actors, we must base that understanding on what people actually do.
Three of these ideas are critical to
symbolic interactionism
Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence w ...
:
*The focus on the interaction between the actor and the world
*A view of both the actor and the world as dynamic processes and not static structures and
*The actor's ability to interpret the social world.
Thus, to Mead and symbolic interactionists,
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
is not separated from action and interaction, but is an integral part of both. Symbolic interactionism as a pragmatic philosophy was an antecedent to the philosophy of ''
transactionalism
Transactionalism is a pragmatic philosophical approach to how we are known, maintain health and relationships, and satisfy our goals for money and career through ambitious ecologies. It involves the study and accurate thinking required to plan a ...
''. Mead's theories in part, based on pragmatism and behaviorism, were transmitted to many graduate students at the University of Chicago who then went on to establish symbolic interactionism.
Social philosophy (behaviorism)
Mead was a very important figure in 20th-century
social philosophy
Social philosophy examines questions about the foundations of social institutions, social behavior, and interpretations of society in terms of ethical values rather than empirical relations. Social philosophers emphasize understanding the social ...
. One of his most influential ideas was the emergence of mind and self from the communication process between organisms, discussed in ''
Mind, Self and Society
''Mind, Self, and Society'' is a book based on the teaching of American sociologist George Herbert Mead's, published posthumously in 1934 by his students. It is credited as the basis for the theory of symbolic interactionism. Charles W. Morris ...
'' (1934)'','' also known as ''social behaviorism''.
This concept of how the mind and self emerge from the social process of communication by signs founded the
symbolic interactionist
Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence w ...
school of sociology.
Rooted intellectually in
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
ian dialectics and process philosophy, Mead, like
John Dewey
John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...
, developed a more materialist process philosophy that was based upon human action and specifically communicative action. Human activity is, in a pragmatic sense, the criterion of truth, and through human activity meaning is made. Joint activity, including communicative activity, is the means through which our sense of self is constituted. The essence of Mead's social behaviorism is that mind is not a substance located in some transcendent realm, nor is it merely a series of events that takes place within the human physiological structure. This approach opposed the traditional view of the mind as separate from the body. The emergence of mind is contingent upon interaction between the human organism and its social environment; it is through participation in the social act of communication that individuals realize their potential for significantly symbolic behavior, that is, thought. Mind, in Mead's terms, is the individualized focus of the communication process. It is linguistic behavior on the part of the individual. There is, then, no "mind or thought without language;" and language (the content of mind) "is only a development and product of social interaction."
[Mead, George Herbert. 1967 ]934
Year 934 ( CMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* Spring and Summer – The Hungarians make an alliance with the Pecheneg ...
'' Mind, Self, and Society'', edited by C. W. Morris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...
. . Thus, mind is not reducible to the
neurophysiology
Neurophysiology is a branch of physiology and neuroscience that studies nervous system function rather than nervous system architecture. This area aids in the diagnosis and monitoring of neurological diseases. Historically, it has been dominated b ...
of the organic individual, but is emergent in "the dynamic, ongoing social process"
that constitutes human experience.
For Mead, mind arises out of the social act of communication. Mead's concept of the social act is relevant, not only to his theory of mind, but to all facets of his social philosophy. His theory of "mind, self, and society" is, in effect, a philosophy of the act from the standpoint of a social process involving the interaction of many individuals, just as his theory of knowledge and value is a philosophy of the act from the standpoint of the experiencing individual in interaction with an environment.
Action is very important to his social theory and, according to Mead, actions also occur within a communicative process.
The initial phase of an act constitutes a
gesture
A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or ot ...
. A ''gesture'' is a preparatory movement that enables other individuals to become aware of the intentions of the given organism. The rudimentary situation is a conversation of gestures, in which a gesture on the part of the first individual evokes a preparatory movement on the part of the second, and the gesture of the second organism in turn calls out a response in the first person. On this level no communication occurs. Neither organism is aware of the effect of its own gestures upon the other; the gestures are nonsignificant. For communication to take place, each organism must have knowledge of how the other individual will respond to his own ongoing act. Here the gestures are significant symbols.
A ''significant symbol'' is a kind of gesture that only humans can make.
[This has been a contentious issue in the burgeoning field of Human Animal Studies.
For a discussion see: Wilkie, Rhoda, and Andrew McKinnon. 2013.]
George Herbert Mead on Humans and Other Animals: Social Relations after Human-Animal Studies
" ''Sociological Research Online
''Sociological Research Online'' is a sociological journal, published quarterly (March, June, September, December) since March 1996. It is an online-only, peer-reviewed journal. It was originally published by a consortium of the British Sociolog ...
'' 18(4):19. Gestures become significant symbols when they arouse in the individual who is making them the same kind of response they are supposed to elicit from those to whom the gestures are addressed. Only when we have significant symbols can we truly have communication.
Mead grounded human perception in an "''action-nexus''".
[ Joas, Hans. 1985. ''George Herbert Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought''. Cambridge, MA: ]MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962.
History
The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...
. We perceive the world in terms of the "means of living."
To perceive food, is to perceive eating. To perceive a house, is to perceive shelter. That is to say, perception is in terms of action. Mead's theory of perception is similar to that of
J. J. Gibson
James Jerome Gibson (; January 27, 1904 – December 11, 1979) was an American psychologist and is considered to be one of the most important contributors to the field of visual perception. Gibson challenged the idea that the nervous system ...
.
Social acts
Mead argued in tune with Durkheim that the individual is a product of an ongoing, pre-existing
society
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Socie ...
, or more specifically, social interaction that is a consequence of a sui generis society. The ''self'' arises when the individual becomes an object to themselves. Mead argued that we are objects first to other people, and secondarily we become objects to ourselves by taking the perspective of other people. Language enables us to talk about ourselves in the same way as we talk about other people, and thus through language we become other to ourselves. In joint activity, which Mead called
''social acts'', humans learn to see themselves from the standpoint of their co-actors. A central mechanism within the social act, which enables perspective taking, is position exchange. People within a social act often alternate social positions (e.g., giving/receiving, asking/helping, winning/losing, hiding/seeking, talking/listening). In children's games there is repeated position exchange, for example in hide-and-seek, and Mead argued that this is one of the main ways that perspective taking develops.
However, for Mead, unlike Dewey and
J. J. Gibson
James Jerome Gibson (; January 27, 1904 – December 11, 1979) was an American psychologist and is considered to be one of the most important contributors to the field of visual perception. Gibson challenged the idea that the nervous system ...
, the key is not simply human action, but rather social action. In humans the "manipulatory phase of the act" is socially mediated, that is to say, in acting towards objects humans simultaneously take the perspectives of others towards that object. This is what Mead means by "the social act" as opposed to simply "the act" (the latter being a Deweyan concept). Non-human animals also manipulate objects, but that is a non-social manipulation, they do not take the perspective of other organisms toward the object. Humans on the other hand, take the perspective of other actors towards objects, and this is what enables complex human society and subtle social coordination. In the social act of economic exchange, for example, both buyer and seller must take each other's perspectives towards the object being exchanged. The seller must recognize the value for the buyer, while the buyer must recognize the desirability of money for the seller. Only with this mutual perspective taking can the economic exchange occur. (Mead was influenced on this point by
Adam Smith
Adam Smith (baptized 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"——— ...
.)
Nature of the self
A final piece of Mead's social theory is the mind as the individual importation of the social process.
Mead states that "the self is a social process," meaning that there are series of actions that go on in the mind to help formulate one's complete self. As previously discussed, Mead presented the self and the mind in terms of a social process. As ''gestures'' are taken in by the individual organism, the individual organism also takes in the collective attitudes of others, in the form of gestures, and reacts accordingly with other organized attitudes.
This process is characterized by Mead as the
''I'' and the ''Me''. The 'Me' is the social self and the 'I' is the response to the 'Me'. In other words, the 'I' is the response of an individual to the attitudes of others, while the 'Me' is the organized set of attitudes of others which an individual assumes.
Mead develops
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
' distinction between the 'I' and the 'Me'. The 'Me' is the accumulated understanding of "the generalized other" i.e. how one thinks one's group perceives oneself etc. The 'I' is the individual's impulses. The 'I' is ''self as subject''; the 'Me' is ''self as object''. The 'I' is the knower, the 'Me' is the known. The mind, or stream of thought, is the self-reflective movements of the interaction between the "I" and the 'Me'. There is neither "I" nor 'Me' in the conversation of gestures; the whole act is not yet carried out, but the preparation takes place in this field of gesture.
These dynamics go beyond selfhood in a narrow sense, and form the basis of a theory of human cognition. For Mead the thinking process is the internalized dialogue between the 'I' and the 'Me'. Mead rooted the self's "
perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
and meaning" deeply and sociologically in "a common
praxis
Praxis may refer to:
Philosophy and religion
* Praxis (process), the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, practised, embodied, or realised
* Praxis model, a way of doing theology
* Praxis (Byzantine Rite), the practice of fai ...
of subjects," found specifically in social encounters.
Understood as a combination of the 'I' and the 'Me', Mead's self proves to be noticeably entwined within a sociological existence. For Mead, existence in community comes before individual consciousness. First one must participate in the different social positions within society and only subsequently can one use that experience to take the perspective of others and thus become conscious''
'.
Philosophy of science
Mead was a major American philosopher by virtue of being, along with
John Dewey
John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...
,
Charles Peirce and
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
, one of the founders of
pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...
. He also made significant contributions to the philosophies of nature, science, and history, to
philosophical anthropology
Philosophical anthropology, sometimes called anthropological philosophy, is a discipline dealing with questions of metaphysics and phenomenology of the human person.
History
Ancient Christian writers: Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo wa ...
, and to
process philosophy
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. In opposition to the classic ...
. Dewey and
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found applicat ...
considered Mead a thinker of the first rank. He is a classic example of a social theorist whose work does not fit easily within conventional disciplinary boundaries.
As far as his work on the philosophy of science, Mead sought to find the psychological origin of science in the efforts of individuals to attain power over their environment. The notion of a physical object arises out of manipulatory experience. There is a social relation to inanimate objects, for the organism takes the role of things that it manipulates directly, or that it manipulates indirectly in perception. For example, in taking (introjecting or imitating) the resistant role of a solid object, an individual obtains cognition of what is "inside" nonliving things. Historically, the concept of the physical object arose from an animistic conception of the universe.
Contact experience includes experiences of position, balance, and support, and these are used by the organism when it creates its conceptions of the physical world. Our scientific concepts of space, time, and mass are abstracted from manipulatory experience. Such concepts as that of the electron are also derived from manipulation. In developing a science we construct hypothetical objects in order to assist ourselves in controlling nature. The conception of the present as a distinct unit of experience, rather than as a process of becoming and disappearing, is a scientific fiction devised to facilitate exact measurement. In the scientific worldview immediate experience is replaced by theoretical constructs. The ultimate in experience, however, is the manipulation and contact at the completion of an act.
Play and game and the generalized other
Mead theorized that human beings begin their understanding of the social world through "play" and "game". ''Play'' comes first in the child's development. The child takes different roles he/she observes in "adult" society, and plays them out to gain an understanding of the different social roles. For instance, he first plays the role of policeman and then the role of thief while playing "Cops and Robbers," and plays the role of doctor and patient when playing "Doctor." As a result of such play, the child learns to become both subject and object and begins to become able to build a self. However, it is a limited self because the child can only take the role of distinct and separate others, they still lack a more general and organized sense of themselves.
In the next stage, the ''game'' stage, it is required that a person develop a full sense of self. Whereas in the play stage the child takes on the role of distinct others, in the game stage the child must take the role of everyone else involved in the game. Furthermore, these roles must have a definite relationship to one another. To illustrate the game stage, Mead gives his famous example of a baseball game:
But in a game where a number of individuals are involved, then the child taking one role must be ready to take the role of everyone else. If he gets in a ball nine he must have the responses of each position involved in his own position. He must know what everyone else is going to do in order to carry out his own play. He has to take all of these roles. They do not all have to be present in consciousness at the same time, but at some moments he has to have three or four individuals present in his own attitude, such as the one who is going to throw the ball, the one who is going to catch it and so on. These responses must be, in some degree, present in his own make-up. In the game, then, there is a set of responses of such others so organized that the attitude of one calls out the appropriate attitudes of the other.
In the game stage, organization begins and definite personalities start to emerge. Children begin to become able to function in organized groups and most importantly, to determine what they will do within a specific group.
Mead calls this the child's first encounter with "the
generalized other
The generalized other is a concept introduced by George Herbert Mead into the social sciences, and used especially in the field of symbolic interactionism. It is the general notion that a person has of the common expectations that others may have ...
," which is one of the main concepts Mead proposes for understanding the emergence of the (social) self in human beings. "The generalized other" can be thought of as understanding the given activity and the actors' place within the activity from the perspective of all the others engaged in the activity. Through understanding "the generalized other" the individual understands what kind of behavior is expected, appropriate and so on, in different social settings.
Some may find that social acts (e.g. games and routine forms of social interaction) enable perspective taking through 'position exchange'. Assuming that games and routine social acts have differentiated social positions, and that these positions create our cognitive perspectives, then it might be that by moving between roles in a game (e.g. between hiding and seeking or buying and selling) we come to learn about the perspective of the other. This new interpretation of Mead's account of taking the perspective of the other has experimental support. Other recent publications argue that Mead's account of the development of perspective-taking is not only relevant with respect to human ontogeny but also to the evolution of human sociality.
Writings
In a career spanning more than 40 years, Mead wrote almost constantly and published numerous articles and book reviews in both philosophy and psychology. However, he did not publish any books. Following his death, several of his students put together and edited four volumes from records of Mead's social psychology course at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
, his lecture notes (Mead's
Carus Lectures, 1930, edited by Charles W. Morris), and his numerous unpublished papers.
In his lifetime, Mead published around 100 scholarly articles, reviews, and incidental pieces. Given their diverse nature, access to these writings is difficult. The first editorial efforts to change this situation date from the 1960s. In 1964,
Andrew J. Reck collected twenty-five of Mead's published articles in ''Selected Writings: George Herbert Mead''.
Four years later, John W. Petras published ''George Herbert Mead: Essays on his Social Psychology'', a collection of fifteen articles that included previously unpublished manuscripts.
More recently, Mary Jo Deegan (2001) published ''Essays in Social Psychology'', a book project originally abandoned by Mead in the early 1910s.
[Mead, George Herbert. 2001 . 1910s ''Essays in Social Psychology'', edited by M. J. Deegan. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. .] In 2010,
Filipe Carreira da Silva edited the ''G.H. Mead. A Reader'', a comprehensive collection including thirty of Mead's most important articles, ten of which previously unpublished.
[ da Silva, Filipe Carreira, ed. 2010. ''G.H. Mead. A Reader''. London: ]Routledge
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, and ...
. Likewise, the Mead Project at
Brock University
Brock University is a public research university in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. It is the only university in Canada in a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, at the centre of Canada's Niagara Peninsula on the Niagara Escarpment. The university bear ...
in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
intends to publish all of Mead's 80-odd remaining unpublished manuscripts.
Bibliography
Collected volumes (posthumous)
* 1932. ''The Philosophy of the Present''.
* 1934. ''
Mind, Self, and Society.''
*1936. ''Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century.''
* 1938. ''The Philosophy of the Act.''
*1964. ''Selected Writings''. — This volume collects articles Mead himself prepared for publication.
* 1982. ''The Individual and the Social Self: Unpublished Essays by G. H. Mead''.
*2001. ''Essays in Social Psychology''.
*2010. ''G.H. Mead. A Reader''.
Notable papers
* "Suggestions Towards a Theory of the Philosophical Disciplines" (1900);
* "Social Consciousness and the Consciousness of Meaning" (1910);
* "What Social Objects Must Psychology Presuppose" (1910);
* "The Mechanism of Social Consciousness" (1912);
* "The Social Self" (1913);
* "Scientific Method and the Individual Thinker"(1917);
* "A Behavioristic Account of the Significant Symbol" (1922);
* "The Genesis of Self and Social Control" (1925);
* "The Objective Reality of Perspectives" (1926);
* "The Nature of the Past" (1929); and
* "The Philosophies of Royce, James, and Dewey in Their American Setting" (1929).
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
* Aboulafia, Mitchell, ed. 1991. ''Philosophy, Social Theory, and the Thought of George Herbert Mead''. Albany:
SUNY Press
The State University of New York (SUNY, , ) is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by c ...
.
* — 2001. ''The Cosmopolitan Self: George Herbert Mead and Continental Philosophy''. Chicago:
University of Illinois Press
The University of Illinois Press (UIP) is an American university press and is part of the University of Illinois system. Founded in 1918, the press publishes some 120 new books each year, plus 33 scholarly journals, and several electronic project ...
.
*Biesta, Gert, and Daniel Tröhler, ed. 2008. ''G. H. Mead: the Philosophy of Education''. Boulder, CO:
Paradigm Publishers
Paradigm Publishers was an academic, textbook, and trade publisher in social science and the humanities based in Boulder, Colorado.
History
Paradigm was founded in 2003 by Dean Birkenkamp. Its authors included Charles Tilly, Noam Chomsky, Henry ...
.
* Blumer, H. & Morrione, T. J. 2004. ''George Herbert Mead and Human Conduct''. New York:
Altamira Press
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an independent publishing house founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing compa ...
.
* Conesa-Sevilla, J. 2005. "The Realm of Continued Emergence: The Semiotics of George Herbert Mead and its Implications to Biosemiotics, Semiotics Matrix Theory, and Ecological Ethics." ''
Sign Systems Studies
''Sign Systems Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal on semiotics edited at the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu and published by the University of Tartu Press. It is the oldest periodical in the field. It was initially p ...
'' (September). Estonia:
Tartu University
The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...
.
*
da Silva, Filipe Carreira. 2007. ''G.H. Mead. A Critical Introduction''. Cambridge:
Polity Press
Polity is an academic publisher in the social sciences and humanities. It was established in 1984 and has offices in Cambridge (UK), Oxford (UK), New York (US) and Boston (US). It specializes in the areas of sociology, media, politics, and soci ...
.
* — 2008. ''Mead and Modernity: Science, Selfhood and Democratic Politics''. Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group is an independent publishing house founded in 1949. Under several imprints, the company offers scholarly books for the academic market, as well as trade books. The company also owns the book distributing compa ...
.
*Gillespie, Alex. 2001.
The Mystery of G.H. Mead's First Book (''Essays in Social Psychology'' book review). ''
Theory & Psychology
''Theory & Psychology'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers in the field of Psychology. The journal's founding editor is Henderikus J Stam. The journal's current editor is Kieran C O'Doherty. It has been in publication since ...
'' 13(3):422–24. Archived from th
original17 June 2010.
* — 2005.
G. H. Mead: Theorist of the social act" ''
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
The ''Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed interdisciplinary academic journal covering the study of social behaviour. It was founded in 1971 by Horace Romano Harré and Paul Secord to advance their alternative ...
'' 35:19–39.
* — 2006.
Games and the development of perspective taking" ''
Human Development Human development may refer to:
* Development of the human body
* Developmental psychology
* Human development (economics)
* Human Development Index, an index used to rank countries by level of human development
* Human evolution, the prehistoric ...
'' 49:87–92.
*
Joas, Hans. 1985. ''G.H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought''. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962.
History
The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...
.
*
Habermas, Jürgen. 1992. "Individuation through socialization: On George Herbert Mead's theory of socialization." in ''Postmetaphysical Thinking'', by J. Habermas, translated by W. M. Hohengarten. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
*
Honneth, Axel. 1996. "Recognition and socialization: Mead's naturalistic transformation of Hegel's idea." ''Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts'', by A. Honneth, translated by J. Anderson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
* Lewis, J. D. 1979 "A social behaviorist interpretation of the Meadian 'I'." ''
American Journal of Sociology
The ''American Journal of Sociology'' is a peer-reviewed bi-monthly academic journal that publishes original research and book reviews in the field of sociology and related social sciences. It was founded in 1895 as the first journal in its disci ...
'' 85:261–87.
* Lundgren, D. C. 2004. "Social feedback and self-appraisals: Current status of the Mead-Cooley hypothesis." ''
Symbolic Interaction
Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence w ...
'' 27:267–86.
* Miller, David L. 1973 ''G. H. Mead: Self, Language and the World''. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...
.
* Nungesser, Frithjof. 2016. "Mead Meets Tomasello. Pragmatism, the Cognitive Sciences, and the Origins of Human Communication and Sociality" in: ''The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead''. Ed. by H. Joas and D. R. Huebner. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 252-275.
* Nungesser, Frithjof. 2020. "The Social Evolution of Perspective-taking. Mead, Tomasello, and the Development of Human Agency" ''Pragmatism Today'', 11(1): 84–105.
* Sánchez de la Yncera, Ignacio. 1994. ''La Mirada Reflexiva de G.H. Mead''. Montalbán, ES:
Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas
The Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas ("Centre for Sociological Research") or CIS is a Spanish public research institute. It was founded in 1963 as the Instituto de la Opinión Pública, and in 1977, after the Spanish general election, 197 ...
.
* Shalin, Dmitri. 1988. "G. H. Mead, socialism, and the progressive agenda." ''American Journal of Sociology'' 93:913–51.
External links
*
*
*
Mead Project 2.0— Mead's published and unpublished writings, many of which are available online, along with others.
George Herbert Mead— Mitchell Aboulafia,
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely accessible to Internet users. It is maintained by Stanford University. Eac ...
Review materials for studying George Herbert MeadGuide to the George Herbert Mead Papers 1855-1968at th
University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mead, George Herbert
1863 births
1931 deaths
People from South Hadley, Massachusetts
20th-century American philosophers
American psychologists
American sociologists
Social psychologists
Pragmatists
Labeling theory
Communication scholars
Social philosophers
Philosophers of science
Philosophical anthropology
Philosophers of history
Process theory
Oberlin College alumni
Harvard University alumni
University of Michigan faculty
University of Chicago faculty
Symbolic interactionism