Chapter1: Introduction: Sociological Theory

George Herbert Mead's Synthesis

The names of James, Cooley, and Dewey figure prominently in the development of interactionism, hut Mead brought their related concepts together into a coherent theoretical perspective that linked the emergence of the human mind, the social self, and the structure of society to the process of social interaction, Mead appears to have begun his synthesis with two basic assumptions: (1) the biological frailty of human organisms forces their cooperation with one another in group contexts to survive; and (2) those actions within and among human organisms that facilitate their cooperation, and hence their survival or adjustment, will be retained. Starting from these assumptions, Mead reorganized the concepts of others so that they denoted how mind, the social self, and society arise and are sustained through interaction.

Mind Following Dewey's lead, Mead recognized that the unique feature of the human mind is its capacity to (1) use symbols to designate objects in the environment, (2) rehearse covertly" alternative lines of action toward these objects, and (3) inhibit inappropriate Iines of action and select a proper course of overt action. Mead termed this process of using symbols or language covertly imaginative rehearsal, revealing his conception of mind as a process rather than as a structure. Further, Mead viewed the existence and persistence of society, or cooperation in organized groups, as dependent on this capacity of humans to imaginatively rehearse lines of action toward one another and thereby select those behaviors that facilitate cooperation.

Much of Mead's analysis focused not so much on the mind of mature organisms as on how this capacity first develops in individuals. Unless mind emerges in infants, neither society nor self can exist. In accordance with principles~ of behaviorism, Darwinism, and pragmatism, Mead stressed that mind arises from a selective process in which an infant initially wide repertoire of random gestures is narrowed as some gestures bring favorable reactions from those on whom the infant depends for survival. Such selection of gestures facilitating adjustment can occur either through trial and error or through conscious coaching by those with whom the infant must cooperate. Eventually, through either of these processes, gestures come to have common meanings for both the infant and those in its environment. With this development, gestures now denote the same objects and carry similar disposition for all the parties to an interaction. Gestures that have such common meanings are termed conventional gestures by Mead. These conventional gestures have increased efficiency for interaction among individuals because they allow more precise communication of desires and wants as well as~ intended courses of action thereby increasing the capacity of organisms to adjust to one another.

The ability to use and to interpret conventional gestures with common meanings represents a significant step in the development of mind, self, and society By perceiving and interpreting gestures, humans can now assume the perspective (dispositions, needs, wants, and propensities to act) of those with whom they must cooperate for survival. By reading and then interpreting covertly conventional gestures, individuals can imaginatively rehearse alternative lines of action that will facilitate adjustment to others. Thus, by being able to put oneself in another's place, or to "take the role of the other," to use Mead's concept, the covert rehearsal of action reaches a new level of efficiency, because actors can better gauge the consequences of their actions for others and thereby increase the probability of cooperative interaction.

Thus, when an organism develops the capacity (1) to understand conventional gestures, (2) to employ these gestures to take the role of others, and (3) to imaginatively rehearse alternative lines of action, Mead believed that such an organism~ possesses "mind."

Self Drawing from James and Cooley, Mead stressed that, just as humans can designate symbolically other actors in the environment, so they can symbolically represent themselves as objects. The interpretation of gestures, then, facilitates human cooperation and serves as the basis for self-assessment and evaluation. This capacity to derive images of oneself as an object of evaluation in interaction depends on the processes of mind. What Mead saw as significant about this process is that, as organisms mature, the transitory "self-images" derived from specific others in each interactive situation eventually become crystallized into a more or less stabilized "self-conception" of oneself as a certain type of object. With these self-conceptions, individuals' actions take on consistency because they are now mediated through a coherent and stable set of attitudes, dispositions, or meanings about oneself as a certain type of person.

Mead chose to highlight three stages in the development of self, each stage marking not only a change in the kinds of transitory self-images an individual can derive from role taking but also an increasing crystallization of a more stabilized self-conception. The initial stage of role taking in which self-images can be derived is termed play In play, infant organisms are capable of assuming the perspective of only a limited number of others, at first only one or two. Later, by virtue of biological maturation and practice at role taking, the maturing organism becomes capable of taking the role of several others engaged in organized activity. Mead termed this stage the game because it designates the capacity to derive multiple self-images from, and to cooperate with, a group of individuals engaged in some coordinated activity~ (Mead typically illustrated this stage by giving the example of a baseball game in which all individuals must symbolically assume the role of all others on the team to participate effectively.) The final stage in the development of self occurs when ~an individual can take the role of the "generalized other" or "community of attitudes" evident in a society. At this stage, individuals are seen as capable of assuming the overall perspective of a community, or general beliefs, values, and norms. This means that humans can both (1) increase the appropriateness of their responses to others with whom they must interact and (2) expand their evaluative self-images from the expectations of specific others to the standards and perspective of the broader community. Thus, it is this ever-increasing capacity to take roles with an ever-expanding body of others that marks the stages in the development of self.

Society Mead believed society or restitutions represent the organized and patterned interactions among diverse individuals. Such organization of interactions depends on mind. Without the capacities of mind to take roles and imaginatively rehearse alternative lines of activity, individuals could not coordinate their activities. Mead emphasized,

The immediate effect of such role-taking lies in the control which the individual is able to exercise over his own response. The control of the action of the individual in a co-operative process can take place in the conduct of the individual himself he can take the role of the other. It is this control of the response of the individual himself through taking the role of the other that leads to the value of tins type of communication from the point of view of the organization of the conduct in the group.

Society also depends on the capacities of self, especially the process of evaluating oneself from the perspective of the generalized other. Without the ability to see and evaluate oneself as an object from this community of attitudes, social control would rest solely on self-evaluations derived from role taking with specific and immediately present others--thus making coordination of diverse activities among larger groups extremely difficult.

Although Mead was vitally concerned with how society and its institutions are maintained and perpetuated by the capacities of mind and self, these concepts also allowed trim to view society as constantly in flux and rife with potential change. That role taking and imaginative rehearsal are ongoing processes among the participants in any interaction situation reveals the potential these processes give individuals for adjusting and readjusting their responses. Furthermore, the insertion of self as an object into the interactive process underscores that the outcome of interaction will be affected by the ways in which self-conceptions alter the initial reading of gestures and the subsequent rehearsal of alternative lines of behavior Such a perspective thus emphasizes that social organization is both perpetuated by and altered through the adjustive capacities of mind and the mediating impact of self:

Thus, the institutions of society are organized forms of group or social activity--forms so organized that the individual members of society can act adequately and socially by taking the attitudes of others toward these activities [But] there is no necessary or inevitable reason why social institutions should be oppressive or rigidly conservative, or why they should not rather be, as many are, flexible and progressive, fostering individuality rather than discouraging it.

Tins passage contains a clue to Mead's abiding distaste for rigid and oppressive patterns of social organization. He viewed society as a constructed phenomenon that arises from the adjustive interactions among individuals. As such, society can be altered or reconstructed through the processes denoted by the concepts of mind and self. However, Mead went one step further and stressed that change is frequently unpredictable, even by those emitting the change-inducing behavior. To account for this indeterminacy of action, Mead used two concepts first developed by James, the "I" and the "me" For Mead, the "I" points to the impulsive tendencies of individuals, and the "me" represents the self-image of behavior after it has been emitted. With these concepts Mead emphasized that the "1," or impulsive behavior, cannot be predicted because the individual can only "know in experience" (the "me") what has actually transpired and what the consequences of the "I" have been.

In sum, then, Mead believed society represents those constructed patterns of coordinated activity that are maintained by, and changed through, symbolic interaction among and within actors, Both the maintenance and the change of society, therefore, occur through the processes of mind and self Although Mead views many of the interactions causing both stability and change in groups as predictable, the possibility for spontaneous and unpredictable actions that alter existing patterns of interaction is also likely This conceptual legacy had a profound impact on a generation of American sociologists after the posthumous publication of Mead's lectures in 1934.Yet, despite the suggestiveness of Mead's concepts, they failed to address some important theoretical issues.

The most important of these issues concerns the vagueness of his concepts in denoting the nature of social organization or society and the precise points of articulation between society and the individual. Mead viewed society as organized activity, regulated by the generalized other, in which individuals make adjustments and cooperate with one ~another. Such adjustments and the cooperation are seen as possible by virtue of the capacities of mind and self. Whereas mind and self emerged from existent patterns of social organization, the maintenance or change of such organization was viewed by Mead as a reflection of the processes of mind and self.~ Although these and related concepts of the Meadian scheme point to the mutual interaction of society and the individual and although the concepts of mind and self denote crucial processes through which this dependency is maintained, they do not allow the analysis of variations in social organization and in the ways that individuals are implicated in these patterns.