Mead, George Herbert

(1863-1931)

A leading American pragmatist, philosopher of the Chicago School, and one of the founders of the sociological tradition that came to be known as symbolic interactionism after his death. His thought is often classified as social behaviourism .

Mead's contribution is most frequently seen as centring upon the development of a theory of Mind, Self and Society, the title of his posthumously published book (in 1934). In this work, he laid the foundations for a sociological social psychology, emphasizing the following: an analysis of experience located firmly within society; the importance of language , symbols , and communication in human group life; the ways in which our words and gestures bring forth responses in others through a process of role-taking; the reflective and reflexive nature of the self ; and the centrality of the ‘act’.

But Mead's work went well beyond this. Indeed, as John Baldwin has argued in his book George Herbert Mead (1986), Mead provided a much wider ‘unifying theory’ for sociology, which anticipated, at one level, developments in sociobiology, and at another, broad historical transformations. Uniting all this was his unswerving commitment to the role of science in human affairs. ‘The scientific method’, he wrote, ‘is the method of social progress.’

Mead fostered a position sometimes designated ‘objective relativism’: he often refers to the ‘objective reality of perspectives’. There are many accounts of reality possible, depending upon whose standpoint is taken. History, for example, is always an account of the past from some person's present. A theory of the social construction of time was another major aspect of Mead's work.

When Mead died he had not published a unified statement of his ideas. His four posthumous books are edited versions of his lecture notes and of notes recorded by his students. This gives much of his written work an unsatisfyingly incomplete and piecemeal character. Despite this, his influence on modern sociology has been enormous. For a selection of his writings see, George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology (1964); and for a valuable bibliography, see , ‘George Herbert Mead: A Bibliography of the Secondary Literature’ in Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 1986. See also reference group.