Mead's Concept Research Articles

Technological factor in the transformation of intergenerational communications

The paper analyzes the dynamics of intergenerational interaction under the influence of modern communicative practices of young people, in turn, conditioned by the development of information technology. Using M. Mead's concept of pre-figurative culture and S. Ward's concept of reverse socialization, the research explains the process of positive activation of intergenerational communication due to growing needs of elder generation for competences of their children and grandchildren that, however, changes the habitual vector of socialization influence. The authors conclude that the dynamics of intergenerational communication under the influence of information technology is ambivalent: the natural increase in value contradictions is compensated by the intensification of interaction in the course of exchanging the experience and competence.

Paratextual Encounters of Four Kinds: Blade Runner and Cinematic Memory

This paper considers a series of Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) paratexts in order to examine the different kinds of memory work they perform and activate depending on the technologies and traditions of representation with which they engage and the contextualizing forces of the sites in which we experience them. Terence Broad's artwork, Blade Runner—Autoencoded (2016)—a version of Ridley Scott's film produced from the memory of an artificial intelligence—is privileged in this analysis, which also considers the Tyrell Corporation miniature, Syd Mead's concept drawings, and the trailer for Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017).

John Cage and George Herbert Mead: The Unknown Influence of Van Meter Ames

AbstractAs John Cage wrote in his bookA Year from Monday, the “current use for art [is] giving instances of society suitable for social imitation—suitable because they show ways . . . people can do things without being told or telling others what to do.” Cage's ideal anarchic music emphasizes not only renouncing compositional control, but also the process of self-discovery happening to everyone, a process that leads participants to discover their creative abilities. This paper argues that Cage's penchant for self-discovery came from his understanding of George Herbert Mead's theories of the process of individuation (the “me” and the “I”). Cage discovered Mead through readingZen and American Thought(1962) by his friend Van Meter Ames, a professor of philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, who saw the compatibility between Zen and Mead's concept of self in the capacity of the “I,” a phase of self whose unpredictable steps contribute to human innovation. Cage found the possibility of overthrowing the thought of the world through triggering a self-discovery of the “I” in everyone. He realized this idea in his happenings, such as0’00”, by requiring performers to respond to the simple descriptions without specifying sound or duration.

Understanding the (Re)Creation of Routines from Within: A Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

Drawing on symbolic interactionism, we propose a process model for the creation and recreation of routines. Our model extends the performative perspective by exploring how routines, as collective accomplishments, are (re)created from within. In particular, we examine the mutual constitution of routines' constituent parts (performative and ostensive) through interaction, and we develop endogenous explanations of routine (re)creation grounded on the actions and understandings of mutually susceptible participants. Mead's concept of role taking, with its strong emphasis on the relational aspect of agency, enables us to account for the fitting together of individual lines of action (performative) and the sharing of participants' schemata (included in the ostensive) as mutually constituted processes that occur as participants develop distinct selves in the context of a routine. Moreover, we account for the content and structure of the ostensive aspect and propose a conceptualization that does justice to it as a...

Reading Sex and Temperament in Taiwan: Margaret Mead and Postwar Taiwanese Feminism

This essay examines the ways in which Margaret Mead's research findings in New Guinea were transmitted to a Chinese-speaking audience through Yang Mei-hui's annotated Chinese summary of part 4 of Mead's Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935). In so doing, Yang served as a cultural intermediary who transmitted Mead's concept of cultural relativism on gender-role formation to her Chinese-speaking audience. Yang's annotated summary (1973) serves as a case study of the ways in which a cultural intermediary's injections of her personal commentaries within a specific cross-cultural context can facilitate her audience's understanding of the arguments made in the original English text. In this essay, I undertake a textual comparison of Yang's Chinese annotated summary with Mead's original English text for the purpose of evaluating Yang's effectiveness in conveying Mead's main arguments. In the 1970s and thereafter, Taiwanese feminists applied Mead's concept of cultural relativism of socially constructed gender to subvert the rigid gender roles in Taiwanese society. In so doing, they contributed to women's self-determination during the era of Taiwan's democratization.

Reading Sex and Temperament in Taiwan: Margaret Mead and Postwar Taiwanese Feminism

This essay examines the ways in which Margaret Mead's research findings in New Guinea were transmitted to a Chinese-speaking audience through Yang Mei-hui's annotated Chinese summary of part 4 of Mead's Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935). In so doing, Yang served as a cultural intermediary who transmitted Mead's concept of cultural relativism on gender-role formation to her Chinese-speaking audience. Yang's annotated summary (1973) serves as a case study of the ways in which a cultural intermediary's injections of her personal commentaries within a specific cross-cultural context can facilitate her audience's understanding of the arguments made in the original English text. In this essay, I undertake a textual comparison of Yang's Chinese annotated summary with Mead's original English text for the purpose of evaluating Yang's effectiveness in conveying Mead's main arguments. In the 1970s and thereafter, Taiwanese feminists applied Mead's concept of cultural relativism of socially constructed gender to subvert the rigid gender roles in Taiwanese society. In so doing, they contributed to women's self-determination during the era of Taiwan's democratization.

Intrapersonal Communicology: Reflection, Reflexivity, and Relational Consciousness in Embodied Subjectivity

Ruesch and Bateson operationalize the intrapersonal level as a “one-person communication system” and describe the function of the communicative agent as a “self-observer.” In this article, I seek to establish a theory of intrapersonal communicology. My analysis follows a phenomenological and psychoanalytic consideration of G. H. Mead's concept of the “I” and “me.” In doing so, I articulate the ground of intrapersonal communicative experience as the phenomenological embodiment of social and cultural relations. We begin our psychological development in group relations (i.e., in the order of the family) and from the effects of this experience on our capacities for trust, autonomy, and initiative, we can begin to entail our social embodiment in a recognizable identity for the experience and articulation of our adult agency. My argument is that communicative embodiment and intersubjective social experience are simultaneous events.

Mead's Lost Conception of Society

The single best word to describe the impact of George Herbert Mead's ideas on the intellectual world is “ironic.” Although Mead was a philosopher, his ideas have been more influential in sociology than in philosophy. Despite Mead's belief that it is the job of sociologists to study society, it is his notion of the self rather than his notion of society that has received the most attention in this field. Mead himself is first and foremost responsible for this ironic state of affairs because his analysis of society is so obscure at points that it is hard for most sociologists to understand. However, Mead alone is not to blame. The two main expositors of his sociological thought since his death, Herbert Blumer and Hans Joas, added to the confusion by not making clear that Mead sees society as a “body of institutions.” To correct their distortions of Mead's notion of society, I provide an alternative exposition of that notion. I disclose how Mead addresses the three main problems that he believes must be resolved before society can be understood: (1) the operation of institutions in the daily lives of people; (2) the origination of early institutions, such as language, the family, the economy, religion, polity, and science; and (3) the change of these institutions after their inception.

Role Taking and Socialization in Single-Parent Families

This article examines the conditions and consequences of role taking in single-parent families. First, the authors discuss the theoretical relevance of role taking for parent-child interaction. Second, they suggest some conditions for parental role taking. Third, the authors consider how social class and family structure affect role taking in single-parent families. They propose that in addition to role taking in the dyadic parent-child relationship, two other forms of role taking are consequential for child socialization and family relations. One is specific to triadic relationships, the other to the family unit. Second-order role taking occurs when a parent elicits the perspective of the spouse in understanding the child. Third-order role taking, similar to Mead's concept of the “generalized other” as the vantage point for role taking, occurs when a parent elicits the perspective of the family as a whole. The authors explore these ideas in a qualitative study of single and married parents.

Theorizing Narrative Identity: Symbolic Interactionism and Hermeneutics

This article argues for a synthesis of George Herbert Mead's conception of the temporal and intersubjective nature of the self with Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic theory of narrative identity. Combining the insights of Ricoeur's philosophical analysis with Mead's social-psychological orientation provides a subtle, sophisticated, and potent explanation of self-identity. A narrative conception of identity implies that subjectivity is neither a philosophical illusion nor an impermeable substance. Rather, a narrative identity provides a subjective sense of self-continuity as it symbolically integrates the events of lived experience in the plot of the story a person tells about his or her life. The utility of this conception of identity is illustrated through a rereading of Erving Goffman's study of the experience of mental patients. This example underlines the social sources of the self-concept and the role of power and politics in the construction of narrative identities.

The Other Heidegger (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 509 comprehensive and probing; his scholarship is impeccable. He rightly calls attention to the fact that the label "social behaviorism," which has been affixed to Mead's social psychology by Charles Morris, was not Mead's own. Although Mead did indicate that his psychology had evolved into behaviorism, Cook nonetheless shows that Mead retained elements of functionalism and did not subscribe to the stereotypical behaviorism of Watson and his epigoni. Cook's critique of Mead's social psychology--e.g., his discussion of Mead's conception of "taking the attitude or the role of the other" in Chapter 6--is detailed and penetrating, and should stimulate lines of inquiry to reconstruct Mead's social psychology. Chapter 7 treats Mead's forays into social and educational reform in Chicago. Cook has researched Mead's activities extremely well, and provides the reader with an account absent from the secondary literature hht indispensable to any assessment of Mead as an activist social scientist. Chapter 8, in which Cook examines Mead's conceptions of the social self and morality, also engages the reader in reflections on nations, wars, and international peace. Again, Cook researches material authored by Mead in obscure publications andnot easily accessible newspapers. Chapter 9 centers on Whitehead's influence on Mead's later thought, and while it is not central to Cook's project in this book, it illuminates a relatively neglected aspect of Mead's philosophy, and should be useful to students not only of Mead but of Whitehead . The Epilogue is devoted to Mead and the Hutchins controversy, and while it, too, is peripheral to Cook's project, it contains an object lesson in higher education. The unwelcome intrusion by university presidents into the jurisdiction of distinguished departments can mean temporary ruin for the academic reputation of the institution. Chapter 1o, entitled "Mead's Social Pragmatism," contains Cook's summary assessment of Mead's achievement. As Cook, following Arthur Murphy, points out there are two features of pragmatism: polemical and constructive. Whereas the polemical feature is evident in the pragmatists' critique of traditional philosophy, which seeks certaint ), in epistemology and metaphysics, the constructive feature is manifest in the endeavors of pragmatists to articulate comprehensive theories of knowledge, inquiry, morals, and society, with human conduct as their crux. Mead's pragmatism accentuates the constructive, and, as Cook demonstrates, his lasting contribution is in social psychology and social philosophy. Cook, therefore, has written a book that is of immense value to all students of American philosophy and social science. ANDREW J. REcK Tulane University Fred Dallmayr. The Other Heidegger. Contestations: Cornell Studies in Political Theory. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. Pp. xii + ~32. Cloth, $30.75. With The Other Heidegger Fred Dallmayr has given us a book that is eminently sane, nuanced, and philosophically instructive. The book is well-tempered, which for the musical ear will mean not only that it is well disposed but above all finely tuned. 510 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3~:3 JULY 1994 Dallmayr may well be the only "critic" of Heidegger's politics who has taken the trouble to grapple seriously with his philosophy. Early on in the book Dallmayr focusses on the distinction between "politics" (d/e Politik), concrete decision-making and policy, and the political (das Politische), the paradigmatic framework. "Irrespective of such caveats (to be amplified later), the distinction between two aspects or levels of politics has relevance for Heidegger's life and opus. It is my thesis here that Heidegger's promising contributions in this domain are located on the level of ontology or paradigmatic framework, rather than on that of decision-making or policy. Conversely, his role on the second plane is dismal, to the point of nearly eclipsing the rest of his work" (51). With the expressed reservation that he is not trying to condone Heidegger's politics , Dallmayr undertakes the arduous task of working through Heidegger's writings and seeing how with ever-increasing consistency they strive to step hack out of metaphysics and its political implications. He traces what he calls Heidegger's "inner emigration ," his ongoing turning away from the heroic and anything that smacks of will, to a reticence and growing...

George Herbert Mead: The Making of a Social Pragmatist (review)

508 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 39:3 JULY x994 persons. Indeed, Hegel describes a variety of holistic structures. Self-consciousness separates the unifying principle, in the form of simple individuality, from the unifying principle operating in the organizational dynamic of differences. In some social forms, the members of society serve the whole like slaves serving a master, getting their law not from themselves but from their relation to the whole. In other social forms, the social structure serves individuals as a reflection of their thought, as useful, as the external manifestation of their will or moral intention. In the PhilosophyofRight, Hegel describes social life as a whole in which unity dominates difference in political life and difference dominates unity in economic life. To sum up all these questions in one, if truth is the whole, what kind of whole is it? These, however, are questions posed to a worthy opponent. The Spirit of Hegel makes an excellent case for Hegel's relevance to a broad contemporary context while developing a clear, balanced, plausible reading of Hegel's text. It challenges every alternative analysis of the Hegelian whole to do the same. ARDIS B. COLLINS Loyola Universityof Chicago Gary A. Cook. GeorgeHerbertMead: TheMaking ofa SocialPragmatist. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Pp. xix + ~31. Cloth, $31.95 . Paper, $15.95. Mead's rank in the history of American pragmatism has always been very high, his name linked with Dewey, and placed after Peirce and James. Yet Mead authored no distinctive contribution to the pragmatist conceptions of knowledge, truth, and inquiry , restating instead the formulations of these critical topics expressed by Dewey. Cook shows, however, that Mead's achievement resides in what he (Cook) calls "social pragmatism." Cook develops his interpretation of Mead by detailed examination of the articles and book reviews Mead himself published in his lifetime, although he also considers the posthumously published books based on lecture notes from Mead's students . And for biographical accounts of Mead's intellectual odyssey and career he draws upon unpublished letters, obscure and not readily accessible newspapers, and archival materials. The first two chapters consider Mead's early life, his conversion to philosophy, his studies at Oberlin, Harvard, Leipzig, and Berlin, his teaching at the University of Michigan under Dewey, but, most of all, his friendship with the doomed Henry Casde, whose sister had become his wife. The portrait Cook sketches is of an industrious, committed, idealistic young man, joined with others by bonds of deep affection and yet distinctively cerebral, finding his way through the maze of psychological and philosophical theories that had sprung up in response to evolutionary biology. Chapter 3 traces Mead's move from Hegelian idealism to social psychology during his tenure at the University of Michigan and his early years at the University of Chicago, a move which parallels that of Dewey, his closest colleague and mentor, from "absolutism to experimentalism." Chapters 4, 5, and 6 concentrate on Mead's social psychology. Cook's discussion is BOOK REVIEWS 509 comprehensive and probing; his scholarship is impeccable. He rightly calls attention to the fact that the label "social behaviorism," which has been affixed to Mead's social psychology by Charles Morris, was not Mead's own. Although Mead did indicate that his psychology had evolved into behaviorism, Cook nonetheless shows that Mead retained elements of functionalism and did not subscribe to the stereotypical behaviorism of Watson and his epigoni. Cook's critique of Mead's social psychology--e.g., his discussion of Mead's conception of "taking the attitude or the role of the other" in Chapter 6--is detailed and penetrating, and should stimulate lines of inquiry to reconstruct Mead's social psychology. Chapter 7 treats Mead's forays into social and educational reform in Chicago. Cook has researched Mead's activities extremely well, and provides the reader with an account absent from the secondary literature hht indispensable to any assessment of Mead as an activist social scientist. Chapter 8, in which Cook examines Mead's conceptions of the social self and morality, also engages the reader in reflections on nations, wars, and international peace. Again, Cook researches material authored by Mead in obscure publications andnot...

Social-Cognitive Aspects of Therapeutic Interactions

The development of the child and adolescent's ability to take part actively in the analytic process is examined from a social-cognitive point of view. Selman's theory of social perspective-taking, which integrates Mead's concept of role-taking with Piaget's concept of cognitive development, is summarized. It is argued that social perspective-taking is an ideal instrument for understanding self-reflective cognitive competence as is needed in psychoanalysis. The growth of the child and adolescent's capacity for introspection and the adaptation of technique necessitated by it, and, second, the development of the cognitive competence for a reflective understanding of transference phenomena, are stage-analyzed. Controversies around these issues are clarified by systematizing reflective abilities developmentally.

G. H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought.Hans Joas , Raymond Meyer

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsG. H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought. Hans Joas , Raymond Meyer David R. MainesDavid R. Maines Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 93, Number 1Jul., 1987 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/228715 Views: 1Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1987 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Lonnie Athens Mead's Lost Conception of Society, Symbolic Interaction 28, no.33 (Aug 2005): 305–325.https://doi.org/10.1525/si.2005.28.3.305

Some Consequences of the Meadian Self*

Mead's conception of the self is analyzed as an internal interaction process, with the “I” viewed as taking perspectives rather than being simply a biologic response. Conceptualizing the self as an intrapersonal process of interaction from differentiated perspectives permits a better understanding of false fronting, autonomy, and creativity. Emergence theory allows us to take a Phenomenological view of the self. Several levels of consciousness in Mead's theory are analyzed, and connections with Berger and Luckmann's conceptions of objectivation and the symbolic universe are suggested.

G. H. Mead's Concept of Rationality: A Study of the Use of Symbols and Other Implements (review)

G. H. Mead's Concept of Rationality: A Study of the Use of Symbols and Other Implements (review)

Language acquisition as the acquisition of speech act competence

The article discusses some aspects of G.H. Mead's concept of “taking the other's role”, and examines its possible use as a theoretical framework for empirical studies on child language acquisition during the first years of life. Starting from the concept of “symbolic interactionism” it is argued that symbolic/verbal role-taking precedes the cognitive ability of role-taking. “Symbolic role-taking” is discussed and evaluated on the basis of the following indicators: 1. (1) speech variants 2. (2) imitation 3. (3) self-correction and training 4. (4) explication and variation with reference to the others' perspective. It is finally hypothesized that the development of the child's competence in verbal acting comprises the following abilities: 1. (1) imitation 2. (2) structuring 3. (3) training 4. (4) explicating 5. (5) acting as “symbolic interaction”.

Beyond Mead: The Societal Reaction to Deviance

I should say parenthetically that reading the essay left me spelled by the beauty of its words and niceties of expression, as well as overwhelmed by its sense of prophecy. It recalled me to an old auctorial ideal espoused by James Branch Cabell, namely that we should write beautifully of things as they are. But having had time to cast off Manning's spell, I conclude that sociologists sometimes write beautifully of things as they are not and that in striving for rhetorical symmetry their conclusions may go beyond what facts will support. In this case I must object that the allegations of its sadness and senility ignore the theoretical potential of deviance sociology, its continuing research output, its influence on the diversion movement in criminal justice, and its striking impact on younger, highly articulate sociologists in Britain. Granting the slow stain and constant erosion of all ideas, it seems to me that even with age deviance sociology still is majestic in decay. But without further pause on the decadence issue, I would like to deal with what may cause some of the faithful to cry sacrilege, namely the deficiencies of G. H. Mead's conception of symbolic interaction and their implications for the study of deviance. My purpose is not to add to the theoretical confusion but to clear some of it away, and hopefully free up sociological energies to exploit in the measure it deserves its least worked area, namely the societal reaction. In order to maxi-

Gemeinschaft, inner creation, and role-taking (empathy). 3. Charles Horton Cooley on "social" vs "spatial" (material) knowledge.

This paper is the third of a series intended to relate Ferdinand Toennies' distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (and all comparable distinctions in social theory) to the difference between (1) intuitional and inferential role-taking (empathy), (2) Erlebnis and Erfahrung experience, and (3) Rorschachian inner creation (movement repsonses) and Rorschachian rationality (form responses). The paper interprets Charles Horton Cooley's concepts of “social” knowledge (or sympathy-as-communion) and “spatial” (“material”) knowledge as intuitional and inferential, respectively. It therefore clusters “social” knowledge with Gemeinschaft, Erlebnis, and inner creation; and “spatial” knowledge with Gesellschaft, Erfahrung, and rationality. The paper treats also of George Herbert Mead's concept of “attitude-taking.” It considers Mead to have confounded intuition and inference, with the result that contemporary Meadians may mean qualitatively different psychological processes when they speak of “role-taking” or “empathy.” For example, whereas it is clear that Cooley's “social” knowledge may be identified with James' “acquaintance with,” Buber's “I-Thou” or “inclusion,” Tillich's “existential attitude” and “existential knowledge,” Maritain's “knowledge through connaturality,” and Sorokin's “intuitional theory of cognition,” it is not at all clear in the case of Mead's “attitude-taking.” This is due, the paper suggests, to his concept's large, sometimes exclusive, inferential component. It is this inferential component, the paper suggests, that has been exploited by the psychometric approach of the past 20 years, beginning with Dymond's “empathy” test. These “empathy” tests, in other words, are tests of an interpersonal version of what Cooley meant by “spatial” knowledge (and hence left Cottrell dissatisfied, since he had been partial to the intuitional kind that for Cooley was “social” knowledge). A tool that the paper uses for suggesting all this is Gouldner's analysis of the role-taking of Epaminondas planning a battle and Plato plotting a dialogue. Gouldner's dialogist-as-dramatist illustrates Cooley's “social” knowledge, and his general, Cooley's “spatial” knowledge.

George Herbert Mead on Ancient Greek Society: An Introduction

The publication of these previously unpublished papers (in their complete version) (2) by George Herbert unveils a very interesting aspect of his thought, and should attract attention because of their deep and original sociological foundations. Whereas is widely known for his theoretical contribution to the development of social psychology (mainly through his posthumous book Mind, Self and Society)? which has had a considerable influence in sociology, his own sociological conceptions have remained somewhat less known. For a number of reasons, ranging from the fact that he scattered his articles in philosophical, psychological, and sociological journals without ever assembling them into a book, to the somehow problematic legacy of his thought in the Chicago School of sociology, as well as the almost exclusive--if partial--appropriation of his views by the symbolic interactionist school, Mead's wider sociological reflections have remained virtually unexplored until recently. (4) And even though the last part of Mind, Self and Society is devoted to amounting to almost one-fourth of the total volume and pointing to many fertile developments in sociology, Mead's conceptions of society and sociological analysis per se still remain much neglected by contemporary sociology. While the return to Mead movement initiated by Hans Joas in the 1980s has been a fruitful and decisive attempt to revive the originality of this thinker, much work remains to be done if we want a more complete and clearer picture of Mead's legacy for sociological theory and sociological analysis. (5) For one thing, Mead's ideas on the development of an international society, which accompanied the unparalleled development of US society during the 20th century, strike us today as acutely relevant in these times where a unilateral globalization has imposed itself as the new catchword to describe our world--albeit more often than not deprived, because of the strictly positive (if not positivistic) content of that notion, of its internal dialectical dynamics concerning the individual's self-consciousness and social movements which were so crucial for Mead's sociological understanding. Also, Mead's historical reflections, which shun historicism while nevertheless embracing the requirements of a scientific view of society and an historicity inspired by the logic of experimentation, can still teach us some lessons about the possible contributions a Meadian sociological analysis can provide regarding the present state of contemporary society. Mead's concept of society, in other words, still demands further attention, and much can be gained in contemporary sociological analysis from his reflections on social larger dynamics, particularly when coupled with his ideas about social reform and an experimental path for social action. At any rate, and as the reader will see, the papers that follow presents Mead's main analytical claim about the relationship between individuals and society, the idea that always appears as the mediation between self-consciousness and the historical development of a specific society. For example, in addressing the development of Greek society with respect to its philosophy, pays attention to the different movements that composed social relations of the times, as well as to the different spiritual and philosophical expressions that reflect them, making possible the reconstruction of highly complex social situations. The first paper situates a very important step in Mead's reflections, since it locates the origins of the scientific mind together with the social reforms that took place in ancient Greece, roughly between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE, which also witnessed the emergence of democracy as a political concept and practice. What interested in this paper, then, is the demonstration of the social processes that form the basis of self-reflection, both on the part of the formation of individual consciousnesses and society as a whole, in terms of its reorganization. …