Introduction to Anthropology

ANT101.4

9/9/2018

A critical analysis on George H.

Submitted by
Shakil Faraji 1430527630 ____________________
Tahiya Ahmed 1320962030 ____________________

Submitted to
TATA ZAFAR
Department of Political Science & Sociology
North South University
Introduction

Mead is acclaimed as one of the most influential social psychologists of the early twentieth
century. Mead is best known for his interpretation of the self and the role of language and
social interaction in its development. Over several years he developed a system of thought that
demonstrates how social behaviorism, The Philosophy of the Act, explores the concepts of
sociality and perspective. In Mind, Self, and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist
Mead develops the notions of self and society, contending that human beings can understand
the idea of self only when the individual can perceive his or her own behavior from the
perspective of another. It is when the individual gains this perspective that they have achieved
a sense of self. Central to this theory is the doctrine that mind and self are not inborn, but
evolve through social interaction. Regarded as a useful historical study, Mead's Movements of
Thought in the Nineteenth Century traces important scientific and revolutionary trends since
the Renaissance. In his final work, The Philosophy of the Present, Mead analyzes how organisms
adjust to their social environment and determines how these adaptations affect the process of
evolution. Moreover, Mead has been consistently praised for his contribution to social
psychology and philosophy. George H. Mead shows a psychological analysis through behavior
and interaction of an individual's self with reality. The behavior is mostly developed through
sociological experiences and encounters. These experiences lead to individual behaviors that
make up the social factors that create the communications in society. Communication can be
described as the comprehension of another individual's gestures. Mead explains that
communication is a social act because it requires two or more people to interact. He also
explains that the self is a social process with communication between the "I", the pure form of
self, and the "Me", the social form of self. "I" becomes a response to the "Me" and vice versa.
That same "I" deals with the response of an individual and the "Me" is considered the attitudes
you take on, both being related to social selves. His efforts to describe a link between ethics
and self surely means that any study into the relationship between morality and self-identity
would be at a loss if it failed to give substantial regard to his ideas. As such, this essay will begin
by outlining the contribution that Mead made to understand the self. This will be followed by a
critical investigation into some of Mead’s most fundamental concepts and their consequences
for his theories of ethics. The "self" as a social structure that emerges from human interaction
and the meanings assigned to it. Each person is taught the meanings for behavior, and each
person, in turn, teaches it to others. This process involves more than simply learning behavior;
it involves the entire person in the process of becoming human. Being a member of society is an
ongoing social process. Actors have the capacity to learn and create new meanings for behavior
throughout their lives. Community as a product of human meaning and interaction,

Each person becomes human through interaction with others, and institutional patterns are
learned in communities dependent on shared language and symbols, Human intelligence is vital
for reflective behavior, and social scientists have a special responsibility to help create
democratic decision-making and political action, especially in urban society. The first step was
to take the attitude of the "other" into the self. If the self has a flawed understanding of this
process it can be learned through refining or reconstructing the self, commonly called
rehabilitation.

Analysis & interpretation

 ‘Self’ and ‘society’ cannot be thought separately since they are interdependent.

Both the articles emphasis on the interdependence of self and society. These two entities
cannot be thought separately. These two entities complete each other. Every individual self
carries elements of independence. In one article, it is clearly stated that an independent
schema of self organizes behavior, the primary referent is the individuals own thoughts,
feelings and action whereas the interdependent schema of self organizes behavior, the
immediate referents is the thoughts, feelings, actions of others with whom the individual is in a
relationship with. One cannot fully understand the concept of self with ignoring the fact of
society because the society shapes the self and the self also does the same thing to the society.

In, George Herbert Mead’s theory of “Self”, he stated something similar while describing self.
Though his theory of self might seem a bit different from these articles but actually it is very
much similar. Further explanation will clarify more on this subject matter. In his theory, he
broke down the self into two parts: “I” & “ME”. Here the “I” part is the representation of our
natural instinct. By nature what kind of a person an individual can be which defines the “I” part.
On the other hand the “ME” part is the socialized part of the self. It develops through the
interaction with society. It knows the symbols, norms, beliefs of the society as well as how to
satisfy the social needs. So, it is very much clear to us now that society and self are very much
interdependent and cannot be thought separately.

 Culture is not static rather dynamic, so is ‘self’

In the articles, we have been told a significant number of times that culture is not static or
stable rather dynamic. The set of beliefs or values in an individual over time due to different
factors. The change in patterns of ideas, practices, and institutions also changes the self.
Moreover an individual’s psychology maybe either implicitly or explicitly shaped by the contexts
or sociocultural system which develops gradually. As cultural content (language, media, politics
etc.) changes, the self and the mental functioning also changes in turn. Moreover, belonging
plays a significant role in forming the self. Belonging is also dynamic because it is the
attachment with people and place which varies according to size and distance.

At the most general level, Mead uses the society to mean the ongoing social process that
precedes both the mind and the self. Given its importance in shaping the mind and self, society
is clearly central importance to Mead. At another level, society to Mead represents the
organized set of responses that are taken over by the individual in the form of the “me”. So it is
very much clear to us that the self is dynamic with society. As the society starts to develop the
‘me’ part also flows with it to shape itself in the accepted form if otherwise the ‘me’ part
becomes an outcast to the society.

 ‘Interaction’ a key element of ‘social’ and ‘self’

In both the articles, interaction is mentioned as a crucial part in forming the social and self. The
study of self and social is viable without the consideration of relationships and interaction.
Interaction with others produces a self as connected to, related to or interdependence with
others. These interactions are guided by culturally prescribed tasks that require and encourage
fitting in with others, taking the perspective of others, adjusting to others, and using others as
referent of action.

In Mead’s view human thought experience and conduct are essentially social. Symbols impose
particular meanings on objects and these meanings are constructed and reconstructed in the
process of social interaction. Symbolic interaction is necessary since man has no instincts to
direct his behavior. He is not genetically programmed to react automatically to particular
stimuli. In order to survive he has to find medium of interaction with others and symbols filled
the lacuna. Via symbols meaning is imposed on the world of nature and human interaction with
that world is there by made possible. Mead defines a symbol as the stimulus whose response is
given in advance. He argues that through the process of role taking the individual develops a
concept of self. By placing himself in the position of others he is able to look back upon himself.
Mead claims that the idea of a self can only develop if the individual can get outside himself in
such a way so as to become an object to himself. Symbolic interactionism is an anti-theoretical
sociological theory that refuses in principle to transcend the peculiar characteristics of social
processes. It goes towards conceptual generalization and abstraction and allowing concepts to
function at best a sensitizing function. They always try to interpret a particular situation rather
than a set of general situations.

 Attaching ‘meaning’ and organizing ‘self’

These articles we are working on has emphasized on ‘meaning’ an individual attach to things.
People are likely to reference others, and to understand their individual actions as contingent
on or organized by the actions of others and their relations with these others. Moreover, we
build a sense of belonging in the world based on the meanings we give our environment by
moving through and engaging with it. We go through a process of ‘making sense of place,
developing a feeling of belonging and eventually identifying with that place, and in this process
we come understand who we are both as individuals and as a group of people.

Mead believed that meaning lies squarely within social act: “meaning arises and lies within the
field of the relation between the gesture of a given human organism and the subsequent
behavior of this organism as indicated to another human organism by that gesture. So, it is
more vivid now than ever that, we construct the ‘self’ according to the ‘meaning’ we attach to
different objects and act accordingly.

 Full development of ‘self’ with ‘generalized others’

In both the article ‘generalize others’ have been given some sort of significance a certain
extent. In one article a figure named “the mutual constitution of culture and selves” is a clear
representation about of how generalized others plays an important role in forming the self. It
takes into consideration the societal factors, pervasive ideas, institutions and its products, daily
situations and practices and describe how these participation in forming the self. On the other
article, it’s clearly stated that, parents find themselves engaging both in new routines such as
taking children to the playground, nursery or school and new interactions with other parents
and teachers, which serves to connect them to a locality in a novel way.

George Herbert Mead's concept of the Generalized Other is that in their behavior and social
interaction individuals react to the expectations of others, orienting themselves to the norms
and values of their community or group. Mead’s concept of the Generalized Other gives an
account of the social origin of self-consciousness while retaining the transforming function of
the personal. Contextualized in Mead's theory of inter-subjectivity, the Generalized Other is a
special case of role-taking in which the individual responds to social gestures, and takes up and
adjusts common attitudes.
Appendices