Mead’s view on the self was that he saw the self as an acting organism. He did not see it as something that receives and responds to stimuli. The self, like the mind, is a social emergent. This social conception of the self, Mead argues that individual selves are the products of social interaction and no ingredients such as social, cultural or psychological variables that can determine the actions of self. Mead compares his social theory of the self with individualistic theories of the self. Mead's model of society is an organic model in which individuals are related to the social process as bodily parts are related to bodies.
Mead argues strongly that people’s ability, through the process of self- interaction, to form and guide there own conduct. His position is that people act on there own environment and in doing so , they create meaning for the objects around them. He explains the differences between things , which are the stimulus that exist prior to, and the objects which exist only in relation to actions. In other words, thing are changed into objects after interaction wit and individual. Symbolic interactionism avoids a deterministic stance by refusing to act as if the self is something that is undifferentiated. In this theory , Mead outlines the two “Phases” of self. The individual's response to the social world is active; she decides what she will do in the light of the attitudes of others but her actions are not determined by such attitudes. There are two phases of the self: the
phase which reflects the attitude of the generalized other and second phase which responds to the attitude of the generalized other. This is where Mead distinguishes between the "me" and the "I." The "me" is the social self, and the "I" is a response to the "me". The 'I' is the response of the organism to the attitudes of the others; the 'me' is the organized set of attitudes of others which one himself assumes. There is a dialectical relationship between society and the individual.
The "me" is the internalization of roles which we get from interaction with others while we are playing, and gaming. "I" is a "creative response" to the symbolized structures of the "me" . “I" and the "me" exist in relation to one another. The human personality ,self, shows in a social situation. This situation structures the "me" by language, gestures, play, and games., and the active organism, as it continues to develop, must respond to its situation and to its "me." This response of the active organism is the "I."
The internal conversation one has with oneself are a very large part of mead’s perspective because it is with this internal conversation , people begin to take in what’s going on around them and then begin to organize the situation for themselves. This is called self interaction. Self interaction is also the basis for role taking. Mead explains that communication is a process where each person will take the role of another or” walk in someone else’s shoes” . A person assumes the attitude of the other individual and is calling it out in the other.
Mead believes that there are three stages when a person is developing their self. The first stage is called “pre-play”. This stage starts at about age two. The second stage is called the “play” stage. This stage happens later on in the childhood. The third stage is called “the game” stage. This stage takes place in childhood . In playing and gaming, the key to self-consciousness is the process of role-playing." In play, the child takes the role of another and acts as though she were the other. This form of role-playing involves a single role at a time. The game involves a more complex form of role-playing than that involved in play. In the game, the individual is required to internalize, not only character of a single other, but the roles of all others who are involved in the game with him. He must also understand the rules of the game which condition the different roles. The game, then, is the stage of the social process at which the individual attains her individual self. One of Mead's major contributions to the development of critical social theory is his analysis of games. The symbol is derived from Mead’s definition of “gesture” . It is defined as not only the first element of act , but a sing for the whole act as well. Gestures become significant symbols because they have the same meaning for all members of society. They get the same attitude from the people who are making them, as well as from the people who are responding to them. Symbol is defined by Mead as “the stimulus whose response is given in advance”. If you were to get into a fight with some one, Mead explains how you would use conversation gestures. An insulting word can be a gesture. The main element is the meaning of the word.. It becomes the stimulus whose response was giving in advance, because with the people who are involved, the meaning of the word and the intentions of which it was used, shows that it was meant to evoke a blow as the response of the person
who it was directed at. Self-interaction is also occurring in this process. There is a conversation of gestures that is going on in the mind of the person as the argument continues. The first theorist that I will compare Mead ‘s theory with is Herbert Blumer. There are many points that Blumer discusses that run along side of Meads theory. In Blumer's theory of interpretation, Blumer argues that there is a necessity for including subjective experience as well as having observable behavior in the explanation of human interaction. Like Mead he also discuses how there is a great importance that symbolic interactionism places on understanding things from the point of view of the person, or actor. Bulmer’s view on symbolic interaction is a little more in depth than Mead’s interpretation. Blumer adds in third term. Instead of Mead’s more simplistic stimulus- response where there is meaning is placed on a stimulus and the response is given, Blumer explains how it is stimulus-interpretation-response. He explains how the first person acts out and action, the second person interprets the action of the first person. In turn the second person will react to the action of the first after they interpret its meaning, then the first will respond accordingly. Blumer also goes into how gestures are a very important key fact or in interpretation. To interpret the meaning of and action from another person , you must take the role of the other person. Instead of just reacting to stimulus like in Meads theory, the person must be able to define the gesture that the other person is acting out in order to respond. According to Blumer, he believes that the self is not just discovered because of psychological elements , like motives and interests, along with societal elements. He believes that people have to give meaning to objects through interaction with it. Blumer talks about his Three Basic Premises for the importance of meaning in human interaction. This theory is very similar to Mead’s theories. The first one is that humans towards things on the basis of the meaning that the things have for them.. This is very close to Mead’s theory in that there are “things” that are in existence prior to a person giving it meaning. The “thing” is already there, and it has its own meaning, but to a person, it might have a different meaning. The second premise is that the meanings of things arise out of social interaction that one has with ones fellow. This is saying that things are given meaning by social interaction wit another person. Different things can have different meanings to other cultures and social settings. What one object means to us can have a completely different meaning in another social setting. Mead’s theory did not seem to go into interpretation of different things in other types of societies, he mainly focused on our culture and society. The third premise is the meanings of things are handled in a modified through an interpretive process used by the person in dealing wit things that he encounters. This is saying that a person communicates and handles meaning of an interaction with another through talking to them self. This theory goes along with Mead’s theory of self -interaction and how a person must have an internal conversation to help them prepare and react to the person that they are talking to. Like Mead, Blumer believes that people are active and adjustable in society. Blumer point out the importance of structures such as social roles, status positions, rank orders, government. Mead view as explained by Blumer does not reject the existence of structure in society. Both believe that there are many different unstructured situations in which human beings must come up wit there own reaction.
The second theorist I will compare Mead with is Erving Goffman. Goffman takes a more dramatic look at people’s interaction with each other. Goffman See interaction as if they were in a play. He takes the idea of the role and puts it on a stage where as the actors are in a situation. There, are two different ways in which the individual performs his everyday activities to others. The two concepts are front and back stage. The front stage would be the way that the person lets people see them. It is the way that they let other perceive them. The back stage would be the real person. The part in which the individual does not let other people see them. In Meads theory , he does not see interaction so much as a stage, but he does believe that people do take roles. During a play the audience tends to only see what is on the front stage. They do not get a chance to see what’s really going on back stage. By bringing all the attention to the back stage process, Goffman shows what goes into what is involved in a successful presentation of one’s self in public. This relates to Mead’s theory of the internal conversation. When one talks to them selves to prepare them selves for an interaction with another, they are in a way using the backstage because they are not letting the others see. The third theorist I would like to compare with Mead is Harold Garfinkel. Garfinkel is the founding father of what is called ethno methodology. It can be defined as how people make sense of every day activities. Everyday activities are normally taken for granted. If something that a person does every day is taken for granted, the people around become confused. If there is an interaction with someone that is out of the ordinary, people tend to not know how to react to it. Garfinkel explains that everyday situations that individuals recognize social facts, such as norms and values, that interpret the situation for them. When a person recognizes the social norm, this person beings to create there social reality. Garfinkel says that ethno methodologies, studies “ analyze everyday activities as member’s methods for making those same activities visibly-rational-and reportable-for-all-practical-purposes, that is, ‘accountable’ as organizations of commonplace everyday activity”. In other words, His theory would reject Mead's theory that object have a reality of their own that impose on the individual. Mead would argue that people act on the environment around them and give the things in meaning. Garfinkel also looks at a process in which people raise certain taken-for-granted rules toward behavior in which they would interpret an interaction and give it meaning. Mead’s argument would be that norms and values come from people interacting with each other. Garfinkel is not really interested in how the norms were formed, he looks more at the process in which people prove to each other that they are following the norms. The fourth theorist I would like to compare Mead to is Talcott Parsons. Parsons is a functionalist theorist. The main concept in Parsons concepts is “The concepts of system in the action field as on others..” His theory of action , which gives the overall display of how societies are structured and fit together, includes four systems. The cultural system, the personality system, the social system, and the behavioral system. The main bases of his cultural system, like Mean is the using the concept of “meaning” or of “symbolic system”. In Parson’s theory , he looks at society how Mead looks at “things” in Society. Some examples of the symbolic system would be languages, values, and religion. All these different structures in society use symbolic meaning in society. He believes that society’s values are internalized by the people in society and then made their own. Parsons theory is also similar in the way that he uses actors, or role players in his theories. He also continues on to use the “symbolic system in his Social system . Although they use the same units of analysis for there theories, they go into different areas. Mead tends to discuss the means of communications and interaction within society. Parson’s, However in more interested in how society functions in itself, not how the people interact. with the objects in society. To explain how society does functions, he uses the “symbolic system” and “meaning”. In Parsons view of socialization, he believes that at birth we are only behavioral organisms. He believes that only as we developed as individuals, that we gain personality. This is A little like Mead’s theory when it explains how in the first stage of life, or the “the preplay”stage. Mead believes that people are just behavioral when they are in the first stage of life. This is where a person just uses imitative actions in order to learn how to communicate with the people around them. This is how the development of one’s self begins to form. Parsons says that people will internalize societies values and define their own by learning from other actors in the social system what is expected of the. Mead has the same kind of theory to explain how a person will developed different values and attitudes. He does explain it very differently in the play, and games stages. There is much work done by many different aspects of how people developed in society and how they give meaning to the objects around them, as well as how people begin to understand how to communicate with the people around them. I have chosen Mead because I think that he has the most, clear and understandable way of explaining his ideas. When comparing his theory to two these four theorists, I realized that his ideas were very influential to a lot of theorists. I also noticed that even though a lot of theorists had the same ideas as him, all elaborated in a different way.
