George Herbert Mead: Critical Assessments (Critical Assessments of Leading Sociologists) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 041503759X ISBN 13: 9780415037594

Publisher: Routledge, 1992

Synopsis

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) is widely seen as the father of symbolic interactionism. He is celebrated as probably the most original and important American sociologist of the twentieth century. This collection of critical assessments shows why Mead is important for symbolic interactionism. But it also traces Mead's influence in social behaviourism and theories of the mind. The articles are gathered together in four sections: section one considers the Biography and Intellectual context of Mead's work, special attention is paid to Mead's links with Pragmatism, Social Reform, the `Chicago School', social behavioursm and symbolic interactionism. Section two, is devoted to Mead and symbolic interactionism. Section three, focuses on the links between Mead and behaviourism. The final section contains articles exploring Mead's theory of the mind, which many now see as the most important area of his work.

About this title

Synopsis

For a man who published relatively little during his lifetime (1863-1931), George Herbert Mead's prominence and influence is quite astonishing. A little more than 30 articles and some book reviews and miscellaneous pieces were all that he had to show for a lifetime's research and teaching. No other figure prominent in the social sciences has been celebrated for work which in its most influential form was culled by lecture notes taken by others - cf Mind, Self and Society (1934) - or assembled from fragments of unfinished manuscripts and papers after his death. After Mead's death a virtual school' of Meadian sociology - baptised symbolic interactionism by some of its adherents, and social behaviourism by others - developed, and has remained influential in American sociology ever since. At the same time Mead's approach to central issues of socialisation, identity and role-taking has constituted the starting point for all later attempts to construct a micro-sociology'.

This collection of papers provides a wide range of evaluations in Mead's work, tracing its importance for the development of certain key areas of sociology, such as symbolic interactionism and social behaviourism, and assessing his influence on current sociological interests. Mead is treated as one of the founding fathers' of sociology. Whereas Marx, Weber or Durkheim provide a set of central questions and concepts for understanding the social structure of modernity, Mead's perspective is firmly focused on the modern individual, and on the processes by which he or she becomes a social being. Mead's role as a founding father' is undoubtedly partly due to the fact that he worked at Chicago, that sociology in Chicago provided a very influential approach to the discipline at a critical stage in its professionalization in the USA, and that he supplied not merely a conceptual foundation for studies of the individual and society, but a comprehensive philosophical underpinning for the methodology of what was coming to be known as the Chicago School' of sociology.

The articles are arranged in four coherent sections covering Mead's life and the intellectual context of his work; his relationship to symbolic interactionism; his influence in social behaviourism and his work on the theory of the mind. This Critical Assessment consists of the best scholarly writings on Mead's work. It has been designed to help in the general process of enabling a richer and more complete image of Mead to emerge.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 041503759X
• ISBN 13: 9780415037594
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1600
• Editor: Hamilton Peter