Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Giambattista Vico
- 3 Phenomenology
- 4 Hermeneutics
- 5 Marxism and language
- 6 Lev Vygotsky
- 7 Meanings and perspectives
- 8 Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 9 Gregory Bateson
- 10 Sociologies – Micro and Macro
- 11 Sources of the self
- 12 Michel Foucault and his challenges
- 13 Discourse analysis
- 14 Ken and Mary Gergen
- 15 Rom Harré
- 16 John Shotter
- 17 Concluding remarks
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Meanings and perspectives
George Herbert Mead and Jakob von Uexküll
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Giambattista Vico
- 3 Phenomenology
- 4 Hermeneutics
- 5 Marxism and language
- 6 Lev Vygotsky
- 7 Meanings and perspectives
- 8 Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 9 Gregory Bateson
- 10 Sociologies – Micro and Macro
- 11 Sources of the self
- 12 Michel Foucault and his challenges
- 13 Discourse analysis
- 14 Ken and Mary Gergen
- 15 Rom Harré
- 16 John Shotter
- 17 Concluding remarks
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
George Herbert Mead
It is true, of course, that once mind has arisen in the social process it makes more possible the development of that process into much more complex forms of social interaction among the component individuals than was possible before it had arisen. But there is nothing odd about a product of a given process contributing to, or becoming an essential factor in, the further development of that process. The social process, then, does not depend for its origin or initial existence upon the existence and interactions of selves; though it does depend upon the latter for the higher stages of complexity and organization which it reaches after selves have arisen within it.
(Mead, 1934: 226)As is common with thinkers of the first order, knowing quite where to start into Mead's work is hard call. Mead did not concentrate on just one topic, but over the course of his lifetime produced an almost entire philosophy of everything. He deals with the self, the nature of society, the nature of history, the nature of objectivity, and other topics ad infinitum. His four books – The Philosophy of the Present (1932), Mind, Self, and Society (1934), Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century (1936) and The Philosophy of the Act (1938) – were constructed from lecture notes made by his students during courses he taught, and all post-date his death.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social ConstructionismSources and Stirrings in Theory and Practice, pp. 121 - 140Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010