George Herbert Mead's Concept of Society

A Critical Reconstruction

Jean-François Côté

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781612058054
• eBook ISBN: 9781317259251
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book offers a new look at Mead's concept of society, in an attempt to reconstruct its significance for sociological theory. Chapter 1 offers a critical genealogical reading of writings, from early articles to the latest books, where Mead articulates his views on social reform, social psychology, and the gradual theorization of self and society. Chapter 2 pays attention to the phylogenetic and ontogenetic processes at work in both the self and society, by comparing Mead's social psychology with Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Chapter 3 brings together all the elements that are part of the structures of self and society within a topological and dialectical schematization of their respective and mutual relations. Chapter 4 is devoted to the passage of Mead's views from social psychology to sociology, with a critical look at Herbert Blumer's developments in symbolic interactionism as the presumed main legitimate heir of Mead's social psychology. Chapter 5 examines how Mead's general philosophical views fit within the new epistemological context of contemporary society based on communication and debates on postmodernity.

Chapter 1

Mead’s Concept of Society

A Chronological Genealogy

We will start off our discussion with explicit references to “society” in Mead’s writings in order to see, at least preliminarily, how the concept appeared to him as a general concern. As will become readily clear, the interest Mead had in society not only existed at the very beginning of his philosophical reflections but was also inevitably tied to all further developments of his social psychology, and so the concept remained foundational until his last writings. We will then proceed in this chapter with some statements showing how Mead posited the “problem” of society, and how that gave way to the development of further lines of theoretical inquiry, as other ones were left behind.

This development started, as we will see, with a general consideration of social reform in relation to the definition of the psychical, and then progressed toward the recognition of the disciplines into which these problems can be addressed. The outbreak of World War I greatly impacted Mead’s reflections and proved decisive in showing him how society has to be considered in its international dimension; in the final decade of his life, he was able to synthetize his views on the evolutionary perspective of a society made of selves as the ultimate development of his conceptions. Through all this, “society” was an underlying core concept, not entirely or clearly defined as such, but rather serving as the background for his other theoretical developments, mainly in social psychology and general philosophical areas such as ethics, aesthetics, and cosmology. In order to chart this ambient concept, it is necessary to proceed with a reading of some of the main articles Mead published during his lifetime. This reading is presented below chronologically and separated into periods that characterize different aspects of Mead’s evolving concept of society, starting with a general concern with social reform, and going more precisely into what is fully implied by the concept of society. The years in parentheses indicate these periods, although they should be taken only as general indications of what appears to be the successive additions to this or that aspect of his overall conceptualization.

SOCIETY AND SOCIAL REFORM: THE FOCUS ON METHOD AND THE DEFINITION OF THE PSYCHICAL (1899–1908)

The interest Mead had in the idea of society runs parallel to the interest that he had in the idea of the self, and both are first and foremost linked to his understanding of social reform as a process that simultaneously involved these terms. In the context of the intense political, cultural, and historical transformations that ensued from the nineteenth century on in the creation of mass democracy—as opposed to the bourgeois democracy of previous centuries—and according to the various possible ideological orientations provided therein, the importance of understanding how social change occurs was a pressing issue for Mead. The emergence of sociology as a new science that promised to reveal the explanations for social change, the understanding of social dynamics, and the very nature of social forms (found in the writings of Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Simmel, Gustave Le Bon, Tarde, and Charles Horton Cooley) helped stimulate an appetite for a scientific treatment of these matters. But this scientific treatment itself posed many problems and opened up many debates in which Mead was eager to participate. In the two first articles he published in The American Journal of Sociology in 1899, Mead states the case as he sees it in an attempt to theorize social reform.¹ In the first, “The Working Hypothesis in Social Reform,” he goes on to develop some of the ideas related to the control of psychological experience presented by John Dewey, especially those developed in his famous 1896 article, “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology.” Mead, though, wanted to apply these ideas to social experience at large, inspired partly by some remnants of Hegelianism, which provided a conception of the relation between the particular and the general.² These considerations appear to be central for defining social reform; as Mead puts it,

We cannot make persons social by legislative enactment, but we can allow the essential social nature of their actions to come to expression under conditions which favor this. What the form of this social organization will be depends upon conditions that lie necessarily beyond our ken. We assume that human society is governed by laws that involve its solidarity, and we seek to find these out that they may be used. In the same way the natural scientist assumes that the world is as a whole governed by laws that involve the interaction of all its forces, and that he may find these laws out, and use them for the further organization of this world, so far as he is part of it.

There is, however, a distinction that is of considerable importance. In the physical world we regard ourselves as standing in some degree outside the forces at work, and thus avoid the difficulty of harmonizing the feeling of human initiative with the recognition of series which are necessarily determined. In society we are the forces that are being investigated, and if we advance beyond the mere description of the phenomena of the social world to the attempt at reform, we seem to involve the possibility of changing what at the same time we assume to be necessarily fixed. The question, stated more generally, is: What is the function of reflective consciousness in its attempts to direct conduct?³

The last question helps us to situate the whole development of Mead’s social psychology, but we should also notice how such a development took place within the context of social reform understood as an ongoing transformation of society led by conscious efforts at changing it in a way that resolves the problems encountered by individuals in social life. Although a few years later, when reflecting on the international situation, Mead will come to realize that there are conditions of the present social organization that provide guidelines for the future evolution of society, for the time being he concentrates on the method that should be used, one that is considered through the hypothesis posited with the hope of reforming the social world, the evolution of which remains open:

It is impossible to […] forecast any future condition that depends upon the evolution of society as to be able to govern our conduct by such a forecast. It is always the unexpected that happens, for we have to recognize, not only the immediate change that is to take place, but also the reaction back upon this of the whole world within which the change takes place, and no human foresight is equal to this. In the social world we must recognize the working hypothesis as the form into which all theories must be cast as completely as in the natural sciences. The highest criterion that we can present is that the hypothesis shall work in the complex of forces into which we introduce it. We can never set up a detailed statement of the conditions that are to be ultimately attained. What we have is a method and a control in application, not an ideal to work toward. As has been stated, this is the attitude of the scientist in the laboratory, whether his work remains purely scientific or is applied immediately to conduct. His foresight does not go beyond the testing of his hypothesis.⁴

As we are talking about reform, and not revolution, there is no need according to Mead to envision “a detailed ideal of a perfect universe”; rather “the test of the effort lies in the possibility of this readjustment fitting into the world as it is.”⁵ This aspect of Mead’s position toward reform is not a minor detail, given as we will later see that he considers contemporary society as having deeply internalized the principle of revolution in its own (institutional) reform process; but this consideration also allows Mead to go beyond a specific ideological creed when he refers to societal reform. While Mead could certainly be associated in general with the progressive movements of the turn of the century, as well as with some forms of liberalism, his conception of social reform in its scientific definition went beyond a particular ideological orientation, as he tried to conceive of more universal (or theoretical) terms according to which an analytical view of reform could be established. He also, for instance, occasionally passed judgments on socialism that would on the one hand acknowledge its value from a reformist point of view, while on the other hand disclaiming some of its other tenets, such as the “definitive” vision of the world that it promoted. This appears clearly in his second article, published as a long book review in the same issue of the American Journal of Sociology, where he criticized Le Bon’s attempts to explain the roots of socialism, specifically what the French sociologist referred to as the “Latin nature” of institutions in France. That this “Latin nature” could explain the statist approach put forward by the socialist protagonists in France, as Le Bon maintained, Mead was ready to acknowledge. But he also saw that this was only one way through which a socialist critique of society and of individualism could be issued, since in Germany and England other brands of more opportunistic socialist critiques were already “coming to a consciousness of the force that lies behind socialism.” In this respect, such critiques should be understood as representing just “one phase of socialistic theory,” which, considered as a hypothesis, represents “a standpoint and attitude” pointing to another “phase of conduct […] rising above the threshold of consciousness—a community phase.”⁶ For Mead, it is only the deterministic vision of socialism as a theory that had to be repudiated, not its value as a reformist effort. Again, Mead stated that, against all ideological programs that might define a specific end for social life, it is the method of social reform that had to be emphasized:

While we are perfectly willing to have the unexpected happen, we expect science, physical and mental, to tell us how to behave in its presence. Furthermore, we state the law, the universal, in terms of society, and its infraction, the exception, the particular, in terms of the individual. But that is only till we can either modify the law or enlarge the individual, in terms of the individual. Thus, while reason is bridging over the chasm between society and individual, it is forming a new society or a new individual, and in either case is making a real identification. Here, also, this takes place, not by a statement of what either society or the individual is going to be, but by finding the point of identity between them, and controlling the process of reform by sacrificing nothing valuable in either. It is only the method we can be sure of, not the result.⁷

Mead’s deeper critique of Le Bon’s argument was that such views could not reach an explanation about social change with the kind of psychological and ethical understanding he set forth in his analysis, according to which the object of perception in social change is always deformed because it belongs to the past and to cultural habits (the “Latin nature”), and also because individuals cannot develop a truly rationalistic approach toward action if not in egoistical terms (the argument raised by Le Bon as a counterpart to the “altruistic” habit of French statism).⁸ These two problems were at the core of Mead’s vision of social psychology, and he addressed them in the first substantial piece he published in 1903, “The Definition of the Psychical,” which was a milestone in the development of his overall theoretical perspective.⁹

This article has rightly been considered by Mead scholars as crucial, since it is here that he introduces William James’s distinction between the “I” and the “Me” for his own purposes, and with his own specific determinations.¹⁰ Although this distinction is essential, as it defines two of the three components of the self (the third component being precisely the “Self,” as something related of course to the first two terms, but not to be confused with them), I want to draw attention to what seems to me the most important aspect within the definition of the “psychical” according to Mead: its threefold significance. This appears when Mead, toward the end of his article and after a long discussion considering different approaches, comes to his own original solution to the problem of “creating a hypothesis” in terms of the two interrelated phases of disintegration and reconstruction that are at stake in the reflective process. For Mead, if there is to be genuine social reform, it is because we encounter a problem that appears in the form of the disintegration of a usual course of action, and then a reflective process emerges that entails a phase of reconstruction so a new course of action can be pursued. This reflective process is as much a physiological process (i.e., it is related to the capacity for an organism to act in an environment) as it is a logical process (i.e., it is related to the capacity to link a predicate to a subject); but not only this, since there is also a social process (i.e., it is related to the Self as a mediating element between the I and the Me).¹¹ For most of his article, Mead pays attention to the psychical as it is discussed in various psychological theories, and tries to differentiate his own position from those of Wundt, Münsterberg, and Bradley. For that reason, he is drawn to an evaluation of the importance of the physical dimension of things in relation to the psychical, but when he comes to consider his own version of a psychology that would be truly “functional,” as he wants it to be, he does not hesitate to go further:

To repeat the statement made above, the logical function of physiological psychology is to give a statement of the world of the physical sciences in terms of the individual so that the conditions of the hypotheses that can arise only in psychical consciousness may be so stated that they will hold for that consciousness. In my judgment, however, we must recognize not only a corporeal individual, but a social and even logical individual, each of whom would answer to the translation of the results of the social and logical sciences into terms of psychical consciousness. That is, if we find it convenient to set up a social environment or an epistemological environment in which we abstract from the physical statement, we must state the laws of these environments in terms of the individual, to put them at his disposal. In any case, such a statement is the subject-function of the judgment.¹²

This is the threefold significance of Mead’s definition of the psychical, which we must insist is as fascinating as it is problematic. It is fascinating because it shows the scope of the analytical problem at stake, and problematic because at each level in which it is defined it introduces mediations that require the recognition of some “split” elements in experience: at the corporeal level, the split occurs between the object of the environment and sensations of the organism; at the social level, the split occurs between the I and the Me; and a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Mead’s Concept of Society: A Chronological Genealogy
• 2 The Ontogenetic and Phylogenetic Processes in Mead’s Concept of Society: A Dialectical View
• 3 A Topological View of the Concept of Society
• 4 The Passage from Mead’s Social Psychology to Sociology
• 5 Mead’s Concept of Society: Communication and Postmodernity
• Conclusion
• Index