Individual Spontaneity and the Possibility of Community in Mead’s Social Psychology

Abstract

The central question of the present study is how to understand the spontaneity of the social self in George H. Mead’s account of the genesis and structure of the self. Its argument develops in three stages. First, I provide a brief discussion of the notion of the self in relation to social existence in Hegel in order to highlight some salient features that will prefigure some of the claims that Mead makes. Second, I discuss Mead’s theory in greater detail in order to emphasize the role of communication and ‘attitude-taking’ in the constitution of the self. These factors comprise what is particularly original in Mead’s account. Finally, I offer an evaluation of Mead’s key claims in the context of certain questions concerning the relationship between the individual and community. I think that Mead provides a sound scheme by means of which we can understand the constitution of the self as a social phenomenon and communities as dynamic systems susceptible to transformation in response to individual and/or group action, i.e., without reifying communities. However, the dynamics of social change, for the most part in terms of ‘adaptation’ in Mead’s account, needs some modification, if we want to understand those periods of social upheaval during which the continuity between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ seems minimal.