Soci Interactionism

Human behaviour is influenced by the meanings we create for ourselves in situations

George Herbert Mead

Founding father of the Chicago school

Taught philosophy

At the turn of the century the dominant explaination for human behaviour was behaviourism-biological determination

Human b is trained and reinforced control of instincts

GHM rejected biology as a way of explaining human behaviour

Human b is learned

Minnd, self & society

Herbert Blumer

Didn’t like macro-structural explainations

Symbolic Interactionalism

Symbol-anything in society that has a shared meaning. 2+people

Symbols are possible cause of symbol systems

Symbol system is lang, sign, Braille,

We learn symbols through interaction with others

3 main ideas

Humans act towards things based on the meanings those things have for them-guide behaviour

These meanings are dereived from the interaction we have with other people

We have the ability to modify or change these meanings depending on the situation

Our selves have a very special ability-our selves are reflexive-we can mentally put ourselves outside of ourselves and see ourselves as an object-from someone elses position

The notion of the reflexive self came from the idea of another soci. – Charles Horton Cooley

The looking glass self

We have the ability to imagine how we appear to others

We also have the ability to imagine how others are judging that appearance

In response to those pericived judgements we choose how to behave

How do we get reflexive ability

GHM talked about the development of the reflexive self-key concept-set of expected behaviour- UNDERSTANDING ROLES-ROLE TAKING

1. Preplay or preparatory stage 0-2 years-babies do not have reflexive self

2. Play stage-2-5-begins to dev. Child now starts to understand roles-eg. Mom- one role

3. Game stage 5+, full

The generalized other

The mature self arises when the generalized other is internalized