The Self and Communicative Theory by Gregory Heath

Author:Gregory Heath [Heath, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781351775441
Google: v3-YDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 9462077
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2000-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Thus it can be seen how radical a view Mead is developing of the self. In his theory we are social beings first, before we are either selves or individual beings. As Mead frequently reasserts, the self is a social process: ‘The self, as that which can be an object to itself, is essentially a social structure, and it arises in social experience’.32 We can only consider the concept of a solitary self after the formation of the self in social experience and it is, ‘impossible to conceive of a self arising outside social experience’.33

Mead having discussed the generation of the self, continues to discuss the notion of the unity of the self. He says that a multiplicity of selves is in fact normal. One is a different self in different situations; ‘we discuss politics with one self and religion with another’.34 But there is, he claims, a unifying element to the self, which may in fact fail in certain psychopathologies. The unity of the self for Mead is also the consequence of a social process. The passage in which he puts his position on the unity of the self is one of his most incisive, if compressed, philosophical statements and is worth quoting in its entirety.

The unity and structure of the complete self reflects the unity and structure of the social process as a whole. Each of the elementary selves of which it is composed reflects the unity and structure of one of the various aspects of that process in which the individual is implicated. In other words, the various elementary selves which constitute, or are organised into, a complete self are the various aspects of the structure of that complete self, answering to the various aspects of the structure of the social process as a whole. The structure of the complete self is thus a reflection of the complete social process. The organisation and unification of the social group is identical with the organisation and unification of any one of the selves arising within the social process in which that group is engaged, or which it is carrying on.35

There are strong echoes here of a Kantian position approaching the transcendental unity of the self, but transformed into a social context. Mead, as read here, is saying that the unity of the self is the unity of the various selves that are generated by, and within, a social context. What gives unity to the self is the unity of the social context. There are clearly significant problems with this statement and unfortunately Mead’s published lecture notes do not provide much support for elucidation or interpretation. For instance a fractured social context does not necessarily lead to a similarly fractured self, although it may do so in extreme situations. What Mead here needs is support from his broader discussion allowing for an account based on the dynamics of the structuring of the social process as a whole.

Notwithstanding the problems of Mead’s position here he does offer a very radical theory of self formation which leads to a basis for recent communicative theory.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.