George Herbert Mead

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“In George Herbert Mead’s writings, social organisation provides the framework for social action.” Discuss the significance of this statement for subsequent symbolic interactionist theorising and research. Symbolic Interaction Theory (SI) was discovered by George Herbert Mead and ‘coined’ by Herbert Blumer in the 1960s. It is seen as one of the most important sociological perspectives from North America. Some of the main key thinkers at the roots of this theory were philosophers such as; Peirce, Dewey, Cooley, and Mead. It seeks to unify intelligent thought and logical method with practical actions and appeals to experience. It tends to centre its focus on the relationship between symbols and interactions. The goal of SI is to describe how shared meaning is created. The theory explains that we all have our own sense of what is real and what is not and that we get these symbols of reality from our interactions with others. Ultimately the theory suggests that we modify these meanings in our mind and then act based on the symbols of reality that we have created. The opportunity for misunderstanding comes from the clashing of these meanings. There are a number of different interpretations and themes incorporated into SI, which I will attempt to unpack below. The first theme of the SI theory is, ‘the importance of meaning for human behaviour.’ This theme implies that we modify our behaviour based on the meanings that others have for us. The first assumption of this theme is that people make choices. Behaviour is modified due to the choices that we make in our mind of what is real and what is not. These choices come from the meanings that we carry with us about how we see others viewing us. The second point regarding the first theme in the Symbolic Interaction Theory states that meaning can only exist when people share common interpretations of the symbols they

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