Notes on Oneself with Others, chapter one of Bauman, Z. and May, T. 2001 Thinking Sociologically

by Andrew Roberts  10.10.2012

If you use these notes along with the website "Thinking Sociologically the Bauman and May way" by Malcolm Richardson and Andrew Roberts at  http://studymore.org.uk/ybaumay.htm, you will be able to follow links to further information and explanation.

Identity: Who are you?

The first three chapters of Bauman and May are about identity. Identity is what something or someone is. Your identity is who you are. Who do you think you are?

The chapter title "Oneself with Others" suggests that your identity is related in some way to society. Bauman and May are discussing, in their own way, the relationship between the individual and society.

Society forming us is called socialisation. Bauman and May say (pages 24-25): "The process of how our selves are formed is often given the name socialisation". And on page 26: "Socialisation never ends in our lives. For this reason sociologists distinguish between the stages of socialisation (primary, secondary and tertiary)"

On page 22, Bauman and May mention the main theorist we will discuss, George Herbert Mead (1863-1931). Mead, they say, provided insight into "how we internalise group understandings". The word "internalise" refers to how the group gets inside your head. How it gets inside you. That happens in socialisation, as we learn to use and know the meaning of language. We are constrained by other people's expectations of us, including our image of who they think we are. The image of who we are that we share with other people is a central part of our identity.

Freedom and Constraint
(Bauman and May  pages 17-22)

I have said that Bauman and May are dealing with the relation between the individual in their own way. All theorist do this and you need to learn to recognise what matters to the theorist you are reading. To Zygmunt Bauman, a jew born in 1926 in pre-Nazi Germany, freedom is very important. Because of this he is concerned that ideas that get inside your head may enslave you. In chapter three he writes of the "power" of the "bonds that unite". Human beings are both free and constrained.

Freedom and constraint have been a very important concepts in the history of social science. In the eighteenth century, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) wrote

    "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains" (Rousseau, J.J. 1762)

By "man", Rousseau means human beings.

Rousseau made his statement about freedom and constraint at the beginning of a chapter on how we pass from a "state of nature" to a "state of society". This was also the main interest of George Herbert Mead in the twentieth century. Mead, like Rousseau, was interested in the evolution of animal like humans into social humans, and what the difference between animals and humans is.

Bauman and May argue that we experience ourselves as free in the sense of being self-determining, but also experience ourselves as "constrained by circumstances" (page 17)

"We often consider ourselves to be the authors of our destinies and so have the power to act in determining our conduct and controlling our lives... Yet is this really how life works?" (Bauman and May 2001, p.18)

I list below the main constraints on our freedom and ability to choose that Bauman and May talk about. Living amongst others constrains (limits) our freedom to think and act just as we please. Bauman and May suggest this can be frustrating. As you read through the list, you may think, as I do, that constraint is not necessarily a bad thing!

Habit

Habits, actions that we do without thinking, are necessary. Bauman and May write about a Centipede who has forgotten how to walk: "Kipling's centipede, who walked effortlessly on all her hundred legs until a sycophantic courtier began to praise her exquisite memory. It was this memory that allowed her never to put down the eighty-fifth leg before the thirty-seventh, or the fifty-second before the nineteenth. Having been made self-conscious, the poor centipede was no longer able to walk." (Bauman and May 2001, p.10)

Responsibility

But, we are held responsible, even for our habits.

Rules

"if we break rules that are meant to guide people's conduct, then we may be punished. The act of punishment is intended as a confirmation that we are responsible for our actions. Rules, in this sense, orient not only our actions, but also their coordination with others..." (Bauman and May 2001, p.18)

Group expectations

"How we act and see ourselves is informed by the expectations of the groups to which we belong" (Bauman and May 2001, p. 20)

"... we owe the ends which we pursue, the means employed in their pursuit and how to distinguish between those who may and may not assist us in the process, to the groups to which we belong. An enormous amount of practical knowledge is thereby gained without which we would be unable to conduct our daily activates and orient ourselves to particular life projects." (Bauman and May 2001, p. 21)

But as the group enables us, it also constrains our freedom. The groups we belong to impose cultural constraints - values, ideas, beliefs, customs, and expectations.

Self-identity

Challenges to self-identity can lead sometimes to feelings of alienation, disorientation or homesickness.

Material resources

Lack of money, employment, or decent education, housing, health care.

Symbolic resources

Deficits in knowledge and experience (limiting career choices).

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One's 'Self' with 'Others' - the sociological perspectives of George Herbert Mead,

Although we might feel that 'others' often constrain our freedom to act -we rely on 'others' for our sense of self - of who we are. The question of self-identity is "who am I?" and it can be argued that "We gain our sense of 'self' through our daily interaction with others - through 'symbolic interaction'" (Malcolm Richardson, notes).

George Herbert Mead argued that human behaviour is the outcome of a complex process involving the use of symbolic forms of communication, such as language. Our ability to communicate and interact with others, is due to our possession of a 'self'. But, Mead argued, we are not born with a self. His contribution was to show how a self can develop from our animal nature, and how, as it does, mind (the power to think) and society emerge as well.

Mead's key work is, Mind, Self, and Society, put together by his students after his death, and published in 1934. I will outline some of the key concepts used in this work, including: role, subject, object, self (I) and self-image (me).

Role.

The theatrical idea of playing a role is one that is used by many sociologists, including Mead.

Mead argues that there is no "general tendency" of animals or humans to imitate one another. In humans, copying other people is usually a conscious act. When children learn to do things that others do they are, he argues, creatively playing a role.

"A child plays at being a mother, at being a teacher, at being a policeman; that is, it is taking different roles, as we say." (Mead, G.H. 1934)

We need, therefore, to understand how the ability to play roles developed.

Subject and object

In psychological terms, animals and humans are subjects that perceive objects. A stone does not see the ground on which it lies. Animals, including humans, have interior (subjective) images in our heads of the things around us.

In this diagram, the carrot is the object that the subject (the person) sees. We could say that there is a reflection of the carrot in the person's head that we call the idea. This idea remains, even when the carrot is not visible any longer.

Mead argues that human beings differ from animals in being able to see ourselves as objects. We have an image or idea of who we are.

"The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body" (Mead, G.H. 1934)

Mead called this self-image that we have me. The unreflective being that we share with animals, he called I. These are not two separate people, but different aspects of the process of living as a human being. As a socialised human being, you (I) have an image of yourself (me)

Mead's life work focused on developing a theory of how this ability to see ourselves developed from our original animal natures. Recent work in the natural sciences suggests that the human brain my have evolved parallel to the development of the human mind in relation to this. Una and Chris Frith write:

[The] "social brain, for humans at least, has a 'theory of mind', which enables us to predict what others are going to do on the basis of their desires and beliefs. It also has a 'mirror system', which enables us to understand others' goals and intentions and to empathise with their emotions" (Frith, U. and Frith, C. 2010 p.165)

 

Stages in the development of the self

Bauman and May (pages 22-23) suggest that we "internalise group understandings" in three stages. Their stages are based on a 1937 text-book chapter by Herbert Blumer (1900-1987) that first applied the term "symbolic interactionists" to theorists such as Mead. I have included what Blumer says about the three stages in the extracts after these notes.

Two of these stages (play and game) can be related easily to Mead's ideas. The first (imitation) is more easily related to Blumer's own theories.

Mead sketched in many stages in the development of the ability to see ourselves as we think others see us. According to Mead, these are also stages in the development of the mind (the power to think) and of society. So as you study how your identity (self) develops, you are also studying the origin and development of thought and society.

Gesture

Mead's theory has mind, self and society "emerging" (developing) from the previous natural inter-actions (gestures) of animals. Animals play at fighting without actually doing so. The moves in this play-acting are what Mead calls gestures. A snap in the air without actually biting is like a symbol of the real thing.

Language and symbol

Gestures precede symbols. According to Mead, language evolves from interacting with one another through gestures.

"if somebody shakes his fist in your face you assume that he has not only a hostile attitude but that he has some idea behind it... When, now, that gesture means this idea behind it and it arouses that idea in the other individual, then we have a significant symbol... we have a symbol which answers to a meaning in the experience of the first individual and which also calls out that meaning in the second individual. Where the gesture reaches that situation it has become what we call 'language'." (Mead, G.H. 1934)

Play

Language and symbol enable play in human children to go much further than it does in animals. In human children, the roles are internalised so that a child can run through the play in his or her own mind. This is how the concept of self arises. The child learns to think about him or herself as if he or she were another person and to see how he or she interacts with other people on the stage of life.

Games

In games played to rules by a number of players, a child learns to take the role of the 'generalised other'. The generalised other is a position that anyone might occupy, just as anyone might play a role within a game.

"in a game where a number of individuals are involved, ... the child taking one role must be ready to take the role of everyone else... at some moments he has to have three or four individuals present in his own attitude, such as the one who is going to throw the ball, the one who is going to catch it, and so on. These responses must be, in some degree, present in his own make-up. In the game, then, there is a set of responses of such others so organised that the attitude of one calls out the appropriate attitudes of the other. This organisation is put in the form of the rules of the game. Children take a great interest in rules." (Mead, G.H. 1934)

Bibliography

Bauman, Z. and May, T. 2001 Thinking Sociologically Second edition of Bauman, Z. 1990 (same title). Revised by Tim May. Basil Blackwell.

Blumer, H. 1937 "Social Psychology." Chapter 4 in Emerson Peter Schmidt (editor) Man and Society: A Substantive Introduction to the Social Science. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc. (1937): pp 144-198. Available at http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Blumer/Blumer_1937.html

Frith, U. and Frith, C. 2010 "The social brain: allowing humans to boldly go where no other species has been" Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society January 2010 volume 365, no. 1537, pp 165-176. Available at http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1537/165

Mead, G.H. 1934 Mind, Self and Society, From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviourist. Edited with an introduction by Charles W. Morris
Extracts at http://studymore.org.uk/xmead.htm

Richardson, M. and Roberts, A. 2011-  Thinking sociologically the Bauman and May way. London: Middlesex University. Available at http://studymore.org.uk/ybaumay.htm

Rousseau, J.J. 1762 The Social Contract
Extracts at http://studymore.org.uk/xrou.htm

 

Stimulus-response: A note before the extracts

In the extracts that follow, George Herbert Mead uses the terms stimulus and response. If someone shouts at you and makes you jump, the shout is the stimulus and the jump is your response. To find out about the science behind this, read the extracts from Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) that I have reproduced at http://studymore.org.uk/associat.htm#Pavlov
Extracts for Mind, Self and Society (1934) by George Herbert Mead

Language is part of social behaviour

Language is part of social behaviour. There are an indefinite number of signs or symbols which may serve the purpose of what we term language. We are reading the meaning of the conduct of other people when, perhaps, they are not aware of it. There is something that reveals to us what the purpose is - just the glance of an eye, the attitude of the body which leads to the response. The communication set up in this way between individuals may be very perfect. Conversation in gestures may be carried on which cannot be translated into articulate speech.

This is also true of the lower animals. Dogs approaching each other in hostile attitude carry on such a language of gestures. They walk around each other, growling and snapping, and waiting for the opportunity to attack. Here is a process out of which language might arise, that is, a certain attitude of one individual that calls out a response in the other, which in turn calls out a different approach and a different response, and so on indefinitely.

In fact, as we shall see, language does arise in just such a process as that.

We are too prone... to approach language... from the standpoint of the symbol that is used. We analyze that symbol and find out what is the intent in the mind of the individual in using that symbol...

if we are going to broaden the concept of language in the sense I have spoken of, so that it takes in the underlying attitudes, we can see that the so-called intent, the idea we are talking about, is one that is involved in the gesture or attitudes which we are using. The offering of a chair to a person who comes into the room is in itself a courteous act. We do not have to assume that a person says to himself that this person wants a chair. The offering of a chair by a person of good manners is something which is almost instinctive. This is the very attitude of the individual. From the point of view of the observer it is a gesture. Such early stages of social acts precede the symbol proper, and deliberate communication.
                                                            

The background of the genesis of the self

We sometimes speak as if a person could build up an entire argument in his mind, and then put it into words to convey it to someone else. Actually, our thinking always takes place by means of some sort of symbols. It is possible that one could have the meaning of "chair" in his experience without there being a symbol, but we would not be thinking about it in that case. We may sit down in a chair without thinking about what we are doing, that is, the approach to the chair is presumably already aroused in our experience, so that the meaning is there. But if one is thinking about the chair he must have some sort of a symbol for it. It may be the form of the chair, it may be the attitude that somebody else takes in sitting down, but it is more apt to be some language symbol that arouses this response. In a thought process there has to be some sort of a symbol that can refer to this meaning, that is, tend to call out this response, and also serve this purpose for other persons as well. It would not be a thought process if that were not the case.
...

Another set of background factors in the genesis of the self is represented in the activities of play and the game.

Playing with an imaginary companion is only a peculiarly interesting phase of ordinary play. Play in this sense, especially the stage which precedes the organised games, is a play at something. A child plays at being a mother, at being a teacher, at being a policeman; that is, it is taking different roles, as we say. We have something that suggests this in what we call the play of animals: a cat will play with her kittens, and dogs play with each other... But we do not have in such a situation the dogs taking a definite role in the sense that a child deliberately takes the role of another... When a child does assume a role he has in himself the stimuli which call out that particular response or group of responses. ... Children get together to "play Indian." This means that the child has a certain set of stimuli which call out in itself the responses that they would call out in others, and which answer to an Indian. In the play period the child utilises his own responses to these stimuli which he makes use of in building a self. The response which he has a tendency to make to these stimuli organises them. He plays that he is, for instance, offering himself something, and he buys it; he gives a letter to himself and takes it away; he addresses himself as a parent, as a teacher; he arrests himself as a policeman. He has a set of stimuli which call out in himself the sort of responses they call out in others. He takes this group of responses and organises them into a certain whole. Such is the simplest form of being another to one's self. It involves a temporal situation. The child says something in one character and responds in another character, and then his responding in another character is a stimulus to himself in the first character, and so the conversation goes on. A certain organised structure arises in him and in his other which replies to it, and these carry on the conversation of gestures between themselves.
...

When we contrast play with the situation in an organised game, we note the essential difference that the child who plays in a game must be ready to take the attitude of everyone else involved in that game, and that these different roles must have a definite relationship to each other.

... in a game where a number of individuals are involved, ... the child taking one role must be ready to take the role of everyone else... at some moments he has to have three or four individuals present in his own attitude, such as the one who is going to throw the ball, the one who is going to catch it, and so on. These responses must be, in some degree, present in his own make-up. In the game, then, there is a set of responses of such others so organised that the attitude of one calls out the appropriate attitudes of the other.

This organisation is put in the form of the rules of the game. Children take a great interest in rules.

                                                                                                                                       

Blumer's three stages
Extracts from "Social Psychology" (1937) by Herbert Blumer

The growth of the self in the child, Mead points out, passes through three stages. The first stage, appearing usually during the second year of the child's life, is marked by meaningless imitative acts. The small child who has seen its parents read newspapers may hold a newspaper before it and move its head from side to side. It does not get the meaning of this act; the newspaper may be upside down, and besides, the child cannot read anyway. However, this otherwise useless imitative behaviour is significant- it implies that the child is beginning to take the roles of those around it, that is, to put itself in the position of others and to act like them.

In the second stage-the play stage, which appears later in childhood-this role-taking becomes very evident, and, furthermore, it becomes meaningful. We are familiar with the behaviour of children as they engage in play- acting-"playing mother," "playing nurse," "playing teacher," "playing janitor," and so forth. Here the child puts itself in the role of the given person and acts in accordance with the part. What is of central importance to such play-acting is that it places the child in the position where it is able to act back toward itself. Thus, in "playing mother" the child can act toward itself in ways in which its mother is accustomed to act toward it. The child may talk to itself as the mother does, addressing itself by its proper name and making commands to itself. It is apparently in this play stage that the child first begins to form a self, that is, to direct social activity toward itself; and it is important to note that it does so by taking the parts or roles of other people. This latter point has great significance, because it means that the particular ways in which it does act toward itself are set by the customary actions of those whose roles the child takes. A more vivid way of stating the point is to say that the child views itself in terms of the way in which it is viewed by those whose roles it takes; its conception of itself is formed out of the way in which it is regarded by others. We shall have occasion to stress this point again shortly.

In the play state, strictly speaking, the child forms a number of separate and discrete objects of itself, depending on the different roles from which it acts towards itself. This is shown in the fickleness and inconsistency with which we are familiar in the case of small children, as contrasted with the consistency of adults. This sets the problem of how a unified self is established -a self which remains more or less constant from one situation to another. Mead explains that the development of a unified self, a conception of oneself that remains the same, is a result of experience such as is had in participating in games. In the game situation, the participant has to take the roles of a number of people simultaneously. We may illustrate this with the game of baseball. On a given play, a player expects each of the other members on the team to carry out a given action. In adjusting himself he anticipates what each is going to do. In this sense he takes a number of roles in his imagination at the same time.

Mead points out further that this role-taking ability, as it is developed in the game situation, permits the individual to take the role of the group, that is, what is common to a number of different individuals. He speaks of this as taking the role of the "generalised other". One may then act toward oneself from the position of the "generalised other", and consequently guide one's actions in terms of the expectations of this generalised other. One does this, for example, when he governs his conduct by some moral conception or maxim. He is really talking to himself and acting toward himself from the standpoint of the generalised other, which can be thought of as representing the group. A young man may seek to act in all situations like a gentleman; accordingly, he governs his conduct from the standpoint of this role, reminding himself, urging himself, cautioning himself, as the case may be, in accordance with the demands and expectations of this role. It should be clear that in taking a generalised role, the individual is able to stabilise his conduct, that is to say, keep it essentially consistent from situation to situation. Correspondingly, in response to such a generalised role, the individual is able to integrate his attitudes or to develop an organised self.

It has been indicated that the individual derives his conception of himself largely from the way in which he is conceived by others. This point shows, especially, how closely our personalities are formed by the kind of positions which we occupy in our various groups. Toward each social position (teacher, dean, graduate student, minister, mother, doctor, and so forth) people have certain common attitudes; they expect a certain kind of conduct and behaviour from people in these status-positions. Consequently, one who occupies such a position is aware of these expectations and is cognisant of the way in which he is viewed by people because he does have such a status. To maintain this position his conduct must conform to these expectations, and it is inevitable that he views himself largely in accord with the public attitude toward his role. In this way his conception of himself reflects the attitudes of others and the social organisation that is sustained by these attitudes.

What is implied by this treatment is that the individual undergoes a change in personality as he develops a new conception of himself. Viewing himself differently, he places new expectations on his conduct and guides this conduct by these new rules or demands. To have a new conception of oneself means, in accordance with Mead's view, that the individual has a new generalised other, which, in turn, is to be recognised as representing a common or abstract group role. Tracing backward this relationship, one may say that an individual changes his personality by getting a new social position; in this new status, he becomes cognisant of the new way in which he is viewed by society; a generalised other is formed corresponding to these views and expectations held by the group; the presence of this generalised other means that he has a new conception of himself, and his conduct and tendencies to action are organised in accordance with this conception of himself.

From what has been said, one can see the intimate way in which the personalities of people are connected with the nature of social life in their respective groups. Whether personality be viewed in the formal way proposed by the stimulus-response adherents, or in the more subtle manner suggested by the symbolic interactionists, it shows clearly the impression of group life. Since it represents patterns of action which have developed under the influence, guidance, and pressure of one's associates, it can be recognised as being genuinely social.