SOC 2112 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Individual Psychology, Social Relation, Symbolic Interactionism

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 2112
• Professor: William Flynn

Document Summary

Mead was one of the sounders of the symbolic interactionism school of sociology. He was a founder of social psychology as well. He didn"t publish books but articles and collective notes were found after his death. He looked at how the environment/individual affects social behavior. Flynn (prof) looks at the person as an individual/subject, which the environment helps create. Meads ideas and theories are the foundation of the symbolic interactionism tradition of sociology. Individual psychology is intelligible only in terms of social processes. Mead is important here due to his theories about the self. The development of the individual self and of his self-consciousness within the field of his experience is preeminently social. It"s a result of social processes/result of socialization. The challenging thing of meads theory at the time is that he argues (similar to durkheim) that the social process is prior to the structures and processes of the individual experience (chicken or the egg dilemma).