A Justice Site
Conceptual Linking
Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan, Transcend Art and Peace
Created: November 7, 2001
Latest Update: November 7, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
Olivier Urbain, Soka University
George Herbert Mead and Agency
Journal entry by Agnes Simpkins
Copyright: Jeanne Curran, Susan R. Takata, and Olivier Urbain: October 2001.
and Individual Authors. "Fair Use" encouraged.
Agnes Simpkins asked in class on Tuesday, November 6, 2001:
How can I conceptually link Geroge Herbert Mead and agency?On Wednesday, November 7, 2001, jeanne wrote:
Well, there are two ways that I can think of off the top of my head:
- Mead: reflexivity and agency.
Mead's concept of reflexivity is founded on the concept of our learning to recognize the Other and learning to negotiate with the Other our respective selves. Mead sees play as one of the ways we learn to do this by taking the role of the Other in our play. He also sees the importance of the first relationship of mother and child in learning to recognize the mother's identity as an Other in the interdependent process of learning to recognize one self as a Self, separate from the world out there.
How does that relate to agency? Well, agency is about our power as individuals to make decisions about and to control what happens to us. Constitutive theory recognizes that we do not have complete agency, for we are always interdependent with the structural context. This recalls Durkheim's definition of the social fact as that which lies beyond our control as we interact with others and with the world around us.
Mead's reflexivity emphasizes the interdependent nature of our learning to restrain our desire for anything we might want by the recognition that the Other also wants and is continually reshaping his/her identity and self in conjunction with our relationship.
W.E.B. DuBois in his explanation of "double-consciousness" recognizes that agency is constrined by the structural context to the extent that a given status characteristic, like race, excludes irredeemably.
- Mead: The "I" and the "me" and agency:
The "me" represents the unconstrained wishes and needs of the individual. The "I" represents the restrained wishes and needs of the individual socialized to understand his/her interdependence with others and with the world in which he/she lives.
Agency is about the control that I have over my own actions and relationships as I interact with the world. So you could consider the "me" the one with agency, who is engaged in interdependent negotiation with Others in the structural context to determine the self "I" that is the product of that interdependence.
These explanations are not the traditional ones in your text books, because you are engaging in re-interpreting theory through looking at how each of these theories has tried to answer one of the major social questions that all disciplines seek to understand and express. As you try to understand how different theorists saw the world and tried to explain it, hopefully you will begin to see how each theorist builds on the shoulders of the giants who preceded him/her.