Abstract
The publication of G.H. Mead: A Reader has the welcome potential to incite a Meadian renaissance. This is because although George Herbert Mead is a prominent theorist, his publications can be difficult to access. Early writing about Mead is obfuscated by questions around authenticity and authorship of the source material cited and this volume is a welcome antidote to this problem. Mead is celebrated as one of the most significant figures in sociology and those who appreciate his work regularly lament his neglect in the sociological canon.
The editor, Filipe Carriera da Silva, notes that his selection of Mead’s work has been carefully considered in relation to what already exists in the literature. In what must have been a difficult task, he has skillfully selected “the most relevant of Mead’s contributions to contemporary social sciences” (p. xi). Thus, G.H. Mead: A Reader only contains work directly attributable to Mead. Previously published articles sit alongside newly transcribed text from Mead’s handwritten notes. A sizeable portion of the book contains material previously unpublished.
A biographical summary helpfully precedes the chapters and offers a useful timeline for situating key developments in relation to Mead’s personal life, his occupational appointments and publications. Importantly, the summary includes Mead’s political work, and the inclusion of his involvement in community organizations alongside his published work fits well with Mead’s pragmatism and personal engagement with assisting in tackling social problems.
Carriera da Silva has arranged the text into three parts titled: Mead on The Social Self; Mead on Science and Epistemology; and Mead, A Radical Democrat. Each part contains ten chapters which are grouped into further sections. The subsections within each part helpfully contain material which might otherwise overwhelm a newcomer to Mead. Carriera da Silva notes that the three areas into which he has grouped Mead’s work are those that are of most significance to, and have the most to offer, sociology.
Mead’s theory of the self is arguably the area for which he is best known. It is fitting that Part I contains material relevant to Mead’s self. The material selected for this section includes Mead’s seminal work on “I” and “me” and “the generalized other.” In a world in which psychoanalytic conceptions of selfhood dominate, Mead is a radical alternative. His self enables a new appreciation of the symbiosis between the self and the social through the rejection of the dichotomous placement of agency and structure, and this is also evident in his work on ethics. Sociology’s recent preoccupation with identity and self demonstrates the currency of Mead’s work—and its applicability to contemporary life is evident in this text. Similarly, the ways in which individual behaviors and relationships to those around them are questioned through events in our environment such as climate change, globalizing forces and inequality pave the way for a resurgence of interest in Mead’s engagement with time, space, and ethics. In this volume we see his engagement with key ideas in ethical frameworks such as Kantianism and Utilitarianism as well as a previously unpublished chapter which examines Greek philosophy.
G.H. Mead: A Reader might have easily been a volume in which a range of material existed in isolation from one another. This is, mercifully, not the case. The coherence of the book is helped by the way in which Mead uses his theory of self as either a clearly articulated foundation or a theoretical orientation to flavor his engagement in various—and diverse—topics such as war, ethics, childhood, and time. Yet there is also the successful connection between chapters: the “I” and the “me” discussed in the section on the self is relevant to Mead’s discussion of their “fusion” (p. xix) during times of war in which national identity overrides the individual. What also makes this book successful is its narration. The editor points out these connections in his introduction and helpfully identifies some of the key ideas emerging from this collection.
Given the rich material contained in this book, there are too many instances of Mead’s sociological brilliance for which there is not enough space to ponder in this review. The final third of the book satisfactorily marries Mead’s epistemological theorizing and theory of self along with ethics. There are some chapters throughout the book in which a new theme emerges. References to time and the past can be found throughout the book, however. In Chapter 20, “The Nature of the Past,” deals exclusively with temporality. Mead argues that there is no past—only a present. He says “The actual passage of reality is in the passage of one present into another, where alone is reality, and a present which has merged in another is not a past. Its reality is always that of the present” (p. 204). Again, the connection between Mead’s work on the self resonates through this essay on temporality in which the past “is the arising of relations between an emergent and conditioning world” (p. 209). This chapter also signals the shift to the final third of the book in which Mead’s ethical scholarship is given new life. The chronological listing of Mead’s published work offers a helpful summary of his publications and nicely concludes the volume.
In summary, G.H. Mead: A Reader offers new material to sociologists. It will be invaluable to those interested in Mead’s work and will help to bring a new audience to Mead, both of which facilitate the placement of this scholar among fellow sociological luminaries.