George Herbert Mead

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) was an American philosopher and social theorist at the University of Chicago whose work laid the theoretical foundation for symbolic interactionism, though he never used that term himself and published no monograph in his lifetime. He argued that the human self is not innate but arises through social interaction, developing as an individual learns to take the perspective of specific others and eventually of the 'generalized other,' the internalized attitude of the community as a whole. Central to his account is the role of language and shared symbols, which he saw as the medium through which minds, selves, and society are jointly constructed. His ideas reached the wider world only posthumously, when students compiled his lecture notes into Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (1934).