ABSTRACT
George Herbert Mead’s thought, at best, has been lodged at the periphery of sociological concern. While a relatively small number of sociologists have sustained and fostered his views with vigor, the majority have given his thought a merely courteous nod of distant acquaintance. Mead’s scheme centers on a picture of the human being which is quite different from that at the basis of the classical sociological approaches. Mead saw the mind as a form of behavior — a form of behavior in which the human being points out things to himself and uses what he points out to himself to organize and direct his conduct. Mead regards the differences that have been mentioned between insect societies and human societies, and between animal societies and human societies, as due to the absence and presence of self-interaction. This chapter explains that Mead regarded the distinctive mark of all societies, human or otherwise, to be the formation of social acts by their members.
