Revision summary
Mead: mind, self, and society arise together in significant symbols. Play, game, and generalised other form the “me”; the “I” answers. The claim rejects a pre-social self and a society without selves. Durkheim, Weber, Cooley, and Blumer sit nearby; class and caste still structure which others count.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
George Herbert Mead argued that the self is not a private soul that later enters society. Mind, self, and society arise together in communication. The statement “twin-born” names that simultaneous birth, not two finished things glued later.
Body
Mead’s mechanism
- The gesture becomes a significant symbol when it arouses in the speaker the same response it arouses in the other, as language does.
- Role-taking: the child plays particular others, then the organised game, then the generalised other of the group.
- The “I” is the spontaneous response. The “me” is the organised set of others’ attitudes. Self is their conversation.
Why twins, not sequence
- Emile Durkheim stressed external social facts. Mead agrees that the group is prior as a conversation, but he refuses a self-less heap of constraints.
- Charles Horton Cooley’s looking-glass self is a neighbour: we see ourselves in others’ imagined judgments.
- Max Weber’s social action already orients to others. Mead supplies the social psychology of how that orientation is learned.
Examination
- The claim attacks both a Robinsonade individual and a society that never lives in persons.
- Karl Marx’s species-being and later interactionists, including Herbert Blumer’s symbolic interactionism, extend the same direction.
- Limits: Mead underplayed class, caste, and state power that structure whose “generalised other” counts. Talcott Parsons later folded the “me” into socialisation, which can flatten conflict.
Indian illustration
- Caste and gender train the generalised other early. SHG talk and school peer groups show new others without erasing the twin birth.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD COM[Communication symbols] --> RT[Role-taking] RT --> ME[Me generalised other] RT --> I[I spontaneous] ME --> SELF[Self] I[I] --> SELF[SELF] SELF --> SOC[Society in persons]
Conclusion
- Mead’s statement holds: self and society are born in the same communicative process of role-taking. Durkheim’s constraint and Marx’s structure still organise which others matter. The twin image fails only if it is read as harmony without power.
Quick related
Students also ask
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"Anomie is rooted in social structure." Explain with reference to R.K. Merton's contribution.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2015 · Q4(c)). View answer →
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Did Mead deny biology?
No. He denied that biology alone yields a social self without communication.
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Is the generalised other always the nation?
No. It can be a caste, a shop floor, a church, or a peer group. That is why power matters.
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