Explain G.H. Mead's idea of development of 'self' through the 'generalised other'.

Self as process: I, Me, play and game

Mead distinguished the I and the Me. The Me is the organised set of attitudes of others that one has taken in. The I is the spontaneous response to that Me. The self is the conversation of the two. Charles Horton Cooley’s looking-glass self sits nearby: we imagine how we appear to others. Mead made the mechanism more precise through gestures and significant symbols, especially language.

In the play stage the child takes the role of particular others, one at a time: parent, teacher, hero. In the game stage the child must take several roles at once, as in a team sport where each position answers the others. Only then does a fully social self become possible. Herbert Blumer later named this family of ideas symbolic interactionism.

The generalised other

The generalised other is the community’s organised attitudes as they live in the person. It is not one neighbour. It is the rules of the game, the law, the school, the caste public, or the nation as the child comes to feel them. When a person asks “what would people say?”, the generalised other is at work. Moral responsibility, for Mead, depends on this ability to take the group’s standpoint toward one’s own act. The self is therefore developed from the outside in, through communication, and then becomes a source of inner control.

Indian socialisation studies can use this idea without copying Chicago. A child learns the Me of family honour, school discipline and, later, a professional code. Conflict among several generalised others, such as village caste and city workplace, is a Meadian problem of modern selfhood. Erving Goffman’s later dramaturgy shows performance; Mead remains the account of how the self is formed so that performance is possible.