The Personal and the Social: Mead's Theory of the ‘Generalized Other’

Abstract

Contemporary sociocultural theories of the development of the self in society need to explain how the social becomes personal and how development can occur in each domain. George Herbert Mead’ s concept of the ‘Generalized Other’ gives an account of the social origin of self-consciousness while retaining the transforming function of the personal. Contextualized in Mead's theory of intersubjectivity, the Generalized Other is a special case of role-taking in which the individual responds to social gestures, and takes up and adjusts common attitudes. By role-taking people adjust and adapt in exchanges based on social gesture-response action sequences. Self-consciousness is developed through act..