Читать книгу Essentials of Sociology - George Ritzer - Страница 136

Central to Mead’s ideas about the development of human beings, and the differences between humans and nonhumans, are the concepts of mind and self. The mind is an internal conversation using words (and also images, especially, but certainly not only, for the autistic and the deaf; Fernyhough 2014; Grandin 2000). That internal conversation arises, is related to, and is continuous with interactions, especially conversations one has with others in the social world. Thus, the social world and its relationships and interactions precede the mind and not vice versa. This perspective stands in contrast to the conventional view that prioritizes the brain and argues that we think first and then engage in social relationships. It also differs from the view that the mind and the brain are one and the same thing. The brain is a physiological organ that exists within us, but the mind is a social phenomenon. It is part of, and would not exist without, the social world. While the brain is an intracranial phenomenon, the mind is not.

The self is the ability to take oneself as an object. The self develops over time. Key to the development of self is the ability to imagine being in the place of others and looking at one’s self as they do. In other words, people need to take the role of others to get a sense of their own selves. There are two key stages in Mead’s theory of how the self develops over time, the play stage and the game stage.

1 Play stage. Babies are not born with the ability to think of themselves as having a self. However, as they develop, children learn to take on the attitudes of specific others toward themselves. Thus, young children play at being Mommy and Daddy, adopt Mommy’s and Daddy’s attitudes toward the child, and evaluate themselves as do Mommy and Daddy. However, the result is a very fragmented sense of the self. It varies depending on the specific other (e.g., Mommy or Daddy) being taken into consideration. Young children lack a more general and organized sense of themselves.

2 Game stage. Children begin to develop a self in the full sense of the term when they take on the roles of a group of people simultaneously rather than the roles of discrete individuals. Each of those different roles comes to be seen as having a definite relationship to all the others. Children develop organized personalities because of their ability to take on multiple roles—indeed, the entirety of roles in a given group. The developed personality does not vary with the individual role (Mommy, Daddy) a child happens to be taking. This development allows children to function in organized groups. Most important, it greatly affects what they do within specific groups.

Mead offers the example of a baseball game (or what he calls “ball nine”) to illustrate his point about the game stage of development. It is not enough in a baseball game for you to know what you are supposed to do in your position on the field. To play your position, you must know what those who play the other eight positions on the team are going to do. In other words, a player, every player, must take on the roles of all the other players. A player need not have all of those roles in mind all of the time; three or four of them will suffice on most occasions. For example, a shortstop must know that the center fielder is going to catch a particular fly ball; that he is going to be backed up by the left fielder; that because the runner on second is going to “tag up,” the center fielder is going to throw the ball to third base; and that it is his job as shortstop to back up the third baseman. This ability to take on multiple roles obviously applies in a baseball game, but it applies as well in a playgroup, a work setting, and every other social setting.

In Mead’s game stage of the development of the self, we learn how to work with others by understanding their roles as well as our own. Do you think this learning process is ever complete?

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