"archival series"

Mind, Self, and Society

“The self is something which has a development; it is not initially there, at birth, but arises in the process of social experience and activity.”

The book is a seminal work for a reason. No other piece of literature has illustrated the construction of the self as situated objects between historical and social contexts than Mead’s work. Through the book Mead provides several distinctions on social acts, the “I”, the “Me”, and expands on the notion of the “other”. In constructing the social world, there is a sense of clarity between the interacting forces and relation. At least for me, it made clear some of the reasonings about a subject’s agency, acts, and appearance.

An implication I came up of is on the notion normative acts. Society requires normativity in behaviors and acts, but looking at it from the perspective of the self in relation to society: these normative acts are a result of our own faculties as subjects and become normative insofar as our usage of normativity is espoused in agreement. So if you want to learn more about how the self is constructed and interact from a sociological viewpoint; this is a great book.