Simmel and Mead-What Shapes an Individual - Research Paper Example

 Simmel and Mead-What Shapes an Individual Introduction A theory is a generalized thinking on a particular thing or situation. It gives explanatory frameworks of particular observations (Luhmann & Barrett, 2012). In sociology, theories are statements that describe the social world. Sociological theories describe features of a social world and facilitate predictions of future events. However, there are also other theories, which give broad perspectives that guide more sociological analyses (Jayapalan, 2014). Through most part of the modern world, many sociologists have developed different types of theories to give their views of the social world. Examples of these sociologists are Georg Simmel and George Herbert Mead. This paper discusses the sociological theories of these two sociologists. It attempts to compare and contrast the sociological methods, perspectives, and theoretical contributions of their theories. Georg Simmel Georg Simmel was a German philosopher, critic, and a sociologist who lived between 1858 and 1918 (Appelrouth & Edles, 2008). He was a paioneer sociologists in Germany. Simmel’s neo-Kantian approach became the base for sociological antipositivism. Instead, of examining the nature as examined by Immanuel Kant, Simmel focused on the society. According to him, culture is the cultivation of people through external forms objectified in the course of history. He discussed cultural and social phenomena in terms of content and forms with a transitory relationship, whereby content become forms, and vice versa. Simmel was thus, a precursor to reasoning styles of structuralisms. Sociology of Georg Simmel Georg Simmel refuted the organicist theories of Herbert Spencer and Auguste Comte. He refused to see the society as an organism or a thing as presented by Spencer and Comte. He saw society as composed of multiple relationships between individuals (Appelrouth & Edles, 2008). His view, the term society is just a word for individuals linked by interactions. Simmel came up with the term sociation, which implies interactions between several individuals. According to Simmel, society is nothing other than the individuals constituting it. In his examination of society, he attempted to understand all social types like the mediator, the stranger, and the poor, and many more. His social types became complementary to his idea of social forms. A social type turns to a type due to his/her relationship with other individuals who assign him/her a particular position. In his book The Stranger, Simmel describes a stranger as an individual who comes today and is gone tomorrow. He/she is assigned a particular position in the society. He/she did not belong to the society in the beginning. The position of a stranger in a society determines the role and the form of interaction. As a stranger, an individual is both near and distant to other individuals. When outside a social group, a stranger is an objective observer. Therefore, a stranger can be a perfect intermediary in any exchange of goods or ideas. In this sense, the position of a stranger is defined and fixed in a society (Simmel, Wolff, 2012). Simmel’s Sociological Method Sociologists employ different methods and design to study social behavior and the society. Methods like Case study research, survey research, correctional research, and observational research. Different methods give different types of information that becomes the basis of conclusions about a particular social world. Simmel used observational research. He studied the actions and behaviors of people in the society. He used particularly the naturalistic observation, which is imperative as it lowers the chance of subjects becoming dishonest. However, biasness is the common problem of this method. In his general observation of the society, Simmel noticed that the society is always in the process of adopting new members by assigning the stranger's positions. Georg Simmel attempted to comprehend various social types. He tried to understand the mediator, stranger, and the poor and recognized that each acts according to the position he/she occupies. He also recognized that individuals are into a social group by being given a position to occupy. In his study of the society, Simmel did not concentrate on a specific set of people. He focused on different individuals in the society. Sociological Perspective Sociologists analyze the social world from diverse perspectives. Sociologists usually used different types of outlooks of the social world. Today, sociologists employ three prime theoretical perspectives. These are conflict perspective, the functionalist perspective, and symbolic interactionist perspective. Conflict perspective and functionalist perspective are usually used to analyze macro level of the social world. Symbolic interactionism is usually used to analyze micro level of the social world. After researchers have interpreted the information through these perspectives and make conclusions, they generalize conclusions to explain similar situations in the social world. Georg Simmel used symbolic interactionist perspective, which is the perspective that directs a sociologist to details and symbols of everyday life. Through this perspective, a sociologist tries to determine the meaning of symbols and the way people interact in the society. According to this perspective, people ascribe subjective meanings to facts in the society. Unlike the other two perspective, symbolic interactionst perspective focus too closely on a particular part of the society. It does not focus on the general society as the other two (Burbank & Martins, 2010). In his studies, Simmel focused on individuals as constituents of the society. He did not focus on the general society. Instead, he divided the society into small units. As discussed earlier, he refused to accept Herbert Spencer and Auguste Comte’s view that described a society an organ. For him, the society is composed of active individuals. They are creative members who create portions, which then limit their creativeness as social and cultural structure saves their lives. When a stranger is into the society, he/she acts or interact according to the expectations of the position he/she is given. Simmel’s focus on individuals makes him a symbolic interactionist. His focus portrays his micro level analysis, which does not target the whole society but a specific component of the whole society. He did not focus on individuals as a whole but as units. Theoretical Contribution of Simmel’s Theory Simmel’s theory brought a different outlook to the individual. It presented an individual as an active entity in the society whose creativeness is by the position the society offered him/her. Every individual has to act as per his/her position. Simmel’s thus helps answer the differences between individuals. He points out the source of the differences as the position he/she occupies. He thus increases sociological understanding of the individual and consequently the social world as a whole. George H. Mead George H. Mead was an American sociologist, psychologist, and philosopher who lived between 1863 and 1931. He was a distinguished pragmatist regarded as the founder of American sociological custom and social psychology. As pragmatic philosopher, Mead focused on the growth of the objectivity and the self in a world within a social realm. He focused on an individual’s mind and its relationship to the other minds in the society. Social behaviorism and philosophy of pragmatism influenced Mead to turn to symbolic interactionism. The two areas of study made him concerned with social objects and stimuli of gestures. He was not concerned with physical objects that psychological behaviorists deemed as stimuli. As a pragmatist, Mead believed that a true reality is in an individual and not in the actual world. Individuals create true reality as they act in and towards the actual world. Again, he believed that people base their understanding or knowledge on what has been useful to them. Therefore, Mead believed that what people do can help sociologists understand their actors. Social Philosophy According to Mead, the mind is not a substance that is in a transcendent world nor is it, a chain of events, which takes place within a human physiological structure. Mead opposed the traditional view that separated the mind from the body. According to him, the mind is the individualized focus in the communication process. It is the linguistic behavior of an individual, as thought or mind cannot exist without the existence of language. Mead also pointed out that the mind is a dynamic, ongoing, emergent social process made up of human experiences. Therefore, the development of the mind is thus due to social interaction, which consequently, makes the mind irreducible to neurophysiology. Mind develops out of social acts of communications. In Mead theory of self, mind, and society, he acknowledges the existence of experiences in interactions. Actions are important in Mead’s sociological theory as they lead to the development of the mind of an individual. Actions can also occur in a communicative process. The starting point of an action consists of a gesture. Gestures are preparatory movements that enable an individual to get ready for the next action. However, in the initial stages of an action, there is not communication done. No single individual is aware of the impact of his/her gesture on the other individual. For communication to commence, each must understand the response of his/her gesture. Gestures are important symbols that only human beings can make. A significant gesture has the same meaning to the addressed individuals as to the one making the gesture. According to Mead, communication can only exist if human beings have significant symbols. Mead placed human understanding and view in an action-nexus. An individual perceive the world in terms of living. When an individual perceives food, he/she perceive seating, while when he perceives a house he/she perceives a shelter. The individual is the product of the preexisting and ongoing society. The self is when an individual becomes an object to other people then to himself/herself. Through language, a person can talk about himself/herself as he/she would talk about other individuals. Therefore, language enables people to be others in themselves. Social acts enable people to perceive themselves in the positions of their co-actors. Therefore, position exchange enables change of perspectives. Through interactions, the self, which defines an individual take in collective attitudes of other individuals as gestures and react to them with other ordered attitudes. Mead characterized the process with I and the Me where I is the reaction to Me, which is the social self. Thinking process involves the internalization of the dialogue between I and Me. According to Mead, an individual exist first before he develops consciousness (Mead & Silva, 2010). Mead’s Sociological Method Just like Georg Simmel, Mead used naturalistic observation of individuals. Influenced by the philosophical pragmatism and social behaviorism, he was able to perceive the society not as made up of individuals. Therefore, he did not study the general society as the ideas he held portrayed individuals as unique objects. For instance, pragmatism, hold the belief that knowledge about an individual exists in the individual himself/herself and not in the outside world. Therefore, in order to understand individuals, there is a need to examine each as a unique entity. Mead did this by examining different people in his society. He observed different people in their natural settings, and he was thus able to develop an understanding that is appropriate to all individual in all societies. Mead’s Sociological Perspective Mead was a symbolic interactionist. He saw society a consisting of different individuals. Unlike, Auguste Comte, he did not perceive society as an organ. According to him, the different individuals in the society are not influenced by the society to act in particular ways. Instead, people have different experiences, which make them act differently. His argument on an individual portrays his symbolic interactionism. According to Mead, the influences of other people affect the action of an individual. Through others people actions; a person can develop experiences that guide his/her actions. The self or the mind, which exist in the language, is developed through interactions (Appelrouth & Edles, 2008). Through interactions, a person can perceive other in himself. The self is up of I and Me. I is there action of a person to his/her social self, which is Me. Therefore, Mead was a symbolic interactionist as seen in his discussion on the self. He is a symbolic interactionist as he studied the social world at a micro level. He studied individuals and not the whole society as an organ. Theoretical Contribution of Mead’s Theory Mead’s theory brought new ideas to sociology. Mead carefully connected different ideas from different fields to develop a theory. His theory is unique. Therefore, it widens the understanding of sociologists on an individual. It gives a different outlook of the factors that influence an individual to act in a particular ways. Unlike functionalists’ theories, which discuss socialization as a process that is uniform in the society, Mead presents socialization as a process unique to every individual. It is a process between the individual and his/her co-actors. With a combination with others theories, Mead’s theory can help sociologists understand the social world even more. Comparison and Contrast of Simmel and Mead’s Theories Both Simmel and Mead used symbolic interactionist perspective. The two sociologists discussed individuals as constituents of society. Unlike Herbert Spencer and Auguste Comte, they did not perceive the society as an organ. Therefore, they studied the society at its micro level and not at its macro level, which gives a perception of similarity across the society. Furthermore, the two sociologists used naturalistic observation of individuals in the society. The use of naturalistic observation was necessary as each of them believed in the uniqueness of an individual. However, the two theorists presented their conclusions differently. According to Simmel, actions by an individual are determined by the position he/she is given by the society. The position determines his/her interaction with others. On his part, Mead claimed that the activities of a person are by the knowledge someone has accumulated in his/her relationship with others. An individual presents himself/herself as other people. The two theorists presented their ideas differently. Simmels discusses about a position and stranger, while Mead discusses the mind. However, their theories seem to present the same idea. The two theories accept the view that an individual exist in a society before he/she acquires consciousness. In Simmel’s theory, an individual acts according to the position he/she is placed. Mead presented Simmel’s view when he talked about experiences (Appelrouth & Edles, 2008). According to Mead, an individual acts as another individual acted in that particular position. Therefore, it seems the two theorists differed only with terms and mode of presentation of a conclusion on an individual. Simmel used position while Mead used co-actors. The differences between the two theories widen the understanding of an individual. Conclusion In conclusion, Simmel and Mead’s theories have many similarities. Both theories used symbolic interactionst perspective and naturalistic observation. However, the two theories are presented differently. Simmel discussed a position and a stranger while Mead discussed the self or the mind. However, the two theories present similar conclusion but in different modes of presentations. The two theories claim that actions by any individual are by his/her position in the society as the co-actor can be seen as a position in Mead’s theory. References Appelrouth, S., & Edles, L. (2008). Classical and contemporary sociological theory (1st ed.). Los Angeles, Calif.: Pine Forge Press. Burbank, P. M., & Martins, D. C. (January 01, 2010). Symbolic interactionism and critical perspective: divergent or synergistic?Nursing Philosophy: an International Journal for Healthcare Professionals, 11(1), 25-41 Jayapalan, N. (2014). Sociological theories. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers. Luhmann, N., & Barrett, R. (2012). Theory of society: Volume 1. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. Mead, G. H., & Silva, F. C. (2010). G.H. Mead: A reader. London: Routledge. Simmel, G., & Wolff, K. H. (2012). The sociology of Georg Simmel. United States: Nabu Public Domain Reprints. Read More