“Explain G.H. Mead’s idea of development of ‘self’ through the ‘generalised other’.” (2024)
For George Herbert Mead (Mind, Self and Society, 1934), the self is not there at birth. It develops as a person learns to take the attitudes of others towards themselves. The self is complete only when those attitudes are organised into a single standpoint, “the organized community or social group which gives to the individual his unity of self”. Mead called this the generalised other.
From particular others to the generalised other
- Significant symbols. Language lets a child call out in itself the response its words call out in others. This makes role-taking possible.
- Particular (significant) others. In play, a child taking the part of a mother at ghar-ghar (playing house) sees itself from one person’s viewpoint at a time. The resulting self is fragmentary, a series of separate roles.
- Organised others. In a game like kho-kho, each player must anticipate what every chaser and runner will do and follow shared rules. The child now holds a whole system of roles in mind at once.
- Generalised other. When the attitudes of the whole group are internalised as one outlook, the individual can view their conduct as “people” or “the community” would. Mead holds that full self-consciousness is reached only at this point.
What the generalised other does
- Unity of self. It integrates scattered role-images into a coherent identity.
- Social control from within. The community enters the person as the “me”. Self-criticism is thus social criticism, and conformity needs no policeman.
- Thinking. Reflection is an inner conversation with the generalised other.
- Abstract communities. The generalised other can extend beyond face-to-face groups to a nation, a profession or a moral community.
- Room for change. The spontaneous “I” can reply to the community, and a person may appeal to a wider, future community against the present one. B. R. Ambedkar told the Constituent Assembly (1948) that constitutional morality “has to be cultivated”. In Navtej Singh Johar v Union of India (2018), the Supreme Court used constitutional morality to overrule popular morality and decriminalise consensual same-sex relations.
Limits
- Plural and conflicting others. Modern people move between many groups. Tamotsu Shibutani (1955) recast these as reference groups whose perspectives can clash.
- Power. Mead’s generalised other assumes consensus. For a Dalit child or a girl in a patriarchal household, the internalised community can carry contempt and exclusion.
Conclusion
The generalised other is Mead’s bridge between individual and society: society becomes part of the self, and the self in turn makes organised social life possible. The concept matters today because selves form among several competing generalised others, and which one prevails is a question of power as well as socialisation.