Auguste Comte

The thoughts of Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who coined the term sociology, while dated and riddled with
weaknesses, continue in many ways to be important to contemporary sociology. First and foremost, Comte's
positivism — the search for invariant laws governing the social and natural worlds — has influenced
profoundly the ways in which sociologists have conducted sociological inquiry. Comte argued that
sociologists (and other scholars), through theory, speculation, and empirical research, could create a realist
science that would accurately "copy" or represent the way things actually are in the world. Furthermore,
Comte argued that sociology could become a "social physics" — i.e., a social science on a par with the most
positivistic of sciences, physics. Comte believed that sociology would eventually occupy the very pinnacle of
a hierarchy of sciences. Comte also identified four methods of sociology. To this day, in their inquiries
sociologists continue to use the methods of observation, experimentation, comparison, and historical
research. While Comte did write about methods of research, he most often engaged in speculation or
theorizing in order to attempt to discover invariant laws of the social world.

Comte's famed "law of the three stages" is an example of his search for invariant laws governing the social
world. Comte argued that the human mind, individual human beings, all knowledge, and world history
develop through three successive stages. The theological stage is dominated by a search for the essential
nature of things, and people come to believe that all phenomena are created and influenced by gods and
supernatural forces. Monotheism is the ultimate belief of the theological stage. The metaphysical stage is a
transitional stage in which mysterious, abstract forces (e.g., nature) replace supernatural forces as the
powers that explain the workings of the world. The positivist stage is the last and highest stage in Comte's
work. In this stage, people search for invariant laws that govern all of the phenomena of the world.
Comte also used the term positivism in a second sense; that is, as a force that could counter the negativism
of his times. In Comte's view, most of Western Europe was mired in political and moral disorder that was a
consequence of the French Revolution of 1789. Positivism, in Comte's philosophy, would bring order and
progress to the European crisis of ideas.

Comte's Sociology
Comte separated social statics from social dynamics. Social statics are concerned with the ways in which the
parts of a social system (social structures) interact with one another, as well as the functional relationships
between the parts and to the social system as a whole. Comte therefore focused his social statics on the
individual, as well as such collective phenomena as the family, religion, language, and the division of labor.
Comte placed greater emphasis on the study of social dynamics, or social change. His theory of social
dynamics is founded on the law of the three stages; i.e., the evolution of society is based on the evolution of
mind through the theological, metaphysical, and positivist stages. He saw social dynamics as a process of
progressive evolution in which people become cumulatively more intelligent and in which altruism eventually
triumphs over egoism. This process is one that people can modify or accelerate, but in the end the laws of
progressive development dictate the development of society. Comte's research on social evolution focused
on Western Europe, which he viewed as the most highly developed part of the world during his times.

Theory and Practice and Comte's Vision of the Future

Comte believed that positivism could both advance science (theory) and change the ways people live their
lives (practice). He argued that the upper classes of his time were far too conservative to advocate
positivistic change. Women and the members of the working class, however, were well situated to advocate
positivism and help to implement its programs of change. Comte viewed the working class as agents of
positivistic change because of their ties of affection to their families, respect for authority, exposure to
misery, and propensity for self-sacrifice. Comte thought of his positivism as a counter-force against
communism, although the latter could provide a foundation for the former.
Comte thought that women would support his positivist program for change largely because women, in his
view, were more affectionate, altruistic, and feeling than men. He tended to view men as superior in
intellectual and practical matters, and thus better suited to planning and supervising change, while women
are better suited to moral matters. Comte did not believe in the equality of the sexes. He saw himself and
his protégés as the "priests of humanity" who would oversee the religion of positivism.
Some of Comte's most amusing ideas are found in his plans for the future. Comte envisioned a positivist
calendar, public holidays, and temples. He elaborated a plan for his positivist society that included important
roles for bankers and industrialists, positivist priests, merchants, manufacturers, and farmers. Comte also
envisioned a positivist library of 100 books — titles that he personally selected. He argued that reading other
works would contaminate the minds of the people. He also planned to restructure the family to include a
father, mother, three children, and paternal grandparents.

Comte's Positive Contributions and Weaknesses

Some positive contributions that Comte made to sociology:
● Comte coined the term "sociology" and may be viewed as its founder.
● Comte thought of sociology as a positivistic science.
● He elaborated four methods of sociology.
● He distinguished social statics from social dynamics.
● He was a macrosociologist.
● He viewed social structures as taming individual egoism.
● He offered a dialectical view of structural change.
● He attempted to integrate theory and practice.
Some basic weaknesses of Comte's work:
● Comte's thought was distorted by his own experiences in life.
● He was out of touch with the real world.
● He was out of touch with other thinkers of his times.
● His empirical work is laughable, and his theoretical work far too generalized.
● His work is only marginally sociological.
● He made no original contributions to sociology.
● His sociology was primitive in its organicism — i.e., he crudely viewed society in terms of the
workings of the human body.
● Comte heavy-handedly imposed his theoretical frameworks on the data he was analyzing.
● His self-conceit led him to make many ridiculous pronouncements and blunders.
● His positivist religion is strangely similar to Catholicism, which casts doubt on his scientific
intentions.
● His plans for the future appear totalitarian and bizarre.
Herbert Spencer

Spencer and Comte

Although the sociological theory of Herbert Spencer (1820-1902) has but a small following today, his work
was quite popular during his lifetime, particularly in America. Spencer's theory of society does represent an
advance over Comtian theory, even though Spencer, like Comte, characterized himself as a positivist and
derived his concepts of structure and function from the field of biology. Spencer used the Comtian terms of
social statics and social dynamics, but not in a descriptive way as Comte did to refer to all types of societies,
but rather in a normative way to describe his version of the future ideal society. Furthermore, Spencer was
more interested in studying the progress of the external world or objectivity, while Comte focused more on
the subjective nature of the progress of human conceptions. Finally, there are important political differences
between Spencer and Comte. Spencer had little regard for centralized political control and believed that the
government should allow individuals the maximum freedom to pursue their private interests. Comte, on the
other hand, desired society to be led by the high priests of positivistic religion.

Spencer's Evolutionary Theory and Sociology

Spencer defined sociology as the study of societal evolution and believed that the ultimate goal of societal
evolution is complete harmony and happiness. Spencer's theory of evolutionary change is built upon three
basic principles: integration, differentiation, and definiteness. Spencer argued that homogenous phenomena
are inherently unstable, which makes them subject to constant fluctuations. These fluctuations force
homogeneous systems to differentiate, which results in greater multiformity. In other words, homogeneous
systems grow to become heterogeneous.
Spencer focused much of his energy on trying to legitimize sociology as a scientific discipline. He argued that
laypeople might think they deal with the same issues as sociologists do; however, they are not trained to
adequately comprehend these issues. One of the ways that Spencer believed sociology could become more
legitimate was for sociologists to study other disciplines, especially biology and psychology. Biology could be
linked to sociology through the search for the basic "laws of life," understanding society as a "living body"
and focusing on human beings as the starting point of sociological inquiries. Psychology is useful to sociology
because it helps to show that emotions or sentiments are linked to social action. According to Spencer,
individuals are the source of all social phenomena, and the motives of individuals are key to understanding
society as a whole.
Spencer's Methodology
Spencer realized that studying social phenomena was inherently different from studying natural phenomena;
therefore, sociology could not simply imitate the methods used by biologists. Spencer also argued that the
psychological method of introspection was ill-suited to studying objective social facts and processes.
Sociologists are also faced with the methodological problem of how to keep their own bias in check and
gather and report trustworthy data. Spencer advocated a "value free" methodological approach for sociology
and cautioned sociologists to be aware of emotional biases that might influence their work, including
educational, patriotic, class, political, and theological biases. Spencer was committed to empirical research
and employed a comparative-historical methodology in much of his work.
The Evolution of Society
As stated above, Spencer's general theory of social evolution involves the progress of society towards
integration, heterogeneity, and definiteness. It also includes a fourth dimension, the increasing coherence of
social groups. Social groups, according to Spencer, strive towards greater harmony and cooperation through
the division of labor and the state. It is important to note the Spencer does not develop a linear theory of
social evolution; he acknowledges that dissolution or no change at all may occur at any given moment.
Spencer was a social realist in that he viewed society as an entity in and of itself—thus, the whole of society
can live on even if its component parts die. As society grows, it becomes more complex and differentiated.
Structures accompany this growth, which function to regulate external concerns like military activities and
sustain internal issues like economic activities. Distributing systems eventually emerge that function to help
link together regulative and sustaining structures.
Spencer uses his evolutionary theory to trace the movement from simple to compounded societies and from
militant to industrial societies. Society evolves from the compounding and recompounding of social groups.
It also evolves from military societies dominated by conflict and a coercive regulative system to industrial
societies characterized by harmony and a sustaining system of decentralized rule. Spencer thought the
society that he was living in was a "hybrid society," exhibiting traits of both military and industrial societies.
Although he ultimately hoped society in general would progress towards a state of industry, he recognized
that the regression to a militant state was possible.
Ethics and Politics
Spencer argued that individuals were the source of moral law in a given society, but that God ultimately
determined good and evil. Evil itself, according to Spencer, was a result of nonadaptation to external
conditions, and that in a perfectly evolved society it would disappear. Spencer's politics can be best
described as libertarian—he saw a limited role for state intervention in everyday affairs, especially economic
activities. Spencer also opposed state-administered charity, education, and even basic services like garbage
removal. Following his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, Spencer even opposed private philanthropy.
State and private charity both helped to maintain "unhealthy" or unfit members of society, and this stifled
present and future society from evolving to perfect harmony.
Karl Marx
Introduction
There are a variety of interpretations of Karl Marx's (1818 - 1883) theory of capitalism. This arises from
both its unfinished nature and Marx's shifting points of emphasis across his lifetime. The focus of Marx's
work, however, was undoubtedly on the historical basis of inequality, and specifically inequality under
capitalism. Marx's critiques of the capitalist system — its tendency towards crises, the necessity of inequality
— are still relevant today.
The Dialectic
Marx's powerful critique has as it basis a unique approach to reality — the dialectic. Taking from G.W.F.
Hegel (1770 - 1831), Marx believed that any study of reality must be attuned to the contradictions within
society and, indeed, he sees contradiction as the motor of historical change. Unlike Hegel, Marx believed
that these contradictions existed not simply in our minds (i.e., in the way we understand the world), but
that they had a concrete material existence. At the heart of capitalism was the contradiction between the
demands of the capitalist to earn a profit and the demands of the worker, who wants to retain some profit to
subsist. Over time, the workings of the capitalist system would exacerbate this contradiction, and its
resolution can be had only through social change.
The Dialectical Method
The dialectical approach does not recognize the division between social values and social facts. To do so
leads away from any real understanding of the problems people face. Additionally, the dialectical method
does not envision the social world as being dominated by a cause-and-effect relationship; instead, it looks at
the reciprocal relations among social factors within the totality of social life. These relations include not only
contemporary phenomena but also the effects of history, as dialecticians are concerned with how the past
shapes the present and how the present lays the seeds for the future. Because of this complex set of
relations, which often fold back in on themselves, the future is both indeterminate and contingent on
individual action. Indeed, this relationship between actors and structures is at the heart of Marx's theory.
Structures both constrain and enable individuals, having the potential of both helping them to fulfill
themselves and contributing to their exploitation.
Human Nature
Marx's insights into actors and structures must be understood in the context of his views on human nature,
which is the basis for his critical analysis of the contradictions of capitalism. Marx viewed human nature as
historically contingent, shaped by many of the same relations that affect society. In his view, a contradiction
exists between our human nature and work in the capitalist system. Though we have powers that identify us
as unique animals, our species being, the possibilities for realizing human potential within the capitalist
system are frustrated by the structures of capitalism itself. Unlike most social theories that have implicit
assumptions about human nature, Marx elaborates a concept of human nature that also informed his view of
how society should look. An important factor in this is Marx's ideas about labor. By objectifying our ideas
and satisfying our needs, labor both expresses our human nature and changes it. Through this process,
individuals develop their human powers and potentials.
Alienation
Under capitalism, the relationship between labor and human expression changes: rather than laboring to
fulfill their needs or express ideas, workers do so at the demands of capitalists. Workers are alienated from
their labor because it no longer belongs to the worker, but rather to the capitalist. This alienates workers in
four ways:
1. Workers are alienated from their productive activity, in that they no longer labor to satisfy their own
needs.
2. Workers are alienated from the product of their labor, which now belongs to the capitalist. Instead
of finding expression in producing, workers turn to consuming to express themselves.
3. The cooperative nature of work is destroyed through the organization of the labor process,
alienating workers from their fellow workers. Additionally, workers often must compete against one
another for work and pay.
4. Workers are alienated from their human potential, as the transformative potential of labor is lost
under capitalism.
The Structures of Capitalist Society
Marx wrote in response to the rapid changes taking place in Europe in response to industrialization,
particularly in Germany. This period of dislocation and poverty is the context for Marx's notion of alienation,
and his critiques were designed to show that capitalism was the basis for alienation and to develop a plan for
action for overcoming the structures of capitalism. Marx understood that inherent within capitalism was also
a system of power: it is both economic and political; it both coerces and exploits workers. Actions
undertaken in the name of economic necessity disguise political decisions For example, although it is an
accepted economic method for dealing with inflation, raising interest rates protects the wealthy, while
causing unemployment among the poor. The political decision to privilege the wealthy at the expense of
workers is hidden behind economics.
Commodities
Marx's understanding of commodities (products of labor intended for exchange) is central to understanding
his ideas about the nature of capitalism. Commodities produced to subsist and to satisfy their needs have
use value. Under capitalism, where workers produce for others and exchange commodities for money,
products have exchange value. Because it is often unclear where a commodity's value comes from, it takes
on an independent, external reality. Marx called this the fetishism of commodities, when the value of an
object or commodity is believed to be tied to something "natural" or independent of human action, such as
markets. Thus, the reality that value originates from labor and the satisfaction of needs is obscured. Marx
used the term reification to describe the process whereby social structures become naturalized, absolute,
independent of human action, and unchangeable. Just as the fetishism of commodities obscures the
relationship between commodities, value, and human labor, reification obscures the underlying relationships
within the capitalist system and allows supposedly natural and objective social structures to dominate
people.
Capital, Capitalists, and Proletariat
Under capitalism, there are two main groups: the proletariat, who are wage-laborers, and the capitalists,
who own the means of production. Whereas workers are wholly dependent upon wages, capitalists are
dependent upon money invested to create more money. Capital is unique to the circulation of commodities
under capitalism. Under non-capitalist forms of exchange, commodities are traded for money, which is then
traded for another commodity (C1 - M - C2). The primary reason for exchange is to obtain a commodity for
use. Under capitalism, money is used to purchase a commodity, which is then sold to create a greater
amount of money (M1 - C - M2). The purpose of this form of exchange is to create greater and greater sums
of money.
Exploitation
Exploitation is a set of social relations on which capitalism is built. Capitalists exploit workers by paying
them less in wages than the value they produce. While a worker may earn eight dollars a day in wages, s/he
may produce ten dollars a day worth of value, creating what Marx called surplus value. Capital grows by
exploiting workers to generate ever greater amounts of surplus value, usually by lowering workers' wages.
In addition, capitalists constantly compete with one another over capital by finding new ways to generate
profit and surplus value in order to maintain an edge. Marx calls this drive the general law of capitalist
accumulation. Capitalism is not the only historical epoch in which individuals are exploited, but it is the only
one in which the mechanisms of exploitation are hidden behind independent, objectified, and reified
structures, such as the market.
Class Conflict
The conflict created by the contradictory positions of two groups, the proletariat and the capitalists, is at the
heart of capitalism. Because these represent groups in conflict, Marx called them classes. For Marx, every
period of history contained fault lines upon which potential conflict could result, and, thus, every historical
period had its own class formations. Because capitalists are continually accumulating capital while also
competing with other capitalists, Marx believed that more and more members of society would eventually
become proletarians in a process he called proletarianization. Society would then be characterized by a very
small number of capitalists exploiting a large number of poor proletarians subsisting on low wages. Marx
called this group of proletarians the industrial reserve army. Thus, the normal operation of the capitalist
system, through competition and exploitation, produces an ever greater number of workers who will
eventually rise up to overthrow the system.
Capitalism as a Good Thing
Despite his criticisms, Marx was aware of the benefits of capitalism, and generally understood it to be a good
thing. The productive capacity of capitalism could free people from need, and it delivered people from the
traditions that have dominated them throughout history. Marx criticized capitalism from a future-oriented
perspective, based upon his understanding of what capitalism, as a revolutionary force in modern society,
was capable of, and what its limits were.
Marx thought that capitalism had fully developed itself and that it was ready to enter a new mode of
production, communism.
The Materialist Conception of History
Marx's future-oriented perspective has its basis in his materialist conception of history. He suggests that the
ways societies provide for their material well-being affects the type of relations that people will have with
one another, their social institutions, and the prevailing ideas of the day. Marx uses the term "the forces of
production" to refer to the ways in which people provide for their needs. He uses the term "relations of
production" to describe social relationships that dominate the productive capacities of a society. Under
capitalism, the forces of production lead to a set of relations of production which pit the capitalist and the
proletariat against one another. To change the relations of production, Marx felt revolution was necessary.
Revolution arises from exploited classes agitating for change in the relations of production that favor
transformations in the forces of production.
Ideology
The relations of production act to dissuade revolutionary behavior, as do the prevalent ideas within society.
Many of these ideas cloud the true relationships that underlie capitalist society. Marx called these kinds of
ideas ideologies. The first type of ideology is emergent from the structure of society, and can be seen in
things like the fetishism of commodities, or money. The second type is used by the ruling class to hide the
contradiction of this system when it becomes apparent. These explain away the contradiction by making
them seem coherent (as in religion or philosophy), making them seem the product of personal pathologies,
or making them seem a reflection of the contradiction within human nature itself and, therefore, immutable.
Marx used equality and freedom, our ideas of which stem from the nature of commodity exchange in
capitalist society. These mask the fact that we are neither equal with one another nor able to freely control
our labor or the products of our labor. Capitalism inverts our notion of equality and freedom: it is capital
that is freely and equally exchanged, not individuals who are free and equal.
Marx also viewed religion as an ideology. Just as freedom and equality are ideas to be cherished, religion
also contains positive dimensions, but it has been used to disguise the true set of relations that undergird
capitalism.
Criticisms
Marx has faced a number of criticisms. Most importantly, actual existing communism failed to fulfill its
promise. Though these experiments may have distorted Marx's thought, Marxist theory certainly did not
reflect its practice. Second, history has shown that workers have rarely been in the vanguard of
revolutionary movements, and indeed have resisted communism in some places. Third, Marx failed to
adequately consider gender as factor in the reproduction of labor and commodity production. Fourth, some
have accused Marx of focusing far too much on production, without giving enough attention to the act of
consumption. Last, Marx's historical materialist approach uncritically accepts Western notions of progress.
Emile Durkheim
Sociology as a Discipline and Social Facts
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) is considered one of the "fathers" of sociology because of his effort
to establish sociology as a discipline distinct from philosophy and psychology. This effort is
evident in the two main themes that permeate Durkheim's work: the priority of the social over
the individual and the idea that society can be studied scientifically. Durkheim's concept of social
facts, in particular, differentiates sociology from philosophy and psychology. Social facts are the
social structures and cultural norms and values that are external to, and coercive over,
individuals. Social facts are not attached to any particular individual; nor are they reducible to
individual consciousness. Thus, social facts can be studied empirically. According to Durkheim,
two different types of social facts exist: material and immaterial. Durkheim was most interested
in studying the latter, particularly morality, collective conscience, collective representation, and
social currents.
The Division of Labor
In this work Durkheim discusses how modern society is held together by a division of labor that
makes individuals dependent upon one another because they specialize in different types of work.
Durkheim is particularly concerned about how the division of labor changes the way that
individuals feel they are part of society as a whole. Societies with little division of labor (i.e.,
where people are self-sufficient) are unified by mechanical solidarity; all people engage in similar
tasks and thus have similar responsibilities, which builds a strong collective conscience. Modern
society, however, is held together by organic solidarity (the differences between people), which
weakens collective conscience. Durkheim studied these different types of solidarity through laws.
A society with mechanical solidarity is characterized by repressive law, while a society with
organic solidarity is characterized by restitutive law.
Suicide
Durkheim's goal to differentiate sociology from psychology is perhaps best seen in this work on
how social facts can be used to explain suicide rates. This work is also important because of the
historical comparative method that Durkheim uses to show that that suicide rates vary across
societies and over time. According to Durkheim, suicide cannot simply be explained by individual
psychological problems—otherwise suicide rates would be static. Durkheim argues that two social
facts, in particular, influence suicide rates: integration, or the strength of attachment people feel
to society, and regulation, or the degree of external constraint on people. Durkheim distinguishes
between four types of suicide that correlate to these two social facts. Egoistic suicide is a result of
a lack of integration; altruistic suicide is a result of too much integration; anomic suicide is a
result of too little regulation; and fatalistic suicide is a result of too much regulation.
Elementary Forms of Religious Life
This is perhaps Durkheim's most complex work, as he attempts to provide both a sociology of
religion and a theory of knowledge. In this work, Durkheim studies primitive society to
demonstrate that an enduring quality of all religions, even the most modern, is the differentiation
between the sacred and the profane. The sacred is created through rituals, and what is deemed
sacred is what morally binds individuals to society. This moral bond then becomes, according to
Durkheim, a cognitive bond that shapes the categories we use to understand the social world.
The development of religion is not simply based on the differentiation between the sacred and the
profane, but also on religious beliefs, rituals, and the church. The latter two conditions are
particularly important to Durkheim because they connect the individual to the social; individuals
learn about the sacred and religious beliefs through participating in rituals and the church. The
most primitive form of religion is totemism, which is connected to the least complex form of social
organization, the clan. The totem is the actual representation of the clan—it is the material
representation of the nonmaterial, collective morality of the clan.
Totemism is important to Durkheim's theory of knowledge in that it is one of his categories of
understanding: classification. Other categories of understanding include time, space, force,
causality, and totality. These six categories may be abstract concepts, but they are all derived
from social experiences, particularly rituals. Durkheim acknowledges that it is possible for moral
and cognitive categories to change or be created anew through what he calls collective
effervescence, or periods of great collective exaltation.
Cult of the Individual
Although Durkheim focused much of his attention on the social, he did not dismiss the idea of
individualism. Indeed, he believed that in modern society the individual has become sacred, and
he called the modern form of collective conscience the cult of the individual. According to
Durkheim, humans are constituted by two beings or selves: one is based on the isolated
individuality of the body, and the other is based on the social. These two beings may be in a
continual state of tension, and they are connected in that individuality develops as society
develops. For example, it is only in modern society, characterized by the division of labor, that
people even come to understand themselves as distinct individuals. Durkheim argued that
individuality has both positive and negative consequences. Egoism, or the selfish pursuit of
individual interests, is at odds with moral individualism, the ability to sacrifice self-interest for the
rights of all other individual human beings.
Moral Education and Social Reform
Durkheim believed that society is the source of morality; therefore, he also believed that society
could be reformed, especially through moral education. According to Durkheim, morality is
composed of three elements: discipline, attachment, and autonomy. Discipline constrains egoistic
impulses; attachment is the voluntary willingness to be committed to groups; and autonomy is
individual responsibility. Education provides children with these three moral tools needed to
function in society. Adults can also acquire these moral tools by joining occupational associations.
According to Durkheim, these associations would include members of a particular occupation
regardless of class position and could provide a level of integration and regulation, both of which
tend to be weakened by the division of labor.
Criticisms
Durkheim is often criticized for being a functionalist and a positivist. However, his historical
comparative methodology puts him at odds with functionalists and positivists who believe that
invariant social laws exist that can explain social phenomenon across all societies. Durkheim does
tend to emphasize the objective nature of social facts; thus, he neglects the subjective
interpretations that social actors may have of a particular social phenomenon and the agency of
individuals in general to control social forces. Furthermore, Durkheim's basic assumption about
human nature—that people are driven by their passion for gratification that can never be
satisfied—is not empirically substantiated in any of his work. Finally, Durkheim's understanding of
the relationship between morality and sociology has been critiqued as being conservative.
George Herbert Mead
Pragmatism and Behaviorism
The theories of George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) were shaped by pragmatism and behaviorism.
Like pragmatists, Mead adhered to the belief in the superiority of scientific data over philosophic
dogma and the importance of empirical investigation of the social world. Mead has been
associated with the philosophic realist branch of pragmatism because he emphasized society and
how it constitutes and controls individual mental processes. Like behaviorists, Mead believed in
studying the experiences of individuals from the point of view of their conduct. However, he
disagreed with the behaviorist use of introspection to study mental processes. Instead, Mead
proposed that the most effective way to study the mind was to study what he called the social
act.
The Social Act and Gestures
The most primitive unit in Mead's theory is the social act. Mead identified four stages of the social
act: impulse, perception, manipulation, and consummation. The first stage, impulse, involves an
immediate stimulation and an actor's reaction to this stimulus. Perception, the second stage,
refers to how an actor searches for and reacts to a stimulus, while the third stage, manipulation,
involves an actor's ability to manipulate a given stimulus. Finally, the fourth stage,
consummation, refers to the action one takes in satisfying the original impulse. The important
point to note concerning Mead's understanding of the social act is that human beings possess the
mental faculties and social agency to make choices regarding how to respond to a given stimulus.
The gesture is the basic mechanism of the social act. Gestures refer to how the action of one
individual mindlessly and automatically elicits a reaction by another individual. However, human
beings are capable of engaging in meaningful or significant gestures. Gestures become significant
symbols when they arouse in the individual who is making them the same kind of response they
are supposed to elicit from those to whom the gesture is addressed. Language, as a set of vocal
gestures, is one of the most important types of significant symbols, as it makes human
communication possible.
The Mind, the Self, and Society
Mead's most widely read work, Mind, Self and Society, gives priority to society over the mind and
highlights the idea that the social leads to the development of mental states. To Mead, the mind
is a process, not a thing, and it is found in social phenomena rather than within individuals.
The self occupies a central place in Mead's theory. Mead defines the self as the ability to take
oneself as an object and identifies the basic mechanism of the development of the self as
reflexivity — the ability to put ourselves into the place of others and act as they act. Mead makes
it clear that a self can arise only through social experiences, and he traces its development to two
stages in childhood: the play stage and the game stage. During the play stage, children learn how
to take the attitude of particular others to themselves, but it is only during the game stage that
children learn how to take the role of many others and the attitude of the generalized other. Mead
also discussed the difference between the "I" and the "me" in his theory of the self. The "I" is the
immediate response of an individual to others; it is the unpredictable and creative aspect of the
self. The "me" is the organized set of attitudes of others that an individual assumes; it is how
society dominates the individual and is a source of social control.
Dialectical Thinking
Mead's sociological theory encompasses dialectical thinking in terms of his reluctance to view the
world in a causal manner and his apprehension about differentiating social processes like the
mind and the self. Mead takes a relational view of the social world, which is evident in his theory
of the relationship between the "I" and the "me." Furthermore, while Mead is interested in
studying how present, past, and future societies are related, he does not have a deterministic
view about the future. Finally, Mead, like other dialecticians, is concerned with conflict and
contradiction. According to Mead, social change and innovation are possible, and result from the
continuing conflict between the "I" and the "me."