self
self, the selfIn sociology, the concept of self is most frequently held to derive from the philosophies of William James, Charles Cooley, and George Mead, and is the foundation of symbolic interactionism. It highlights the reflective and reflexive ability of human beings to take themselves as objects of their own thought. For Mead, ‘it is the self that makes the distinctively human society possible’ (see Mind, Self and Society, 1934). In this work, a distinction is usually drawn between two aspects of the self: the ‘I’, which is spontaneous, inner, creative, and subjective; and the ‘Me’, which is the organized attitudes of others, connects to the wider society, is more social and determined. The ‘Me’ is often called the self-concept—how people see themselves through the eyes of others—and is much...
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