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p.5 Humans have the capacity for generalizing so that when they act they always take up the attitude of what Mead called the generalized other. In other words, they always take the attitude, the tendency to act, of the group or society in relation to their actions - they are concerned about what others may think of what they do or say. This is often unconscious and it is, of course, a powerful form of social control.
p.5 The social object is a generalization that exists only when it is made particular in the ordinary local interaction between people.
p.6 Elias' work shows in detail how norms constitute major aspects of the personality structures, or identities, of interdependent people.
p.7 Values arise in social processes of self-formation (Joas, 2000) - they are fundamental aspects of self, giving meaning to life
p.33 in their interdependence humans constrain and enable each other. Since power is such an enabling constraint, power is an irremovable aspect of all human relating. Patterns of power relations are always emerging in human interaction (Elias, 1939, 1970).
p.33 in their interdependence humans constrain and enable each other. Since power is such an enabling constraint, power is an irremovable aspect of all human relating. Patterns of power relations are always emerging in human interaction (Elias, 1939, 1970). In addition, human agents use simple and more and more complicated tools and technologies to accomplish what they choose to do. It is these embodied attributes of consciousness, self-consciousness, reflection and reflexivity, creativity, imagination and fantasy, communication, meaning, power, choice, evaluation, tool use and sociality that should be explicitly brought to any interpretation, as regards human beings, of the insights derived from complex adaptive system simulations.
p.33-34 George Herbert Mead... understands consciousness as arising in the communicative interaction between human bodies. Humans have evolved central nervous systems such that when one gestures to another, particularly in the form of vocal gesture or language, one evokes in one's own body responses to one's own gesture that are similar to those evoked in other bodies. Mead refers to this as communication in the medium of significant symbols. In other words, in their acting, humans take the attitude, the tendency to act, of the other, and it is because they have this capacity to communicate in significant symbols that humans can know what they are doing. It immediately follows that consciousness (knowing, mind) is a social process in which meaning emerges in the social act of gesture-response, where the gesture can never be separated from the response. Meaning does not lie in the gesture, the word, alone but only in the gesture taken together with the response to it.
p.33-34 consciousness (knowing, mind) is a social process in which meaning emerges in the social act of gesture-response, where the gesture can never be separated from the response. Meaning does not lie in the gesture, the word, alone but only in the gesture taken together with the response to it.
p.34 Humans have the capacity for generalizing so that when they act they always take up the attitude of what Mead called the generalized other or the social object. In other words, they always take the attitude of the group or society to their actions - they are concerned about what others might think of what they do or say. This is often unconscious and it is, of course, a powerful form of social control.
p.34 In Mead's work we have a theory of consciousness and self-consciousness emerging in the social interaction between human bodies in the medium of significant symbols, and at the same time widespread social patterns also emerge, as they do for the complex adaptive system simulations described earlier.
p.35 Social objects are common plans or patterns of action related to the existent future of the act. Social control is the bringing of the act of the individual into relation with the social object, and the contours of the object determine the organization of the act. Social control depends upon the degree to which the individual takes the attitude of the others; that is, takes the attitude which is the social object. All institutions are social objects and serve to control individuals who find them in their experience. It is important to notice how Mead used the term 'object' in a social sense as a 'tendency to act' rather than as a concept of a thing, which are meanings appropriate to physical objects... The pattern or tendency Mead calls an object is in a sense an object in that it is what we perceive in taking it up in our acting, but this is perception of our own acting, not a thing.
p.35 In order to accomplish complex social acts, people need to be able to take the attitude of all of those directly or indirectly engaged in the complex social act.
p.53 By social object Mead meant something that arises in perception and which is other than a physical object or an object purely of our imagination (so-called scientific objects). Social objects are the generalized patterns of gestures and responses emerging from human interaction. Social objects are, at the same time, our perceptions of action on the part of others and the feelings or tendencies to action that are aroused in us as we participate socially one with another. It is our ability to hold such objects in our reflexive awareness of our social environment that enables us to be actors within it, just as it is our perception of physical objects that enables and constrains our action in the physical world. Objects in perception are what Mead described as the 'stuff' of images and then ultimately, once signified in words and language use, the material through which we are able to communicate our sense of our experiences to others as significant symbols. Social objects, argued Mead, allow us to frame responses to our social context as we are able to both generalize and symbolize in language and word structures patterns of human interaction.
p.53 By social object Mead meant something that arises in perception and which is other than a physical object or an object purely of our imagination (so-called scientific objects). Social objects are the generalized patterns of gestures and responses emerging from human interaction. Social objects are, at the same time, our perceptions of action on the part of others and the feelings or tendencies to action that are aroused in us as we participate socially one with another. It is our ability to hold such objects in our reflexive awareness of our social environment that enables us to be actors within it, just as it is our perception of physical objects that enables and constrains our action in the physical world... Social objects, argued Mead, allow us to frame responses to our social context as we are able to both generalize and symbolize... patterns of human interaction.
p.56 normative behaviors are also established by all of us in the context of the movement of these power relations as we take up the attitudes of what Mead described as the 'generalized other'. By this he means the habits, routines and expectations that are associated with particular social roles and functions. This is the social process that Elias described as figuration (Elias, [1939] 2000), which he understood as the perpetual movement of relations between people as they enable and constrain each other.
p.96 To Mead, the self is a social object... we call forth attitudes both from within ourselves and from others which have distinctive patterns and in which the total complexity of the social act may be discovered... Human beings have a unique capacity to call forth in themselves an experience of how others may gesture and respond in relation to social objects. Mead links the notion of social objects with the issue of social control. In Mead's terms, self-organization occurs in human society because of the constraints and attitudes called forth by social objects. Social objects organize our acts.
In so far as there are social acts, there are social objects, and I take it that social control is bringing the act of the individual into relation with this social object. With the control of the object over the act, we are abundantly familiar. Just because the object is the form of the act, in character it controls the expression of the act. (Mead, 1925, pp.273-274)
p.96 Mead suggests that human beings are unique in their capacity to create social objects and societies. Human beings have a unique capacity to call forth in themselves an experience of how others may gesture and respond in relation to social objects. Mead links the notion of social objects with the issue of social control. In Mead's terms, self-organization occurs in human society because of the constraints and attitudes called forth by social objects. Social objects organize our acts.
p.97 In Mead's terms... people's actions are formed by their attitudes towards the institution as a social object
p.98 there are patterns of response to the social object which allow for the construction of meaning and purpose and which constrain people to iterative patterns of interaction.
p.155 Mead's 'self' is formed by three aspects of intersubjective activity, namely language, play and the game. Language is communication through significant symbols by which one can take the attitudes of others towards oneself as an object or self. The development of self-consciousness is in the linguistic activity of playing and gaming through which one can enter into the process of role playing.
p.157 [McNamee and Gergen] As it is reasoned, actions in themselves have no meaning; they acquire meaning only as they are supplemented by the actions of others (Gergen, 1994). Thus, meaning is a by-product of relatedness.
p.187 human interaction, when richly enough connected, has the inherent capacity to spontaneously produce coherent pattern in itself without any blueprint or programme.
p.188 [Elias and Scotson] This basic issue resulting from many single plans and actions of people can give rise to changes and patterns that no individual person has planned or created. From this interdependence of people arises an order sui generis, an order more compelling and stronger, than the will and reason of the individual people composing it.
p.188 Elias challenges the notion of the unilinear sequence of cause and effect in human causality... Elias argues that we cannot simplistically ascribe an outcome to a single cause, or indeed to a series of events in a linear development. He uses game models to illustrate the actions and responses of interdependent people as moves in games. He urges us, in anticipating 'what happens next', to attend to how the preceding moves of players have intertwined and to the specific figuration, or network of relationships, which has resulted from this intertwining, and which immediately precedes the move one makes
p.188 order is continually emerging in our practice as we carry on, taking into account of the changing environment, understood not as something fixed, as mainstream strategic choice theory seems to imply, but as a network of relationships in which we participate as interdependent people. This is very different understanding of agency and of causality to that which we encounter in strategic choice theory.
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