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George Herbert Mead on Humans and Other Animals: Social Relations after Human-Animal Studies
Sociological Research Online
Volume 18, Issue 4, November 2013, Pages 182-194
© 2013 SAGE Publications and the British Sociological Association, Article Reuse Guidelines
https://doi-org.manchester.idm.oclc.org/10.5153/sro.3191
Article
George Herbert Mead on Humans and Other Animals: Social
Relations after Human-Animal Studies
Rhoda Wilkie and Andrew Mckinnon
Abstract
The turn towards nonhuman animals within sociology has shed a critical light on George
Herbert Mead, his apparent prioritisation of language and the anthropocentric focus of
Symbolic Interactionism (SI). Although Herbert Blumer canonised Mead as the founder of this
perspective he also played a key role in excising the evolutionary and ‘more-than-human’
components in Mead’s work. This intervention not only misrepresented Mead’s intellectual
project, it also made symbols the predominant concern in Blumer’s version of SI. Since
groundbreaking animal sociologists in America framed much of their thinking in opposition to
SI’s emphasis on language, because it excluded alingual animal others from sociological
consideration, Mead’s Mind, Self, and Society has largely functioned as a negative classic
within this sub-field. Although some scholars recognise there is more in Mead’s work that is
potentially applicable to this interspecies area the attempt to recover what might be helpful
has yet to begin (e.g. Alger & Alger 1997). This paper suggests that if the ambiguities and
contradictions that exist alongside Mead’s oft-quoted anthropocentrisms are also attended
to this may open up a more positive reading and use of Mead’s work for animal sociology.
Keywords
Mead, Symbolic Interactionism, Human–Animal Studies, Animal Turn
University of Aberdeen
Introduction
1.1 In a little-known article published in 1928, The Culture of Canines: A note on subhuman
sociology, Read Bain notes that the ‘denial of culture to subhuman animals is probably a
phase of anthropocentrism’ (Bain in Wilkie & Inglis 2007: 8). In this paper, the American
sociologist also observed: ‘[j]ust as animal intelligent and emotional behaviour, anatomical
and physiological structure and function, and group life, have their correlates in human
behaviour, so the dividing line between animal and human culture is likewise vague and
arbitrary’ (ibid: 9). In hindsight, although Bain had anticipated the emergence of ‘animal
sociology’ and the need for multispecies scholarship (ibid: 6), it would take a further five
decades for people’s relations with other animals to register once again on the discipline’s
radar. Since early sociologists largely overlooked ‘the influence of animals, or their import
for, our social behaviour, [and] our relationships with other humans’, it was the publication of
Clifton Bryant’s seminal paper in 1979 that influenced contemporary sociologists to address
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George Herbert Mead on Humans and Other Animals: Social Relations after Human-Animal Studies
the ‘zoological connection’; he did this by reminding colleagues
that ‘[o]ur social enterprise
[1]
is not composed of humans alone’ (1979: 399 & 417). By drawing attention to the
interspecies blind spot within sociology Bryant also contributed to the scholarly turn towards
nonhuman animals within the social sciences (Armstrong & Simmons 2007).
1.2 This burgeoning interest in multispecies research facilitated the formation of Human–
Animal Studies (HAS), a pioneering interdisciplinary field dedicated ‘to examining,
understanding, and critically evaluating the complex and multidimensional relationships
between humans and other animals’ (Shapiro 2008: 5; Shapiro & DeMello 2010). The
proliferation in recent years of ‘new books, journals, conferences, organizations, college
programs, listservs, and courses, both in the United States and throughout Europe, Australia,
New Zealand, and Canada’ (Shapiro & DeMello 2010: 307) highlights the thriving nature of
this ‘more-than-human’ field (Whatmore 2006: 604). Although two journals opened up this
scholarly area, Anthrozoös (1987) and Society and Animals (1993), there are now seventeen
HAS-related journals listed on the Animals and Society Institute’s website (2013). The
growing popularity of multispecies scholarship is further evidenced by the upsurge of
human-animal edited collections (e.g. Wolch & Emel 1998; Atterton & Calarco 2004; Knight
2005; Kalof & Fitzgerald 2007; Wilkie & Inglis 2007; Flynn 2008; Arluke & Sanders 2009;
Carter and Charles 2011; Taylor & Signal 2011; Birke & Hockenhull 2012; Dekoven & Lundblad
2012) and the publication of two introductory textbooks (Demello 2012; Taylor 2013).
1.3 As growing numbers of sociologists are conducting interspecies-related research (e.g.
Arluke & Sanders 1996; Franklin 1999; Sanders 1999; Nibert 2002; Irvine 2004; Brandt 2004;
Arluke 2006; Twine 2010; Wilkie 2010; Cudworth 2011; Hamilton & Taylor 2012; Morris 2012;
Peggs 2012; Jerolmack 2013) professional sociological associations have responded to this
development by setting up specialist research groups. The American Sociological Association
set up the Animals and Society Section in 2002, and four years later, the British Sociological
Association established the Animal/Human Studies Group. Despite these institutional
developments and trends the perpetuation of such study groups is thought to lie with
‘graduate students who have the courage to challenge the field’s (i.e. sociology’s) outdated
ideas about animals’ (Irvine 2012: s127). Since animal studies have been described as
‘boutique’ sociology (Arluke 2002: 370), and some sociologists have ‘experienced responses
that range from amusement to derision’ (Kruse 2002: 377) with reference to the mixedspecies focus of their research, this highlights the ambiguous status of nonhuman animals
and HAS scholars within sociology, and the politicised nature of interspecies scholarship (e.g.
Jerolmack 2005; Best 2009). Although some sociologists enthusiastically engage with
mixed-species relations, to study nonhuman animals in what has largely been a humancentric discipline also has the potential to tarnish the academic status of those engaged in
such scholarship (Wilkie 2013).
1.4 Contemporary sociology has clearly responded to the ‘animal turn’, but its response
has been somewhat slower than cognate disciplines (Armstrong & Simmons 2007: 1). In the
words of Nik Taylor, a human-animal sociologist herself, ‘The humanities have been slow to
catch up with many other disciplines such as ethology in seeing animals differently … and
arguably the social sciences – particularly sociology – are even further behind’ (2012: 44).
That said, other species are registering on sociology’s radar and more sociologists are
attracted to and participating in human-animal scholarship. As groundbreaking scholars
animalise their sociological imaginations a recurring field-forming narrative has materialised
within animal sociology to explain why nonhuman animals, and interspecies relations, have
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George Herbert Mead on Humans and Other Animals: Social Relations after Human-Animal Studies
not been studied sociologically. The social theorist who has most often been singled out for
this disciplinary oversight is George Herbert Mead; since Mead’s ‘interpretation of humans as
profoundly distinct from other animals seems to be accepted as the origin of the
fundamental division between humans and other animals in sociology’ (Peggs 2012: 6) we will
now consider in more depth the case against Mead’s work, and follow it by a somewhat
different reading of his texts.
A critical reading of Mead by human–animal sociologists
2.1 The common reading of Mead as a ‘symbolic interactionist’ may be both anachronistic
and an oversimplification of his work, but it has nonetheless been a productive misreading
(Bloom 1973). Similarly, because pioneering animal sociologists have been critical of Mead’s
apparent prioritisation of verbal language, their human-centric reading of Mead would inspire
important empirical and theoretical innovation (e.g. Sanders 1993, 1999; Alger & Alger 1997,
2003; Irvine 2003, 2004). Animal sociologists often argue that since Mead elevated the
spoken word above all other forms of communication (a point to which we shall return at
length later), he asserted human exceptionalism (Alger & Alger 1997). By separating humanhuman interaction from all other species, Mead thereby bolstered ‘the conventional
sociological belief that “authentic” interaction is premised on the abilities of social actors to
employ conventional linguistic symbols’ (Sanders 1993: 205–206). Since animals do not
converse as people do, the nature and significance of mixed-species relations ought to be of
minimal interest to sociologists. Given this disciplinary backdrop, Sanders argues that Mead’s
view of animals
came to be a taken-for-granted assumption when sociologists occasionally passed lightly over
the topic of animal–human interactions. Since animals were not full-fledged social actors from
the Median point of view, their encounters with humans were one-way exchanges, lacking the
intersubjectivity at the heart of true social interaction. People interacted with animals-asobjects (1999: 118).
2.2 This reading of Mead suggests that he supplanted the ‘Aristotelian and Cartesian
markers of human difference – “soul” or “mind” – with a secularized … version: language
behaviour’ (Myers 2007: 42). The sociological significance of Mead’s prioritisation of
language is that the ‘“verbal gesture” enables self-reflectiveness, the only means by which
the person integrates the various perspectives of others. Thus, selfhood is only attained in
the context of a [2]society of other language users, in which animals are not participants’
(Myers 2007: 42). As alingual others, nonhuman animals were consigned to the instinctual
exchange of insignificant expressions, to a ‘conversation of gestures’. As Mead explains in
one oft-quoted passage,
Gestures may be either conscious (significant) or unconscious (non-significant). The
conversation of gestures is not significant below the human level, because it is not conscious,
that is not self -conscious (though it is conscious in the sense of involving feelings or
sensations). An animal as opposed to a human form, in indicating something to, or bringing out a
meaning for, another form, is not at the same time indicating or bringing out the same thing or
meaning to or for himself; for the animal has no mind, no thought, and hence there is no
meaning here in the significant or self-conscious sense. A gesture is not significant when the
response of another organism to it does not indicate to the first organism what the second
organism is responding to (Mead 1964: 168 emphasis in original).[3]
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The depiction of animals as non-minded creates a categorical distinction between
humans and other animals, which is undoubtedly present in this passage – even if Mead’s
thought elsewhere is much more nuanced (as we discuss below).
2.3 Human exceptionalism was the norm when Mead was writing, although it was
contested, and would be cast into increasing doubt as the century progressed (e.g. Demello
2012; Ingold 1994; Manning & Serpell 1994). Since the 1970s, attitudes towards and
knowledge about animals in industrialised societies has been characterised by a decline of
‘anthropocentric instrumentality’ and a rise in ‘zoocentric empathy’ (Franklin 1999: 175).[4]
The proliferation of animal-orientated fields, such as cognitive ethology, primatology and
animal science, have contributed to this trend by presenting a more propitious perception of
animals; these areas have enhanced and refined our understanding of animal intelligence,
emotion, sociality, communication and culture in different species of animals (e.g. Bekoff
2006; Birke & Hockenhull 2012; Degrazia 1996; De Waal 2001; Griffin 1976, 1984; Hillix &
Rumbaugh 2004; Masson & McCarthy 1994). For example, ‘Ethologists and comparative
psychologists have discovered increasing complexities in animal behaviour during the past
few decades. … [Such research indicates that] complex processes occur within animal
brains, … that … may have much in common with our own mental experiences (Griffin 1976:
3). This is perhaps most evident in primate language research that explores how ‘border
animals’ have been taught to use lexigrams, which are ‘abstract symbols representing
words’, and American Sign Language, a system of gestural symbols (Sanders 1999: 128–129;
Great Ape Trust 2012).
2.4 Such studies have stimulated debate and also softened hard-and-fast distinctions
between animal communication
and human language (Alger & Alger 1997: 66; Sanders 1999;
[5]
Segerdahl 2012). This blurring of the human–animal boundary indicates that animals may
have varying capacities to engage in forms of communication, and that ‘the absence of
language in animals does not necessarily preclude the existence of mental experiences and
consciousness’ (Alger & Alger 1997: 66). Although lay accounts readily depict companion
animals as minded beings, this commonplace practice of ‘endowing … domestic animals with
personality’ according to Mead is the result of anthropomorphic projection i.e. ‘We put
personalities into the animals … We talk to them and in our talking to them we act as if they
had the sort of inner world we have’ (cited in Sanders 1999: 118).
2.5 By elevating the spoken word above all other forms of communication Mead’s thinking
has been typically understood by animal sociologists to have perpetuated the ‘Cartesian
error’, ‘establish[ing] two states of consciousness: one for those who could converse about
it, and another, lesser form for those who could not’ (Irvine 2004: 122). Mead does identify
the use of symbolisation and language as a difference between humans and other animals.
However, he is also inconsistent about the extent to which this was an absolute species
difference or one of a series of characteristics that distinguish a range of different species.
We suggest – and will later show – that Mead’s texts are full of unresolved contradictions;[6]
there are times when he indicates that some nonhuman animals may be capable of the
significant gesture, and then at other times he recoils from this position and asserts that only
humans can use significant gestures. Such inconsistencies are suggestive of a much more
nuanced and ambivalent understanding of the species boundary in Mead’s thinking than has
generally been recognised.
2.6 A significant source for subsequent misunderstandings of Mead’s thinking may stem
from the work of editors and interpreters who have re-constructed – and perhaps
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misrepresented – his ideas. In the preface to Mead’s important posthumous work, Mind, Self,
and Society Charles Morris explains that it was constructed from a mixture of student lecture
notes, ‘a stenographic copy of the 1927 course in social psychology’ given at the University
of Chicago, and ‘unpublished manuscripts left by Mr Mead … [thus] the whole is by no
means a court record’ (Mead 1934: vi). Furthermore, although his book consists of three
parts, each corresponding to an element in the title, it is also unlikely that students have read
every section of this magnum opus; many sociologists will have focused on the Self and few
will have ventured into the chapters on Mind and Society. To the extent to which this is true,
this will have contributed to the perception that the self was Mead’s overriding concern,
however doubtful it is that this middle term can be adequately understood without reference
to either Mind or Society. Finally, we also suggest that Herbert Blumer, who was the
‘principal interpreter of Mead’s thought’ and the person who coined the term ‘symbolic
interactionism’ in 1937 is largely responsible for narrowing Mead’s intellectual project (Turner
1991: 391; Blumer 1969: 1). By portraying Mead’s contribution as a social conception of the
(human) self that prioritised the importance of language, Blumer pushed aside the human–
animal comparative element and excised the evolutionary framework that also runs through
and shaped Mead’s thinking.
2.7 Since Blumer canonised Mead as the founder of Symbolic Interactionism he
popularised a version of Interactionism that prioritised the importance of symbols and
language. Although animal sociologists have reacted to, and been rightly critical of this
overemphasis in Mead’s work, we suggest that the human-centric version of Interactionism
put forward by his posthumous editors and Blumer have done an intellectual disservice to
Mead’s ‘more-than-human’ focus (Sanders 1993: 206; Whatmore 2006: 604) and has
contributed to his work acting as a negative classic within animal sociology. For example, the
thinking of some groundbreaking American sociologists within this interspecies field, was
initially framed in opposition to Mead’s emphasis on language, which excluded alingual
animal others from sociological consideration. As Irvine notes, ‘Even if language were the
unique property of human beings, making it the sole vehicle of the self and meaningful
behaviour overlooks the significance of other forms of communication’ (2003: 47; see also
Konecki 2005).
2.8 By deemphasising language and decentring the ‘significant gesture’ these human–
animal sociologists (some from the school of Symbolic Interactionism itself) opened-up an
alternative line of sociological enquiry that would draw on, and attend to, non-verbal forms
of communication in interpersonal interactions to understand interspecies relations. For
example, studies have shown that when people routinely interact with those who are severely
disabled (e.g. Bogdan & Taylor 1989) or suffer from Alzheimer’s disease (e.g. Gubrium 1986)
they carry out a form of ‘symbolic ventriloquism’ i.e. they ‘speak for’ the linguistically
impaired or non-verbal other (Owens 2007: 577). Since carers and family members accrue
intimate knowledge about and understanding of their loved one’s non-verbal gestures,
preferences and emotions this enables them to speak on their behalf. This interlocutory
practice draws heavily on a shared interpersonal history as it is this that provides the basis
from which the socially competent person feels they can convey what they think the socially
impaired person is ‘really’ trying to say. Although it has been noted that ‘attributing selves to
those who cannot speak simply imposes a sense of self’ (Irvine 2007: 10), taking the role of
and giving voice to the inarticulate other has nonetheless enabled carers to construct the
‘minded “personhood”’ of alingual and socially impaired others which (re)integrates them
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into the ‘language community’ (Arluke & Sanders 1996: 62–64). Such work highlights an
interactional understanding of selfhood that is less reliant, if at all, on language (Irvine 2003:
47).
2.9 The idea of ‘doing mind’ in non-linguistic ways also resonates with ethnographic
accounts of people who routinely interact and work with animals (Sanders 2003). This is
because animal carers ‘who have practical interests in making ongoing sense of their
[animal’s] behaviour consistently see … [them] as subjective actors and define interactions
with them as being “authentic” and reciprocal social exchanges’ (Sanders 1993: 206).
Although Mead might have sometimes been inclined to see these as ‘mere anthropomorphic
delusions’ Sanders found that those ‘who regularly interact with companion canines typically
assume a practical “as if” stance with regard to the[7] thoughts, feelings, and interactional
abilities of their nonhuman intimates’ (1999: 141–148). Just as carers construct the identity
of socially and verbally impaired loved ones by recognising their capacity ‘to reason,
understand and remember’, seeing them as individuals who have the ability to reciprocate,
and fully integrating them into social networks such as the family, animal carers also draw on
these ‘categories of evidence’ to construct the ‘person-like’ like status of their nonhuman
animal companions (Bogdan & Taylor 1989: 139; Sanders 1993: 211, 221; Charles & Davies
2008). If people perceive animate and non-animate others as having the capacity to ‘act
meaningfully and independently’ then they will act towards them accordingly (see also Cerulo
2009). As Owen further notes,
Whether or not it is inherently “possible” or “real” for … objects [and animals] to participate
actively in interaction is irrelevant. Interaction does not require that both parties willingly and
purposefully engage with one another. All that is required is the assumption by one party that
this is so, as anyone who has ever mistaken a stranger’s wave and waved enthusiastically in
return may attest. Nor is it required that both parties be able to symbolically interpret and share
meaning (2007: 568).
2.10 A recurring theme in this literature on mixed-species relationships has been the
endeavour of animal sociologists to develop a form of symbolic interactionism that
demonstrates that ‘shared understanding, communication, and
construction of minds and
[8]
selves are possible without language’ (Jerolmack 2005: 658). For example, by drawing on
infancy research Irvine’s model of animal selfhood proposes that like infants, nonhuman
animals have a ‘core self [that] is pre-verbal’ (2004: 126; see also Irvine 2007). Based on the
experiences and accounts of those who visited an animal shelter, some of whom had no
intention of adopting an animal, she found that they all wanted to talk to and about the
animals therein. By expressing concern about the ‘animal’s needs and well-being’ they also
indicated that they perceived these animals as relational and subjective others. Irvine
develops her work in response to what she understands of Mead’s view that it is people who
endow animals with personality and subjectivity. She identifies four dimensions that
collectively constituted the animals’ ‘core self’: ‘agency, coherence, affectivity and history’
(Irvine 2008: 1964). Since those interacting with the animals perceived them to have a
‘subjective presence’, i.e. ‘as having a mind, beliefs, and desires … [t]his not only confirms
the other’s sense of self to us; it also confirms our own’ (Irvine 2004: 119).
2.11 In order to make these arguments, animal sociologists such as Irvine, Alger and Alger,
and Sanders have paid more attention to the sense of self as a ‘system of experiences’ i.e.
that ‘allows us to feel and to know’ (Irvine 2004: 127; see also Alger & Alger 1997: 69–71).
This more experiential understanding of the self resonates with Randall Collins, because he
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advocates ‘an emotional dimension to the concept of role-taking’ and envisages two types
of symbolic interaction, i.e. either orientated towards practical or social goals (Alger & Alger
1997: 70). Since social goals ‘are generated by our relationship to social groups, and they
focus on symbols of solidarity’ Collins believed such goals arise out of ‘natural interaction
rituals’ that ‘require at least two participants in the same location to “focus attention on the
same object or action, … are aware that each other is maintaining
this focus”, and … “share
[9]
a common mood or emotion”’ (Alger & Alger 1997: 70). The Algers, unlike Collins (1989),
think these interaction rituals are not necessarily reliant on linguistic exchanges. When
applied to human–animal relations it is the ‘emotive discourse’ that takes place between the
species that is of more significance (Gubrium in Sanders 1993: 222). What binds people and
nonhuman companion animals is the affectionate bond they build up as they mutually
participate in routine ritual activities such as play (e.g. Sanders 2003). As Sanders explains:
The generative context within which this emotionally focused construction of animal mind takes
place involves the accretion of mutual experience of what Collins (1989) referred to as “natural
rituals”. Caretakers and their dogs ongoingly share activities, moods, and routines. Coordination
of these natural rituals requires human and animal participants to assume the perspective of the
other and, certainly in the eyes of the owners and ostensibly on the part of the dogs, results in a
mutual recognition of being “together” (1993: 222).
2.12 The extent to which animals mutually participate or experience the same meanings as
their human partners in such interactions is difficult to evaluate; just as it is in human–human
interactions (Jerolmack 2005: 658). In light of this limitation, other animal sociologists have
questioned the need to ‘elevate animals to symbolic interactants … [or] assume “minds” or
shared meanings’ between people and animals. Instead Jerolmack believes that ‘associations
with humans and animals are still possible and enjoyable to humans even if symbolic
interaction is impossible’ (2009: 376). Given this standpoint, he thinks it is more ‘useful to
consider symbolic interaction as an ideal type by which to compare various interactions
along a continuum of intersubjectivity’. He also contends ‘there are layers of intersubjectivity
– from absolute shared perspective/understanding among two or more actors down to a
simple shared awareness of an object in the setting’ (Jerolmack 2009: 372), and illustrates
this using the example of playing ‘tug of war’ with his cat:
If I use a string to play ‘tug of war’ with my cat, we both share awareness of and action toward
the string. The string is shared among us, intersubjectively. However, while our actions meet in a
way that brings off this coordinated activity, we need not take the other’s point of view or share
the other’s understanding of the situation to carry this out. We could have entirely different
practical purposes or understandings of the encounter, and yet, for all practical purposes, the
game works (Jerolmack 2005: 659 emphasis in original).
2.13 This line of argument highlights that coordinated action is still feasible without
establishing a shared understanding of the situation (Jerolmack 2009: 373). In his most
recent work, The Global Pigeon, Jerolmack notes that ‘Interacting parties [in this case,
people feeding pigeons], … can have different intentions in “successful” interactions and
can assign asymmetrical meanings to them’ (2013: 38 emphasis in original).[10] This is an
important point because Mead also recognises that ‘individual organisms’, human and other
animals, act and interact socially by coordinating their actions by means of gestures, one
organism ‘calling forth’ actions of other organisms participating in the coordinated (inter)
action – this being the hallmark of sociality (Mead 1934: 13–14). Given this more species
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inclusive understanding of Meadian sociality, we suggest he would concur with contemporary
animal sociologists who believe that the difference between humans and other animals is a
matter of degree not kind. Our re-reading of Mead thus casts doubt on descriptions that
‘[h]is illustrative presentations of the limitations of squirrels, horses, elephants, foxes,
canaries, cats, dogs, and various other nonhuman animals were, in essence, neocartesian’
(Sanders 1999: 117). Although Mead does often draw a sharp line between human and animal
species, at other times his understanding of this species boundary was more nuanced.
Re-reading Mead on humans, animals and social relations
3.1 On the one hand, Mead’s anthropocentrism is central to the field-originary myth that has
emerged within animal sociology. On the other hand, because this aspect of Mead’s work is
more nuanced than the myth currently allows, we suggest the development of animal
sociology actually provides an opportunity to retrieve the more species inclusive elements
that were lost when Mead’s thought was truncated to serve as the founder of symbolic
Interactionism (Da Silva 2006). It is our contention that much of the criticisms that have been
directed at Mead have only been partially true, and reflect, among other things, the way
Mead’s work has been reconstructed as a founding classic of Symbolic Interaction (Da Silva
2006), beginning with Herbert Blumer’s work in the years following Mead’s death in 1931
(Blumer 1937). In the same way that Blumer’s productive misreading (Bloom 1973) of Mead
has been important for the construction of a school of thought called ‘Symbolic
Interactionism’, so too have the criticisms developed by animal sociology of this symbolic
interactionist Mead been a productive misreading. Although the symbolic interactionist’s
Mead and the animal sociology critics of Mead are worlds apart on the ‘animal question’
they nonetheless share a very similar understanding of Mead. This view of Mead is, however,
rather partial. We argue that, if we attend to the complexities and contradictions of Mead’s
work, we find a rather different Mead, one whose work may be more compatible with HAS.
3.2 In this paper we draw primarily on Mead’s best known texts, Mind, Self, and Society
(1934) and George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology (1964), even though these texts have
a definite weakness in the manner by which they have come to us. Recent scholarship shows
a much more fulsome picture of Mead’s oeuvre, including the publication of selections from
Mead’s archives, until recently the preserve of those who made a trip to the Regenstein
Library at the University of Chicago (see Da Silva 2011). Nonetheless, we show that, even in
these canonical, ‘symbolic interactionist’ texts, we find a much more nuanced understanding
of the human–animal boundary, of the ‘self’ in non-human species, and of the social life of
some other animals. Just as contemporary animal sociologists are keen to debunk
reductionist and mechanistic accounts of animal behaviour, Mead was similarly engaged in
an intellectual project at the turn of the Twentieth Century that aimed to counterbalance the
asocial behaviourist accounts of the human animal that was emerging in psychology.
3.3 Mead usually describes himself as a ‘social behaviourist’, social distinguishing his own
approach from that of John B Watson, also for a time at the University of Chicago. Although
Mead considered behaviourist psychology’s empirical manner a major scientific
breakthrough, his thinking had long been deeply shaped by his engagement with Darwinian
evolutionary theory (Miller 1973) and by his dialogue with Dewey (Cook 1993) and the
philosophy of Hegel (Joas 1997). As a result, he was convinced that asocial behaviourism, as
promoted by Watson, was inadequate for understanding the psychology, particularly – but
not exclusively – of the human animal that was his primary interest.
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3.4 Asocial behaviourism begins with a particular kind of ‘animal psychology’, derived
from laboratory experiments with solitary animals, rather than from in situ observations, and
then extrapolates from these results to the psychology of the human animal (Mead 1934: 2).
Mead himself regularly refers to our species as ‘the human animal’, and he has no objection
to beginning with other species as a means of understanding humans. Rather, he is
concerned that Watson and other behaviourists bracket out the question of consciousness
(and self-consciousness), treating the mind as a black box; like the Queen in Alice in
Wonderland, the behaviourist demands: ‘[o]ff with their heads!’ (1934: 3
