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Present, Past, and Future
Conjugating George Herbert Mead’s
perspective on time
Michael G. Flaherty and Gary Alan Fine
ABSTRACT. Time is of utmost importance in the writings of
George Herbert Mead, the American pragmatist philosopher and
social psychologist. Yet, despite Mead’s prominence as the primary
source of the symbolic interactionist approach to sociology, most
social scientists are unfamiliar with his perspective on temporality.
We describe his analysis of the present, the past, and the future –
emphasizing that, for Mead, people live in the present, and that their
interpretations of the past and the future are shaped by the present. In
addition, we consider the implications of his perspective for our
understanding of the self, interaction, and society. KEY WORDS •
agency • determinism • interaction • self • temporality
It was time that stood between George Herbert Mead and his sought-after break-
through in social psychology – the taken-for-granted time of everyday life and
the nascent behavioral sciences of his era, where it was assumed that the past
determines the future. Seeking to circumvent what he viewed as naive forms of
determinism, he made time a central and explicit issue in his writings. Indeed,
for Mead (1938: 64), more than any other social theorist, we inhabit a ‘temporal
world.’
His own life was characterized by a busy simultaneity. Mead (1863–1931)
was a leading pragmatist philosopher, the primary source of the symbolic inter-
actionist perspective in sociology, a political progressive, and a central figure
in the Chicago school of sociology. Drawing from the work of his friends and
colleagues, William James and John Dewey, all of Mead’s lectures and writings
are grounded in the power of temporal organization for the creation of social
order – especially the partitioning of time into present, past, and future.
TIME & SOCIETY copyright © 2001 SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), VOL.
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Mead’s critical assault on traditional notions of time has been quite fruitful in
American sociology – especially among scholars, following Mead, who study
temporality within the symbolic interactionist paradigm (Maines, 1987).1To
one degree or another, we are indebted to Mead and his conceptualization of
time for studies of ‘dying trajectories’ (Glaser and Strauss, 1968: 5), the
temporalities of consciousness (Denzin, 1982) and culture (Maines, 1989), the
experiences of chronic illness (Maines, 1983; Charmaz, 1991) and widowhood
(Lopata, 1986), the career and family plans of young adults (Maines and
Hardesty, 1987), pauses in social rhythms (Snow and Brissett, 1986), the expe-
rience of work in restaurant kitchens (Fine, 1990), temporal aspects of deviance
(Reese and Katovich, 1989), and the nature of social pasts (Katovich and
Couch, 1992).
More recently, Emirbayer and Mische (1998: 968) have argued that ‘it is
the work of George Herbert Mead that offers us the most compelling tools for
overcoming inadequate conceptions of agency.’ Their sophisticated analysis of
agency is rooted in what they (1998: 968) describe as Mead’s ‘seminal (but
little discussed) theorization of temporality.’ In a more empirical vein, Flaherty
(1999) has used Mead’s writings as part of the foundation for his study of
variation in the perceived passage of time. Flaherty’s analysis of lived duration
turns on the fact that self-consciousness is maximized when one confronts
problematic circumstances – an observation that is derived from Mead’s
writings.
The reach of Mead’s influence extends to Europe, as well, where Joas
(1980/1997) has made significant contributions to the exegetical analysis of his
thought. In particular, Joas (1980/1997: 190) devotes a chapter to Mead’s per-
spective on temporality, arguing that he was constructing ‘an intersubjectivist
theory of the constitution of time-consciousness.’ According to Adam (1995:
78), Mead ‘presents the most radical of all social science conceptualizations of
time,’ yet she also points out (1990: 10, 24) that his writings have shaped the
work of both Giddens and Luhmann. Clearly, Mead’s thought continues to pro-
vide inspiration for both empirical research and theoretical development.
Despite the size and scope of this literature, it is safe to say that most social
scientists are unfamiliar with the full extent of Mead’s perspective on temporal-
ity, in part owing to its complexity and counterintuitive qualities (Adam, 1990:
37–8). Moreover, it may be that the centrality of time in Mead’s thought is not
well known because he has little to say about temporality in his best-known
book, Mind, Self, and Society (Mead, 1934).2Whatever the case, we concur with
Joas’s (1980/1997: 167) assessment: ‘Mead’s philosophy of time is certainly the
least intelligible and least well elucidated part of his work.’ This, despite the
importance of time in Mead’s thought.
Mead’s perspective on temporality has been the primary subject of few
articles and no books. Two articles – one by Maines, Sugrue, and Katovich
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(1983) and the other by Bielby and Kully (1989) – emphasize Mead’s theory of
the past, while another by Strauss (1991) concerns Mead’s multiple conceptions
of evolution.3This literature is not only small, but does not come to grips with
central features of Mead’s perspective on time.
We contend that the present is paramount in Mead’s analysis of temporality,
and our goal is to clarify his writings on this subject. In this article, we examine
his thoughts on time by parsing his perspective on the present, the past, and the
future. In addition, we consider the implications of his perspective for our
understanding of the self, interaction, and society.
The Present
A central strand of our argument is reflected in the organization of this article. If
asked to order temporal concepts, most people would feel that it is only natural
to list them as past, present, and future. After all, they might say, the past pre-
cedes the present, and the present precedes the future. However, this is not in
keeping with Mead’s priorities.
In formulating his theory, Mead was reacting to the behaviorism of J. B.
Watson (1924/1998).4Claiming ‘that “consciousness” is neither a definable nor
a usable concept,’ Watson (1924/1998: 3, 6) asked, ‘Why don’t we make what
we can observe the real field of psychology?’ It is for this reason that Mead
(1934: 2–3) begins his lectures in Mind, Self, and Society with the comment,
‘John B. Watson’s attitude was that of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland – “Off
with their heads!”’ Watson (1924/1998: 6) believed that only one question is
relevant: ‘Can I describe this bit of behavior I see in terms of “stimulus and
response”?’ As Watson (p. 26) noted, Pavlov had rung a bell and a dog had
salivated (despite the absence of food). The cause precedes the effect in time;
this is the temporality of behaviorism and the stimulus–response sequence.
Mead viewed it as an ill-conceived form of determinism that left no room for
essential features of human experience: consciousness, choice, emergence, and
novelty.
Mead recognized that Watson and other behaviorists had overlooked a crucial
facet of social interaction. Human beings do not respond immediately and un-
thinkingly to a stimulus in the manner of Pavlov’s dog. Rather, a moment exists
that Mead (1938: 220) called the ‘specious present,’ during which the individual
interprets the situation and considers various responses to the gestures or utter-
ances of another person.5Instead of a stimulus–response (S–R) sequence, Mead
argued in favor of a stimulus–interpretation–response (S–I–R) sequence, and he
stressed that the response ‘is something that is more or less uncertain’ (1934:
176). Thus, ‘[d]elayed reaction is necessary to intelligent conduct’ because
it ‘makes possible the exercise of intelligent and reflective choice in the
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acceptance of that one among these possible alternative responses which is to be
carried into overt effect’ (pp. 98–9). This formulation enabled Mead to include
consciousness, choice, emergence, and novelty in his theoretical framework.
Nonetheless, given that the individual interprets the situation with an awareness
of social expectations, Mead (1932: 47) observed that the ‘social nature of the
present arises out of its emergence.’
Mead’s (1932) lectures on the subject of time are entitled The Philosophy of
the Present, and the first heading on the first page is ‘The Present as the Locus
of Reality.’ But when is the present? It is said that baseball pitcher Tom Seaver
once asked his manager, Yogi Berra, ‘What time is it?’ Yogi replied with his
own question: ‘You mean now?’ In fact, the present is becoming the past as you
read these words. Just as quicksilver squirts out from under one’s finger, so too
does the present become utterly elusive when one tries to pin it down. There is a
certain irony, then, to Mead’s (1932: 28) focus on this most fleeting aspect of
time and his insistence that reality ‘is always in a present.’ But this irony reflects
his profound insight. For Mead (1932: 1), all being is becoming, and given his
unwavering attention to the dynamics of social interaction (i.e. the flow of
expressions, gestures, and utterances), ‘that which marks a present is its becom-
ing and its disappearing.’ And if the present is characterized by emergence,
then, in contradiction to the simplistic temporality of behaviorism, the past does
not determine the future: ‘Its [the present] chief reference is to the emergent
event, that is, to the occurrence of something which is more than the processes
that have led up to it.’
For Mead, the present is the paramount form of temporality. When he
describes the present as the ‘locus of reality,’ he means that social interaction is
happening now; the self is arising from and acting back upon that interaction
now; and each individual is interpreting the comportment of other participants
now. It is in the present that we can observe things actually happening (as
opposed to recalling or anticipating them). According to Cook (1993: 147),
Mead assumes ‘the continual emergence of novel elements in experience’ – an
outlook that Cook attributes to the influence of Whitehead. In his own words,
Mead (1932: 1) asserts that the ‘world is a world of events.’ The individual
confronts these emergent events in the present. Moreover, in dealing with these
events, the individual exercises essential features of human nature: ‘Life is a
happening; things take place; the novel arises; and our intelligence shows itself
in solving problems’ (Mead, 1936: 508). Of course, by ‘intelligence,’ Mead
refers to self-conscious thought (i.e. the interplay of mind and self). Here, in one
of the most lyrical statements in the social science literature, Mead offers a
vision of the present as the temporal arena for the dynamics of human conduct
and experience. While so much of our current conceptual apparatus concerns
the past or the future, Mead calls our attention to the immediacy and problemat-
ic meaning of each expression, gesture, and utterance.
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As one would expect given his philosophical background, Mead’s perspec-
tive on time is not only counterintuitive by way of priorities, but also by way of
definitional precision. For most people, the present is an indefinite interval
extending from the current moment (i.e. ‘now’) to the current era (i.e. some-
thing like their own lifetime). Mead sharpens our understanding of the present
by narrowing our focus to show how each new expression, gesture, and utter-
ance cuts into the future. As Mead (1936: 299) puts it, ‘the present is that which
is going on,’ and this strict definition makes for a horizon of poignancy around
all forms of social interaction because ‘our experience is always a passing
experience.’ Hence, our fascination with the ability of photography and
cinematography seemingly to slow, stop, or even reverse time. Typically, the
horizon of poignancy is only glimpsed obliquely, but the uniquely human
obsession with time can be traced to the self-conscious awareness of our own
finitude – an unsettling fact that is presaged by the ephemerality of our every
gesture, our every encounter, and our every occasion.
For Mead (1932: 28), then, ‘[d]urations are a continual sliding of presents
into each other.’ He later elaborates on this statement in his analysis of the way
one ‘hears’ a melody. Mead (1936: 297) points out that ‘there would not be a
melody if there was a sound at this moment, another at the next, and so on, each
taken by itself.’ But what is it that turns separate events into an integrated
whole? Mead’s answer implicates the human capacity for interpretation:
There must be an interpenetration of the different notes in order that there may be
a melody, and that is what is characteristic of all our thought. Duration, as such,
always involves this interpenetration, not only in the sense that what is taking
place extends over into what is coming into existence and anticipates what is
coming on, but also that it gives the meaning and value to things. (1936: 297)
Thus, it is self-conscious thought that links memory, perception, and anticipa-
tion into a coherent sense of duration.6What is more, the same interpretive
process operates in social interaction where the individual confronts a compara-
ble skein of seemingly separate events.
The Past
In place of the billiard-ball causality of behaviorism, Mead offers what, today,
we might call a ‘fuzzy’ determinism (Ragin, 2000). From his standpoint, the
past confronts the present with an array of facts, but the effects of these facts are
mediated by attention and interpretation, which render their actual impact
uncertain. Therefore, ‘rigorous thinking does not necessarily imply that con-
ditioning of the present by the past carries with it the complete determinism of
the present by the past’ (Mead, 1932: 17). This recognition of the interpretation
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and construction of an obdurate reality of facts has been labeled ‘cautious
naturalism’ (Gubrium, 1993; Fine, 1997). Mead’s fuzzy determinism makes
room for the improvisational character of social interaction – a quintessential
attribute, but one that is neglected or denied by other students of human nature.
Mead did not view the world as impinging on the person in the same way that
Watson did. There is an infinite number of stimuli in any particular setting – a
cognitive overload – but the individual selects those that enable him or her to
construct a meaningful and useful line of action: ‘Man is distinguished by that
power of analysis of the field of stimulation which enables him to pick out one
stimulus rather than another’ (Mead, 1934: 94). And, of course, subsequent to
selecting a stimulus, the individual must interpret it, further problematizing the
response. These processes make for the constant reinterpretation of the past
from the standpoint of the present. On the group level, this process is implicated
in the process of collective memory. It is in this sense, as Mead would have it,
that the present determines the (perceived) past, rather than the other way
around.
At the analytical level of personal history, there is ‘the reinterpretation of
one’s biography’ to fit one’s current identity (Berger, 1963: 61), as when people
who now espouse a particular sexual orientation dismiss previous contradictory
experiences as either youthful experimentation or sexual repression. Here, we
have a form of revisionism that Strauss (1969: 67) describes as ‘“reseeing” the
past’; in often amusing ways, people ‘bring their pasts into line with their
presents.’ What is more, Strauss (pp. 167–8) points out that the revision of
inconvenient facts also operates at the analytical level of collective history:
‘Each generation perceives the past in new terms, and rewrites its own history.’
In his own words, Mead (1938: 456) provides further evidence for our central
argument: ‘All history is the interpretation of the present.’ Research by
Schwartz (1991) and Schudson (1992) demonstrates that there are limits to revi-
sionism, but their work does not unseat Mead’s (1932: 2) paradoxical wisdom:
‘The pasts that we are involved in are both irrevocable and revocable.’
As in the preceding quotation, Mead (1932: 31) often used plural forms when
discussing the tenses of time: ‘our pasts are always mental in the same manner
in which the futures that lie in our imaginations ahead of us are mental.’ The
present is empirical, since it is represented by each new gesture and utterance in
the sequential flow of interaction, but the past and the future can only be found
in memory and anticipation, respectively. With the word ‘future,’ we refer to
the fact that our conduct can move in any one of many different directions, but
Mead realized that the possibility of multiple futures is predicated upon the
possibility of multiple pasts. Thus, in counterintuitive fashion, he asserted that
‘the past . . . is as hypothetical as the future.’ If the past determined the future,
then the improvisational qualities of human interaction would be impossible. As
Mead (p. 31) puts it, ‘the novelty of every future demands a novel past.’ Intent
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on capturing the way we surprise ourselves and others with our behavior, Mead
(p. 27) directs our attention to ‘the constant appearance of the novel from whose
standpoint our experience calls for a reconstruction which includes the past.’
From this perspective, the past is a resource, not a cage. Instead of being im-
prisoned in it, we use it to make sense of the present and imagine the future.
Mead (1934: 116) did not ignore the significance of the central nervous
system, but he realized that our sense of time cannot be reduced to physiological
processes:
Our past stays with us in terms of those changes which have resulted from our
experience and which are in some sense registered there. The peculiar intelligence
of the human form lies in this elaborate control gained through the past. The
human animal’s past is constantly present in the facility with which he acts, but to
say that that past is simply located in the central nervous system is not a correct
statement. It is true such a mechanism must be present in order that the past may
appear in our experience, but this is part of the conditions, not the only condition.
In other words, the central nervous system is a necessary but not sufficient
factor. Its crucial contribution lies in the way it provides a foundation for self-
consciousness. The upshot is that, in theory, human beings retain and thereby
accumulate knowledge from past experience at both the individual and col-
lective levels of analysis. This self-conscious control over one’s conduct is the
basis for our remarkable intelligence.
Given the relationship between self-consciousness and our sense of time,
Mead (1934: 350) reasoned that human beings must enjoy and suffer a much
broader range of temporal experience than that of other animals: ‘From the
point of view of instinctive behavior in the lower animal . . . past and future are
not there.’ He adds that the same is true of human beings in those (typically
rare) instances when they act in an instinctive fashion. In both cases, Mead
(1934: 351) argues, the absence of self-conscious thought collapses time into
‘an undifferentiated now’:
The flow of experience is not differentiated into a past and future over against an
immediate now until reflection affects certain parts of the experience with these
characters, with the perfection of adjustment on the one hand, and with the
shifting control on the other. The biologic individual [human or animal] lives in an
undifferentiated now; the social reflective individual takes this up into a flow of
experience within which stands a fixed past and a more or less uncertain future.
However, Arluke and Sanders (1996: 42) have suggested that Mead under-
estimated the self-consciousness of other animals, thereby also underestimating
the range of their temporal experience.
Classic sociological analyses predict behavior and attitudes from background
factors, such as age, gender, race, and class. But like Watson’s behaviorism, this
approach privileges the past over the present. As Blumer (1969: 8–9), Mead’s
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most prominent student, argued so forcefully, Mead saw interaction not as a
mere ‘setting’ or medium for the release of pre-existing forces, but ‘as a presen-
tation of gestures and a response to the meaning of those gestures.’ What is
more, this process not only transpires within the immediacy of a face-to-face
encounter, but also plays a formative role in determining the outcome. In short,
Mead (1934: 116) stresses that the past only has behavioral (and uncertain)
relevance in the present:
If you recognize somebody it must be through the fact that you have seen that
individual in the past, and when you see him again there are those tendencies to
react as you have in the past, but the individual must be there, or somebody like
him, in order that this may take place.
Maines and his colleagues (1983) are correct when they argue that Mead offers
us a sociologically significant theory of the past, but Mead (1934: 116) made it
clear that, from his perspective, the past is subordinate to the present: ‘The past
must be found in the present world.’
The Future
The tenses of time are intertwined in Mead’s writings, just as they are in human
experience. Of necessity, then, we have already addressed some of what he had
to say about the future. Mead (1934: 1) called himself a ‘social behaviorist,’
and, given his emphasis on conduct, he viewed the future as merely ‘mental’
(1938: 219) and hypothetical.7It represents what might happen – a temporal
facet of anticipation. In keeping with his fuzzy determinism, Mead (p. 650) con-
tends that the future is no more determined by the present than the present is
determined by the past: ‘If it were, there would be no means of distinguishing
the future from the present.’ Consequently, from Mead’s (1938: 413–14) per-
spective, the future is always ‘uncertain’ because it ‘has a character which is
novel and could not be predicted in its ultimate peculiarity.’
Mead’s (1934: 173) famous distinction between phases of the self in inter-
action – the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ – is based on temporality. He (1934: 175) defines
the ‘I’ as ‘the response of the organism to the attitudes of the others,’ while ‘the
“me” is the organized set of attitudes of others which one himself assumes.’ Put
differently, the ‘I’ represents a selected line of action, and the ‘me’ represents
one’s awareness of social expectations. Given that the individual’s response is
always more or less unpredictable, Mead (1934: 177) associates the ‘I’ with
emergence, novelty, surprise, and becoming: ‘That movement into the future is
the step, so to speak, of the ego, of the “I.”’ In contrast, the ‘me’ involves a look
backward at what has transpired along with evaluation of one’s response from
the standpoint of social expectations. Mead (pp. 176–7) is careful to point out
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that this is an analytical distinction: ‘to look back and see what we are doing
involves getting memory images. So the “I” really appears experientially as a
part of a “me.”’ Nonetheless, his (1934: 174) conceptualization illuminates the
dynamics of self-consciousness and social interaction: ‘The “I” of this moment
is present in the “me” of the next moment.’ From Mead’s perspective, the self is
a constantly flickering alternation between two temporal modalities.
Mead’s perspective on the future can only be fully grasped by viewing it
against the backdrop of his philosophical and historical context. He was work-
ing within the philosophical tradition of pragmatism (James, 1907), where the
test of ideas is in their practical consequences. As we have seen, Mead recog-
nized that human beings typically interpret stimuli before choosing a line of
response. In other words, our interpretations are akin to working hypotheses,
and, as Mead (1932: 26) put it, the future provides ‘the necessary test of the
formulation of the past in rising events in experience.’8What does this other
person want from me? She says things and does things that I must interpret. Is
my interpretation correct? Only time (and her response) will tell. Indeed, Mead
(1938: 83) saw the scientific method as ‘merely the elaboration of the simple
processes of everyday inference.’
He spent most of his professional life in the American Midwest during a
peaceful and prosperous era. From this vantage point, Mead thought that the
trial and error of social interaction, having been formalized in the scientific
method, would make possible the continued reform of society. He (1938: 39)
anticipated a society, like science, ‘eagerly at work reconstructing itself.’ In
short, Mead was an optimistic man who saw the long-term future as one of
progress toward the amelioration of social problems.
The usual image of the future is that of distant and as yet unforeseen circum-
stances – the stuff of speculation, crystal balls, and psychic hotlines. These
phenomena are evidence of our profound interest in knowing the future, but, try
as we might, it always seems to surprise us. From Mead’s (1936: 295) per-
spective, novelty is the only certainty: ‘there is a constant creation of that which
is new.’ And, he (1936: 292) asserts, this is no less true in the natural sciences,
where, for example, ‘the astronomer can figure out all of the eclipses of the sun
for a number of centuries ahead.’ Mead notes that planets slow, orbits erode,
and, as Einstein demonstrated, there is nothing final about the Newtonian ‘laws’
that serve as the basis for such predictions. Drawing from Bergson, Mead
(1936: 292) concludes that, ‘like all the rest of the world, we are en route to
something which we cannot foresee. We do not know where we are going, but
we are on our way.’ This nice phrasing is especially apt as a characterization of
conversation, where novelty takes the form of a constant cascade of interaction,
not in some distant future, but from moment to moment and act to act during the
dynamic interplay of gestures, utterances, and their interpretation. For Mead,
the future is now, on the cutting edge of the present.
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Mead (1938: 650) tells us that ‘the present is less than the future,’ because the
former represents what is actually happening, while the latter represents every-
thing that could happen. Moreover, he (1938: 351) distinguishes between two
different phases of the future: the hypothetical future and the immediate future.
The hypothetical future is defined as ‘that part of the experience in the
temporarily extended duration which immediately, but not instantaneously, con-
trols the ongoing process.’ Here again, Mead refers to those moments during
which the individual considers alternative responses to the situation at hand (e.g.
the preceding gesture or utterance in a conversation). During these moments,
there is a world of possibilities, and selection from this set will shape ensuing
events in ways that could not have been anticipated beforehand. Under ordinary
circumstances, all of this transpires quickly – hence, Mead’s use of the word
‘immediately’ – but he is at pains to point out that the response is not instanta-
neous, which would rule out any role for interpretation, consideration, and
selection. The immediate future (i.e. that which actually happens) is ‘an exten-
sion’ of the hypothetical future, and Mead (1938: 351) observes that it is often
‘wrongly conceived’ as an aspect of the ‘instantaneous present.’ Therefore,
these terms correspond to alternating phases of the self in action and reflection.
Mead’s (1936: 301) perspective is never more paradoxical or revealing than
when he argues that ‘what is going to happen can actually affect what has just
happened.’ On the face of it, his statement would seem to contradict the usual
logic of causal determinism, and, indeed, that is his point: ‘The future can
influence the present just as it does in our own conduct’ (p. 301). Like a chess
player who chooses a move now because he or she anticipates a certain response
one or more moves into the future, Mead (1936: 318) describes the actor
envisioning a path of action and, in so doing, constructing or organizing the
sequence of stimulation to which he or she will have to respond:
We are at any moment surrounded by an indefinite number of possible sensations.
Which of these will be picked out is decided in terms of the response that is
already being made. There you have the future, the conclusion of the act, implied
in what is now going on but which is not yet achieved, coming in to set up the
conditions in terms of which stimuli shall arise.
According to the behaviorists, environmental stimuli precede and thereby deter-
mine the conduct of the individual, but Mead (1934: 130) shows us that, where
human behavior is at issue, the individual ‘and environment determine each
other and are mutually dependent for their existence.’ To the extent that one’s
current conduct is oriented toward one’s ability to select a particular path from
among future possibilities, the individual is actively and intentionally construct-
ing a line of action, and not passively responding to environmental stimuli.
Of unsurpassed importance, then, is Mead’s (1936: 317) contention that this
perspective enables us ‘to see conduct as selective, as free.’
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Self, Interaction, and Society
Mead’s seminal writings still serve as the foundation for the symbolic inter-
actionist paradigm in social psychology. Although his sophisticated and
counterintuitive understanding of temporality transforms the way we think
about the present, the past, and the future, his unique perspective on time
remains a relatively unfamiliar facet of his work. Nonetheless, it has profound
implications for the way we conceive of the self, interaction, and society.
Mead shows us that the self is, above all, a temporal process. The distinguish-
ing characteristic of human nature, self-consciousness, represents the awareness
of one’s own duration and, not incidentally, the inevitability of one’s own
mortality. ‘There is,’ says Mead (1932: 13), ‘a certain temporal process going
on in experience.’ As consciousness alternates between action (the ‘I’) and
reflection (the ‘me’), a self emerges from the dynamic interplay of present, past,
and future. Looking backward at past events, the self has a biographical history,
but the ‘facts’ are subject to (re)interpretation from the standpoint of the present.
Looking forward to goals or purposes of one kind or another, the self constructs
a line of action in the present by anticipating, and thereby bringing into
being, just those events which seem to call for an intended response. Far from
being the static and structural entity that is so often depicted, the self is more
accurately understood as a momentary stance toward past and future events.
Like particles of sand in an hourglass, like the molecular oscillations within
quartz crystals, the alternating phases of the self together with the streaming
objects of consciousness keep a kind of experiential time. Always and every-
where, one’s attention to the internal environment of mind (thoughts, emotions,
physical sensations) and the external environment of perception makes for units
of lived duration. The primordial clock is self-consciousness.
The intrapersonal temporality of self-consciousness reflects, at least in part,
the interpersonal temporality of social interaction. Indeed, we can conceive of
each expression, gesture, and utterance, each ‘turn’ in the conversational
sequence, as analogous to that movement marked by the hands of a clock. Like
the self, interaction is a temporal process. It is a dynamic and open-ended flow
of events. Selective attention and self-conscious choice make for an improvisa-
tional, creative, unpredictable, and, as Blumer (1969: 66) puts it, ‘formative
process’ with respect to the subsequent conduct of each participant. Never-
theless, the temporality of social interaction is structured by unwritten rules that
ensure an appropriate sequence and the rhythmic dance of turn-taking. During
primary socialization, children learn that interpersonal encounters should not
last too long or end too quickly. Running parallel to the interactional flow of
events is a constant stream of standard temporal units – seconds, minutes, hours,
and so forth. With a certain amount of experience (and some coaching from
their elders), young children gradually learn how to translate units of inter-
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personal conduct into standard temporal units, and vice versa. This capacity for
translation enables us to know what it feels like to engage in ten minutes of
normal interaction. The upshot is a rough, but crucial, synchronicity in inter-
personal relations.
From the painted outlines of hands on the walls of ancient caves to con-
temporary monuments for fallen heroes, how much of the total human endeavor
has been devoted to efforts to transcend the ephemerality of our personal and
collective existence? Society is composed of self-conscious individuals, and,
just as ‘the individual organism determines in some sense its own environment
by its sensitivity’ (Mead, 1934: 245), so too can society take an interpretive
moment during a collectively defined specious present to select one of many
possible directions for social development. Consequently, Mead (1934: 251)
suggests that, rather than merely reacting to what arises in the future, a self-
conscious society is one that can construct a collective line of action: ‘The
human society that can itself determine what the conditions are within which it
lives is no longer in a situation of simply trying to meet the problems that the
environment presents.’ While Mead (1934: 251) understood that there is no
particular direction or ‘goal’ in evolutionary development, he did see the possi-
bility of social reform in a society that self-consciously selects current moves
toward a desired future. And, of course, a society characterized by constant
flux and redefinition is one which must ceaselessly reinterpret its past to fit an
ever-changing present.
Conclusion
In the eyes of many people (including, sadly, many social scientists), space and
time are simply viewed as fundamental facets of nature. Mead’s (1982: 117)
investigations demolish the naive temporal determinism one finds in everyday
life and behaviorism by exploring the previously unmapped temporality of
human self-consciousness and social interaction: ‘Space and time are thus
products of experience.’ His work is remarkably fertile, and continues to inspire
empirical and theoretical research. Still, most social scientists remain unfamiliar
with the full extent of his thoughts on temporality, and the existing literature
does not begin to exhaust his potential contributions. Not only does Mead help
us to understand the present, the past, and the future, but his insightful analysis
also has significant implications for the ways in which we conceptualize the
self, interaction, and society.
Like Henri Bergson, Mead (1936: 300) ‘insists . . . that we should take time
seriously.’ One of the more promising ways to do this, in our judgment, is to
take Mead seriously. In this regard, unquestionably, there is much more to do.
We could not hope to express the full complexity of Mead’s perspective on time
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in a paper of this length, but we have tried to clarify his challenging writings on
this subject, and we will have accomplished our goal if this discussion fans the
enduring flame of interest in his work.
Notes
1. Readers who are unfamiliar with this perspective should consult Blumer’s (1969)
book, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method.
2. Actually, this book was not ‘written’ by Mead. It represents transcriptions from his
lectures in a course entitled Social Psychology. Likewise, The Philosophy of the
Present (1932) is based on lectures Mead gave at the 1930 meeting of the American
Philosophical Association.
3. Readers who are fluent in German will find it useful to examine an article by
Bergmann (1981).
4. Miller (1973: 164) also notes that Mead was critical of ‘finalism’ – ‘the view that
everything happens either in accordance with a fixed rational plan or according to
fixed ends.’
5. Mead’s use of the term ‘specious present’ is derived from the writings of William
James (1890: 609). Mead (1938: 219–20) also referred to the ‘knife-edge present.’
6. An interesting question, which we cannot answer, is whether Mead was aware of the
similar argument by Husserl (1928/1964: 52).
7. However, as previously noted, Mead’s social behaviorism is quite different from
Watson’s version of behaviorism in that Mead was intent on acknowledging the inter-
play of mind, self, and society.
8. Technically, the test comes on the cutting edge of the present, or what Mead (1938:
351) called the ‘hypothetical future,’ but since confirmation or disconfirmation has
not occurred yet as one initiates a particular line of action, we can think of the tempo-
ral context as that which has not quite happened – ‘an extension of . . . the immediate
future’ as Mead (p. 351) would have it.
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MICHAEL G. FLAHERTY is Professor of Sociology at Eckerd College.
He is on the Editorial Board of Social Psychology Quarterly, and he is the
author of A Watched Pot: How We Experience Time (New York University
Press, 1999). His current research concerns the relationship between time
and agency. ADDRESS: Department of Sociology, Eckerd College, 4200
54th Avenue South, St. Petersburg, FL 33711, USA.
[email: flahermg@eckerd.edu.usa]
GARY ALAN FINE is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University.
He is the author of Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Life (University of
California Press, 1996), Morel Tales: The Culture of Mushrooming
(Harvard University Press, 1998), and Gifted Tongues: The Culture of High
School Debate (Princeton University Press, 2001). His current research
concerns the development of art markets. ADDRESS: Department of
Sociology, Northwestern University, 1810 Chicago Avenue, Evanston, IL
60208, USA. [email: g-fine@northwestern.edu.usa]
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