George Herbert Mead: Public Sociologist

• In Event: 088 - Section on Sociological Practice and Public Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Practicing Theorists

Abstract

Building on my own work and others’ scholarship on George Herbert Mead’s contribution to public sociology, participatory democracy, urban socialities, and cities, this paper will focus more specifically on how Mead contributes to our understanding of how to build democratic cities through twenty-first century experiences of urban socialities. John Dewey and George Herbert Mead’s contributions complemented each during other their forty-year collaboration to develop big ideas, and more importantly, methods to implement them. It is in the role as public sociologist of the city that Mead made some of his greatest contributions. Mead expanded and communicated his public sociologists role, which he exemplified long before the recent revival of that concept among philosophers, sociologists, and urban planners. The public role of the sociologist has been debated for the last twenty-five years since Herbert Gans 1988 Presidential Address to the American Sociological Association; Michael Burowoy revisited this concept in 2004, during his ASA Presidency. The American Philosophical Association recently established the “Committee on Public Philosophy,” and the “Public Philosophers Network” was formed with the practical mission of involving the public in analyzing contemporary social problems, and developing potentially feasible and desirable solutions. Urban planning professionals have regarded public service as a key part of their role since the beginning of the Planning Movement in 1908. Thus, all of the fields in which Mead played an active public role have returned in recent years to his vision of complementarity – even necessary interconnection – between public involvement and transformative social theory.

Author

• David W. Woods, New York University Polytechnic School