George Herbert Mead is widely considered one of the most influential American philosophers of the twentieth century, and this edited collection shows that his work remains vibrant and relevant to many areas of scholarly inquiry today. The sixteen contributions provide detailed analyses of Mead s importance to innovative fields of scholarship, including cognitive science, environmental studies, democratic epistemology, narratological and social ethics, non-teleological historiography, and the history of the natural and social sciences. The volume makes a coherent statement that places Mead in dialogue with current research, pushing these domains of scholarship forward while also revitalizing the growing literature on an author who has an ongoing major influence on sociology, psychology, and philosophy."

George Herbert Mead has long been known for his social theory of meaning and the ‘self’ - an approach which becomes all the more relevant in light of the ways we develop and represent ourselves online. But recent scholarship has shown that Mead’s pragmatic philosophy can help us understand a much wider range of contemporary issues including how humans and natural environments mutually influence one another, how deliberative democracy can and should work, how thinking is dependent upon the body and on others, and how social changes in the present affect our understandings of the past. Historical scholarship has also changed what we know of Mead’s life, including new emphasis on his social reform efforts, his engagement with colonization and war, and critical reinterpretation of the works published after his death. This book provides an approachable introduction to Mead’s contemporary relevance in the social sciences, showing how a pragmatic view of social action serves as the core of Mead’s theory, offering striking insights into human agency, symbolism, politics, social change, temporality, and materiality. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and the social sciences more broadly, with interests in social theory and the enduring importance of the sociological classics.

George Herbert Mead is widely considered one of the most influential American philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work remains vibrant and relevant to many areas of scholarly inquiry today. The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead brings together a range of scholars who provide detailed analyses of Mead’s importance to innovative fields of scholarship, including cognitive science, environmental studies, democratic epistemology, and social ethics, non-teleological historiography, and the history of the natural and social sciences. Edited by well-respected Mead scholars Hans Joas and Daniel R. Huebner, the volume as a whole makes a coherent statement that places Mead in dialogue with current research, pushing these domains of scholarship forward while also revitalizing the growing literature on an author who has an ongoing and major influence on sociology, psychology, and philosophy.

Topics include tenure; academic freedom; Robert Maynard Hutchins and The University of Chicago and The Great Books; Charles Eliot of Harvard and the "elective system"; William Rainey Harper; William Heard Kilpatrick; Leland Stanford and Stanford University; Jimmy Carter and Higher Education; Clinton's education policies: Veblen's Views on Society and Education.

In this intriguing study, two social psychologists and an intellectual historian describe the people and intellectual currents which have given rise to the complex discipline of American social psychology. The authors examine the influence of British evolutionary theory, French social theory, American pragmatism, and the ideas of Freud, Marx and Lewin on the evolution of social psychological theory, and explain how these traditions contributed to later developments such as group dynamics, cognitive social psychology, and symbolic interaction. American social psychology during this century has shifted back and forth from a focus on individual psychological processes to a concern with the role of the broader social context and social interaction. This has resulted in the development of several quite distinct social psychologies, which are all valid rather than mutually exclusive, and it should be possible to build a discipline in which all aspects of social interaction are considered. Students and professionals in social psychology, sociology, and related areas, as well as those interstd in the history of the social sciences, will find this important and comprehensive appraisal of the field useful.