SOURCE: "Sociability and Social Conflict in George Herbert Mead's Interactionism, 1900-1919," in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 51, No. 2, April-June, 1990, pp. 233-54.

In the following essay, Feffer places Mead's philosophy in the political and cultural context of the Chicago reform culture at the turn of the twentieth century.

During the 1970s and 80s philosophers, psychologists, and intellectual historians revived the Pragmatist tradition in American philosophy. They devoted the greater share of study to the work of Charles S. Peirce and John Dewey. A number of scholars, however, also participated in a minor but persistent revival of interest in the work of George Herbert Mead, Dewey's partner and collaborator at the University of Chicago and one of the founders of social psychology in the United States.

One generally welcomes renewed attention to a thinker and writer of such unappreciated brilliance as Mead. This renaissance would be no different...