Final answer:
George Herbert Mead argued that culture and social interactions are fundamental in developing an individual's self-awareness and identity. Mead's work on symbolic interactionism focuses on how individuals ascribe meaning to things based on social interactions, which shapes their notion of self and societal roles.
Step-by-step explanation:
George Herbert Mead argued that the role of culture in our lives is pivotal in forming our individual identities through social interaction. Mead's concept of the self suggests that individuals develop self-awareness by seeing themselves from the perspective of others, an ability not inherent from birth but learned through socialization. This socialization process has stages, including the preparatory stage of imitation, the play stage where children assume roles, and later stages where individuals learn to understand and integrate multiple roles. Moreover, this framework helps to decipher how societal norms and cultural expectations shape our actions and the development of our selves.
Mead's contributions to symbolic interactionism underline the importance of communicative acts and the symbolic meanings we ascribe to various aspects of our social world. The meanings we attach to things are derived from our interactions with others and negotiate our actions within the context of these meanings. Mead's student, Herbert Blumer, further established that humans interact with their environment and others based on these socially constructed meanings, which are subject to change and reinterpretation.