George Herbert Mead
meanings and selves in illness
pp. 107-123
in: Fran Collyer (ed), The Palgrave handbook of social theory in health, illness and medicine, Berlin, Springer, 2015Abstract
George Herbert Mead is widely recognised as the father of symbolic interactionism, a theoretical perspective that gave new direction to research in diverse fields of study. His dynamic theory of action based on meaning, agency and process challenged conceptions of social structures as fixed and stable and has been fruitfully used to examine facets of chronic illness, our main substantive focus here.
