Categories We Live By

Journal Data

Type	SOURCE_BOOK
Publisher	Oxford University Press, Incorporated
ISBN-13	9780190256791
Open Library	OL25056401W
Total publications	1
Coverage period	2018 - 2018
Language	EN
Impact factor	10

We are women, we are men. We are refugees, single mothers, people with disabilities, and queers. We belong to social categories that frame their action, self-understanding, and life options. But what are social categories? How are they created and sustained? How does one come to belong to them? To answer these questions is to offer a metaphysics of social categories, and that is the project of Categories We Live By . The key component in the story offered is a theory of what it is for a feature of an individual to be socially meaningful in a context. People have a myriad of features, but only some of them make a difference socially in the contexts people travel. The author gives an account of what it is for a feature of an individual to matter socially in a given context. This the author does by introducing a conferralist framework to carve out a theory of social meaning, and then uses the framework to offer a theory of social construction, and of the construction of sex, gender, race, disability, and other social categories. Accompanying is also a theory of social identity that brings out the role of individual agency in the formation and maintenance of social categories

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