Categories We Live By

The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race, and Other Social Categories

Bibliographic Data

ID20003304
AuthorsÁsta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir (corresponding author), Ásta (0000-0003-0252-6527, corresponding author), Ásta Ásta (corresponding author)
Year2018
Pages160
Publication date2018-08-16
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueCategories We Live By (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780190256791.001.0001
OpenAlexW4239016206
Open LibraryOL33318983M
ISBN9780190256791
LanguageEN
Citations received75

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

Action (physics) · Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy) · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Identity (music) · Meaning (existential) · Political science · Politics · Social category · Social constructionism · Social group · Social identity approach · Social identity theory · Social order · Social science · Sociology · Structure and agency · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology · 305 · Gesellschaft · Group identity · Gruppenidentität · Hm753 .s94 2018 · Identität · Population