Classification
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7078504 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Roger Burrows (0000-0001-6837-1586, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Publication date | 2007-02-15 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | OTHER |
| Venue | The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosc055 |
| OpenAlex | W4244153435 |
| ISBN | 9781405165518 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 12 |
Classification – the process of assigning objects (elements, cases, units, items, and so on) to classes or categories – is fundamental to cognition, language, and the construction of social structures. As such it has long been an important topic for sociological inquiry (Durkheim & Mauss 1963; Bowker & Star 1999; Olsen 2002). At the same time, more formal processes of classification – taxonomies, typologies, the construction of ideal types, and so on – are at the analytic heart of much of the sociological enterprise (Foucault 1970; van Mechelen et al. 1993) and, as such, they are also a central resource for the sociological imagination. Indeed, this distinction between classifications as both a substantive topic of investigation and, simultaneously, as an analytic resource for such investigations, forms the foundation for debates about what has come to be viewed as the issue of the “double hermeneutic” (Giddens 1976) in the discipline. This refers to a central conundrum in sociology in which the concepts and categories drawn upon by lay actors in their everyday practices are “explained” by sets of concepts and categories developed by sociologists that may (or more likely, may not) be recognized by lay actors themselves. On occasion these sociological concepts and categories are reappropriated by lay actors into everyday language and life (one thinks of “social class” and more recently “social capital,” “social networks,” “social exclusion,” and so on). But on other occasions the challenge is to demonstrate how and why the categories and classifications developed by sociologists are (in any sense) “superior” to those used by lay actors to explain their social actions. Which set of understandings possesses the greatest legitimacy – those provided by social actors in terms of their own lay “vocabularies of motive” or those provided by sociologists in terms of systematically constructed typologies of social action
Class (philosophy · Epistemology · Everyday life · Ideal (ethics · Social science · Sociological theory · Sociology · Information Systems Theories and Implementation · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Philosophy · Social and Cultural Dynamics
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |