Description
Book SynopsisA team of sociologists presents a groundbreaking model of concepts and categorization that can guide sociological and cultural analysis of a wide variety of social situations. Using this model, important yet commonplace phenomena such as routine buying decisions can be quantified in terms of the cognitive distance between concepts.
Trade ReviewSocial classification—the establishment of categories and the sorting of entities into those categories—is the critical juncture at which cognition and social organization intersect. As such, it is a central topic that cuts across many fields of sociology and other social sciences. This volume integrates work from the most productive and promising program of theory and research on social classification into a coherent statement that will inform sociological thinking for years to come. -- Paul DiMaggio, New York University
This formal foundation of categorization processes represents a massive step forward in our theoretical understanding of categories, their evolution, and their influence on decisions. The authors do an excellent job of motivating these cognitive foundations in terms of their relevance to sociological questions of interest. -- Olav Sorenson, Frederick Frank ’54 and Mary C. Tanner Professor of Management, Yale School of Management
Concepts and Categories is at once foundational and generative—the kind of book in which you will fill the margins with new learnings and insights. I highly recommend it both to newcomers to the sociology of markets as well as to established scholars looking for their next novel idea. -- Damon Phillips, Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise, Columbia Business School
Hannan and collaborators have produced a masterful interdisciplinary intervention, the first to bridge research on the nature of concepts in cognitive psychology and sociological work on organizational and market categories. The book provides solid theoretical foundations tightly linked to formal measurement tools that should prove foundational to future advancements in the field. -- Omar Lizardo, LeRoy Neiman Term Chair Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
Crisply written and technically rich. . . . Recommended. * Choice *
An impeccable search for clearly defined concepts, an articulated theorizing connecting the concepts together logically
and in natural language, and an exposure that distinguishes definitions, postulates, correlates, and propositions. * Administrative Science Quarterly *
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
1. Concepts in Sociological Analysis
Part I. Concepts and Spaces2. Preliminaries
3. Semantic Space
4. Concepts as Probability Densities in Semantic Space
5. Conceptual Spaces: Domains and Cohorts
6. Expanding Spaces to Compare Concepts
7. Informativeness and Distinctiveness
Part II. Applying Concepts8. Categories and Categorization
9. Free Categorization
10. Concepts, Perception, and Inference
Part III. Bridges to Sociological Application11. Conceptual Ambiguity and Contrast
12. Valuation
Part IV. Concepts in Social Interaction13. The Group Level: Conceptual and Extensional Agreement
14. Social Inference and Taken-for-Grantedness
15. Broadening the Scope of Application
Part V. AppendixesAppendix A: Glossary of Technical Terms
Appendix B: Some Elemental First-Order Logic
Appendix C: Proofs
Notes
Bibliography
Index
