The social construction of human categories
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The social construction of human categories Ásta: Categories we live by: The construction of sex, gender, race, and other social categories. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, 140pp, US$35.00 PB Jonathan Y. Tsou1 Accepted: 2 November 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
This book articulates a social constructionist theory of human categories. Ásta’s analysis focuses on social categories: human categories defined by ‘socially significant’ properties that bring about ‘constraints and enablements.’ The distinctive feature of her ‘conferralist account’ is that social properties are entirely bestowed upon, i.e., conferred on, individuals by others (33). Ásta presents the conferralist account in terms of an example of how a baseball pitch acquires the status of being a ‘strike.’ The conferral of this property involves five components: (1) The conferred property (e.g., being a strike) (2) Subjects who confer the property (e.g., the umpire) (3) The attitudes or actions of subjects that matter for conferral (e.g., the umpire’s judgment) (4) The context of conferral (e.g., a baseball game) (5) The base properties that subjects are consciously or unconsciously attempting to track (e.g., whether a baseball passes through the strike zone). For Ásta, the most important factor in determining whether a pitch is a strike is (3). Analogously, the most important factor in determining whether an individual possesses a social property is the judgment of conferring subjects, rather than base properties. Ásta’s conferralist account is presented primarily against John Searle’s constitutional account of social reality. Searle argues that social properties are constituted by rules: ‘X meeting conditions K in context C constitutes social property S.’ While Searle holds that subjects, e.g., umpires, can be mistaken in their judgments of base properties, Ásta argues that—in terms of factors that matter for acquiring a * Jonathan Y. Tsou [email protected] 1
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
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status—the judgments of conferring subjects ‘cannot be wrong’ (11). Searle’s more recent account accommodates the role of collective intentions: ‘We collectively accept that X meeting conditions K in context C constitutes social property S.’ Ásta’s countersuggestion is that: ‘Subjects’ judgment that X meets conditions K in context C confers social property S to X.’ Whereas Searle maintains that constitutional rules determine whether an individual possesses a social status, Ásta maintains that conferring subjects’ judgments, guided by explicit or implicit rules, are decisive. Ásta distinguishes between ‘institutional’ and ‘communal’ properties, arguing that her account is superior to Searle’s for explaining communal properties. Whereas conferrals of institutional properties, e.g., being president or married, are grounded in institutional authority, conferrals of communal properties, e.g., being cool or a woman, are grounded in social standing. Compared to the form
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