- George Simmel, How is society possible? In On Individuality and Social Forms
- Holland and Skinner, Prestige and intimacy. In Cultural models of language and thought (Holland and Quinn, Eds.)
- Lawrence Hirschfeld, Race in the Making. Chps. 0, 1
Read all three essays. Think about how categorization "makes society possible":
- How do these authors describe the cognitive structure with which we think about people?
- Where do the categories come from?
- How do they change and evolve?
- How do we classify people we meet?
- What happens when the cues we get from the person do not fit any existing category?
- Why do we have the particular categories we have?
- Are they primarily descriptive (what is this person like) or prescriptive (how should I act toward them)?
- How is information about types of people shared?
- Is the development of these categories a personal or social process?
Please submit your essay by Sunday morning, and spend some time before class reading over the other essays.