Why do people like books, music, or movies that adhere consistently to
genre conventions? Why is it hard for politicians to take positions that
cross ideological boundaries? Why do we have dramatically different
expectations of companies that are categorized as social media platforms
as opposed to news media sites? The answers to these questions require
an understanding of how people use basic concepts in their everyday
lives to give meaning to objects, other people, and social situations
and actions.
In this book, a 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. Drawing on research in
various fields, including cognitive science, computational linguistics,
and psychology, the book develops an innovative view of concepts. It
argues that concepts have meanings that are probabilistic rather than
sharp, occupying fuzzy, overlapping positions in a "conceptual space."
Measurements of distances in this space reveal our mental
representations of categories. Using this model, important yet
commonplace phenomena such as our routine buying decisions can be
quantified in terms of the cognitive distance between concepts.
Concepts and Categories provides an essential set of formal
theoretical tools and illustrates their application using an eclectic
set of methodologies, from micro-level controlled experiments to
macro-level language processing. It illuminates how explicit attention
to concepts and categories can give us a new understanding of everyday
situations and interactions.
