Concepts and Categories - (Middle Range) (Hardcover)

About the 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. Using this model, important yet commonplace phenomena such as routine buying decisions can be quantified in terms of the cognitive distance between concepts.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

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"

Crisply written and technically rich. . . . Recommended.-- "Choice"

Social 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

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

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

About the Author

Michael T. Hannan is the StrataCom Professor of Management emeritus in the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and professor emeritus of sociology at Stanford University.

Gaël Le Mens is professor of behavioral science in the Department of Economics and Business at Pompeu Fabra University.

Greta Hsu is professor of management at the University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Management.

Balázs Kovács is assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale University School of Management.

Giacomo Negro is professor of organization and management at Emory University's Goizueta Business School.

László Pólos is professor of organizational theory at Durham University Business School.

Elizabeth Pontikes is associate professor of management at the University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Management.

Amanda J. Sharkey is associate professor of organizations and strategy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.