Concepts and Categories

Michael T. Hannan, Greta Hsu, Elizabeth Pontikes, Giacomo Negro, Amanda J. Sharkey, Gaël Le Mens, László Pólos, Balázs Kovács

ISBN 10: 023119272X / ISBN 13: 9780231192729

Edité par Columbia University Press, US, 2019

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. N° de réf. du vendeur LU-9780231192729

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.

À propos de l'auteur: Michael T. Hannan is The StrataCom Professor of Management in the Graduate School of Business and Professor of Sociology, Emeritus in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Stanford University and Professor of Organisation Theory at the Durham University Business School. He is the co-author of Logics of Organization Theory: Audiences, Codes, and Ecologies (2007), The Demography of Corporations and Industries (2000), and Dynamics of Organizational Populations: Density, Legitimation and Competition (1992).

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Concepts and Categories
Éditeur : Columbia University Press, US
Date d'édition : 2019
Reliure : Hardback
Etat : New