{"title":"Visual essentialism & social kinds","authors":"Katie Tullmann","doi":"10.1111/jtsb.12318","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Scholars increasingly deny that they are strictly biological. Instead, these scholars argue that they are socially constructed. One challenge is to square the notion of social kinds with the apparent perception of those categories. I argue that we do not perceive social categories such as race. Instead, racial categories are visually encoded based on visible markers that are proxies for social kinds. Thus, I argue that the assumption of seeing social categories commits us to a flawed theory of <i>visual essentialism</i>: the idea that some social kinds are visible properties that are biologically determined.</p>","PeriodicalId":47646,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2021-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jtsb.12318","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Scholars increasingly deny that they are strictly biological. Instead, these scholars argue that they are socially constructed. One challenge is to square the notion of social kinds with the apparent perception of those categories. I argue that we do not perceive social categories such as race. Instead, racial categories are visually encoded based on visible markers that are proxies for social kinds. Thus, I argue that the assumption of seeing social categories commits us to a flawed theory of visual essentialism: the idea that some social kinds are visible properties that are biologically determined.
期刊介绍:
The Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour publishes original theoretical and methodological articles that examine the links between social structures and human agency embedded in behavioural practices. The Journal is truly unique in focusing first and foremost on social behaviour, over and above any disciplinary or local framing of such behaviour. In so doing, it embraces a range of theoretical orientations and, by requiring authors to write for a wide audience, the Journal is distinctively interdisciplinary and accessible to readers world-wide in the fields of psychology, sociology and philosophy.