Concepts and Categories : : Foundations for Sociological and Cultural Analysis / / Michael T. Hannan, Gaël Le Mens, Greta Hsu, Amanda J. Sharkey, Giacomo Negro, László Pólos, Elizabeth Pontikes, Balázs Kovács.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2019
• VerfasserIn: Hannan, Michael T.,; Hsu, Greta,; Le Mens, Gaël,; Negro, Giacomo,; Pontikes, Elizabeth,; Pólos, László,; Sharkey, Amanda J.,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2019]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: The Middle Range Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 35 figures
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Preface --; Acknowledgments --; CHAPTER ONE. Concepts in Sociological Analysis --; PART ONE. Concepts and Spaces --; CHAPTER TWO. Preliminaries --; CHAPTER THREE. Semantic Space --; CHAPTER FOUR. Concepts as Probability Densities in Semantic Space --; CHAPTER FIVE. Conceptual Spaces: Domains and Cohorts --; CHAPTER SIX. Expanding Spaces to Compare Concepts --; CHAPTER SEVEN. Informativeness and Distinctiveness --; PART TWO. Applying Concepts --; CHAPTER EIGHT. Categories and Categorization --; CHAPTER NINE. Free Categorization --; CHAPTER TEN. Concepts, Perception, and Inference --; PART THREE. Bridges to Sociological Application --; CHAPTER ELEVEN. Conceptual Ambiguity and Contrast --; CHAPTER TWELVE. Valuation --; PART FOUR. Concepts in Social Interaction --; CHAPTER THIRTEEN. The Group Level: Conceptual and Extensional Agreement --; CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Social Inference and Taken-for-Grantedness --; CHAPTER FIFTEEN. Broadening the Scope of Application --; PART FIVE. Appendixes --; APPENDIX A. Glossary of Technical Terms --; APPENDIX B. Some Elemental First-Order Logic --; APPENDIX C. Proofs --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9780231549936; 9783110651959; 9783110610765; 9783110664232; 9783110610130; 9783110606485
• DOI: 10.7312/hann19272
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Michael T. Hannan, Gaël Le Mens, Greta Hsu, Amanda J. Sharkey, Giacomo Negro, László Pólos, Elizabeth Pontikes, Balázs Kovács.

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.