Social Categories are Natural Kinds, not Objective Types (and Why it Matters Politically)

Abstract

There is growing support for the view that social categories like men and women refer to "objective types." An objective type is a similarity class for which the axis of similarity is an objective rather than nominal or fictional property. Such types are independently real and causally relevant, yet their unity does not derive from an essential property. Given this tandem of features, it is not surprising why empirically-minded researchers interested in fighting oppression and marginalization have found this ontological category so attractive: objective types have the ontological credentials to secure the reality (and thus political representation) of social categories, and yet they do not impose exclusionary essences that also naturalize and legitimize social inequalities. This essay argues that, from the perspective of these political goals of fighting oppression and marginalization, the category of objective types is in fact a Trojan horse; it looks like a gift, but it ends up creating trouble. I argue that objective type classifications often lack empirical adequacy, and as a result they lack political adequacy. I also provide, and in reference to the normative goals described above, several arguments for preferring a social ontology of natural kinds with historical essences.

Gender as a historical kind: a tale of two genders?

“…This position has been set out in response to the representation problem in the work of Iris Marion Young on the one hand, who suggests that women should be thought of as a “serial collective” ( 1994 ), and in more detail in the historical essentialist account of gender defended by Theodore Bach. The latter is the account I will follow most closely (Bach 2012 , 2016 ). I will try to demonstrate the virtues of the account, and in particular I will show that a historical account has the capacity to resolve any tension between the inductive potential of gender and the variation within the category.…”

“…As Bem and other social psychologists have thoroughly documented, we are so used to gender pronouns, stereotyping and so on, that we are almost blind to how pervasive it is (Liben and Bigler 2017 ). With so many properties being gendered, it is quite natural to think of gender as a social kind , providing some grounds for inductive generalizations and generics 3 (Bach 2012 , 2016 ; Mallon 2016 ). Note that this conception of social kinds is not necessarily essentialist.…”

“…As noted above, Bach advocates a historical cultural-reproductive account of gender that aims to address the representation problem—as well as other problems. Accordingly, he thinks taking gender to be a historical kind gives a superior answer to accounts that treat it as an “objective type”, which makes a salient normative feature of gender, with which one may be concerned in political advocacy, essentially a matter of definition ( 2012 , 2016 ). [A]n ontology of historical kinds provides explanations for objective similarities.…”

Making Up Peoples? Conferralism about Nationality

“…14 For a reformist version of reductionism about social categories in general, see Bach 2016. 15 For an application of conferralism to debates about essentialism, see Ásta 2013a.…”

Real Kinds in Real Time: On Responsible Social Modeling

“…For additional discussion of the epistemic difference between classes and real kinds, see especiallyMillikan (2010). For discussion of why this epistemic difference undercuts the strategy of appealing to Dupre's "promiscuous realism" to support the ameliorative strategy, seeBach (2016).…”