Zerubavel Classification Sociale
Zerubavel Classification Sociale
Zerubavel Classification Sociale
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INTRODUCTION
Although the world in which we live is essentially continuous, we experience it as discrete chunks: "strangers" and "acquaintances," "fiction"
and "nonfiction," "business" and "pleasure," "normal" and "perverse."
Carving out of reality such "islands of meaning" (E. Zerubavel, 1991:5-32)
involves two contrasting yet complementary cognitive acts-lumping and
splitting.2 The former entails grouping "similar"things together in a single
mental cluster. The latter involves perceiving "different" clusters as separate from one another. Lumping enables us to perceive grape juice as simi1Department of Sociology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903-5072.
2E. Zerubavel, 1991:21. On the distinction between "lumpers" and "splitters" in science, see
Simpson, 1961:137-140; Hexter, 1979:242-243.
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SPLITTING
Whereas lumping involves overlooking differences within mental clusters, splitting entails widening the perceived gaps between them, thereby reinforcing their mental separateness. Thus, while playing down intracluster
mental distances, we also exaggerate intercluster ones (Tajfel and Wilkes,
1963). Employing the same nonmetric, topological mode of thinking, we thus
envision substantial gaps separating "different"mental clusters from one another. Indeed, it is the perception of such mental gaps that enables us to
envision islands of meaning in the first place (E. Zerubavel, 1991:21-32).
Most critical, in this regard, is the experience of mental quantum leaps
that accompanies the "crossing" of the mental divides separating different
clusters from one another, and which entails the mental inflation of distances across those divides (E. Zerubavel, 1991:24-32). It is such inflation
of intercluster mental gaps that leads us to perceive chimpanzees as
"closer" to chipmunks than to humans, with whom chimpanzees share 99%
of their genes, and 64-year-old workers as closer to 24-year-olds than to
65-year-olds, whom we often consider officially unfit to work.
Consider the mental inflation of intercluster distances in actual space.
Our topological experience of space distorts our metric perception of distance, leading us to exaggerate distances between points that are located in
"separate" chunks of social space (Kosslyn et al., 1974; Sherman et al., 1979;
Allen, 1981; Thorndyke, 1981; Maki, 1982; Acredolo and Boulter, 1988).
Such tendency to inflate distances across mental divides overrides even the
basic "law of proximity"(Wertheimer, 1923) that makes things that are close
to one another seem parts of a single cluster. As a result of the gaps we
4Using proximity as a metaphor for similarity (Werner, 1940/1957:222-225), we often envision
difference in terms of mental distance. See, for example, Goldstein and Scheerer, 1941:59-60,
75-82, 103-107, 128; Attneave, 1950; Osgood et al, 1957:89-97; Bonner, 1964; Torgerson,
1965; Blau and Duncan, 1967:67-75, 152-161; Arnold, 1971; Fillenbaum and Rapoport, 1971;
Reed, 1972; Caramazza et al., 1976; Krumhansl, 1978.
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first-year "graduate" students often seems wider than the three-year distance between seniors and freshmen.
Consider also, in this regard, the somewhat convulsive manner in
which we officially move from one conventional phase of our existence to
the next one, as manifested in the way we transform metrically negligible
steps in time into significant quantum leaps in age. The minuscule interval
from the day before one's sixth birthday to the birthday itself, for example,
is far more critical than the 364-day interval that follows it since it entails
a full-year leap from being "five" to being "six." (By contrast, despite the
fact that we age continuously, a boy is officially considered six until his
seventh birthday.) Such quantum leaps are even more dramatic when we
reach particularlycritical birthdays, such as when we become legally eligible
to drive a car, drink in a bar, or vote (Wright, 1968:189-190). Eighteenyear-old "adults" are thus regarded by the law as closer to 52-year-olds
than to 17-year-old "minors."
The way we reckon age is only one manifestation of the somewhat
spasmodic manner in which we structure official mobility in social time.
Though they are usually quite short, weddings, for example, involve a major
leap across the mental divide separating marriage from singlehood, so that
even couples who have already lived together for several years officially
undergo a considerable transformation of their relationship at the brief moment when they exchange their vows. Along similar lines, we expect a move
from one phase of one's career to the next one to entail a dramatic leap
in one's professional skills. Thus, on the day they are officially transformed
from "interns" into "residents,"we expect young physicians to immediately
assume significantly greater amounts of responsibility, which they would be
denied only a few hours earlier. By contrast, despite the considerable professional experience they gain during their internship, on the last day of
that year, interns are nevertheless assigned the same amount of responsibility they were given ten months earlier (E. Zerubavel, 1979:5-6, 10-11).
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cialized to "see" them. In other words, it is social convention that transforms actual oceans into mental archipelagos.
Thus, it is by sheer convention that we treat Danish and Norwegian
as two separate languages, distinguish heroin from its chemical cousins,
which we use as controlled substitutes for it (Gould, 1990:74), and cut up
continuous stretches of land into separate continents ("North America" and
"Central America," "Europe" and "Asia"). Nor are there any natural divides separating childhood from adulthood, winter from spring, or one day
from the next. It is we ourselves who organize reality into "separate" compartments (Bergson, 1908/1911:239-298).
And yet, while they may not exist "out there" in the real world, neither are islands of meaning generated solely by our own minds. The gaps
we envision between "different" mental clusters are neither natural nor
logical, yet they are not entirely personal either. It is indeed a mind that
organizes reality in separate chunks, yet it is not just the individual's own
mind. When we cut up the world, we usually do it not as individuals but
as members of particular "thought communities" (Fleck, 1935/1979:45, 103;
E. Zerubavel, 1997).
The logic of classification is something we learn as part of our cognitive socialization (E. Zerubavel, 1997).5 Thus, when we take a course in
art history, we learn to see things as "Gothic" or "Postimpressionistic."
Learning music likewise involves learning to break up a continuous voice
range into discrete categories such as "alto" and "soprano."
Much of this, of course, is done through language. It is language that
helps us carve out of experiential continua discrete categories such as
"long" and "short" or "hot" and "cold" (Whorf, 1942/1956:259; Wilber,
1979/1981:26). As we assign them distinct labels, we thus come to perceive
"bantamweight"boxers and "four-star"hotels as if they were indeed qualitatively different from "featherweight" boxers and "three-star" hotels. It is
language that helps us distinguish "undergraduate" from "graduate" students and "minors" from "adults" as well as "this week" from "last week"
and "herbs" (parsley, dill) from mere "leaves," which we would never allow
on our plates. It is likewise language that helps us separate in our minds
"bonus" from regular "salary," "fetus" from "baby," and "menstruating"
from mere "spotting" (see papers by Zelizer, Isaacson, and Foster, this issue).
At the same time, however, it is our ability to assign things a common
label that also helps us lump them together in our minds, since such ability
provides us with the seemingly homogeneous mental niches into which we
lump them (Plato, 4th century BC/1952:263c-263d; Locke, 1690/1975 book
5See also Luria, 1974/1976:49-99; Curran, 1996.
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to help reinforce the mental separation of the "public" from the "private."
Numerous contact taboos are likewise designed to help mentally separate
the sacred from the profane. The use of two separate calendars for homeand work-related appointments and the practice of keeping one's house
and office keys on two separate rings offer similar evidence of attempts to
separate those two domains in users' minds (see Nippert-Eng, this issue).
While rites of separation are particularly useful for the student of
mental splitting, students of mental lumping should pay closer attention to
"Freudian" slips.6 Traditionallyused by psychoanalysts for detecting strictly
personal associations (Freud, 1901/1960:53-105), Freudian slips are also excellent sources on social classification since they tell us quite a lot about
what people actually lump together in their minds. Thus, when we note
that someone refers to a person named Goldenberg as "Rosenblum" or
"Finkelstein," for example, we learn quite a lot about the salience of ethnicity in the way she categorizes people, since the three are all allo-variants
of the category "Jewish name." The same is true when people refer to
someone by the name of a fellow "Black" or "Oriental" who happens to
work in the same predominantly white place. And when people keep mixing
up two holidays that are associated with two different historical events that
both involved armed resistance to an enemy, we learn how salient is such
resistance in the way members of their society generally classify historical
events (Y. Zerubavel, 1995:220-221). Such errors, in short, offer students
of social classification a window into the way people actually organize the
world in their minds.
Understanding the process of lumping and splitting is absolutely critical for understanding how we rent a video, use the Yellow Pages, or qualify
for certain benefits. In each of the above situations, our vision of an object
is essentially embedded in a vision of some larger mental niche within
which it is conventionally placed-"comedy," "appliances," "handicapped."
How we actually lump "similar" objects in such mental clusters and split
"different" clusters from one another is thus critical for understanding how
we generally organize the world in our minds.
As the following seven papers demonstrate, the process of lumping
and splitting underlies the way we use money (Zelizer), create a safe (Simpson) as well as a fair (Purcell) world, sculpt our professional (Nippert-Eng)
and sexual (Brekhus) identity, and narrate complex biological processes
such as pregnancy (Isaacson) and menstruation (Foster). Furthermore,
these papers all reveal the unmistakably cognitive foundations of social life
6For some earlier attempts to use errors as data in cognitive sociology, see E. Zerubavel,
1981:22-30, 1985:134-138.
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