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SAGE Handbook of European Studies

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European Journal of Social Theory
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Making up People

On Some Looping Effects of the Human Kind - Institutional Reflexivity or Social Control?

Davide Sparti

UNIVERSITY OF SIENA, ITALY

This paper is an account of the co-construction of categorical identity and personal identity among human beings. As people recognize themselves within a socially sanctioned categorical scheme, they reproduce that scheme, and hence institutional and personal reflexivity occur as a joint movement that, at the same time, can be seen as an exercise in social control. The inspirations for this account are lan Hacking's view about the distinctiveness of social kinds from natural kinds, and Dan Sperber's idea about cultural communication as a form of social epidemiology.

Key Words: category • classification • identity • reflexivity • social control

European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 4, No. 3, 331-349 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/13684310122225154
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