Abstract
Two major questions have dominated work on the metaphysics of social groups: first, Are there any? And second, What are they? I will begin by arguing that the answer to the ontological question is an easy and obvious ‘yes’. We do better to turn our efforts elsewhere, addressing the question: “What are social groups?” One might worry, however, about this question on grounds that the general term ‘social group’ seems like a term of art—not a well-used concept we can analyze, or can presuppose corresponds to a real kind we can investigate. But while the general notion of ‘social group’ may be a term of art, our terms for clubs and courts, races and genders, are not. It is worth stepping back to ask what function these social group concepts serve. I will argue that individual social group concepts function to give normative structure to our lives together. Paying attention to the role of norms in social groups, I will argue, can enable us to provide a unified understanding of the importance of core social groups, while still respecting the great differences among social groups of different kinds.
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Notes
This is an application of the ‘easy’ approach to ontology I defend at length elsewhere (2015).
Effingham does cite my position against this, but just says it is better to not get dragged into a debate here if one doesn’t have to (2010, p. 253).
For a more detailed response to ‘magic’ objections, see my (2015, pp. 215–220).
On this point, see also my (2015, Chap. 8).
As Kate Ritchie has pointed out (correspondence) one might, however, want to allow that social groups needn’t be constituted only by individual people—one might, for example, want to allow that some social groups may be (at least in the first instance) constituted by others. For example, Major League Baseball might be constituted by a certain number of teams (themselves constituted by members).
In her (2015) Ritchie labels these simply ‘Type 1’ groups; in her (forthcoming) she gives the more descriptive labels of ‘Organized Groups’ and ‘Feature Groups’.
Perhaps it is for this reason that Ritchie later shifts to treating type 2 groups as sharing a (causally and/or constitutively) socially constructed property (2015, p. 317).
This makes the above analysis of social groups analogous to Heidegger’s (1927/1962) treatment of the ready-to-hand, as characterized by norms regarding who is to use it, in what way, for what purpose... Also, like Heidegger’s ready-to-hand (but unlike the more standard category of artifacts) social groups may be, but need not be, intentionally created.
This account of social groups fits reasonably well with the notion employed by social identity theories of norms—which hold that group norms are obeyed because one identifies with being a member of the group. For this to have any plausibility (even as a partial account of norms) the groups in question must be governed by internal and/or structuring norms: mere belonging in a group of people with a longer second toe intuitively does not affect one’s feelings of identification, and doesn’t bring with it any norms to comply with. In short, social identity theorists about norms must think of social groups as normatively structured (though more specifically, as having internal and/or structuring norms—not just external norms).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this issue.
In particular, I can remain neutral about what underlies norm compliance—why we tend to follow these norms (the point here is just that the presence of these norms is in part constitutive of what it is for there to be this social group). But the view proposed here is quite coherent with Bicchieri and Muldoon’s account that empirical and normative expectations (about others conforming to the norm, expecting them to do likewise, and perhaps sanctioning them if they don’t) underlie norm compliance (2014, Sect. 7).
Including both empirical expectations (about what others will do) and normative expectations (about what others will think ought to be done).
See Bicchieri and Muldoon (2014, Sect. 7) for clarity that while expectations—about others conforming to the norm and expecting them to conform to the norm and perhaps sanctioning them if they don’t—underlie norm compliance, these expectations may not be things we are aware of.
This is thus in line with Witt’s (2011) work defining gender as a social position, where social positions are linked to complex webs of social norms.
Along these lines Witt (2011, pp. 87–90) treats gender as the mega social role, in part given its role in inflecting and defining a range of other social roles.
Nonetheless, as Witt makes clear, in many cases (including gender) social recognition rather than self-identification is the primary element in classification in a particular social group, a classification which makes one evaluable under the relevant norms (2011, pp. 33–34), even if one does not self-identify with the category.
This also brings to light the interesting feature that we may be subject to norms as individuals given our role in a particular structured social group (where that role is fulfilled by only one person at a time). There seems no barrier to seeing these norms in parallel, though in some cases a social role is such that it is permitted only to be fulfilled by a single individual at a time. It does, however, lead to additional potential clashes between the norms that apply to someone qua member of a certain group, and qua individual who fulfills a certain role in a structured group.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to audiences at conferences in Southampton (2016) and Gothenburg (2015), as well as to two anonymous referees, for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Thomasson, A.L. The ontology of social groups. Synthese 196, 4829–4845 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1185-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1185-y