Race, Class, and Gender as Organizing Principles

Abstract

Think of all the people using electricity right now: a teenager drying his hair in the locker room after a game; an elderly couple driving their hybrid car to the grocery store; someone writing the great American novel on her computer in the coffee shop; a father switching on his daughter’s night-light. These electricity users are like the bus riders and radio listeners that philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre uses to illustrate his distinction between two different and interrelated types of social collectives: groups and series. A group of people, for Sartre (2004), is self-consciously formed around something its members have in common, while people in a series have a relationship to some material thing but hold little else in common. If electricity users comprised a group, they might wear T-shirts that say “Electricity Rocks!” or send out monthly newsletters noting electricity users’ birthdays and anniversaries. They would identify with each other because they would believe themselves to be alike. A series of people, though, has no such identification. Electricity users all depend on the electricity staying on, so they all have a common relationship to that material issue. Bus riders, too, face a common condition together: at any given bus stop, some of them stand waiting for the bus, which will either get them to their destinations on time or make them late.