An Ontological Turn in Categories Research: From Standards of Legitimacy to Evidence of Actuality
批评以往类别研究忽视类别的产生与消亡过程，提出本体论转向，构建框架解释陌生类别如何成为常识，并推荐集合论与网络分析两种方法。
Abstract In this Counterpoint to D urand and P aolella, we argue that prior work on categories has neglected processes of category emergence and dissolution. In response, we call for studies of categories that focus on how they emerge and fall out of use and on what they come to mean. We call this an ontological turn in categories research because systems of categorization and their associated meanings capture and reflect what societies view as social realities, or ontologies. As a guide to this broad topic, we develop a framework that relates the effects of categories to the familiarity of (1) occasions and motivations for their usage and (2) meanings and ontologies they carry, and we use this framework to elaborate two paths by which previously unfamiliar categories become accepted as elements of common knowledge. These paths jointly inform the recognition front of the emergence question, an understudied problem in organization studies. Finally, we outline two methodologies – set theoretic analysis and network‐based analysis – that offer particular promise for analysing processes of category emergence and dissolution.