BLOG IX: Àsta’s Categories We Live By: The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race, and Other Social Categories

Àsta’s book Categories We Live By: The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race, and Other Social Categories explains what social categories are, how they are created, sustained, and how  humans belong to them. Chapter one of Àsta’s book introduces a 'conferralist' perspective of how things are subjected to a social category depending on another constant. In regard to social properties, Àsta writes “...A social property is a property that depends on other human attitudes and practices in a particular way, namely, it is conferred by human attitudes and practices, and that is how one acquires them” (Àsta, 33). According to Àsta, social properties are created and maintained  by humans. This means that humans create social properties to place each other into social categories. For example, take the property of being a woman. What does it mean to be a woman? Are there  physical properties that define womanhood? Or is being a woman a behavioural property? Maybe a combination of both, or neither? Properties that define womanhood have changed, and continue to change, throughout time. There is no real attribute that defines women. A human is defined as a woman based on the attributes constructed by society to define womanhood. Àsta also writes that “ Social properties thus exist because of collective agreement, and their content is determined by collective agreement, on the perceptual constitutionalist account” (Àsta, 30).  This suggests that social properties are properties that humans constructed to use as definitive attributes. As these attributes become more socialized, they become the new normal, and appear as a collective agreement. Ultimately, this means that social properties are socially constructed. 

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