Research Summary |
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We live in a world in which the boundaries of race, gender, and sexual orientation are increasingly being contested. Commonly accepted social binaries—man/woman, black/white, heterosexual/homosexual—are proving to be a fraught way to understand social identity. In a series of recent papers, I argue for a philosophical alternative to binary conceptions of social identity. On my proposed scalar (or continuous) theory of social identity, social identities come in degrees; e.g., one is not simply a man, but one is a man to a lesser or greater degree. The scalar theory allows us to make sense of racial, sexual, and gender social identities that are often obscured by social binaries.
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Publications |
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