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The Construction of Nature and Social Categories.

紀錄類型:	書目-電子資源 : Monograph/item
正題名/作者:	The Construction of Nature and Social Categories./
作者:	Johfre, Sasha Shen.
出版者:	Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, : 2023,
面頁冊數:	241 p.
附註:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-06, Section: B.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International85-06B.
標題:	Behavior. -
電子資源:	https://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=30726868
ISBN:	9798381022032

The Construction of Nature and Social Categories.
Johfre, Sasha Shen.

The Construction of Nature and Social Categories. - Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2023 - 241 p.

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-06, Section: B.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2023.

he idea that something "natural" is better than something not natural is regularly used to make decisions and justify beliefs in American life, in contexts as diverse as deciding what to buy in a grocery store to advocating for the righteousness of the gender binary. This dissertation identifies ways that concepts of nature and social categories (e.g. gender, race, and age) are socially constructed, and explores their consequences for inequality. It consists of three separate empirical papers.In the first, I present a theoretical framework of the cultural components of the valuing of nature and naturalness. I argue that the idea that natural options are better consists of at least three separate cultural products: first, the naturalness schema that defines some things as natural and some as unnatural; second, the natural-is-better cultural logic that positions natural options as morally and instrumentally better than nonnatural ones; and third, appeal to nature frames that cultural actors use to render meaning and make persuasive claims using the naturalness schema and natural-is-better cultural logic. Through a series of nationally representative surveys, I test whether natural-isbetter is indeed a cultural logic and find that it is because it is used consistently by some individuals to make decisions across several domains of life. Natural-is-better logic is used non-randomly among Americans; in particular, people with stronger conservative political beliefs are most likely to rely on natural-is-better logic to evaluate options. Finally, I find that one consequence of this logic may be reinforcing an unequal status quo, in that people with stronger natural-is-better logic are more likely to suggest action that maintains, rather than disrupts, a hypothetical situation of unequal resource distribution. This is particularly the case for the strongest political liberals, suggesting that natural-is-better logic may have hidden conservative underpinnings that insidiously influence liberals' action in ways that don't match with their stated beliefs. Social scientists may find value in considering other ways that the natural-is-better cultural logic explains social processes, including those related to inequality.In the second paper, I examine appeal to nature frames by exploring ways that nature is mobilized in cultural conversations through an analysis of an original dataset of 5700 print magazine advertisements from 1970-2019. I find that there are two common and distinct strategies by which nature is used to frame persuasive messages: appeals to the outdoors (present in 16% of ads in my sample) and appeals to natural properties (present in 17% of ads in my sample). Appeals to the outdoors have remained relatively consistent in prevalence over time but appeals to natural properties have increased significantly since the year 2000. Furthermore, these two types of appeals to nature are associated with images and text in advertisements that construct notions of rugged individualist White masculinity and authentic care-focused femininity. Both types are much more common than appeals to environmentalism, despite the relatively higher focus such "green advertising" receives in culture and academic literature. This paper shows that appeals to nature are common frames, and that they may be reinforcing the gender binary and harmful gender stereotypes, thereby contributing to gender inequality.The third paper examines a different type of social process related to the construction of social categories: how common American first names signal age, gender, and race. The research presented in this paper shows that names are strong signals of all three types of social categories, and that people's perceptions of a name's age do not closely match the true population distribution. Perceptions of age and race interact, in that names that are perceived as Black are also more likely to be perceived as young compared to names that are perceived as White, and no names I tested were perceived to be old and Black despite an explicit attempt to include such names in my sample of names. This paper has implications for theory on person perception as well as methods that use first names to signal social category membership, such as audit studies testing labor market discrimination.Together, these papers answer and raise empirical and theoretical questions related to the roles of social constructs of nature and social categories in processes of inequality. Both social scientists and lay cultural actors may benefit from observing and critically engaging with ways that natural-is-better cultural logic is deployed across myriad domains of everyday life. In the concluding chapter of this dissertation, I discuss avenues for future research that build on these threads of research to examine a sociology of nature and social categories.

ISBN: 9798381022032Subjects--Topical Terms:

532476
Behavior.

The Construction of Nature and Social Categories.
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