Categorical knowledge of strangers frequently depends on personal information about them

Evidence

To know another personally is not to eliminate knowing him categorically. Personal knowing supplements categoric knowing; it adds temporal events, nuances of meaning, relational depth to the stark outline of the other’s roles and statuses. It adds adjectives and adverbs and qualifying phrases, as it were, to the simple sentence that is categoric knowing. In some instances, to carry the analogy further, the noun and the verb themselves lack meaning without their modifiers and qualifiers. That is-and the importance of this point will become clear soon-complex categoric knowing is frequently dependent upon personal knowing, categorical placement being dependent upon biographical information. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 106

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s cross-reading of Simmel and Lofland: how urban dwellers sort strangers — links to Lofland’s own later analysis of categoric knowing in public space.
• QUESTION: Claim that complex categoric knowing depends on biographical data is flagged by the author as becoming important — worth chasing how it plays out in the city-stranger analysis that follows.