Durkheim held society provides the categories for thinking the world, not taxonomy content

Evidence

The seminal text in which Durkheim worked out this part of his theory was that which he wrote with his pupil, Marcel Mauss: Primitive Classification . In it Durkheim set out to show how the cognitive categories and mental classifications which “primitives” used to think their world were in fact modeled on social relations. Society did not—as rather crude functionalists assumed—provide the content of social taxonomies. Rather, Durkheim believed, following Kant, that what society did was to provide the categories in which men “thought” their world. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 356

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Durkheim’s anti-functionalist move: society supplies a priori categories rather than taxonomic content, a Kantian inheritance.
• XREF: Builds toward how cultural categories are social products, foundational to Hall’s later work on ideology and articulation. — connects to: Society provides the categories of thought, not the content of taxonomies; Durkheim held society itself is the source of logical and moral categories — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 355; Durkheim and Mauss argued cognitive categories derive from social relations
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Society provides the categories of thought, not the content of taxonomies; Durkheim held society itself is the source of logical and moral categories — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 355; Durkheim and Mauss argued cognitive categories derive from social relations

Broader Connections

• Society provides the categories of thought, not the content of taxonomies #corroborates (1.00)