Eroded ‘master concepts’ lose their explanatory reach over social phenomena.

Evidence

The extent to which this is true for morally and politically loaded words such as “liberty” is likely to vary with time, place, and culture. Take, for example, the transformation of the “honor codes” at various venerable universities. These codes were phrased in quite general terms at their inception in the 18th and 19th centuries because these schools contained homogeneous student bodies who shared a common conception of the type of conduct definitionally incorporated within the word “honor.” If a person thought that purchasing a term paper from a professional term paper service was consistent with being honorable, then that person simply did not know what “honor” meant. As values have changed and as student bodies have become less homogeneous, however, shared definitions of terms such as “honor” have broken down. Some people now do think that buying a term paper can be honorable, and this breakdown in shared meaning has caused general references to “honor” to be displaced in such codes by more detailed rules. There may now be little shared agreement about what the precept “be honorable” requires, but there is considerable agreement about what the rule “do not purchase a term paper” requires. — Frederick Schauer, Formalism, 27 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Collective identities erode rather than vanish, losing their former social and explanatory stability.; Cultural meanings are unstable and shift with the social field; Abstracted theory that loses local situatedness betrays Cultural Studies’ core method. (+5 more)

Related

• General vague norms give way to specific rules as communities lose shared meanings. (similarity 0.84)
• Similar groups need sharper ritual distinctions than very different ones (similarity 0.81)
• Loss of communal relationships destroys the framework in which common sense operates (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Collective identities erode rather than vanish, losing their former social and explanatory stability. #corroborates (0.92)
• Abolished theoretical concepts recurrently return in reconfigured forms. #expands (0.80)
• General vague norms give way to specific rules as communities lose shared meanings. #expands (0.76) — Frederick Schauer, Formalism, 27
• Cultural meanings are unstable and shift with the social field #expands (0.75)
• Abstracted theory that loses local situatedness betrays Cultural Studies’ core method. #qualifies (0.72)
• Cultural symbols carry no fixed meaning; meaning shifts with the social field #expands (0.72) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1012