Society provides the categories of thought, not the content of taxonomies

Evidence

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

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Distinguishes Durkheim’s — and later structuralism’s — claim that social relations shape the forms of thought, not its subject matter.
• XREF: This Kantian-informed social categories thesis is a direct ancestor of Hall’s conception of ideology as a framework for thinking rather than a set of contents.

Related

• Durkheim and Mauss argued cognitive categories derive from social relations (similarity 0.84)
• Structuralism inverts culturalism’s claim by making experience an effect of categories (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• There is nothing natural or noncontingent about the term basketball, but it is nevertheless an error in this culture at this time to apply that word to a group of people hitting small hard balls… #expands (0.75)
• Structuralism inverts culturalism’s claim by making experience an effect of categories #corroborates (0.70)
• Subjects are constituted by unconscious cultural categories rather than their authors #corroborates (0.65)
• Thought is primarily public and social, not private #corroborates (0.60) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 200