Typification is perceiving the world and structuring it by means of types and typology. Typification is depicted as an essential and intrinsic aspect of the basic orientation of actors to their situations. In the process of typification we form a construct of a typical way of acting, assume typical underlying motivations or personality. Typification is a process of creating standard social construction based on standard assumptions. Discrimination based on such typification is called typism. Ethnomethodology deals with the use of the process of typification as a tool for understanding how people like coroners, prosecutors, and police officers achieve a sense of concreteness and predictability in their work. Coroners for example, may operate with a sense of a typical suicide.
Alfred Schutz who was a major influence in the development of phenomenological sociology suggests that in all of our encounters with others, with the exception of the most intimate of relationships, we experience and understand the other in terms of ideal types or typification. For example, we make prior assumptions about the personalities and behavior of a doctor, priest or judge. Much of the non-logical element in our argument taps the reservoir of unconscious understandings, feelings, expectations, and values that we have coded and stored in our unconscious minds in the form of stereotypes, schemas, and typifications.
Typification, Typology, and
Sociological
Theories - John C. McKinney, Social Forces.
Abstract: Typification is important
for structuring the self, conceptualizing roles,
and as a necessary feature of institutionalization and the development of social structure. In typification, two basic
orders of types are distinguished: the existential type, developed by participants in
social systems, and the constructed type, formulated by the social scientist for purposes
of explicating those social systems. An
exploration of selected theoretical and methodological
issues is conducted with respect to the construction and utilization of typology,
emphasizing problems of nominalism versus realism, ethnomethodology, social morphology.
Typification in
Society and Social Science: The Continuing Relevance of Schutz's Social
Phenomenology
Kwang-ki Kim & Tim Berard. Human Studies volume 32, Article number: 263 (2009).
Abstract: This paper examines Alfred Schutz’s insights
on types and typification. Beginning with a brief overview of the history and
meaning of typification in interpretive sociology, the paper further addresses
both the ubiquity and the necessity of typification in social life and
scientific method. Schutz's contribution itself is lacking in
empirical evidence, but examples are
provided of ongoing empirical research which advances the understanding of types
and typification. As is suggested by illustrations from scholarship in the
social studies of social science, studies of social identity associated with
membership categorization analysis, and constructionist
social problems theory,
typification can be found to be central to social research whether it is taken
up as a largely unacknowledged resource or whether it is addressed by different
names. The overview and illustrations suggest the continuing, widespread, and
indeed foundational relevance of Schutz's insights into types and typification.
Punitive Attitudes and the Racial Typification of Crime - Kelly Welch, Florida State University. Abstract: The public has often perceived that crime is a problem largely attributable to blacks. The idea for this research originated from the fact that many have conjectured a relationship between public punitiveness and the racial typification of crime. No one had yet produced empirical evidence for this claim. Overall, this research shows how the relationship between the racial typification of crime and punitiveness both augments and possibly expands aspects of the social threat and social control relationship postulated by Blalock (1967), Liska (1992), and others.
The return of the “Battered husband Syndrome” through the typification
of women as violent
Martin D. Schwartz, Ohio University, Walter S. DeKeseredy, Department of Sociology and
Anthropology, Carleton University.
Abstract The process of the social construction of woman abuse includes the essential idea
of typification: that how we typify abused women can be a part of justifying help, or it
can provide the scientific justification for a male discourse which legitimates abuse and
buffers batterers from guilt.
The Racial and Ethnic Typification of Crime and the Criminal Typification of Race and Ethnicity in Local Television News - Ted Chiricos, Sarah Eschholz. Local news programming from three television stations in Orlando, Florida was analyzed for racial and ethnic content in relation to crime. The data show that Blacks are not overrepresented among TV news suspects relative to their proportion in the population or among those arrested in Orlando. Hispanics are slightly overrepresented in relation to their numbers in the population. Qualitatively, Blacks and especially Hispanics who appear as crime suspects do so in more threatening contexts than Whites. Blacks are more likely to appear as criminal suspects than as victims or positive role models, but this pattern is especially amplified for Hispanics. These results suggest typification and that local TV news may contribute to the social construction of threat in relation to Blacks and Hispanics.
Racial Typification of
Crime and Support for Punitive Measures
Kelly Welch, Ted Chiricos, Marc Gertz - Criminology, ISSN: 0011-1384 Volume: 42.
Abstract: This paper assesses whether support for harsh punitive policies toward crime is
related to the racial typification of crime for a national random sample of households
(N=885), surveyed in 2002. Results from OLS regression
analysis show that the racial typification of crime is a significant predictor of
punitiveness, independent of the influence of racial prejudice, conservatism, crime
salience, southern residence and other factors.
The Portrayal of Gays and Lesbians on TV, and How Viewers React, Matthew Wood. The visualisation of homosexuals has, to a great extent, led to negative stereotypical portrayals on television. It is often impractical to portray a character's sexuality through narrative and, therefore, programmes rely on typification. The importance of gay typification is that it makes people visible to the viewer and keeps the homosexuality of a character present throughout the text. There are clearly both advantages and disadvantages to this form of typification. In typing certain characters we reduce everything about that character to sexuality. Typification compacts an abundance of social knowledge into a limited number of distinct signs, but is likely that many homosexuals never relate to the various gay types portrayed on television, and most gays and lesbians remain invisible for most, if not all their lives. Whilst typification leads to negative, stereotypical views of homosexuality, it is important to note that in many cases such types are used by homosexuals themselves.
Phenomenology and Typification: A Study in the Philosophy of Alfred Schutz - NATANSON, Maurice. - Social Research, v. 37, 1970.