Levels of categorism

Categorism operate through facets. These facets of categorism can operate on different levels. Ranging from personal micro scale to the global macro scales, as well as ranging from being a matter of how people speak about something to being a matter of structural patterns for how people behave.

One distinction that can be made is into the following six categories: Individual, group, systemic, structural, discursive and dogmatic. Through the facets, the various foci and abstractions of categorism also operate on these six different levels. However, other levels such as law and international treaties should also be recognized.

Failing to distinguish between such different levels, one is likely to proverbially “compare apples and oranges”. Thus making it harder to communicate but easier to invisibilize or incomprehensibilize various expressions of categorism. Two persons are unlikely to have a fruitful conversation about racism or any other foci of categorism if one of them is talking exclusively about the individual level while the other is talking exclusively about the structural level.

Note that the levels are only levels "of categorism" because categorism is the topic being discussed here: The same levels can also be applied to completely different things.

The six levels in the thesis

• 1. Individual level refers to the internal reality of what happens within a person. And also to how this is expressed by the individual. This level includes categorism against others as well as internalized categorism.

• 2. Group level refer to how people interact with each other. Social dynamics on a micro level. Such group-dynamics may for better and worse include building social norms for what views, feelings and acts are socially appropriate, encouraged or even mandatory in the group, and which ones are not. These norms may or may not differ significantly from mainstream society.

• 3. Systemic level refers to something happening over and over in a pattern that is sufficiently coherent to have effects of its own. Patterns of prejudices, bigotries and discriminatory practices that are common in a culture, subculture or similar. Lots of little things that wouldn't matter if they were isolated incidents but that adds up very quickly.

• 4. Structural level refers to a facet of categorism being built-in into a social structure of some kind. Discriminatory laws, customs, self-reinforcing social expectations, and so on.

• 5. Discursive level refers to a facet of categorism having been built into how we talk and think about concepts. How the language turns into dichotomism that bends our thoughts, feelings and acts in certain directions, limiting our understanding and locking people in linguistic cages.

• 6. Dogmatic level refers to a facet of categorism that has been systematized in such a way that it has been built into a cateity or great narrative. Which may be conceptualized as a political ideology, a theological position, a scientific paradigm, or simply “the common sense”. Narrativization can turn into narrativism, and thus narratives can turn into destructive dogmatism that fuels categorism.

The law level and international treaties levels

• 7. Law Level refers to a facet of categorism being included in the law itself. May refer to national laws, as well as the bylaws of a local region within a nation.

• 8. International Treaties Level refers to a facet of categorism being included in agreements made between nations.

Intersections

These eight levels are constantly interacting with each other, affecting each other in various ways. For example, a person who holds an certain prejudice or bigotry on an individual level may feel more at home in a social context where this particular categorism is also systemic and structural. He may also feel more at ease with discourses and narratives that reinforces his categorism rather than opposes it.

Even when two cases of the same facet of categorism operate at the same level they may still differ greatly in how deeply entrenched they are in the mindset of the person or social conventions of the group. It may also vary with power relationships: The same categorism may be more damaging when done by the many against the few, or by the powerful against the comparatively powerless.

Other divisions

As eight levels may be a bit much, it might be a good idea to group the levels into four categories (which are studied through very different academical disciplines):

• A. Individual level. (Psychology, neuro-psychology and social psychology.)
• B. Interaction levels. Contains the group level and systemic levels. (Mainly social psychology.)
• C. Structural levels. Contains discursive, dogmatic and unspecified-structural levels. Levels such as "normative" could be added to this category. (Mainly sociology.)
• D. Legal levels. Contains the law level and the international treaties level. (Mainly law and international relations.)

An example of levels

The intersection between the facet kyriarchy and the focus misogyny is commonly known as "patriarchy".

• Individual level and group level: While patriarchy itself is too abstract for these levels, patriarchal structures, discourses, dogmas and so on can empower facets such as male supremacism and infantilization of women at the individual and group levels.
• Systemic level: In a society where people systematically encounter almost exclusively men in positions of validated/unquestioned authority, their minds are likely to associate maleness with power and femaleness with lack of power.
• Structural level: A society can have many kinds of structures holding women back. Such as social norms that blame women for having children or for not having children, disqualifying them from careers on the basis of having children or for perhaps maybe having children at some point in the future. Or for being "abnormal" by not having children or for not staying home with them.
• Discursive level: Constructing the language so that it constructs women/femininity as being inferior and constructs the same behavior as being cool when a man does it but shameful when a woman does it. For example, constructing the same behavior as a boy being "assertive" and a girl being "bossy".
• Dogmatic level: Religious theology or political ideology positioning women as being inherently inferior and/or inherently assigned to a subordinate position.
• Law level: Most countries used to have laws that enshrined male dominance, such as allowing only men to vote or to run for office. Some countries still have some such rules.
• International treaties level: If two or more nations have ever entered a treaty where they promised each other to hold women back and help each other to ensure male dominance, please send information about it!