ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on social role normativity, which is the normativity that attaches to social positions and to their occupants. It suggests that all human societies include social positions and associated roles in their ontologies, while differing in the particular social roles available. Social roles demarcate ways of being a person or a social agent. Examples of social roles include being a carpenter or a baker, being a mother or a father, being a President or a professor, being a woman, or being Asian American. Being a carpenter is a social role that entails a set of techniques and expertise that are evaluable in relation to the function of making things out of wood. The chapter argues that social role normativity should be understood in terms of an individual’s social position occupancy. It nails the social role to the social position occupancy itself rather than to the agent’s attitudes towards social norms.
