ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the work that categories do in relation to borders and hierarchies, enabling systems of differential inclusion and resource allocation. It argues that categorisations, and associated forms of belonging, involve the marking and making of places of difference, mapping out the borders and boundaries of entitlements, resource allocation, inclusion and exclusion, and inequality. The chapter considers the under-theorising of categories of difference in the sociological canon and briefly examines some of the limitations found in the work of notable social thinkers, amongst them Bourdieu and Foucault. It also discusses the limitations, heuristically, of the diversity problematic. The chapter then explores some of the commonalities of the major social categories of gender, ethnos and class in terms of the work that they do in the social order of things and as concrete social relations of hierarchisation and unequal resource allocation.
