ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author begins with a critical review of a selection of the more influential formulations of these issues and argued that the majority of these were, in various ways, both theoretically and methodologically unsound. He suggests that they displayed most of the characteristics of absolutist and scientistic thinking, in that the actions of research subjects were reduced to epiphenomena of social and psychological factors whose occurrence, relevance and import were legislated by the investigator. The author develops approaches that were articulated with the commonsense knowledge, or body of lay theories, which was invoked by actors to recognise what was happening, to formulate its relevance for their concerns and to act upon it. Although componential analysis was originally developed in the context of kin terms, a rather esoteric branch of anthropology at the best of times, it was rapidly taken up as a tool for the general analysis of classificatory systems in many areas of social life.
