Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T15:30:30.207Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

22 - The Blackness of Black

Color Categories as Situated Practice

from Part V - Professional Vision, Transforming Sensory Experience into Types, and the Creation of Competent Inhabitants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2017

Charles Goodwin
Affiliation:
University of California
Get access

Summary

One of the central accomplishments of cognitive anthropology is Berlin and Kay’s (1969) demonstration that the diversity of human color systems is built on a universal infrastructure, with black and white the most basic colors. Their analytical focus is a structural system divorced from the messy tasks of actually using color terms to make relevant distinctions within specific courses of action, situated within the concrete settings that constitute the lifeworld of a particular society. By way of contrast, the last two chapters have argued that categories are intrinsically forms of co-operative action that require a cohort of skilled actors within a community. Analysis here focuses on chemists attempting to determine when to stop a reaction by deciding when the material they are working with is jet black. This chapter explores (1) the diverse practices they use to establish what can count as black, (2) how such a distinction is embedded within the local activity system of a community, and (3) the construction of competent actors through embodied apprenticeship. For the chemists, jet black is not a preformulated, context-free universal color category, but instead a problematic judgment to be artfully accomplished through a collection of systematic work practices.

* * *

Type
Chapter
Information
Co-Operative Action , pp. 363 - 390
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×