With private and public, and insiders and outsiders, distinguished, we can return to the problem of definition, to consider a third approach that many scholars think avoids some of the shortcomings of the essentialist and the functionalist approaches. This approach is commonly found in textbooks today, and is known as the family resemblance approach to definition.

Readers might recall that, in the discussion on essentialism, they were told that a light could either be on or off, and never partially on or partially off. So too with essentialist definitions. In fact, the presumption that there is a distinct insider perspective as opposed to an outsider view – as opposed to seeing insides and outsides as continually changing and continually contested, all depending on where you stand and in relation to whom – is itself a product of an essentialist viewpoint. Although the light switch imagery works to communicate the ‘either/or’ nature of this approach to definition (whether defining who gets to count as a ‘patriotic citizen’ or who counts among ‘the faithful’), surely some readers must have thought, ‘What about that dimmer switch in the dining room?’ Good point. In the study of definitions the dimmer switch example would be called the family resemblance approach.

The family resemblance approach to definition – sometimes called polythetic definitions – is thought by some to enable them to steer a middle path between essentialist and functionalist approaches.