Community and Category: Two Ways of Communicating Social Difference
Essay · Vitor Barros on Why Some Categories Become Communities — and What That Means for Identity, Belonging, and Constructivist Sociology
What Turns a Social Category Into a Community?
Sociologist Vitor Barros offers a conceptual reconstruction: instead of treating category and community as synonyms, he treats them as two distinct ways of communicating about social difference. Categories sort people from outside — a bureaucrat ticks a box, an algorithm assigns a profile. Communities emerge when those addressed by a label start communicating with each other about what they share. The distinction lets us take collective belonging seriously without abandoning constructivist insights — and ask sharper questions about how identities form, persist, or dissolve.
Essential points in this essay:
Categories sort people from outside (bureaucrats, algorithms, border guards apply labels regardless of self-understanding); communities emerge when those addressed by a label start talking to each other as members
A community persists only as long as its foundational similarity continues to be reproduced in communication as meaningful and binding — its boundary is symbolic, not social
The arc from category to community runs through three steps: distinction (recognising similarity), generalisation (extending it to strangers), and structuration (members communicating with each other as members)
About the author: Vitor Barros is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Bonn. He holds a Master’s degree in Sociology (summa cum laude) from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. His doctoral research investigates the relationship between ethnoracial concepts and political interventions in Republican Brazil.
Almost all social scientists now agree that social differences intersect in complex ways. The categories we use to describe these differences—race, gender, class, sexuality, etc.—no longer refer to groups in the traditional sense, with clear boundaries and shared identities. They are fluid and constructed. This much is now conventional wisdom.
Categories, in this view, are bundles of meanings that intersect and activate differently across individuals’ lives. They are not fixed entities but processual elements that unfold over time.
And yet, beyond our department walls, strong social identities are acting as magnets for political and cultural action as they have not done for over half a century.
In these contexts, the complexity of categories and intersections is reduced to clear, often binary, lines. Social actors claim membership in large social groups—regardless of how informal or internally diverse these groups might be—and describe this membership as an existential pillar of their everyday experience.
Here, social differences appear not merely as categorical markers but as existential.
This brings us to a research challenge: how can we reconcile these two dimensions—our constructivist commitments and the expressed reality of social actors—without invalidating either?
My suggestion is that some conceptual reconstruction can help.
Two Concepts, Two Logics
Consider two terms: “social category” and “community.” In everyday English, these often function as synonyms—different ways of grouping people together, with “community” sometimes carrying a geographical connotation.
But we can also treat these concepts differently: not as collections of people, but as forms of communication—distinct ways of talking about and organizing social differences.
Under this view, categories are labels into which people can be sorted: gender, age, sexuality, disability, migration status, etc. The meaning of a category emerges from broad social configurations. Those being categorized may have little power to shape that meaning, may not identify with it, and may not even be aware of it. A bureaucrat ticks a box; an algorithm assigns a profile; a border guard checks a document. The person being sorted need not be involved.
Communities are different. They emerge when a category becomes the basis for a social system—when those addressed by a label constantly communicate with one another about what they share. This communication generates expectations, circulates experiences (including negative ones, like shared discrimination), and gradually produces a symbolic boundary between what counts as inside and outside. What it means to belong becomes relevant and informative for the members themselves.
An Example: From Epidemiological Label to LGBTQIA+
Think of being classified as a “man who has sex with men.” This is a category—an epidemiological label developed for public health purposes. It encompasses people with vastly different self-understandings, including many who identify as heterosexual. The category sorts; it does not bind.
Now think of claiming membership in the LGBTQIA+ community. Here, a category has become the foundation for recursive communication: shared symbols, political claims, internal debates about inclusion, collective memory. The community exists not because everyone in it is the same, but because communication keeps reproducing what members have in common—and what that similarity means.
“A community exists not because everyone in it is the same, but because communication keeps reproducing what members have in common — and what that similarity means.”
Notice the difference in type of similarity. The epidemiological label refers to something that happens to people—a condition or circumstance, what we might call a mark. The community, by contrast, also involves shared practices and performances—Pride celebrations, coming-out narratives, performative aesthetics—what we might call customs. Communities typically weave together both: marks that are experienced and customs that are enacted.
How Categories Become Communities
Not every category generates a community. Age is a category; “middle-aged people” are not a community in any robust sense. Why do some categorical distinctions become the basis for communal communication while others do not?
There is no easy answer, but the process follows a recognizable arc. It begins when people start noticing a similarity—something that marks certain individuals as alike (distinction). That recognition then travels: it becomes abstract enough to apply to strangers, not just people one knows personally (generalisation). Finally, and crucially, those being grouped start talking to each other as members—comparing experiences, debating boundaries, developing expectations about what belonging means (structuration). When that happens, a community has formed.
None of this denies that social boundaries are situationally variable or internally contested. Large communities are embedded in diverse settings, and members often disagree fiercely about what belonging really means.
The point is not to replace a fluid picture with a rigid one.
The argument simply proposes that we treat communities as communicative systems rather than as aggregations of similar people. A community persists as long as its foundational similarity continues to be reproduced in communication as meaningful and binding by enough of those involved.
This framework also explains why communities can persist even with weak internal solidarity. Not everyone in a community needs to feel warmly toward fellow members; what matters is that communication about the shared similarity continues.
The boundary that matters is symbolic, maintained through communication, rather than social, requiring clear lines between insiders and outsiders.
Why This Matters: Sharper Questions, Stronger Accounts
What does this distinction buy us analytically?
It allows us to ask sharper questions when dealing with issues of “identity”. Instead of debating whether a given social difference is “real” or “constructed,” we can ask: is this difference being communicated categorically or communally? By whom? With what effects? We can trace how a category becomes a community over time—or how a community dissolves back into a mere category when communication falters.
Most importantly, it lets us take seriously the felt reality of collective belonging without abandoning our constructivist insights. The identities people claim are not illusions to be debunked, nor essences to be accepted uncritically. They are communicative achievements—ongoing, contested, and consequential.
“The identities people claim are not illusions to be debunked, nor essences to be accepted uncritically. They are communicative achievements — ongoing, contested, and consequential.”
Where social identity is at play, distinguishing between communal and categorical communication is crucial if we want accounts of the social world that neither trivialize nor essentialize people’s experiences.
Vitor Barros is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Bonn in Germany. He holds a Master’s degree in Sociology (summa cum laude) from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. His doctoral research investigates the relationship between ethnoracial concepts and political interventions in Republican Brazil. His research interests include racism and anti-racism, social theory, systems theory, intellectual history and historical sociology
Brilliant! Love it. This makes so much sense.