We are women, we are men. We are refugees, single mothers, people with disabilities, and queers. We belong to social categories and they frame our actions, self-understanding, and opportunities. But what are social categories? How are they created and sustained? How does one come to belong to them? 

Ásta approaches these questions through analytic feminist metaphysics. Her theory of social categories centers on an answer to the question: what is it for a feature of an individual to be socially meaningful? In a careful, probing investigation, she reveals how social categories are created and sustained and demonstrates their tendency to oppress through examples from current events. To this end, she offers an account of just what social construction is and how it works in a range of examples that problematize the categories of sex, gender, and race in particular. The main idea is that social categories are conferred upon people. Ásta introduces a 'conferralist' framework in order to articulate a theory of social meaning, social construction, and most importantly, of the construction of sex, gender, race, disability, and other social categories.

What does it mean to say that identities are socially constructed? This excellent book digs deep into the metaphysical and political issues involved in this idea. Ásta is an immensely talented philosopher, and here she brings the debate over gender to the next level. A book to be reckoned with. (Linda Martín Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center)

Categories We Live By is a fresh and illuminating look at the construction of human categories. (Ron Mallon, Professor and Chair, Philosophy & Director, Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program, Washington University in St. Louis)

Categories We Live By offers an important and original account of the construction of the social world. Drawing on her broader conferralist approach in metaphysics, Ásta gives a compelling account of how our actions constitute social categories. In doing so, she brings tremendous analytical clarity and political insight into areas that are often obscured in consideration of the social domain and provides resources for social agency and social change. (Sally Haslanger, Ford Professor of Philosophy and Women's & Gender Studies, MIT)