This contribution aims to present results from a three-year research project. The theme of the study is how children understand and justifies Human Kinds. For the definition of Human Kinds, we refer to Mallon (2016) for which Human Kinds correspond to various types of human groupings, on the basis of characteristics considered similar.

During childhood, different ways of being, of doing and thinking are progressively acquired and structured (Lignier, Lomba & Renahy, 2012), inside various institutions. More generally, the schemes of classification and categorization of social reality used by social agents (whether adults or children’s) correspond to essential elements through which it is possible to define some aspects of social reality. These schemes contributing to respond to the human need to make order in the chaos of the surrounding world (Lévi-Strauss, 1984). Social agents use these also in order to create Human Kinds.

We consider that this subject corresponds to an important subject that need to be studied. There is also an historical series of studies dealing with the processes of categorization at a more general level (Cousineau, 2017; Edelman, 2018; Hacking, 1986; Jenkins, 2000; Liberman et al., 2017), but, the empirical field relating to how children categorize social reality remains little explored. It is possible to find some researchers carried out on this subject in France (Zarca, 1999; Ligner&Pagis, 2017) and in England (Connolly et al. 2009; Sutton, 2007; Kustatscher, 2017), but, this issue still remains little explored in Italy.

For these reasons, a case study has been carried out in 2019 Italy in order to explore the definition and justification of Human Kinds by children aged seven and by their parents. 96 families have been traced in three contexts, with different socio-economic level (High, medium and low).

One of the objectives of this research project is to observe whether the acquisition of the practice of social categorization (or of making Human Kinds) can be different depending on the socio-economic level of the school context. Secondly, if children practice can be similar to the adult’s one. Another dimension has been that have been studied, is the comparison of the children’s way of justification of Human Kinds with those of their parents.

That is possible to refer to Bourdieu’s (1980) theory of practice, especially his notion of practical sense, to explore what happens when children from different socio-economic and socio-demographic backgrounds bring their dispositions to the description and justification of human kinds.

The practical sense corresponds to the mechanism that underlies the selection of social categories and that becomes tangible when the individual is called to exercise it. The practical sense is configured as a sort of pre-logical thought that orients an individual in the action and in the formulation of judgments on others. The "practical sense" as well as the "social sense" endows social agents with "coordinates" through which to perceive, evaluate and act in the social world.

Therefore, the Bourdieu's notion of practical sense has been intersected with the neurological notions of “automatic cognition” and “deliberate cognition” (D'Andrade, 1996; DiMaggio, 1997; Kahneman, 2011).

At first, some findings will be presented in order to demonstrate how children and adults describe Human Kinds. Secondly, some findings will be presented in order to compare how children’s and parents justify their use of the “automatic cognition” during the social practice of grouping people.

The empirical study has been carried out in the city of Florence and in its metropolitan area in 2019. The sample includes 232 individuals: 96 children’s, 48 fathers, 88 mothers, from three different schools. The three schools have been selected for their socio-economic levels: upper, middle, and middle-lower according to the ESCS-level (Economic, Social and Cultural Status) openly provided by the Italian Ministry of Education. Children, aged seven, as well as their parents have been interviewed using photo elicitation interviews (PEIs) (Clark-Ibáñez, 2004; Epstein et al., 2006). The parents have been also interviewed with a survey concerning the family socio-economic and socio-demographic status. The images show people that differ in gender, age, ethnicity, and exhibiting different religious, socioeconomic, and socio-professional characteristics. The pictures have been selected ex-ante by the researcher. Some of these have been selected on the basis of the main ethnic minorities, ethno-religious and on the main socio-professional groups present in Italy in 2019. The selection process has been made by the researcher in order to be able to compare children’s and adults’ answers. 18 photos presented in the same sequence of presentation to children’s and to adults. Pictures have been collected mostly using the Google image archive. The research project revolves around the following questions: 1) Which are the main social categories used by children aged seven, once they have been interviewed using photo-elicitation? (Compared to those used by adults?) 1.1) What are the main discursive justifications advanced to mention social categories? (Compared to those used by adults)? A pilot study has been carried out in order to verify the study feasibility and in order to check the scientific credibility of the selected photos. Children’s and adults’ answers have been audio-recorded and transcribed later. For the analysis of the empirical material, the Nvivo12 program has been used. Through this program the answers have been coded ex-post in categories. The selected categories have been named on the basis of the review of the literature on social categories and human kinds.

Some findings will be presented. There are some social categories used by children at the age of seven (regardless of the socio-economic level of the school) that have not been discovered before. For example, children aged seven are able to create grouping based on the “familiar role”, or the “religion”, or the “politic” or some others groupings based on the “social role and hierarchy” of the person represented in the picture. These issues were not documented before, for this reason, explanation for these findings have been traced as well as in anthropology and in sociology. Therefore, that will be possible to demonstrate that a study on the acquisition of social categories at an "incomplete" stage in the formation as social individuals (as well as the child aged seven) testifies the existence of a "stratified" embedding of those. In other words, children learn to make Human Kinds, in a progressive and extensive way, compared to adults (i.e. at first, they start to make some categorization using gender, then sexuality, then age, ethnicity, socio-economic positioning, etc.). That can be explained because the individual social trajectory affects in different ways the knowledge about social categories (not only from an anagraphic standpoint). That will be possible also to show some finding’s on how children justify their use of Human Kinds, compared to adults’ justifications. Children, as well as adults, use mostly “corporality” and the “material culture” in order to justify their making of Human Kinds. Some sociological explanations will be presented in response to these findings.

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