From categories to categorization : studies in sociology organizations and strategy at the crossroads Categorization pervades economic life; products services firms and industries are continuously being classified by rivals clients experts and critics. A stream of research highlighting the importance of market and product categories for organizations and individuals has grown in importance during the past 40 years. This volume contains ten essays on categorization authored by some of the worlds leading scholars within sociology of markets organization theory and strategy research. It opens with revisiting the influential theory of the categorical imperative and moves on to present various accounts of the social processes that form part of categorization and elaboration of their consequences. Together the different chapters effectively show that categorization is a process tightly connected to actors involved and their specific acts the characteristics of the entity being categorized and the context and timing informing these activities. As such it complements the earlier cognitive perspectives by discussing the evaluative social and political manifestations of categorization.