Drawing Out Definitions.

Defining social scientific concepts can contribute to scholarly advancement in many ways. Definitions, which we define as <italic>a description of a word or phrase using terms for which the meaning is well known in the community</italic>, can contribute to inclusive discussion by welcoming outsiders, mitigate misunderstandings among insiders, encourage theorists to commit to the (sometimes surprising) entailments of their theories, and provide starting points and new pathways for future research. A necessary feature of definitions is “boundaries” – <italic>to define is to bound</italic>. But, it is precisely in boundaries that definitions get us into problems: the meanings of words are inherently fuzzy and changing; exceptionless definitions are elusive. We elaborate a process of “definition work” which is inherently “community work.” The process recognizes that meaning is a dynamic and fuzzy community property and uses theory visualizations – specifically, property spaces, schematic networks, and dynamic spanning trees – as definition tools to explore this fuzziness, while also communicating definitions along with their indeterminacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]