The Individual Victim. Hypogeneralization within a New Social Type

Abstract

Over the past several decades we have seen increased attention paid to victimhood. However, many of these dialogues are only tangentially related to actual experiences of victimization. They are better understood as reflections of a new Simmelian social type, that is, a new pattern emerging within psycho-social interaction—namely, the Victim. The current reflections focus on the meaning making processes within these broader discussions of victimhood. We first briefly review Georg Simmel’s understanding of social types and explore the Victim as a new social type. We then examine how the process of hypogeneralization appears within social types, including the Victim, whereby the patterned social interactions that constitute a social type are seen as a single individual or collective. Finally, we examine a recent example from popular discourse of the hypogeneralized Victim.