Young borrows the concept of seriality from Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason, where he originally developed the idea to describe the relationship of individuals to social classes and the capitalist system of production and consumption.
For instance, people waiting in line for a bus, radio listeners, prison inmates and street theatre spectators are all examples of series.
In each example, individuals are oriented toward the same goals by their response to existing conditions and structures in the environment, which are the collective legacy of human actions and decisions in the past.
This problem exists as a dilemma between two conflicting positions: [1] i) On one hand, it is important to be able to speak of women as a group for practical political reasons.
Young has suggested that the concept of seriality might also be usefully applied to relationships of race or nationality as linkages which also result from historical conditions – such as the institution of slavery and projects of nation-building – which also function to limit and enable individuals' actions on the level of everyday life and habit.