An edition of Sorting things out (1999)

Sorting things out

classification and its consequences

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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 17, 2024 | History
An edition of Sorting things out (1999)

Sorting things out

classification and its consequences

  • 3 Want to read

What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification -- the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. They investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. This book has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
377

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Sorting things out
Sorting things out: classification and its consequences
1999, MIT Press, The MIT Press
in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. [335]-365 ) and indexes.

Published in
Cambridge, Mass
Series
Inside technology

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
001/.01/2
Library of Congress
BD175 .B68 1999, BD175.B68 1999, BD175 .B68 1999eb, BD175 .B68 2000

The Physical Object

Pagination
xii, 377 p. :
Number of pages
377

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL38557M
Internet Archive
sortingthingsout0000bowk
ISBN 10
0262024616
LCCN
99026894
OCLC/WorldCat
44963790, 45846910
Library Thing
62760
Goodreads
1707630

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July 17, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
December 19, 2023 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
February 12, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
August 4, 2020 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
December 8, 2009 Created by WorkBot new work