Main entry:

Bowker, Geoffrey C., author.

Title & Author:

Sorting things out : classification and its consequences / Geoffrey C. Bowker, Susan Leigh Star.

Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©1999.

Description:

xii, 377 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Series:

Inside technology

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 335-365) and indexes.
Introduction : to classify is human -- Some tricks of the trade in analyzing classification -- The kindness of strangers : kinds and politics in classification systems -- The ICD as information infrastructure -- Classification, coding, and coordination -- Of tuberculosis and trajectories -- The case of race classification and reclassification under apartheid -- What a difference a name makes : the classification of nursing work -- Organisational forgetting, nursing knowledge, and classification -- Categorical work and boundary infrastructures : enriching theories of classification -- Why classifications matter.
Also available via the World Wide Web.
Current Copyright Fee: GBP15.00 0.

Summary:

"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. Sorting Things Out 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."--Jacket.

Resources:
Restricted to MIT Press CogSci subscribers
Restricted to MIT Press CogSci subscribers

ISBN:

0262024616 (alk. paper)
9780262024617 (alk. paper)
0262522950 (pbk.)
9780262522953 (pbk.)

Subject:

Knowledge, Sociology of.
Classification.
Sociologie de la connaissance.
sociology of knowledge.
classification (information handling function)
Classificaties.
Ordening.

Form/genre:

Classification.

Added entries:

Star, Susan Leigh, 1954-2010.
Inside technology.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 216892
Call No.: BD175 .B68 1999
Status: Available

Location: Library main 216891
Call No.: BD175 .B68 1999
Status: Available