Re: apartheid racial categorization

From: Stanton Wortham (stantonw@gse.upenn.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 12 2000 - 10:33:12 PST


Leigh--

Thanks for posting that blurb on classification, and for your chapter.
I take it you are arguing that classification is woven into practice in
at least two ways. The classification systems themselves are
sociohistorical artifacts, created in the context of sociopolitical
processes. And classification systems are applied in particular
instances (with respect to a particular individual or in a particular
setting) often with particular practical ends in mind -- as in your
"liar" example in your last post (where people get classified as "X"
because of pragmatic or interactional features of the context, not just
because of abstract characteristics that they may possess).

Is there any sort of systematic relationship between these two levels?
For instance, can historical change at the ("macro") level of
classification systems be driven by pragmatic patterns at the more
"micro" level? Do you have some larger theory of how these two levels
relate? Or is there no general relationship between them?

Stanton

--
Stanton Wortham
Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania
3700 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6216
(215) 898-6307
http://www.upenn.edu/gse/fac/wortham/



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