Hi Renee, Thanks for your interest in the chapter. Let me first answer
about Aristotelian classifications, and this I hope will also speak to
Paul's earlier questions about this distinction. In another part of the
book, Geof Bowker and I wrote:
"A classic divide between kinds of classification system - and one that can
lead us to this kindof coconstruction - is that drawn by Taylor, who
distinguishes between Aristotelian classification and prototype
classifications. Experimental psychologist Eleanor Rosch (1978) defined
the prototype classification. This distinction is going to be an important
one through this chapter, so let us explore it in some detail. An
Aristotelian classification works according to a set of binary
characteristics, which the object being classified either presents or does
not present. At each level of classification, enough binary features are
adduced to place any member of a given population into one and only one
class. So we might say that a pen is an object for writing within a
population consisting of pens, balls and bottles (Taylor, 1995). We would
have to add in one more feature in order adequately to distinguish it, for
example, from pens, pencils, balls or bottles. A technical classification
system operating by binary characteristics is called monothetic if a single
set of necessary and sufficient conditions is adduced (‘in the universe of
polygons, the class of triangles consists of figures that have three
sides’); polythetic if a number of shared characteristics are used (in our
example, we might say a pen is thin, cylindrical, used for writing, has a
ball point and so forth) (Blois, 1984). Desrosičres (1993) points to a
typical breakdown between monothetic and polythetic classifications in the
work of statisticians. He associates the former with Linnaeus and the
latter with Buffon (who engaged in local classification practices, just
using the set of traits needed to make a determination in a specific
instance); and writes:
These local practices are often carried out by those working in statistical
centers, according to a division of labor whereby the chiefs are inspired
by Linnaean precepts but the working statisticians apply, without realizing
it, Buffon’s method. (Desrosičres, 1993: 296. Authors’ translation).
Aristotelian models - monothetic or polythetic - have traditionally
informed formal classification theory in a broad range of sciences,
including biological systematics, geology and physics.
According to Rosch’s prototype theory, our classifications tend to be much
fuzzier than we might at first think. We do not deal with a set of binary
characteristics when we decide that this thing we are sitting on is a
chair. Indeed it is possible to name a population of objects that people
would in general agree to call chairs which have no two binary features in
common.
Prototype theory proposes that we have a broad picture in our minds of what
a chair is; and we extend this picture by metaphor and analogy when trying
to decide if any given thing that we are sitting on counts. We call up a
best example, and then see if there is a reasonable direct or metaphorical
thread that takes us from the example to the object under
consideration. George Lakoff (1987) and John Taylor (1995) have powerfully
developed prototype theory within the field of sociolinguistics. One
finding of the theory is that different social groups tend to have quite
different prototypes in mind when classifying something, as, say, a piece
of furniture: thus when surveyed a group of Germans came up consistently
with a different set of best examples than did a group of Americans
(Taylor, 1995: 44-57). For the Americans, chair and sofa are best fits
for furniture, for the Germans, asked about möbel, it was bed and table.
An important implication of the theory is that there are levels at which we
most easily and naturally distinguish between objects in the world: and
that supervenient or subvenient levels tend to be more technically
defined. Looking at a picture of a Maine coon cat, a non-expert will say
that this is a picture of a cat. An expert might call it either a Maine
coon cat or a vertebrate.
This distinction between two main types of classification is a very useful
one. However there are a number of reasons for saying that it is not an
absolute distinction - indeed one could say that we all probably have our
own prototype of the ideal Aristotelian classification system, but that no
one system in practice fully meets a single set of Aristotelian
requirements (Sweetser, 1987) As Coleman and Kay note, while black-boxing
the notion of “knowledge of the occasions”:
It seems that the use of some words, like lie, may depend on two sorts of
considerations. One is the traditional question of what count as criteria
for classifying a real-world thing in the category: perhaps we would like
to reserve the term semantic prototype for this constellation of
things. But a second consideration is knowledge of the occasions, reasons
etc. for deciding whether or not to classify something in a particular
way. A frequent reason for reporting something as a lie is that we want to
blame or criticize the person who said it. (1981: 37)
Our analysis here stresses precisely this latter criterion of ‘in
practice’. Turning to an example from the workplace, it is possible to
begin to see how practice and location mediates such divisions. In the
medical arena, the criterion emerged from a survey of physicians in 1979 in
the United Kingdom that general practitioners: “‘had a constant tendency to
regard a wider range of phenomena as disease’” than the hospital
physicians, who in turn were more inclusive than the lay public. The
perceived need for medical intervention was the determining axis (Prins,
1981: 176; Campbell, Scadding and Roberts, 1979). An influential factor,
Prins notes, seems to have been whether or not medical intervention was
required - for the lay public measles and mumps might be prototypical
diseases; but arthritis, a card-carrying ICD10 disease, might be seen
rather as a condition … .
So why do we sometimes seem in practice prototypical in our
classifications, even if in principal we are Aristotelian? For two main
reasons: because each classification system is tied to a particular set of
coding practices; and because classification systems in general (we are not
making this as an ex cathedra pronouncement) reflect the conflicting
contradictory motives of the sociotechnical situations that gave rise to
them. Ritvo notes a similar phenomenon in 18th century zoological
classification, and for the same reasons. She states that:
Eighteenth-century systems reflected competing, if unacknowledged,
principles of organization that undermined both their schematic novelty and
their claim to be based on objective analysis of the natural world. These
competing principles usually divided animals into groups based not on their
physical characteristics but on subjective perceptions of them…. Rather
than analyzing nature exclusively on its own terms the claim embodied in
their formal systems naturalists often implicitly presented it in terms of
its relationship to people, even constructing formal categories that echoed
the anthropocentric and sentimental projection characteristic of both the
bestiary tradition they had so emphatically discarded and (then as now) of
much vernacular discourse about animals (1997: 38-39).
Goldstein (1987: 379) also notes that prototypical categories are
themselves manufactured, accented, and dramaturgically presented. In her
discussion of the development of neurological categorization in the 19th
century, she notes the:
… theatricality of Charcot’s Friday lessons, where patients in nervous
crisis and hypnotic trance were exhibited before an avid audience,
including artists and litterateurs as well as physicians. When Charcot
lectured on tremors, for example, the afflicted patients appeared wearing
headdresses decorated with long plumes, whose distinctive, feathery
vibrations illustrated the different varieties of the pathology.
At any given moment, she points out, a particular category may become
famous or politicized, or seize the popular imagination (Goldstein, 1987:
169-171). This is of course the case throughout the worlds of classification."
So I hope that what is clear here is that we are trying to look at
classifications as tools, in use, and it seemed useful in turn to note that
sometimes people use categories in an Aristotelian way, sometimes in a
prototypical way -- and even sometimes both at once. Especially for the
chapter that you read, the main emphasis is on a pragmatic "how" for
categories as tools, how to situate them historically and culturally.
The example that you give of Means' self-identifcation is a perfect example
of what we talked about a couple of days ago as "strategic
essentialism." Note that this concept is internally contradictory or even
ironic -- I like it in that it acknowledges (as does Means in your example)
the effects of an essentialized, oppressive identity at the same time that
it resists the oversimplifications that always come with essentialisms.
There is some excellent work coming out on the U.S. Census case, I'll bring
in some references tomorrow.
Hope this helps.
Leigh
>Folks,
>
>I rarely post, and I am trying to do so more often. I would love to enter
>the discussion about Leigh´s paper, but I have to admit first that I need
>some further information, so if somebody could help out...
>
>I had no idea of aristotelian categories, although Paul wrote something
>briefly about them (sorry I already deleted quote...too hasty!) and
>contrasted them, I think, with dialogical categories. If someone would
>explain a little what these are, I´d be thrilled, edified.
>
>Well, speaking about individual appropriation of categories for identity
>purposes, I remember a few years ago I heard American Indian activist Bill
>Means speak (he is, at least was, a leader of the political group
>AIM...American Indian Movement). He said he felt strongly opposed to
>using the term "Native American" to identify himself, the word which has
>gotten I think some preferential use in the US recently. He said he
>preferred "Indian" for I think kind of an interesting reason...because it
>is the name under which his people have been persecuted, and for this
>reason it is the name under which members of his organization prefer to
>fight for their rights. That´s the ideological, emotional reason he gave,
>and he also said there was a legal reason, because all of the
>(subsequently broken)treaties between the US government and Indian tribes
>in the US were written using the term "indian" and legally, this would be
>the best strategy. He added that he preferred not to be lumped into the
>category of Indian at all, but by the indigenous name for his tribe (I
>think Oglala, but this detail is fuzzy).
>
>Well, anyway, I think Leigh´s paper is a good vehicle to stimulate
>thinking and discussion about this issue of identity by racial category,
>which can be extended as people have done already to other realms, like
>gender and ethnicity. I am interested in the complications and
>contradictions of this, the personal and social dimensions, the political
>and legal motivations people may have to define or be defined according to
>categories.
>
>Renee Hayes
>University of Delaware (academically)
>Vigo, Spain (geographically)
>
>
>
>
>
>______________________________________________________
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