Great questions, Stanton. There is a wide variety of ways in which the
classification systems arise. But most of the big, formal top down ones I
have looked at are an attempt to apply scientific principles to order a
combination of scientific findings and folk theories. So the grassroots
and the formal are usually quite mingled. Changes can occur through some
historical crisis -- for instance, the cholera epidemics in the 19th
century occasioned a huge attempt to reform and classify vital
statistics. Often, social movements are formed around a single category
and its politics-- for example, in the DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual, the list of categories of psychiatric diseases put out by the
American Psychiatric Association), the category of homosexual was
demedicalized after vigorous social protest and lobbying by gay activists.
There are two ways I think about the relationship between the application
of categories to individuals and the development of classification
systems. One is that the intermingling of folk and formal leaves wide
opportunity for abuse and suffering in the name of science or
technology. Like Jensen, people can use folk/scientific categories such as
race, and point to the technical apparatus as scientific justification,
then the results seem to validate the system -- a vicious circle. The
second, and related concept, is the notion of torquing between the
individual being labelled and the larger system (Geof Bowker and I wrote
about this in an article in MCA on tuberculosis, it's also in the book and
the apartheid chapter). This also relates to the November timeline
discussion. Individual biographies, careers, projects, are moving at
different rates along different trajectories. Large-scale classifications
also have trajectories, they are born, mature, fracture, get reformed,
sometimes die. The alignment of trajectories across from the individual to
the larger scale varies -- sometimes things line up, and are smooth. Other
times the different rates pull against each other, or torque (twist). So,
for example, take the classification of homosexuality by the psychiatric
community. Say you are in the process of coming out, and it's 1965. Your
parents send you to a psychiatrist when they discover that you are
gay. The psychiatrist turns to the DSM, and has you committed to an asylum
and given hormone shots to cure you (this really happened to a good friend
of mine). The torque between the larger system and your life twists your
biography forever. If you move the date of this scenario to 1995, there
may be other kinds of torque, but the classification system at least cannot
be formally invoked to produce that kind of twist.
Obviously, some torques are more consequential than others, and I don't
believe there is ever perfect alignment, nor should there be. But I do
think a better understanding of these dynamics is important for
understanding bureaucratic suffering.
Thanks!
L*
>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/
_______________________________________________
Susan Leigh Star, Professor
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0503
phone 858/534-6327
fax 858/534-7315 email: lstar@ucsd.edu
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~lstar/
"Quantify suffering, you could rule the world." -- Adrienne Rich
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