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interdisciplinary scientific cooperation, we define boundary objects as those objects that both inhabit several communities of practice and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them. In working practice, they are objects that are able both to travel across borders and maintain some sort of constant identity. They can be tailored to meet the needs of any one community (they are plastic in this sense, or customizable). At the same time, they have common identities across settings. This is achieved by allowing the objects to be weakly structured in common use, imposing stronger structures in the individualsite tailored use. They are thus both ambiguous and constant; they may be abstract or concrete. In chapter 9, we explore in detail the abstract ramifications of the use of classifications by more than one community and the connection with the emergence of standards. |
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The Structure of This Book |
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To explore these questions, we have written a first chapter detailing some key themes of the work to follow. We have then divided the middle of the book into three parts, which look at several classification systems. We have structured these studies around three issues in turn: classification and large-scale infrastructures (part I), classification and biography (part II), and classification and work practice (part III). Weaving these three themes together, we can explore the texture of the space within which infrastructures work and classification systems from different worlds meet, adjust, fracture, or merge. In two concluding chapters, we elaborate some theoretical conclusions from these studies. |
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Part I:
Classification and Large-Scale Infrastructures |
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Classification systems are integral to any working infrastructure. In part I (chapters 2 to 4) we examine how a global medical classification system was developed to serve the conflicting needs of multiple local, national, and international information systems. |
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Our investigation here begins in the late nineteenth century with another kind of information explosionthe development of myriad systems of classification and standardization of modern industrial and scientific institutions. |
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In the nineteenth century people learned to look at themselves as surrounded by tiny, invisible things that have the power of life or death: microbes and bacteria. They learned to teach their children to |
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