|
|
|
|
|
|
|
processes (a term also used by Strauss and Timmermans), and other metaphors to examine how wires, people, and bits are put together by a large organization. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What is interesting about such twists and textures? Through them we can move on from exploring the seamless web of science and society, of nature and knowledge to an analysis of the information infrastructure that acts as matrix for the web. The web itself is textured in interesting ways by the available modes of information storage and transfer. Medical classification work, typified by the ICD, deals in spatial compartments; and these compartments cannot hold when biography and duration are a necessary part of the story. In general, the information infrastructure holds certain kinds of knowledge and supports certain varieties of network; we believe that it is a task of some urgency to analyze which kinds of knowledge and network. This textural metaphor is explored in detail in chapter 9. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Much of this book concerns itself with the relationship (first conceptualized as a kind of gap) between formal systems of knowledge representation and informal, experiential, empirical, and situated experience; however, it is never the case of "the map OR the territory." One may try to hold a representation constant and change practice to match it, or vice versa. Using the example of medical classifications, however, both coconstruct each other in practice. Thus we have "the map IN the territory" (making the map and the territory converge). It is not a case of the map and the territory (Berg 1997). |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This chapter attempts to examine one kind of map in a territory marked by severe biographical interruptions, solitude and aspects of total institutions, and in dialogue with a compelling infrastructure (both informatic and managerial). We see the map in this case as a warping factor, not in the sense of deviating from any putative norm, but in the sense of reshaping and constraining other kinds of experience. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Finally, before turning to a second example of classification and biography (the example of race classification) we draw attention to the appearance both here and in chapters 2 and 4 of time as a problem for many classification systems. In chapter 2 we saw two examples: the difficulty of producing a stable classification for rapidly evolving species (for example, viruses) or the difficulty of expressing duration (wear and tear on the human body) in the ICD. In chapter 4, we saw the difficulty of maintaining long-term comparability of epidemiological results if the classification system changed too fast. In this chapter |
|
|
|
|
|