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genius of what Sacks called "doing being ordinary" (1975) or what Strauss pointed to as "continual permutations of action" (1993). In the simplest seeming action, such as picking an article of clothing to wear, is embedded our complex knowledge of situations. (Where will I go today? What should I look like for the variety of activities in which I will participate?) These situations involve multiple memberships and how objects are used differently across communities. (Will this shirt "do'' for a meeting with the dean, lunch with a prospective lover, and an appointment with the doctor at the end of the day?) Many of these choices become standardized and built into the environment around us; for example, the range of clothing we select is institutionalized by the retail stores to which we have access, traditions of costuming, and so forth. To think of this formally, the institutionalization of categorical work across multiple communities of practice, over time, produces the structures of our lives, from clothing to houses. The parts that are sunk into the built environment are called here boundary infrastructuresobjects that cross larger levels of scale than boundary objects. |
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Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of future directions for research into classifications, standards, and their complex relationships with memberships in communities of practice. This includes ways we might visualize and model these intricate relationships. |
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The overall goal of the chapter is to trace theoretically what we have shown empirically and methodologically throughout the book: that categories are historically situated artifacts and, like all artifacts, are learned as part of membership in communities of practice. We want as well to talk about this insight beyond the individual "mind," task, or the small scale. Classifications as technologies are powerful artifacts that may link thousands of communities and span highly complex boundaries. |
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What Sort of Thing Is a Category? |
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In so far as the coding scheme establishes an orientation toward the world, it constitutes a structure of intentionality whose proper locus is not the isolated, Cartesian mind, but a much larger organizational system, one that is characteristically mediated through mundane bureaucratic documents such as forms.
(Goodwin 1996, 65) |
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Classification is a core topic within anthropology, especially cognitive anthropology, and within computer science. Recently, there has been a move to understand the practical, work-related aspects of |
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