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are absolute, none cover all aspects of someone's identity, and there is no category that is completely globally accepted.) The category alive or dead is quite thick and nearly global. So we can think of two dimensions of scope: thickness and scale. How thick is the individual strandgossamer or thickest rope? With how many others is it shared? |
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Classifications have habitats. That is, the filiations between person and category may be characterized as inhabiting a space or terrain with some of the properties of any habitat. It may be crowded or sparse, peaceful or at war, fertile or arid. In order not to mix too many metaphors. Important questions about filiations and their ecology that may be visualized in thread-like terms are: How many ties are there? That is, how many other categories are tied to this person, and in what density? Do these threads contradict or complement (torque versus boundary object of cooperation)? That is, are the threads tangled, or smoothly falling together? |
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Who Controls the Filiation? |
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The question of who controls any given filiation is vital to an ethical and political understanding of information systems whose categories attach to individuals. A first crude characterization concerns whether the filiation was chosen or imposed (an echo of the sociological standard, achieved or ascribed); whether it may be removed and by whom; and under whose control and access is the apparatus to do so. Questions of privacy are important here, as with medical information classifying someone with a social stigmatized condition. The nature of the measure for the filiation here is important loci of control as well. For example, an IQ test may be an important way to classify people. People at some remove from those who take the test developed it. The measure, IQ, is controlled from afar. On these grounds, past criticisms of IQ tests charge that this control is racially biased and biased by gender. |
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Is It Reversible or Irreversible? |
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Finally, there is the important question of whether the filiation is reversible. The metaphor of branding someone is not accidental in this regard, branding meaning that a label is burned into the skin and completely irreversible. Some forms of filiation have this finality for the individual, regardless of how the judgment was later regarded (e.g., a charge of guilt for murder may mean permanent public guilt |
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