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10
Why Classifications Matter |
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At the beginning of this book we told the story of the homicidal maniac who needed the insight of a psychic to understand his murderous urges as such. ''Don't you get it, son? You're a homicidal maniac.'' End of explanation. The story is powerful and funny because it reminds us, ironically, that a classification is not of itself an explanation. All we understand at the end of the scene is that the maniac now has a label that others, and he himself, can apply to his behavior. Although the classification does not provide psychological depth, it does tie the person into an infrastructureinto a set of work practices, beliefs, narratives, and organizational routines around the notion of "serial killer." Classification does indeed have its consequencesperceived as real, it has real effect. |
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Classifications are powerful technologies. Embedded in working infrastructures they become relatively invisible without losing any of that power. In this book we demonstrate that classifications should be recognized as the significant site of political and ethical work that they are. They should be reclassified. |
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In the past 100 years, people in all lines of work have jointly constructed an incredible, interlocking set of categories, standards, and means for interoperating infrastructural technologies. We hardly know what we have built. No one is in control of infrastructure; no one has the power centrally to change it. To the extent that we live in, on, and around this new infrastructure, it helps form the shape of our moral, scientific, and esthetic choices. Infrastructure is now the great inner space. |
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Ethnomethodologists and phenomenologists have shown us that what is often the most invisible is right under our noses. Everyday categories are precisely those that have disappeared into infrastructure, into habit, into the taken for granted. These everyday categories are seamlessly interwoven with formal, technical categories and specifications. As Cicourel notes: |
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