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Howard Becker relates a delightful anecdote concerning his classification by an airline. A relative working for one of the airlines told him how desk clerks handle customer complaints. The strategy is first to try to solve the problem. If the customer remains unsatisfied and becomes very angry in the process, the clerk dubs him or her "an irate." The clerk then calls the supervisor, "I have an irate on the line," shorthand for the category of an irritated passenger. |
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One day Becker was having a difficult interaction with the same airline. He called the airline desk, and in a calm tone of voice, said, ''Hello, my name is Howard Becker and I'm an irate. Can you help me with this ticket?'' The clerk began to sputter, "How did you know that word?" Becker had succeeded in unearthing a little of the hidden classificatory apparatus behind the scenes at the airline. He notes that the interaction after this speeded up and went particularly smoothly. |
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individual; tourist or business class; short haul or long haul (different fare rates and scheduling apply). |
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This categorical saturation furthermore forms a complex web. Although it is possible to pull out a single classification scheme or standard for reference purposes, in reality none of them stand alone. So a subproperty of ubiquity is interdependence, and frequently, integration. A systems approach might see the proliferation of both standards and classifications as purely a matter of integrationalmost like a gigantic web of interoperability. Yet the sheer density of these phenomena go beyond questions of interoperability. They are layered, tangled, textured; they interact to form an ecology as well as a flat set of compatibilities. That is to say, they facilitate the coordination of heterogeneous "dispositifs techniques" (Foucault 1975). They are lodged in different communities of practice such as laboratories, records offices, insurance companies, and so forth.
9 There are spaces between (unclassified, nonstandard areas), of course, and these are equally important to the analysis. It seems that increasingly these spaces are marked as unclassified and nonstandard. |
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It is a struggle to step back from this complexity and think about the issue of ubiquity rather than try to trace the myriad connections in any one case. The ubiquity of classifications and standards is curiously difficult to see, as we are quite schooled in ignoring both, for a variety of interesting reasons. We also need concepts for under- |
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