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systems that other cultures have for classifying diseases of the body and spirit; and we will not see the fragile networks these classification systems subtend. Rather, we will see only those who are strong enough and shaped in such a fashion as to impact allopathic medicine. We will see the blind leading the blind. |
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This blindness occurs by changing the world such that the system's description of reality becomes true. Thus, for example, consider the case where all diseases are classified purely physiologically. Systems of medical observation and treatment are set up such that physical manifestations are the only manifestations recorded. Physical treatments are the only treatments available. Under these conditions, then, logically schizophrenia may only result purely and simply from a chemical imbalance in the brain. It will be impossible to think or act otherwise. We have called this the principle of convergence (Star, Bowker and Neumann in press). |
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Reality is 'that which resists,' according to Latour's (1987) Pragmatist-inspired definition. The resistances that designers and users encounter will change the ubiquitous networks of classifications and standards. Although convergence may appear at times to create an inescapable cycle of feedback and verification, the very multiplicity of people, things and processes involved mean that they are never locked in for all time. |
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The methods in this chapter offer an approach to resistance as a reading of where and how political work is done in the world of classifications and standards, and how such artifacts can be problematized and challenged. Donald MacKenzie's (1990) wonderful study of ''missile accuracy" furnishes the best example of this approach. In a concluding chapter to his book, he discusses the possibility of "uninventing the bomb," by which he means changing society and technology in such a way that the atomic bomb becomes an impossibility. Such change, he suggests, can be carried out in part at the overt level of political organizations. Crucially for our purposes, however, he also sensitizes the reader to the site of the development and maintenance of technical standards as a site of political decisions and struggle. Standards and classifications, however dry and formal on the surfaces, are suffused with traces of political and social work. Whether we wish to uninvent any particular aspect of complex information infra- |
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