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2
The Kindness of Strangers: Kinds and Politics in Classification Systems |
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Most Enlightenment naturalists joined the chorus of praise for system in the
abstract; but their responses to particular systems were apt to be less cohesive.
The very icons of classificationthe tables and diagrams prefixed and ap-
pended to works of Enlightenment zoology to distinguish them from the
unstructured productions of previous agescould simultaneously evidence
this lack of unity.
(Ritvo 1997, 21) |
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Introduction: Formal and Informal Aspects of Classification |
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How people classify things, and what relationship those categories have with social organization, has long been a central topic within anthropology, especially cognitive anthropology and cognitive science. In this chapter, we touch on some of the issues raised in those disciplines, such as the relationship between what is singled out as different and what is considered normal. Our primary project is a pragmatic one, not a logical or cognitive one. We want to know empirically how people have designed and used classification systems. We want to understand how political and semantic conflicts are managed over long periods of time and at large levels of scale. |
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Equally, as good pragmatists, we know that things perceived as real are real in their consequences (Thomas and Thomas 1970 [1917]). So even when people take classifications to be purely mental, or purely formal, they also mold their behavior to fit those conceptions. When formal characteristics are built into wide-scale bureaucracies such as the WHO, or inscribed in hospital software standards, then the compelling power of those beliefs is strengthened considerably. They often come to be considered as natural, and no one is able completely to disregard or escape them. People constantly fiddle with them, however, and work around the formal restrictions (Hunn 1982). When we |
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