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example, whether or not to include the fossil record in the classification system; fossils being a problem since they perpetually threaten to create another level of taxa, and so cause an expensive and painstaking reordering of the whole system (Scott-Ram 1990). |
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There is even a metadiscipline of classifying that examines the architectonic features of classification systems in general. Using a variety of statistical techniques, these specialists analyze data structures, overall shape and structure of taxonomies and categories, and assess the elegance and durability of a classification system much in the way an architect would assess the structural and aesthetic features of a building. The International Classification Society regularly meets to discuss these issues, as does the Special Interest Group in Classification Research of the American Society for Information Science (SIG-CR of ASIS). The kinds of readings and assessments brought to bear by these specialists has not traditionally dealt explicitly with political or cultural issues at the metalevel (although those debates are the stuff of classification design and revision for any applied group, such as the WHO). |
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Practical Classifying, Folk, Vernacular, and Ethno-Classifications |
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Practical classifying is the stuff of cultural anthropologyhow people classify their everyday worlds, including everything from color to kinship. Traditionally much ethno- or folk-classification research has examined tribal categories in nonindustrial societies. How people in industrial societies categorize on an everyday basis is less well known, especially in natural workaday settings. Most of the extant research, in linguistics or cognitive psychology, has been in experimental settings highly constrained in focus. |
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Here, we use the term practical classifying to mean how people categorize the objects they encounter in everyday situations, including formal classification schemes. Part of reading classifications is understanding the nature of these encounters, and the interplay between vernacular and formal systems. |
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The kind of reading we do here emphasizes the range of ways classification systems may be fuzzy or logical, reflective at once of bureaucratic concerns, scientific grounds, formal considerations, and cognitive theories. Our reading will not resolve the divergent perspectives created by these different needs, but will hopefully restore some of the stories to the dry lists that shape so much of our lives. In the |
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