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(Goodwin 1996, 78; see also Star 1983). In general, classificatory work practices involve politics, kinds of both prototypical and Aristotelian classifications, and deletion of the practices in the production of the final formal record. |
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Contradictory Requirements of Classification Systems in General |
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Classification systems in general inherit contradictory motives in the circumstances of their creation. This is very clearly illustrated by items in the ICD covering such charged ethical or religious issues as abortion or stillbirth. Over the years, as we will discuss in the next chapter, defining the moment of birth differed radically from Protestant to Catholic countries and with technological changes. The final definitions given in the ICD directly reflect the charged political and ethical atmosphere of the subject, distinguishing, for example, legal and illegal abortion as separate categories. In this sense, the ICD can also be read as a kind of treaty, a bloodless set of numbers obscuring the behind-the-scenes battles informing its creation. This dryness itself contains an implicit authority, appearing to rise above uncertainty, power struggles, and the impermanence of the compromises. |
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Indeed, one might observe that technical classification schemes are constructed in such a way as to fit our common-sense prototypical picture of what a technical classification is. Thus when the International Committee for the Nomenclature of Viruses, to which we shall return, floated the idea of using "siglas"a series of code letters attached to the virus name to indicate its characteristicsMatthews describes the response: "Leading virology journals were only lukewarm to try out cryptogram ideas. Among comments from this period: 'Why should they be given funny names? Are we not exposing ourselves to the laughter of the general public? Do we want to join the ranks of old-fashioned botanists and zoologists so soon?'" (Matthews 1983, 13-14). A good technical classification should not only be correct in Aristotelian terms, it should, in good prototypical fashion, look and feel scientific. This is not an isolated casethe developers of the Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC) have made similar observations for example (as we shall see in chapter 7, they initially did not classify "leech therapy" not because it was not a scientific intervention but because it did not look and feel like one). With respect to the ICD, there has been a long debate within its patient community about naming chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) for example (as there was for |
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