Sorting Things Out¶
Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. The MIT Press.
Cited by¶
6 citations across 6 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Classification
- Classification is the deliberate process of assigning entities to discrete categories according to explicitly defined rules, as Bowker and Star (1999) characterize in their treatment of classification systems and their consequences.
This sourceDevelops the constructivist view that classification systems (disease/ICD, race under apartheid, nursing interventions) are designed boundary structures whose invisibility hides the moral and political work they perform.
- Classification is the deliberate process of assigning entities to discrete categories according to explicitly defined rules, as Bowker and Star (1999) characterize in their treatment of classification systems and their consequences.
- Native-Category Flattening
- And the optional feedback loop appears when the imposed English scheme, used in schools and records long enough, reshapes how the community itself describes kin, so a later researcher "finds" the English partition in the data as a self-fulfilling artifact.
This sourceFoundational study of how imposed classification schemes (medical, administrative) merge and split lived distinctions, the irreversibility of the loss, and the feedback by which imposed categories reshape self-description.
- And the optional feedback loop appears when the imposed English scheme, used in schools and records long enough, reshapes how the community itself describes kin, so a later researcher "finds" the English partition in the data as a self-fulfilling artifact.
- Segmentation and Boundary Drawing
- This pattern names the insight that discretization is not found in nature but constructed by boundary placement, a constructivist stance Bowker and Star (1999) develop in their treatment of how classification systems shape and are shaped by social practice.
This sourceDevelops the constructivist view that classification systems (disease, race, occupation) are designed boundary structures whose invisibility hides the moral and political work they perform.
- This pattern names the insight that discretization is not found in nature but constructed by boundary placement, a constructivist stance Bowker and Star (1999) develop in their treatment of how classification systems shape and are shaped by social practice.
Mechanisms¶
- Category Audit
- Classification, as Bowker and Star put it, is infrastructure — quiet, ubiquitous, and consequential.
This sourceNamed because a Category Audit makes that infrastructure visible for one category at a time.
- Classification, as Bowker and Star put it, is infrastructure — quiet, ubiquitous, and consequential.
- Glossary or Code Key
- Its failure mode is Procrustean — forcing genuinely ambiguous, contested, or evolving meaning into rigid boxes, and freezing a key that reality has since outgrown, so the artifact that was meant to aid interpretation starts to overwrite it.
This sourceShows that rigid classifications can force disputed or ambivalent cases into bins and can shape or silence the interpretations they were intended to organize.
- Its failure mode is Procrustean — forcing genuinely ambiguous, contested, or evolving meaning into rigid boxes, and freezing a key that reality has since outgrown, so the artifact that was meant to aid interpretation starts to overwrite it.
- Inclusive Taxonomy Review
- It is the practical face of the insight that classifications are never innocent: every category does work, and what it leaves out has consequences.
This sourceShows that classification systems shape action and outcomes by privileging some viewpoints while silencing others.
- It is the practical face of the insight that classifications are never innocent: every category does work, and what it leaves out has consequences.
Verification¶
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Links previously used in the corpus¶
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