Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Inside Technology)
Bowker, Geoffrey C., Star, Susan Leigh
Language: English
Published by The MIT Press, 2000
- Softcover
- Used

Seller: Phatpocket Limited, Waltham Abbey, HERTS, United KingdomPhatpocket Limited
AbeBooks seller since April 28, 2005
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- Title
- Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Inside Technology)
- Author
- Bowker, Geoffrey C., Star, Susan Leigh
- Publisher
- The MIT Press
- Publication year
- 2000
- Condition
- Good
- Binding
- Soft cover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0262522950
- ISBN 13
- 9780262522953
What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification—the scaffolding of information infrastructures.
In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis.
The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Susan Leigh Star was Doreen Boyce Chair for Library and Information Science, University of Pittsburgh.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Phatpocket Limited
Waltham Abbey, HERTS, United Kingdom
AbeBooks seller since April 28, 2005
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Phatpocket Limited is a world class secondhand bookstore located in the Hertfordshire countryside in the United Kingdom. We specialize in textbooks across an enormous variety of subjects. We aim to provide a low cost source of high quality textbooks to the academic community. We also have a sizable collection of rare and collectible books. We are dedicated to providing our customers with the highest standard of customer service in the bookselling business.Phatpocket Limited is registered in England and Wales: No. 04924751.…
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