DRMacIver's Notebook
Book Review: Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star
Book Review: Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star
(This is a bit of a placeholder review because I’ve been putting off writing it).
This is a book about classification and its consequences, and in particular about the politics and decision making that goes on behind them. It makes the point that classification forms a complex set of interlocking infrastructure, and discusses how that plays out in a variety of real world settings.
I really liked this book, but I’m not sure how strongly to recommend it. It varies wildly between extremely readable and fairly obtuse in its prose. I don’t know whether this reflects which bit was written by which author, or whether both authors have the style. Nevertheless, I’m keeping it on my “further reading” shelf and intend to return to it regularly.
A couple of interesting points:
- I liked their definition of infrastructure, and their discussion of classification as infrastructure.
- I am generally rather down on classification and labelling and even in the course of discussing how problematic it is, they did quite a good job of explaining its upsides.
- They make the point that in a pragmatic sense anything that we treat as real might as well be real, and that in this sense the categories we describe are real despite being made up.
- They introduce the notion of torque - the twisting of lives that are created as you seek to match yourself to categories that don’t really fit.
This book definitely falls under the heading of books I think are secretly about combat epistemology.
I need to do some reading and comparative study before I hvae much more to say about it.