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Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences
A revealing and surprising look at how classification systems can shape both worldviews and social interactions.
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.
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.
392 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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About the author
Geoffrey C. Bowker
20 books10 followersGeoffrey C. Bowker is Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. He moved to UCI at the start of 2012, having held the positions of Professor and Senior Scholar in Cyberscholarship at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
September 4, 2010
This book is critical reading for anyone involved in any type of standardization, classification, or data modeling work. We are moving toward a world where systems are more inter-connected than ever, and it is classifications (and standards) that form the infrastructure for these systems. Classifications are ubiquitous in the world around us and tend to implicitly shape the way we view our world.
Key points that this book expands on in detail include:
- Classification systems provide the mechanism for information to be shared between disparate communities of practice – across space and time.
- Classification systems create the infrastructure in the world around us and because of the tendency for infrastructures to “disappear” it normally takes effort to see them (unless they break down).
- Classification systems provide the mechanism for organizational memory. Through this mechanism, classification systems may be used to force the erasure of certain organizational memories – All memory is generally filtered through a classification system.
- The use of boundary objects and boundary infrastructures are critical to supporting multiple viewpoints within a system. Boundary objects provide a way for individual communities of practice to form strong localized meaning of the object, while still maintaining a shared, more generalized, meaning between disparate communities of practice (i.e. plasticity).
- Classifications not only shape our view of the world, they shape the way we act. “Equally, as good pragmatists, we know things perceived as real are real in their consequences. So even when people take classifications to be purely mental, or purely formal, they also mold their behavior to fit those conceptions” (Bowker, Star, p. 53).
- There are always political, moral, and ethical forces that naturally shape the creation and maintenance of classification systems.
Key points that this book expands on in detail include:
- Classification systems provide the mechanism for information to be shared between disparate communities of practice – across space and time.
- Classification systems create the infrastructure in the world around us and because of the tendency for infrastructures to “disappear” it normally takes effort to see them (unless they break down).
- Classification systems provide the mechanism for organizational memory. Through this mechanism, classification systems may be used to force the erasure of certain organizational memories – All memory is generally filtered through a classification system.
- The use of boundary objects and boundary infrastructures are critical to supporting multiple viewpoints within a system. Boundary objects provide a way for individual communities of practice to form strong localized meaning of the object, while still maintaining a shared, more generalized, meaning between disparate communities of practice (i.e. plasticity).
- Classifications not only shape our view of the world, they shape the way we act. “Equally, as good pragmatists, we know things perceived as real are real in their consequences. So even when people take classifications to be purely mental, or purely formal, they also mold their behavior to fit those conceptions” (Bowker, Star, p. 53).
- There are always political, moral, and ethical forces that naturally shape the creation and maintenance of classification systems.
July 11, 2015
Assigning things, people, or their actions to categories is a ubiquitous part of work in the modern, bureaucratic world. Categories in this sense arise from work and from other kinds of organized activity, including the conflicts over meaning that occur when multiple groups fight over the nature of a classification systems and its categories.
The authors focus on classification of diseases for much of the book, also touching on race, work practices, and boundaries within and surrounding classification schemes. Underneath that is an exploration of the technology, bureaucracy, archives, daily and historical practices that determine classification systems and are determined by classification systems. You want access to the birth control pill in 20th century Spain? Better hope your doctor will classify you as hypotensive because prophylactics were illegal, but hypotensive medication (a side use of the pill) is a-ok. You want money to research the tropical diseases that are killing your neighbors? Sorry, Western researchers aren't interested so that's not listed as a category in the ICD, which means you don't get grant funding. Visiting apartheid South Africa as an African American woman? Hope you don't need to use the airport restroom, because there isn't one available to people in your category.
It's like they took Kafka's The Trial and split the structure open to have a look inside: the spoken, the unspoken, the visible, the forgotten, everything that makes up the thousands of little rules we live by, fight against, work around, create anew. It is - no surprise - a little dense in places, but totally worth the effort. And now that the idea of borderlands is fresh in my memory, I think it's time for me to check out Gloria Anzaldua.
the sciences are very good at what they do: the task of the philosopher is to keep open and explore the spaces that otherwise would be left dark and unvisited because of their very success, since new forms of knowledge might arise out of these spaces.
April 17, 2024
Fascinating with sections of dry repetition which were necessary to reiterate important arguments made throughout. This is an academic text but a masterclass in choosing case studies to illustrate points and inserting personality where possible. I wish I could share photos of the notes I took in the margins next to the authors' very bad puns.
If you're curious but don't want to read the whole thing, the chapter "The Case of Race Classification and Reclassification under Apartheid" is a great summary of the social consequences of systems of classifications and the banality of evil.
If you're curious but don't want to read the whole thing, the chapter "The Case of Race Classification and Reclassification under Apartheid" is a great summary of the social consequences of systems of classifications and the banality of evil.
November 30, 2016
In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star make information infrastructure exciting! They set out to answer what goes into making things seem effortless, who does this work, and what happens to the cases that do not fit? First, they introduce us to their terminology defining classification as “a set of boxes into which things can be put to then do some kind of work” (10) and standardization as “agreed-upon rules for the production of objects…spanning more than one community of practice” (13). But their examples will show that the real world does not fit into mutually exclusive boxes.
They then introduce us to the three sections they set out to explore: classification and large-scale infrastructure, classification and biography, and classification and work practice. In the introduction, they also present four “methodological departure points” which we can utilize to invert infrastructure so that we may study it more deeply.
They emphasize that there is a moral component to this discussion because “each category valorizes some point of view and silences another” (5). One example they give is the “decision of the US immigration and Naturalization Service to classify some races and classes as desirable for U.S. residents, and others as not, resulted in a quota system that valued affluent people from northern and western Europe over those from Africa or South America” (6). In addition to an overwhelming amount of information in need of classification, there is also a blurring of social boundaries and identity when it comes to classifying humans and the work that they do.
In part I Bowker and Star focus on understanding the multifaceted interests and needs that went into the formation of the International Classification of Diseases, an information infrastructure that is “an invisible underpinning to medical practice” (131). This international component is the first time we see the way in which globalization and the influx of diversity not only in commodities and culture, but also in disease, brought to the surface a need for standardization—this standardization presents itself in the Aristotelian binary distinctions; however, Rosch’s prototype theory is much more accurate to reality. But before we reach standardization, there are often many wars that take place in the classification process, and this is what they will address in these chapters. Just as the bacteria and microbes, harbingers of disease and death, were invisible so too were the details of the classification systems defining everything from electric pulse rate to railroad cars---everything in the built environment.
Keeping the theme of maintaining stability amidst a rapidly changing landscape, part II focuses on human suffering that occurs in trying to fit into the classification systems of chronic illness as well as racial classification under the apartheid in South Africa. They theoretically pull from Max Weber who “spoke of ‘the iron cage of bureaucracy’ hemming in the lives of modern workers and families. The cage formed by classification systems can be constraining in just this way” (26). They use the term torque to mean “a twisting of time lines that pull at each other, and bend or twist both patient and biography and the process of metrication” (27).
The focus shifts in part III to the topic of classification in work practices, particularly those of the nurses who established the Nursing Intervention Classification. In this section, we see how nurses from Iowa, feeling largely marginalized and underappreciated, took the initiative to show that they were more than a bed in a hospital, formulating a long list of services nurses provide to the patient and doctor. Striving to make their work visible, the NIC is an “attempt at a universal standardized tool with a common language; at the same time, its development and application is proceeding via managing and articulating the local and particular” (254). They show how “values, policies and modes of practice become embedded in large information systems” (230).
They conclude this work by providing some theoretical foundations for their research findings. They also strangely call the reader to action—to move from being simply a critic and try to improve the ‘built moral environment’. They advise us to recognize the political and ethical implications of infrastructure, to maintain flexibility by keeping the voice of the classifier on record, to be sensitive to exclusion and aware of the multiplicitous nature of classifications.
Naturally my reading of this was deeply personal; however, I think many people can relate with the alienation that comes with not fitting into an established category. Bowker and Star are right in their bold claim that “to classify is human.” We identify with those diseases on the list that just don’t fit; haven’t we all felt at some point displaced and without a box to fit into? There are small, everyday certainties in my life that are blurred in the lives of others: such as checking the box for Female on standardized forms. As with Susan Leigh Star’s piece, “The Ethnography of Infrastructure,” this not only provides a thorough account of classification and standardization, but also informs us of how to approach future research into infrastructure studies.
Sure, there is an extensive list of other examples they could have given in terms of everyday classifications and standardizations; however, I don’t see how this would have bolstered their argument much. In fact, I think their ability to stay relatively focused in one field, (except for their chapter on racial classification), is a strength of the work. And with that said, their chapter on racial classification stays within the their focus of the individual’s relationship with codified codes and classifications.
What can I say? This book is incredible. Bowker and Star weave together their theories, their empirical findings, and their methodologies in a fluid, intellectually dense manner. They consistently remind us of what we have read and how they tie together as we carry forth. For example, at the end of their chapter on Tuberculosis, they remind us of how our readings of the ICD relate to the “difficulties in capturing a disease that itself changes over time using tools that need to capture body in motion, and one that has a profound temporal effect on the biography of the sufferer” (194).
My one and only critique is their use of the work torque. It seems odd and inconsistent with the rest of the book. They never ground their use of the term. I think any number of verbs could have been used in its place that would have worked just as well if not better.
I couldn’t help but think about the unclassifiable attributes of a good nurse while I read this. Sure there are codified attributes that can be listed on a chart such dexterity with an IV, knowledge of drug interactions, warm hands, and a vile full of Demerol doesn’t hurt their score. However, beyond that list, there are indistinguishable traits that differentiate someone from simply good at their job to a true caregiver. They are things that I cannot put on a list but I can feel in my heart. Most of what is grand and divine in this world does not fit squarely into a clean box.
They then introduce us to the three sections they set out to explore: classification and large-scale infrastructure, classification and biography, and classification and work practice. In the introduction, they also present four “methodological departure points” which we can utilize to invert infrastructure so that we may study it more deeply.
They emphasize that there is a moral component to this discussion because “each category valorizes some point of view and silences another” (5). One example they give is the “decision of the US immigration and Naturalization Service to classify some races and classes as desirable for U.S. residents, and others as not, resulted in a quota system that valued affluent people from northern and western Europe over those from Africa or South America” (6). In addition to an overwhelming amount of information in need of classification, there is also a blurring of social boundaries and identity when it comes to classifying humans and the work that they do.
In part I Bowker and Star focus on understanding the multifaceted interests and needs that went into the formation of the International Classification of Diseases, an information infrastructure that is “an invisible underpinning to medical practice” (131). This international component is the first time we see the way in which globalization and the influx of diversity not only in commodities and culture, but also in disease, brought to the surface a need for standardization—this standardization presents itself in the Aristotelian binary distinctions; however, Rosch’s prototype theory is much more accurate to reality. But before we reach standardization, there are often many wars that take place in the classification process, and this is what they will address in these chapters. Just as the bacteria and microbes, harbingers of disease and death, were invisible so too were the details of the classification systems defining everything from electric pulse rate to railroad cars---everything in the built environment.
Keeping the theme of maintaining stability amidst a rapidly changing landscape, part II focuses on human suffering that occurs in trying to fit into the classification systems of chronic illness as well as racial classification under the apartheid in South Africa. They theoretically pull from Max Weber who “spoke of ‘the iron cage of bureaucracy’ hemming in the lives of modern workers and families. The cage formed by classification systems can be constraining in just this way” (26). They use the term torque to mean “a twisting of time lines that pull at each other, and bend or twist both patient and biography and the process of metrication” (27).
The focus shifts in part III to the topic of classification in work practices, particularly those of the nurses who established the Nursing Intervention Classification. In this section, we see how nurses from Iowa, feeling largely marginalized and underappreciated, took the initiative to show that they were more than a bed in a hospital, formulating a long list of services nurses provide to the patient and doctor. Striving to make their work visible, the NIC is an “attempt at a universal standardized tool with a common language; at the same time, its development and application is proceeding via managing and articulating the local and particular” (254). They show how “values, policies and modes of practice become embedded in large information systems” (230).
They conclude this work by providing some theoretical foundations for their research findings. They also strangely call the reader to action—to move from being simply a critic and try to improve the ‘built moral environment’. They advise us to recognize the political and ethical implications of infrastructure, to maintain flexibility by keeping the voice of the classifier on record, to be sensitive to exclusion and aware of the multiplicitous nature of classifications.
Naturally my reading of this was deeply personal; however, I think many people can relate with the alienation that comes with not fitting into an established category. Bowker and Star are right in their bold claim that “to classify is human.” We identify with those diseases on the list that just don’t fit; haven’t we all felt at some point displaced and without a box to fit into? There are small, everyday certainties in my life that are blurred in the lives of others: such as checking the box for Female on standardized forms. As with Susan Leigh Star’s piece, “The Ethnography of Infrastructure,” this not only provides a thorough account of classification and standardization, but also informs us of how to approach future research into infrastructure studies.
Sure, there is an extensive list of other examples they could have given in terms of everyday classifications and standardizations; however, I don’t see how this would have bolstered their argument much. In fact, I think their ability to stay relatively focused in one field, (except for their chapter on racial classification), is a strength of the work. And with that said, their chapter on racial classification stays within the their focus of the individual’s relationship with codified codes and classifications.
What can I say? This book is incredible. Bowker and Star weave together their theories, their empirical findings, and their methodologies in a fluid, intellectually dense manner. They consistently remind us of what we have read and how they tie together as we carry forth. For example, at the end of their chapter on Tuberculosis, they remind us of how our readings of the ICD relate to the “difficulties in capturing a disease that itself changes over time using tools that need to capture body in motion, and one that has a profound temporal effect on the biography of the sufferer” (194).
My one and only critique is their use of the work torque. It seems odd and inconsistent with the rest of the book. They never ground their use of the term. I think any number of verbs could have been used in its place that would have worked just as well if not better.
I couldn’t help but think about the unclassifiable attributes of a good nurse while I read this. Sure there are codified attributes that can be listed on a chart such dexterity with an IV, knowledge of drug interactions, warm hands, and a vile full of Demerol doesn’t hurt their score. However, beyond that list, there are indistinguishable traits that differentiate someone from simply good at their job to a true caregiver. They are things that I cannot put on a list but I can feel in my heart. Most of what is grand and divine in this world does not fit squarely into a clean box.
December 29, 2022
And that's all I've got to say about that.
July 7, 2025
Who would’ve thought a book about classification systems and standards could be so engrossing? Not me. But this was so fascinating!! The chapter on Apartheid in South Africa was especially eye opening. Other chapters kinda lost me and were bit *too* dense.
November 9, 2024
very dense and somewhat jargon-y, but a useful piece of literature.
July 24, 2025
I can understand why this is modern classic of STS scholarship. Nothing but positive things to say about this book.
In a nice way, it reminds me of work in phenomenology: Bowker and Star detail the invisible infrastructures that are completely fundamental to how we experience (or as they argue in some places, make) our world. This world-making is especially potent in the chapters discussing the very real consequences of race classification in apartheid South Africa. If you're going to read anything, read those chapters on race.
I thought their conception of torque ("the twisting that occurs when a formal classification system is mismatched with an individual's biological trajectory, memberships, or location," p. 223) was one of the most interesting thing's I've come across.
You might say that the book is a little repetitive, and you'd be right, but I think they hammer the thesis--that classifications guide **every** aspect of our lives--so hard because it really is so strong.
In a nice way, it reminds me of work in phenomenology: Bowker and Star detail the invisible infrastructures that are completely fundamental to how we experience (or as they argue in some places, make) our world. This world-making is especially potent in the chapters discussing the very real consequences of race classification in apartheid South Africa. If you're going to read anything, read those chapters on race.
I thought their conception of torque ("the twisting that occurs when a formal classification system is mismatched with an individual's biological trajectory, memberships, or location," p. 223) was one of the most interesting thing's I've come across.
You might say that the book is a little repetitive, and you'd be right, but I think they hammer the thesis--that classifications guide **every** aspect of our lives--so hard because it really is so strong.
January 30, 2015
This was a truly eye-opening read. One does not think that you are going to be finding a particularly engaging read when it comes to classification, and at some points it honestly isn't. But Bowker and Star do address the fact that their method at bottom is one that can be at time down right boring. The book picks up though in its analyses from the ICD to tuberculosis lit. reviews and cultural classifications of apartheid in a way that makes it that you have to feel on a personal level the effects of the classification that they are pointing out. So what is the point? Classification, whether we like it or not, is something that we do. And we have been doing it misguidedly. By not looking at the preexisting structures around us we miss the nuances that reveal so much about ourselves. The biggest thing is that, however much faith and lack of thought we give to them - they are guiding every aspect of our lives. This alone makes the book a worthwhile read. But what Bowker and Star really do is go into the ethical/political implications of these structures and try to find a way by which we could better organize the world so as to fully assimilate the "monster" and the "cyborg" as realities that we can't just push to the wayside. It is about embracing our multiplicities. Now, I do have a quesiton. Some of the new vocabulary that Bowker and Star propose to make this change is simply not there and so they themselves don't offer much of a starting point. They simply say that it is needed. But being aware of the problem can be just as important as trying to solve it and so as a descriptive analysis one should not expect from them a grand unifying theory.
October 5, 2018
The book was very interesting, but hard to read. It is very much an academic work which reads like other social science journal publications (Indeed, some sections follow articles the authors have published very closely). A discipline has its own language, that’s fine, but be aware what you get into.
The content and the ideas are fascinating as classification is explored based on several cases around health, race and profession. The authors develop concepts to make sense of the discussions and developments of classifications. It thus can be an eye-opener particularly if one works in a field where classifications, standards and regulations play an important role – and there are many.
The content and the ideas are fascinating as classification is explored based on several cases around health, race and profession. The authors develop concepts to make sense of the discussions and developments of classifications. It thus can be an eye-opener particularly if one works in a field where classifications, standards and regulations play an important role – and there are many.
April 15, 2015
Great book. Read it as part of "book club" course called New Perspectives on Organizing at UC Berkeley School of Information. Really important considerations about embedded values in infrastructure, time as a constraint on organizing systems, and offers many important examples of how information systems and classification causes either suffering or advantage, depending on who is being classified. Especially appreciated the perspective that we shouldn't practice classification without recognizing that "carving nature at the joints" is always going to end badly for someone.
May 4, 2017
If you classify things in any capacity in your life you MUST read this.
November 6, 2023
Quite influential in the information sciences (from my understanding), this book presents and problematizes the concept of putting things into boxes: classification. While it is acknowledged that “[t]o classify is human” (p. 1), it also viewed through a lens of critical thinking - who has the power to classify?, who is benefiting from it?, and who is being silenced? This is the gist of the book, and is simultaneously its greatest asset and, in my opinion, its weakness.
The book is divided into three sections. One deals with medical classification, specifically in regards to the ICD (International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems)[1] and other tools for diagnozing illness. Another talks about the terrible segregation in South Africa during the latter part of the 20th century, the system of apartheid, during which people were valued differently - and treated accordingly - depending on what category they were assigned to. The third and final section is not about (perceived) natural categories, but rather social and workplace ones, namely nursing work.
Some of the statements in the book are just a bit plain weird. The ICD is criticized because it has "very little in the way of overt narrative" and it's a "curiously perverse activity" to read it (p. 55). Surely the authors should know that this is a heavy duty medical manual, not a fairy tale? There are things deserving of discussion, but surely, this can't be one of the important ones, can it?
All in all, this book was thought provoking, and I am happy that I read it. Although it pushes harder than I personally do against the concept of classification - or rather, it problematizes it - I learned a lot by reading it. And maybe even just so slightly, changed my opinion on the subject somewhat. That's a good sign. Recommended.
[1] It is worth noting that the ICD currently has come out with an eleventh revision, while when Sorting Things Out was published, the latest revision of ICD was the tenth (although to be fair, the medical field is slow to endorse and bring these updated manuals into use).
The book is divided into three sections. One deals with medical classification, specifically in regards to the ICD (International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems)[1] and other tools for diagnozing illness. Another talks about the terrible segregation in South Africa during the latter part of the 20th century, the system of apartheid, during which people were valued differently - and treated accordingly - depending on what category they were assigned to. The third and final section is not about (perceived) natural categories, but rather social and workplace ones, namely nursing work.
Some of the statements in the book are just a bit plain weird. The ICD is criticized because it has "very little in the way of overt narrative" and it's a "curiously perverse activity" to read it (p. 55). Surely the authors should know that this is a heavy duty medical manual, not a fairy tale? There are things deserving of discussion, but surely, this can't be one of the important ones, can it?
All in all, this book was thought provoking, and I am happy that I read it. Although it pushes harder than I personally do against the concept of classification - or rather, it problematizes it - I learned a lot by reading it. And maybe even just so slightly, changed my opinion on the subject somewhat. That's a good sign. Recommended.
[1] It is worth noting that the ICD currently has come out with an eleventh revision, while when Sorting Things Out was published, the latest revision of ICD was the tenth (although to be fair, the medical field is slow to endorse and bring these updated manuals into use).
October 1, 2021
A thorough and systematic analysis of classification schemes and the various infrastructures (e.g., professional, educational, social) that they support. The authors ground their discussion of classification in pragmatism, noting the importance of classification for creating objects of focus and defining the boundaries of how we interact (or don't interact) with them. Some of the details of classifications get a little lost in the details of the case studies (chapters 2-8) but the summary chapters after (9 & 10) draw the threads together nicely and show the edges of the theory they have been developing. The case studies themselves are interesting and should be enough to sustain many readers' interests.
March 1, 2025
This's a sociological look at the concept of classification systems, their advanages, and their shortcomings. It contained some interesting insights and case studies, but was written in a dry academic style which meant I often had to drag the interesting bits out of a morasse of progressive academia on my own.
Yes, all classification systems sacrifice some other parameters. Yes, they hide some of the complexity of the world. More interestingly, they can hide details that would be useful to future systems built after more insight is gained - and the authors provide some interesting case studies.
But I wouldn't recommend this particular book.
Yes, all classification systems sacrifice some other parameters. Yes, they hide some of the complexity of the world. More interestingly, they can hide details that would be useful to future systems built after more insight is gained - and the authors provide some interesting case studies.
But I wouldn't recommend this particular book.
July 25, 2019
So I am fascinated with how brains sort and distinguish...well, anything. This book went a bit beyond the single brain but into ways multiple humans sort things to create a working order.
A lot of this book read like stereo instructions (please know that reference) but some was pretty interesting. Some main focuses were health, tuberculosis, the apartheid ( holy fucking shit I barely knew anything about the apartheid and what I read blew my mind and now I need to know more depressing history), nursing.... so yeah.
Not a wild read by any means but I regret nothing.
A lot of this book read like stereo instructions (please know that reference) but some was pretty interesting. Some main focuses were health, tuberculosis, the apartheid ( holy fucking shit I barely knew anything about the apartheid and what I read blew my mind and now I need to know more depressing history), nursing.... so yeah.
Not a wild read by any means but I regret nothing.
May 6, 2025
Very hard to read for anyone not familiar with jargon of this domain.
Two case studies -tuberculosis sanatorium and apartheid classifications-are interesting, but I did not get any other idea there but “map is not territory”. While the authors actually insist that the idea is “map and territory”, whatever it may mean, lol.
Two case studies -tuberculosis sanatorium and apartheid classifications-are interesting, but I did not get any other idea there but “map is not territory”. While the authors actually insist that the idea is “map and territory”, whatever it may mean, lol.
April 10, 2020
This dense volume tackles the delicate question posed by scientific nomenclatures, as applied to diseases, medical acts, and causes of death. Even in technical fields, naming systems turn out to be surprisingly ad hoc, reflecting and reinforcing an era’s inherent biases.
Read
February 21, 2023I read a big chunk of this for a class. (A basic rule I have is that if I read over 100 pages of a book, I can count it as read.) It's out of date now, really, but it somehow made the ICD (a very boring categorization of disease) something that is fascinating.
October 22, 2020
Other reviews said what needs to be said. This is the book that allows us to think about information infrastructure and how it scaffolds the world we live in.
May 8, 2021
Remarkably bad
Read
May 16, 2023in the trenches
December 11, 2023
Exhaustive and exhausting. I read this for a class and would never have finished it otherwise. The concepts were fascinating and important. The writing makes them inaccessible except to very few.
Read
October 20, 2024hey. hey. everyone should read this
November 6, 2024
It's fine...more of an anthology than cohesive book.
November 10, 2024
It looks bleak but it goes so hard
March 27, 2025
En klassiker, tydligen.
Read
May 9, 2009The preface focuses largely on the nursing classification book/system which is the main object under consideration. Much of Sorting Things Out, however, is enjoyably abstract, i.e. introducing braided identity, a term for a concept complementary to linguistics' "code-switching"(306); "To communicate information in the aggregate, we must first classify"(68). Ultimately infrastructure is central:
"Large information systems such as the Internet or global databases carry with them a politics of voice and value that is often invisible, embedded within layers of infrastructure. The 'politics of artifacts' ... are more available for public debate than those of information interchange protocols or how insurance data are encoded. Yet these latter decisions and standards may affect markets, differential benefits from particular technologies, and the visibility of constituencies, among other important public goods ([cf. Charles:] Kindleberger 1983 ['Standards as Public, Collective and Private Goods': Kyklos 36])."
"Large information systems such as the Internet or global databases carry with them a politics of voice and value that is often invisible, embedded within layers of infrastructure. The 'politics of artifacts' ... are more available for public debate than those of information interchange protocols or how insurance data are encoded. Yet these latter decisions and standards may affect markets, differential benefits from particular technologies, and the visibility of constituencies, among other important public goods ([cf. Charles:] Kindleberger 1983 ['Standards as Public, Collective and Private Goods': Kyklos 36])."
January 6, 2011
Fascinating, but dense. I had this book assigned for a class, and didn't read more than I had to. This is because, even though every chapter raises truly interesting and valuable points, it's probably one of the densest books I've ever read - and I was a philosophy major in undergrad. The diversity of topics covered in this book are commendable, from an analysis of classification of TB patients to an analysis of classification of race in apartheid South Africa. The problem is that Bowker & Star really love to cram every bit of information that they can into a chapter and write in a very overtly boring way, so actually getting anything out of the material comes long and slow. Once you're immersed in a chapter, it's worth it, but it's something you really have to budget time and brain capacity for.
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