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Cited by 6,188Information Systems Theories and ImplementationGerman Social Sciences and HistoryRace, Genetics, and Society

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

Bowker, Geoffrey C., Star, Susan Leigh·1999·The MIT Press eBooks
DOI 10.7551/mitpress/6352.001.0001
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Abstract

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.

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  • Making work more visible can come with regimes of surveillance, micromanaging, or self-censorship.

    “While there is often an impulse to always make work visible, other literature show how making this work more visible can come with regimes of surveillance, micromanaging, or self-censorship[14,97,121].”

    From The Labor of Maintaining and Scaling Free and Open-Source Software Projects (2021) · cites this paper as [14]

  • Health labels are 'boundary objects' in that they cross institutional frontiers and inhabit several communities of practice and satisfy the informational requirements of each.

    “They are what Bowker and Starr call ‘boundary objects’ in that they cross institutional frontiers and ‘inhabit several communities of practice and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them.’”

    From Is it Still Ok to be Ok? Mental Health Labels as a Campus Technology (2023) · cites this paper as Bowker and Starr 1999

  • Classification is a process imbued with social, economic, and organizational imperatives.

    “Classification is a process imbued with social, economic, and organizational imperatives [17, 38].”

    From Towards a critical race methodology in algorithmic fairness (2020) · cites this paper as [17]

  • As Bowker and Star demonstrate, systems of classification and standardization are never neutral, they embed institutional values and shape what becomes available for knowledge production.

    “As Bowker and Star [6] demonstrate, systems of classification and standardization are never neutral,they embed institutional values and shape what becomes available for knowledge production.”

    From Who speaks when machines read scripture: boundary-making and interpretive authority in AI-mediated religious knowledge (2026) · cites this paper as [6]

  • Bowker and Star demonstrate that systems of classification and standardization embed institutional values and power relations within technical infrastructures.

    “Bowker and Star [6] demonstrate that systems of classification and standardization embed institutional values and power relations within technical infrastructures.”

    From Who speaks when machines read scripture: boundary-making and interpretive authority in AI-mediated religious knowledge (2026) · cites this paper as [6]

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L.
ORCID
Bowker, Geoffrey C.
Venue
The MIT Press eBooks
Publisher
The MIT Press
Published
1999-09-29
DOI
10.7551/mitpress/6352.001.0001
OpenAlex
W4244021162
Cited by
6,188
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 626 · 2025: 418 · 2024: 327 · 2023: 338 · 2022: 382 · 2021: 411 · 2020: 344 · 2019: 407 · 2018: 267 · 2017: 235 · 2016: 252 · 2015: 245 · 2014: 244 · 2013: 191 · 2012: 237
FWCI
62.14
Type
book
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
The MIT Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Information Systems Theories and Implementation
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › German Social Sciences and History
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Race, Genetics, and Society
Keywords
classification systems, categories, standards, information infrastructure, invisibility, International Classification of Diseases, Nursing Interventions Classification, virus taxonomy, tuberculosis classification, life tables, social interaction, worldview

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