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Making Classifications (at) Work

Ordering Practices in Science

Wolff-Michael Roth

University of Victoria, mroth{at}uvic.ca

To make and use classifications is human. At least in the sciences, classification activities involve high degrees of uncertainty. Drawing on ethnography and conversation analysis of videotaped scientists, the activities of classifying and making classifications are analyzed considering four types of situations that arise when there is certainty or uncertainty about the object to be classified and the classification scheme to be used. As a collection, the different analyses of everyday scientific work articulate classification as a physically and temporally situated and socially distributed activity that does not eliminate uncertainty and inconsistency, but tends to minimize contradiction.

Key Words: categorization • classification • perception • uncertainty

Social Studies of Science, Vol. 35, No. 4, 581-621 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0306312705052102
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