Public Lecture on Classification and Silence

Geof Bowker and Leigh Star, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego

3pm Wednesday 1st September, Faculty Room North, David Hume Tower, George Square, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh

Focus of the Lecture

This develops the discussion in Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star's (1999) work Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences, MIT Press. To be classified is to be given a 'voice', however the clamour of voices in our multiple classification systems screens out a work of silencing which these systems frequently encourage. Looking at racial, medical and other classification systems, this paper explores the phenomenology of silence and suffering in classification systems.

Further Information

Background papers are available at http://weber.ucsd.edu/~gbowker/pubs.htm
All welcome. For further information contact Prof Robin Williams, Institute for Studies of Science, Technology and Innovation, The University of Edinburgh (R. Williams@ ed. ac. uk)
This visit is sponsored by the EPSRC Dependability of Computing Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (DIRC)