Mapping Beyond Dewey's Boundaries: Constructing Classificatory Space for Marginalized Knowledge Domains - Dewey Decimal Classification excludes some groups

ABSTRACT

Classifications are bounded systems that marginalize some groups and topics by locating them in ghettoes, diasporized across the system. Other marginalized groups and topics are totally excluded from these systems, being outside of their territorial limits. Because classifications are locational systems, spatial analyses borrowed from various disciplines have potential to identify and address their problems. The philosophical basis for the analysis in this article is Lorraine Code's (1995) conception of "rhetorical spaces" as sites where topics can be taken seriously as legitimate subjects for open discussion. In existing classifications, there is rhetorical space for most mainstream social and scholarly knowledge domains but not for marginalized knowledge domains. Geography offers concepts for building a theoretical framework to ameliorate the biases of classification. This article describes such a framework and how it is applied using techniques such as Gillian Rose's (1993) "paradoxical spaces," which are simultaneously or alternately in the center and at the margin, same and other, inside and outside to develop a more complex and meaningful classification for women and other marginalized groups. The project described here operationalizes these theoretical openings by applying them to the Dewey Decimal Classification as both critique and and as techniques for change.

INTRODUCTION

The problem of bias in classification can be linked to the nature of classification as a social construct. It reflects the same biases as the culture that creates it. Existing literature has critiqued the most widely used classification in the world, the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), for its treatment of women, Puerto Ricans, Chinese and Japanese Americans, Mexican Americans, Jews, Native Americans, the developing world (including Africa, the Middle East, and Melanesia), gays, teenagers, senior citizens, people with disabilities, and alternative lifestyles.(1) To look at these biases with a fresh eye, a theoretical construct capable of revealing the complexities of classification and its social construction was sought. The theoretical framework that subsequently evolved draws on the spatial metaphors that have become so prevalent in cultural criticism in recent years.

As Lorraine Code (1995) points out:

   [use of] spatial metaphors picks up a late-twentieth-century concern with
   location: with territories, mappings, positionings where resources are
   variously available, subjectivities are variously enacted, and identities
   are constructed and continually reconstructed in the enactings; and where
   hierarchies of power and privilege always contribute to shaping these
   processes.... (p. ix)

In this spirit, this discussion will move from a description of the construction of classification to the development of spatial imagery as a metaphorical mechanism with the ability to discover the processes by which powerful and privileged discourses shape information and with the potential to inform change. What will then evolve will be a multidisciplinary theoretical framework based on spatial conceptions in the context of a specific project, concluding with suggestions for further research.

THEORETICAL MODELS FOR THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF CLASSIFICATION

The idea of classification as a social construct is not new. A. C. Foskett (1971) suggests that classificationists are the products of their times. Therefore, since classifications are the products of classificationists, classifications also reflect the biases of their times. Examining the ideological construction and present needs for reconstruction of the former Soviet classification (Sukiasian, 1993) or the Confucian, and later Maoist, classification in China (Studwell, Wu, & Wang, 1994) makes it easy to see that classifications reflect philosophical and ideological presumptions of their cultures and not only the times but also the places. Classifications arrange concepts according to accepted cultural discourses whether those discourses are Leninist or Maoist communisms, the Seven Epitomes of Confucian doctrine, or Dewey's apparent reversal of Francis Bacon's classification scheme.

Allocation of 80 percent of DDC's religion section (the 200s) exclusively to Christianity and the existence of a separate section for American literature (the 810s) when all other literatures are arranged by language is not surprising given the origins of this classification. Finding the topic "concubinage" under customs in 392.6 where it is gathered with topics such as chaperonage and dating or "suttee" in 393.9 and all combined with funerals and wakes has a certain ethnocentric logic. The other major North American classification, the Library of Congress Classification (LCC), exhibits similar biases. For example, the allocation of space and the sequence of development of Class K for law, with separate volumes for individual North American and European countries, was published in the 1960s and 1970s with only one volume appearing in 1993 covering Asia, Eurasia, Africa, Pacific Area, and Antarctica. In each of these cases, there is a tendency to simply accept that these powerful discourses operate, and that change is too expensive and impractical.