Please distribute. Apologies for cross-postings<br /><br />Sanna T.<br /> <br />
CALL FOR PAPERS<br />
HEGEMONIES IN CLASSIFICATION PROCESSES<br />
CASES FROM HEALTH CARE AND ONLINE INTERACTIONS<br /> <br />
Special Issue of the Language and Society Newsletter<br />
International Sociological Association - Research Committee 25 on<br />
Language and Society<br /> <br />
Classifications serve as shared systems to organize and handle<br />
knowledge in a given domain. They act as infrastructures that<br />
"[enforce] a certain understanding of context, place, and time"<br />
(Bowker and Star 1999: 82). We therefore look at classifications as<br />
being one of the means to "establish, maintain, and transform<br />
mechanisms of power" (Foucault 2007: 2), while these same mechanisms<br />
of power are at the same time deeply inscribed into classifications.<br />
This mutual dependency of power and classifications raises the<br />
question how changes in the roles of the actors who negotiate<br />
classifications affect and maybe challenge power relations and<br />
hegemonies in a wider sense. The negotiation of classifications<br />
through discursive practices is one of the ways in which<br />
classifications depend on language. Language also takes on a central<br />
role in establishing, applying, and reproducing classifications. The<br />
repeated reproduction through language is necessary for<br />
classifications to stabilize and to gain recognition and explanatory<br />
power. Last but not least, language provides labels for<br />
classifications. The interpretation of a class crucially depends on<br />
the label and its connotations. Whether a specific illness is, for<br />
instance, referred to as GRID (gay-related immune disorder) or as AIDS<br />
(acquired immune deficiency syndrome) has implications that go far<br />
beyond health care organizations.<br /> <br />
The role of classifications in coordinating formal and informal social<br />
activities is becoming more evident with the spread of information and<br />
communication technologies (ICT). Since communication processes are<br />
increasingly taking place between dispersed individuals and groups,<br />
common understanding and coordination are not facilitated by<br />
co-location. Thus, classifications (are expected to) keep patterns of<br />
action aligned. Health care activities provide a clear example:<br />
information about patients needs to travel with and beyond the<br />
patients themselves, in order to allow consequent actions to be<br />
performed by a variety of actors (different specialized physicians,<br />
nurses, pharmacists, relatives, lab technicians, sometimes local<br />
communities and public opinion...). However, classifications do not<br />
travel across different contexts without being reinterpreted or<br />
changed. Instead, they are often locally renegotiated and given a<br />
different meaning, resulting in unplanned actions and consequences.<br /> <br />
Other examples of dispersed settings for social activities can be<br />
found in online communities, which enable the communication and<br />
collaboration of actors who do not share the same physical place. The<br />
Internet and related communication technologies provide laypersons<br />
with access to information, possibilities for participation, and<br />
reception by large audiences, which used to be restricted to experts<br />
only. Knowledge collections like encyclopedias and dictionaries, which<br />
used to be compiled by small groups of highly instructed experts, are<br />
now written collaboratively online by large numbers of dispersed<br />
laypersons. Such collaborative authoring requires explicit and tacit<br />
negotiation of shared classifications - a process which sometimes even<br />
becomes a goal in itself, for instance in creating meta-information to<br />
organize the abundance of information online through social<br />
bookmarking (Bruns 2008: 171-178).<br /> <br />
The role of laypersons in classification processes is thus becoming<br />
one of great interest: empirically because of increasing use of ICT in<br />
accessing, manipulating, and sharing information; theoretically<br />
because of the consequences for a constructionist view, which include<br />
the question of shifts in power between the different actors and the<br />
effects of this on hegemonic classifications. It becomes apparent that<br />
classifications are not 'natural' since they are themselves the<br />
product of negotiation and/or enforcement (Bowker and Star 1999: 44,<br />
131). Therefore the "double hermeneutic" between those who are usually<br />
termed 'subjects' and 'objects' has to be revised, mutual dependency<br />
between classifications and their objects needs to be highlighted.<br />
Thus, we are not only interested in the way classifications construct<br />
their objects, but also in the co-construction of objects and<br />
classifications, in the unfolding exercise and unfinished task of<br />
mixing force and consent that create and support hegemonies, or<br />
challenge them.<br /> <br />
The consequences of this stance for health care and online<br />
interactions are not obvious. For the health domain, for instance,<br />
this would mean to go beyond the point of arguing that medicine<br />
constructs the patients. Rather, we would like to understand how and<br />
why patients and their environments enter into an active interplay<br />
with health delivery services, and the way they 'slice' reality,<br />
because the dynamics and power relations of the interaction between<br />
laypersons and experts can change considerably.<br /> <br />
Given this frame, we invite submissions about how classifications are<br />
established and applied, as well as about their planned and unexpected<br />
effects. We especially welcome empirically rich research accounts from<br />
the field of e-health (exploring relations beyond physicians and<br />
patients, and including families, homes, social environment,<br />
technologies, etc) and online interactions in collaborative settings<br />
(addressing how dispersed social actors rely on and negotiate<br />
classifications and definitions). The articles could take their<br />
starting point from one of the following questions:<br /> <br />
- Where are the "loci of negotiation" of classifications and their<br />
meanings? How are negotiations affected by the respective locus?<br />
- E.g. in medical research vs. at the "shopfloor" of health<br />
delivery; in medical institutions vs. in<br />
physicians-patients-families-society interactions; online vs.<br />
'offline'; among experts vs. among laypersons...<br />
- How does an increase in the accessibility of information affect<br />
power relations in classification processes?<br />
- What role does language play in the construction and application of<br />
classifications?<br />
- How are power shifts between actors manifested in linguistic<br />
practices of negotiating and applying classifications?<br />
- How does the lexical meaning of labels influence classes and their<br />
applications?<br />
- What potential do role changes of experts and laypersons imply?<br />
- Instead of assuming that 'empowerment' of laypersons leads to a<br />
loss of cultural values (Keen 2007) or to a shift towards more<br />
democracy: how do the changing roles affect the interplay of consent<br />
and coercion which "co-exist in a complex and shifting dynamic based<br />
on complex tactics of attempted domination and clever local<br />
resistance, conflict and alliance, imposition of meaning through<br />
discourse and antagonism" (Nicolini 2007)?<br /> <br />
LOGISTICS<br />
Please submit your article as a MS Word or Rich Text Format files<br />
(8000 words maximum, reference list excluded) to the newsletter editor<br />
and to both guest editors:<br /> <br />
NEWSLETTER EDITOR<br />
Isabella Paoletti<br />
paoletti@crisaps.org<br />
Centro di Ricerca e Intervento Sociale<br />
P.O. Box 131 06100, Perugia<br />
Italy<br /> <br />
GUEST EDITORS<br />
Gianluca Miscione<br />
miscione@itc.nl<br />
Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management<br />
International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation<br />
Hengelosestraat 99 P.O. Box 6 7500 AA Enschede<br />
The Netherlands<br /> <br />
Daniela Landert<br />
daniela.landert@es.uzh.ch<br />
Department of English<br />
Universität Zürich<br />
Plattenstrasse 47<br />
CH - 8032 Zürich<br />
Switzerland<br /> <br /> <br />
Schedule:<br />
31/03/09 Deadline for contributions<br />
30/06/09 Feedback to authors<br />
30/09/09 Deadline for revised versions<br />
End of 2009 Publication<br /> <br /> <br />
References:<br />
Bowker, Geoffrey C., Susan Leigh Star (1999). Sorting things out:<br />
classification and its consequences. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.<br /> <br />
Bruns, Axel (2008). Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond. From<br />
Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang.<br /> <br />
Foucault, Michel (2007). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at<br />
the Collège de France 1977-1978. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.<br /> <br />
Keen, Andrew (2007). The Cult of the Amateur How Today's Internet Is<br />
Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy. London: Nicholas<br />
Brealey.<br /> <br />
Nicolini, Davide (2007). "Hegemony". In: James R. Bailey and Stewart<br />
Clegg (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies.<br />
London: Sage.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br />
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<p class="imp-signature"><!--begin_signature-->-- <br />
Sanna Talja<br />
University of Tampere<br />
Department of Information Studies<br />
FIN-33014 University of Tampere<br />
Finland<br />
email: sanna.k.talja at uta.fi<br />
Homepage <a target="_blank" href="http://www.info.uta.fi/talja">http://www.info.uta.fi/talja</a><br />
phone: +358 (0)40 595 8919 (mobile)<br />
phone: +358 (0)3 3551 8062 (office)<br />
fax: +358 (0)3 3551 6560<br /> <br />
phone: +358 40 595 8919<!--end_signature--></p>