Library and Information Science Commons^™

Gender As An 'Interplay Of Rules': Detecting Epistemic Interplay Of Medical And Legal Discourse With Sex And Gender Classification In Four Editions Of The Dewey Decimal Classification, Melodie J. Fox

Theses and Dissertations

When groups of people are represented in classification systems, potential exists for them to be structurally or linguistically subordinated, erased or otherwise misrepresented (Olson & Schlegl, 2001). As Bowker & Star (1999) have shown, the real-world application of classification to people can have legal, economic, medical, social, and educational consequences. The purpose of this research is to contribute to knowledge organization by showing how the epistemological stance underlying specific classificatory discourses interactively participates in the formation of concepts. The medical and legal discourses in three timeframes are examined using Foucauldian genealogical discourse analysis to investigate how their depictions of gender …