ABSTRACT
This chapter examines one facet of the multifaceted apparatus that mediate the fish scaling of ideas between disciplines, categories and standards. It draws on both the sociology of science, and the cognition and practice perspectives. The tasks involved in framing categories in the context of politics and culture, and the ways in which those categories are ordered into systems, is often overlooked. The situated cognition/practice movement has helped to both ground and scale up traditional notions of categories and classification, making clear the role of materiality of categories in shaping action. The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is a classification scheme which began in the late 19th century. It is still in use today; indeed, it is ubiquitous in medical bureaucracy and medical information systems. The reclassification process was fraught in myriad ways and was internally inconsistent. In ambiguous cases the Race Reclassification Board would decide after conducting hearings and administering a range of tests of race.
