Robert D. Montoya examines how biodiversity classification, with its ranking of species, has social and political implications as well as implications for the field of information studies in his book Power of Position (on sale May 24, 2022 from the MIT Press).
The idea that species live in nature as pure and clear-cut named individuals is a fiction, as scientists well know. According to Robert D. Montoya, classifications are powerful mechanisms and we must better attend to the machinations of power inherent in them, as well as to how the effects of this power proliferate beyond the boundaries of their original intent.
Montoya, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Studies in the School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California argues that we must acknowledge the many ways our classifications are implicated in environmental, ecological, and social justice work—and information specialists must play a role in updating our notions of what it means to classify.
In Power of Position, Montoya shows how classifications are systems that relate one entity with other entities, requiring those who construct a system to value an entity's relative importance—by way of its position—within a system of other entities. These practices, says Montoya, are important ways of constituting and exerting power.
“The social powers that classifications exhibit in the lived, social world are ontological, organizational, epistemic, and historically situated,” Montoya writes. “To better understand this power, we must idealize ways to frame how this power is exerted in concrete and manufactured ways. To this end, classifiers have a certain obligation to express how these classifications fit within the broader field of social use and the contexts within which they will function as tools of decision making. So too do the users of these systems, who need to unpack the nuances of their construction.”
Classification also has very real-world consequences. An animal classified as protected and endangered, for example, is protected by law. Montoya also discusses the Catalogue of Life, a new kind of composite classification that reconciles many local (“traditional”) taxonomies, forming a unified taxonomic backbone structure for organizing biological data. Finally, he shows how the theories of information studies are applicable to realms far beyond those of biological classification.
“Montoya offers a compelling and nuanced look at how we can engender epistemic and material justice through deep interrogation into how classification systems construct our responses to an ever-changing world,” writes Joseph T. Tennis a Professor at the University of Washington Information School.
“We should work toward creating classifications that allow for the radical possibility of upsetting that assumed order and imagining new arrangements,” Montoya argues.
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About the author: Robert D. Montoya is Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Studies in the School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles; Director of UCLA's California Rare Book School; and Director of UCLA's Library, Ethics, and Justice Lab.
Learn more about the book on the MIT Press website: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/power-position