Invisible Mediators of Action: Classification and the Ubiquity of Standards

This article is a methodological think piece about the ways in which classifications (and standards) impinge in myriad ways on our daily lives. We argue that although they are frequently invisible to us, they are highly political and ethically charged. We suggest 4 principles garnered from our own research and that of others that can together be used to give a picture of their scope and reach: recognizing their ubiquity, analyzing their material texture, examining ways in which they reconfigure our understanding of the past, and exploring their practical politics. Together, the principles suggest a reverse engineering of classification systems to reveal the multitude of local political and social struggles and compromises that go into the constitution of a universal classification.