**How biodiversity classification, with its ranking of species, has
social and political implications as well as implications for the field
of information studies.
**
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. 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.
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.
