The Kindness of Strangers: Kinds and Politics in Classification Systems

THIS ARTICLE OFFERS A FORMAL READING of a classification scheme of international scope and long duration: the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). The argument is made that this classification scheme retains many traces of its own administrative and organizational past in its current form. Further, it is argued that such traces operate normatively to favor certain kinds of narrative of medical treatment while denying others. It is suggested that the ICD, like other large-scale classification systems, is able to do its work so effectively precisely because these traces permit a coupling of classification scheme and organizational form.

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