International Blog Against Racism Week: On Classifications

(Aside: Casper is all better; "full of beans and her usual self this morning," mr. flea reports.)

I read a couple of the first posts for IBARW, and then went back to today's task of shifting books. Today I am shifting the Ps, and this led me to a contribution I could make to this week.

When I was an archaeologist, and interested in postprocessualism (deconstructionism:literature::postprocessualism:archaeology), one of the rules was 'how you choose to classify something determines the kind of conclusions you can draw from it.'

At the Looniversity Library, we use the Library of Congress Classification System for our books. It was developed starting in 1897. Most large academic libraries use it. (For more history, see wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Congress_Classification)

In this system, D, E and F cover history; E and F are history of the Americas (E: United States General, F: United States local and Other Parts of the Americas), and D is everything else. D looks like this:
DA Great Britain
DAW Central Europe
DB Austria. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
DC France
DD Germany
DE The Greco-Roman World
DF Greece
DG Italy
DH Low Countries. Benelux Countries
DJ Netherlands (Holland)
DJK Eastern Europe (General)
DK Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics. Poland
DL Northern Europe. Scandinavia
DP Spain. Portugal
DQ Switzerland
DR Balkan Peninsula. Turkey
DS Asia
DT Africa
DU Oceania (South Seas)
DX Gypsies
Yes, Africa and Asia each get as big a chunk of the classification as the Benelux Countries, Switzerland, and Gypsies.

Then there's Language and Literature (P):
P Philology. Linguistics
PA Greek and Latin languages and literatures
PB Modern languages (General). Celtic languages
PC Romance languages
PD Germanic languages (General). Scandinavian languages
PE English language
PF West Germanic languages
PG Slavic, Baltic, Albanian languages and literature
PH Uralic, Basque languages and literatures
PJ Oriental philology and literature (General). Semitic languages and literature [Oriental seems to mean Middle Eastern, FYI]
PK Indo-Iranian languages and literatures
PL Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania
PM Hyperborean, Indian, and Artificial languages [Indian in the sense of Native American]
PN Literature (General)
PQ French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures
PR English literature
PS American literature
PT Germanic literatures
PZ Fiction and Juvenile belles lettres
Again, Finnish, Hungarian and Basque together get one letter (and I agree they are a fascinating set of oddities, but) while all of East Asia, Africa, and Oceania also share a letter (that's Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Malay, Tagalog, Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, etc. Wikipedia estimates there are 2000 spoken languages in Africa alone.) Note also that European literatures get their own letters, while non-European literatures are stuck in with the languages, or in the general PN.

How you choose to classify something determines the kind of conclusions you can draw from it.

And what value you place on it.