Power of Position: Classification and the Biodiversity Sciences

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 bound...