Operationalizing Cultural Warrant in Knowledge Organization

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2021Data representation of diverse cultures, perspectives, and identities has stepped to the fore in society, especially with the academy’s increasing attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The failure to provide descriptions that are inclusive to diverse cultures and perspectives can hinder information access and raise ethical concerns. Information scientists and information professionals have identified problematic data representations and have advocated for changes to include diverse cultures, perspectives, and identities. Scholars have recognized various ways culture can manifest in knowledge organization (KO), such as through classifications, categories, and subjects. Previous studies use the concept of warrant, the justifications for classificatory decisions, to discuss the rationales for developing and applying KO standards. Cultural warrant is one of these warrants, and it is an approach to consciously account for culture in classification. In this dissertation, I expand the application of warrants from classificatory decisions to knowledge organization decisions writ large, including cataloging and data description. While culture is recognized as one of the forces that shape data work and KO, little work has thoroughly examined the observable manifestations of the concept of culture in KO. As a result, information scientists and information professionals are constantly reacting to issues caused by the lack of culturally inclusive data organization and description. To date we are yet to prevent the influx of bias and misnaming into information systems. The goal of this dissertation is to fill this gap by operationalizing cultural warrant in KO. Through analyzing editorial documents of KO standards developed at different times, in languages, and regions, and through prolonged ethnographic fieldwork, observing cataloging practices, I present an in-depth analysis of culture in KO. The dissertation provides concrete examples from literature, standards, and practices about how culture is woven into multiple aspects of data representations and KO, such as the development, application, and evaluation of KO standards and data practices. To operationalize cultural warrant, I propose three research questions. RQ1: How is culture identified in the knowledge organization literature? RQ2: How is culture manifested in knowledge organization standards? RQ3: How is culture manifested in cataloging practices? Through answering these research questions, the dissertation identifies prominent manifestations of culture that are common across standards and practices in KO, including conflicts and prioritizations of warrants, levels of standards and standardization, forms of resistance, and resources being cultural. These manifestations of cultural warrant reflect the perspectives of scholars, KO standard developers, and information professionals. Ultimately, this dissertation presents a literature-informed discussion highlighting specific dimensions of culture that are relevant to cultural warrant, an inventory of sources of cultural influences in KO, a list of manifestations of cultural warrant, and an explanation of how they play out. These deliverables provide scholars precise terms to identify, examine, and discuss cultural influences and cultural warrant in KO. Furthermore, by advancing our understanding of cultural warrant in KO, we gain insight into how and where to change our practices and standards in order to improve cultural inclusivity and create ethical data representations and KO systems