book: women, fire, and dangerous things

Lakoff, George. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

I want to pull this book into the mix because classification and categorization is exactly what librarians do. How do these categories impact our understanding of knowledge and truth? Lakoff’s book is long and detailed, and he rails against objectivist perpectives. Yet, it’s facinating and useful for library and information thinkers to have this worldview as another tool in their kit. Early on in my MLIS program, I wrote a paper on postmodern criticisms of classification, so I probably won’t take that angle for this paper, but this would be a useful book if I come around to the topic again.