Folk taxonomies are generated from social knowledge and are used in everyday speech. They are distinguished from scientific taxonomies that claim to be disembedded from social relations and thus objective and universal." (Wikipedia, 2006).
Folk taxonomy / folk classification
Taxonomies and classifications may be based on scientific or scholarly methods and principles or they may be based on social and cultural transmission. Some professionals study how different cultures classify things (indigenous knowledge). Such an activity may be related to user studies in knowledge organization.
"A Folk taxonomy is a vernacular naming system, and can be contrasted with scientific taxonomy.
Folk taxonomies are generated from social knowledge and are used in everyday speech. They are distinguished from scientific taxonomies that claim to be disembedded from social relations and thus objective and universal." (Wikipedia, 2006).
Berlin, Breedlove & Raven (1966) examined a sample of 200 native plant names from the Tzeltal-speaking municipio of Tenejapa, Chiapas, Mexico. They found that the names consist of 41 percent that comprised more than one botanical species, 34 percent with a one-to-one correspondence, and 25 percent that referred to only a part of a botanical species. Cultural significance was least for the plants in the first group, greatest for those in the last group. Over half (60 percent) of the names for which there was one-to-one correspondence were plants associated with Hispanic culture, introduced as named entities following the Spanish conquest.
The view that user studies/folk taxonomies should found the basis for developing knowledge organization systems (KOS) has been criticized within Library and Information Science (LIS) by, for example, Frohmann (1990).
Sociology and communication aspects of IPM. 1. Understanding farmers. Ethnoscience. 1.1 Folk taxonomy.
http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/IPM/soccomm/Folk%5fTaxonomy.htm
Literature:
Bellon, M. & Taylor, E. (1993). Folk soil taxonomy and the partial adoption of new seed varieties. Economic Development and Cultural Change 41(4), 763-785.
Berlin, B. (1973). Folk systematics in relation to biological classification and nomenclature. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4: 259-271. (The author has revised some of his ideas since the publication of Berlin et al., 1966).
Berlin, B (1992) Ethnobiological classification - principles of categorization of plants and animals in traditional societies. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Berlin, B., Breedlove, D. E. & Raven, P. H. (1966). Folk taxonomies and biological classification. Science, 154(3746), 273-275.
Frohmann, B. (1990). Rules of Indexing: A Critique of Mentalism in Information Retrieval Theory. Journal of Documentation, 46(2), 81-101.
Marks, J. (2006). ANTH 2141: Principles of Biological Anthropology. A Folk Classification of Animals. http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/2141/Folk_Classification.pdf
Sandor, J. A. & Furbee, L. (1996). Indigenous knowledge and classification of soils in the Andes of southern Peru. Soil Science Society of America Journal, 60, 1503-1512.
Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. (2006). Folk taxonomy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_taxonomy
See also: Indigenous knowledge (Core Concepts in LIS); Naïve cognition (Epistemological lifeboat);
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 09-08-2006