Knowledge Organization for Feminism and Feminist Research:A Discourse Oriented Study of Systematic Outlines, Logical Structure, Semantics and the Process of Indexing

摘要

The focus in this article is an analysis of the knowledge organization systems that index and classify feminist research texts in a Swedish bibliographic context. The theoretical and analytical framework is primarily discourse theoretic. At first, a feminist discourse is defined, of which feminist research is seen as a part. Feminist perspectives are analyzed through text analysis of PhD dissertations as feminist articulations. I also analyze the possibilities to classify and index feminist research with the national universal knowledge organization systems (KOS): Svenska Amnesord (SA) and Klassifikationssystem for sven-ska bibliotek (KSB), and one subject specific system: Kvinnohistoriska samlingarnas amnesord (KvA). The systems are analyzed as articulations. The KOS are studied in order to discuss how they are able to articulate feminist perspectives. In the national universal systems, a severe marginahzation of feminist research is noticed. Feminist discourse consisting of feminist theoretical and metatheoretical perspectives are not considered at all in the KOS, which could not be considered as feminist articulations. The marginalization is interpreted as an objectivistic and universalistic epistemology and ontology; monodisciplinary knowledge and thematic topics are privileged. Feminism is misunderstood as a field relating to socio-political women's issues, which has marginalized status in the systems. In the subject-specific system Kvinnohistoriska samlingarnas amnesord incomplete and inadequate knowledge organization is shown. The structure of this index is too simplistic and feminist discourse as such is not defined. Successful organization of feminist knowledge needs to be based on a particular understanding of knowledge and knowledge organization as contextually shaped (and shaping).