emergent ontologies: layers of multiple locals and globals

Francois Lachance, thank you for the suggestion to check out the term "local ontologies." A brief googling does suggest how useful this term is. I like one bit I found describing communication concerns in larger organizations that do not share a "global" ontology, but rather multiple local ones, noting that differing communities of practice within the organization can use the same terms with quite different meanings. This is indeed one phenomenon I am interested in, in women's studies in particular, my own local organization (my department), and more broadly, as a necessary condition of interdisciplinary practice. I wrote my first book on how the term "theory" travels among differing feminisms. (Theory in Its Feminist Travels) Or actually, how many different objects "theory" travel under this single term. This was before I read Bowker and Star (Sorting Things Out) on boundary objects, but that was the travel I was trying to describe.

One link I found quite fascinating suggests some possibilities: mapping multiple ontologies on to each other point to point, or creating "a global reference ontology." In women's studies Adrienne Rich wrote an amazing book of poetry called The Dream of a Common Language. I continually encounter feminists who appear to assume that the language they speak ought to be that "common language." Academic publishing today seems to consider that it promotes a common language for some common public to which all academic thought can be translated for a common reader, one beyond the academy. I think this is a fantasy, and my book on reenactments is one attempt to address this fantasy seriously, not rejecting it, but engaging with it. (my manuscript on Networked Reenactments: histories under globalization)

Mapping one to one could entail the kind of mutually learning practice I think is part of the interdisciplinarities I wish myself to practice with others. A global reference ontology is of course always relatively global: what works for one organization might be helpful but not actually global for another organization. This is why I like to think about "layers of locals and globals" and how they are relative and relational. I use locals and globals within many metaphors of "mapping" – from the materially geographical to the meta-languages to describe degrees and kinds of abstraction.

I heard the term "emergent ontologies" at a conference last year, where it was used to describe categories for databases generated by users manipulations of the data over some period of time, then becoming the template for new and shifting ontologies. I like this use as well, it captures the dynamics of use and flux I am also trying to think about and learn how to describe.