“Some people dismiss taxonomies and their revisions as mere exercises in abstract ordering–-a kind of glorified stamp collecting of no scientific merit and fit only for small minds who need to categorize their results. No view could be more false and more inappropriately arrogant. Taxonomies are reflections of human thought; they express our most fundamental concepts about the objects of our universe. Each taxonomy is a theory about the creatures that it classifies.”
—Stephen Jay Gould. “Foreword.” In: Lynn Margulis, Karlene V. Schwartz.Five kingdoms: an illustrated guide to the phyla of life on earth.3rd ed. New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1998: xii.
“Vocabularies are never neutral. Things that are included in a vocabulary gain a familiar reality; things that are left out are ignored or even have their existence denied. Moreover, a vocabulary implies a story of how the world works and why. Such stories always serve the interests of established institutions or classes. In sciences, politics, or art, a new way of talking about the world threatens to displace established ideas and the group that espouse them, so it encounters vigorous opposition.
Today, the struggle over the basic terms of public discourse take place in the media and in the work of scientists, educators, philosophers, moralists, preachers, economists and politicians. Both leaders and ordinary citizens exposed to new ideas slowly accept or reject them. Thus our thinking continually changes to meet changing social needs—sometimes in ways that prevent crisis, sometimes not.”
—Ernest Callenbach. “The power of words.” In: Ecology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008: 163
Even though our strict usage of Library of Congress Authority Subject Headings (LCASH) to describe the contents of the articles indexed, in rare instances ccindex finds itself creating new Subject Headings, trying to describe areas of knowledge that are not represented in them.
The reasons for these absences from LCASH’s list vary. As periodicals have an immediacy that books have not, some knowledge or information is just too recent or too specific as to grant the creation of an LCASH. It is a slow process to enter a catalog. Speculative materialism, Temporary Autonomous Zone, Web crawlers or Neoconcretism would be examples of ccindex-created Subject Headings to address these immediacy lacunae; another reason for our decision is that LCASH could be perceived as ideologically charged, and even though we produce supposedly neutral data or information, in sparse instances we feel the need to create Subject Headings that allow nuances of meaning to enter, or simply to state that a social, cultural or political condition exists. For example, Third Cinema, Theater of the Oppressed or Creolization do not have a LCASH. Based on the materials indexed in the database, and on our empirical encounters in the world, we know they exist, therefore our creation of specific Subject Headings.
The last reason for this cataloging idiosyncrasy is due to software limitations. As ccindex’s software is not based on Machine-Readable Cataloging standards (MARC), we do not have the possibility of creating See or See also references. Therefore, in rare instances we have opted to use vernacular forms rather than the ones offered by LCASH, as these might be difficult for the database users to find. Another example, Salvatrucha (gang) and Stasi are verancular terms more likely to be used than the LCASH suggested M18 or Germany (East). Ministerium für Staatssicherheit.
We would venture that Subject Headings created by ccindex represent only 0,00023% of the ones used in the database. Nonetheless, a list of Subject Headings created by contemporary culture index, as well as See or See also references can be found below:
- Acid house music
- Affect (psychology) in motion pictures
- African diasporic people in art
- Air-supported structures in art
- Airlines offices - design
- Amateur photography
- Amazon (firm) - reviews
- Anime
- Animals as actors
- Animals in theater
- Anti-advertising movement
- Antropofagia
- Archives in art
- Archives in motion pictures
- Art websites
- Art education - curricula
- Art and technology - social aspects
- Art exhibition curators
- Art fairs
- Artificial satellites in art
- Artists and television
- Artists’ as museum curators
- Artists’ publications
- Atrocities in art
- Auditory perception - history
- Beauty in motion pictures
- Border - photographs
- Biopolitics in art
- Black Anti-Defamation Association (organization)
- Branding (marketing) in art
- Cabinets of curiosities
- Capital Realism (art)
- Childbirth in motion pictures
- Choreography - instructions
- Class consciousness in art
- Colonies - study and teaching
- Colonization - study and teaching
- Collectors and collecting in art
- Complexity (philosophy) in music
- Computer animation in art
- Computer programming - political aspects
- Creolization
- Cultural studies
- Cyberspace in art
- Decolonization in motion pictures
- Design - citizen participation
- Divas
- Domestic violence in mass media
- Dub poetry
- DVD art
- Electronic surveillance in art
- Enthusiasm - political aspects
- Eroticism
- Essay films
- Expanded cinema
- Experience in art
- Factography
- Film collectives
- Found footage
- Gangs in motion pictures
- Gang members - United States - motion pictures
- Ghosts - philosophy
- Gift - philosophy
- Global Positioning System - social aspects
- Harvard University - presidents - political activity
- Heimat
- Historiography and motion pictures
- Hospitality in motion pictures
- Housewives in motion pictures
- Hybridity (social sciences) in music
- Hunger - symbolic aspects
- Image, Projected
- Improvised music - festivals
- Inflatable architecture
- Information - political aspects
- Interviewing in motion pictures
- Islands - philosophy
- Islands in art
- Literature - network analysis
- Magic in motion pictures
- Mara Salvatrucha (gang)
- Maquiladoras
- Maoism
- Measurement in art
- Melancholy in motion pictures
- Menstruation in art
- Möbius strip
- Models and modelmaking in art
- Multiculturalism in music
- Multiculturalism in theater
- Music - graphic scores
- Musicians’ associations
- Nationalism and historiography
- Narrativity - motion pictures
- Narrativity - television
- Neobaroque literature
- News cinematographers
- Neoconcretism
- Objectivity in art
- Objects in literature
- Obsolescence
- Office decoration - social aspects
- Oil spills - pictorial works
- Op art
- Operation Northwoods
- Paper industry - political aspects
- Parapsychology in art
- Patience - political aspects
- Pavilions, Austrian
- Pavilions, Belgian
- Performance - social aspects
- Physical anthropology - political aspects - Japan
- Poetry - political aspects - Palestine
- Polemics in architecture
- Pornographic films
- Postcards in art
- Posthumanism (philosophy)
- Precarious employment in literature
- Prisoners of war - abuse of - drama
- Programming languages (electronic computers) - law and legislation
- Protest movements - philosophy
- Pyramids - symbolism
- Reality television programs - influence
- Red Guards
- Reference (philosophy) in photography
- Remote-sensing images in art
- Repetition in architecture
- Repetion in art
- Repetition in television
- Sanctuary cities
- Single mothers in motion pictures
- Smoke in art
- Snapshots
- Speculative materialism
- Stasi
- Steam in art
- Subaltern classes
- Surgery, Plastic - in art
- Surveillance in architecture
- Surveillance in art
- Tales - Tibet
- Teenagers - photographs
- Temporary Autonomous Zone
- Theater of the Oppressed
- Third Cinema
- Thought and thinking in art
- Tourists - photographs
- Transnationalism - religious aspects
- Unemployed in motion pictures
- Universalism (philosophy)
- Utopias in mass media
- Video artists
- Video stores
- Voyeurism in motion pictures
- Web crawlers
- Windows - symbolic aspects
- Women and space (architecture)
- Women ethnomusicologists
- Weird, The
