Cultural Warrant: Old and New Sights from Knowledge Organization

Abstract

: Culture is a controversial and multi-discursive term in different disciplines. A dimension of Knowledge Organi- zation (KO) appears in the cultural warrant (CW) because KO systems, processes and products show “the values of the cultures involved” (Guimarães et al. 2019). We identified four theoretical elements necessary to understand the CW: the need of adjusting the concept of culture to the KO field; the focus placed on local dimen- sions of knowledge; the intention to promote biased classifications in favour of minority and relegated social sectors; and the ethical issue expressed in the respect for the integrity of the cultural thought of a community. The suitable techniques for the application of the CW in the processes of construction, evaluation, and revision of knowledge organization systems (KOS) are qualitative. Some methods are common to KO: content, terminological, discourse, and domain analysis techniques. We also propose a categorization of three cultural hos-pitalities. It is concluded that the concepts of culture and CW are not neutral since they favour forms of knowledge organization that replace the criteria of objectivity and neutrality, by those of cultural pertinence and respect for the values of a community. We also suggest considering the extrapolation of some methodologies from social sciences to study the linguistic behaviour of subcultures in order to improve the CW of KOS.