34 Tweaking the social sciences (Dewey 300s)

As I mentioned earlier, I am having problems with the social sciences. My first gripe is the way the Dewey schedules interpolate Environment and natural resources, 333.7, in the middle of the Economics line-up. I feel Economics is a specific discipline with a definite approach to matters of its own, and somehow natural resources conservation and environmentalism – forests, wilderness and recreational areas, parks, wetlands, biodiversity, and so on – doesn’t seem (to me) to fit in seamlessly. Especially since economics proper picks up again after 333: after all the green stuff, after the birds and the bees, it’s back again to proper this-worldly subjects 334 Cooperatives, 335 Socialism and related systems (under which they’ve put Fascism as well!), 336 Public finance, 337 International economics, 338 Production, 339 Macroeconomics.

I have a particular problem in my collection, which is that my economics items (up to 339) are all mostly books, which will fit into smaller shelves and make a pretty display, whereas my 333 collection is full of dusty A4-size reports and photocopies picked up here and there (mostly bound compilations of conference papers, for instance). What I have done is to bring out the economics books to the front hall, all lined up in wooden shelves, but left the 333 items in the back room in the old angle-iron racks with the inter-shelf heights adjusted to suit the larger sizes. The back room collection then picks up at 340 Law (old dusty manuals!), 350 Public administration (ditto!), and carries on as usual.

So far so good, but here’s my peeve. A number of topics to do with the environment and socio-economic problems get relegated to the 360s, such as 363.7 Environmental problems, or 362.5 Problems of poor people, under which are measures to prevent poverty, etc. This scatters books on similar subjects too far apart… some under the 330s, some under the 360s, and so on, depending on the accent – whether it is on economics, or on social welfare, and so on.  

I used to be a bit of a fanatic about zeroing in on the most precise number, but after seeing the way the items are dispersed around, I am bringing them back together by choosing the nearest approximation under one preferred number. For example, I had put some items under 362.57 Measures to prevent, protect against, limit effects of poverty, but am now of a mind to bringing these back to, say, 339.46 Poverty (under 339 Macroeconomics, of all things!) Dewey advices us to “Class comprehensive works on poverty in 362.5”, but I am not happy with such a wide scatter of my collection. When we think of poverty, we usually think of economics and development, i.e. 339.8 Economic development and growth. I realize that many works actually talk about the micro-level interventions to mitigate the effects of poverty, and not the macro, but the convenience of having all poverty-related books in one place outweighs the technical nicety. Similarly, books on famine are being relocated from 363.8 Food supply (“Class here famine, hunger”), to 338.19 Food supply (which has a “class here” note for “maladjustments in food supply”, “food requirements” or “demand”, etc.).  On a similar note, rather than sending works on population to 363.9 Population problems, I would prefer to bring them back to the main number 304.6 Population (there doesn’t seem to be a number for Economics of population).

There is another promising entry under 338.9 Economic development and growth, that is 338.927 Appropriate technology. This has a note “Class here alternative technology, environmental economics (!!), sustainable development”. I feel now that this is a suitable place to put most of the books on multi-disciplinary aspects of tackling the problems of underdevelopment and development, some of which may have been sent to 333.7 Environment or to 362.57 Measures to prevent (etc.) effects of poverty. In fact, with “environmental economics” and “sustainable development” having been hitched to this wagon (338.927), I would put all works on the environmental costs of development also here: a title like When a Billion Chinese Jump, for instance. Incidentally, Dewey doesn’t want you to suffix place numbers to 338.927 (and other subdivisions under 338.92 Specific topics), but to use 338.93 -99 (development and growth in different locations) suffixed with 027 etc. (standard subdivisions have to be attached via -00-, as per the footnote). In other words, it doesn’t want sequences like 338.927’051 Sustainable development-China, but prefers 338.951’027 Development-China-sustainable development.

Other special topics under 338.92 are 338.922 Subsidies and grants, 338.924 Nationalization, 338.925 Privatization, 338.926 Information policy, and of course 338.927 Appropriate technology. The same caveat applies of not adding -093-099 geographical locations after these suffixes, but using the alternative 338.93-338.99 Economic development and growth in specific localities, followed by suffixes -022-027 for the Special topics.

I am in the process of liquidating my previous assignments to 363.7 Environmental problems, and bringing them back to earlier numbers like  333.7 for general works, or this newly discovered 338.927 where the accent is on development. Even climate change and global warming, which has a specific number 363.73874, are being brought back to 333.7 for general works, 333.92 Air for air pollution, and 551.5 Climatology and weather (or more narrowly 551.525 Temperatures) for more technical-scientific works. You could even suffix the scientific aspects of climate change by using the ‘015 subdivision, to any topic in the schedule, thus keeping climate change effects with the thing acted upon, be it biodiversity 333.95 or forest lands 333.75 and so on.

In summary, then, I really wish Dewey would refrain from breaking up topics over too wide a range of locations, so that one is not all the time confused over the likely location of the required items!