Knowledge organization needs to broaden up by incorporating into its theory the social activities based on document production and use. This very document production and use is constituted by genre-based activities. Genres communicate and organize certain stabilized forms of social organization and knowledge organization can be conceptualized as the typified response to this. The social activity of organizing knowledge in information systems is subordinated and a part of a broader social organization. However, this significance of social organization seems to have been excluded in the LIS-conception of knowledge organization. From various perspectives this session seeks to examine the connection between the LIS-conception of knowledge organization and social organization. A field that is well aware of how documents shape social organization is writing and composition studies. Here, writing is seen as a way of interacting and connecting with certain social practices, or activity systems, by the use of genres. This session will explore the connection between composition studies and knowledge organization as it seems productive for both knowledge organization theory and theories of genre and activity systems to incorporate each other since they both focus on the interaction between documents and people involved in socio-communicative activities.
