Reassembling The Social

Author : Bruno Latour
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2007-09-06
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780191622892

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Reassembling the Social by Bruno Latour Pdf

Reassembling the Social is a fundamental challenge from one of the world's leading social theorists to how we understand society and the 'social'. Bruno Latour's contention is that the word 'social', as used by Social Scientists, has become laden with assumptions to the point where it has become misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon, it is used to indicate a stablilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon. But Latour also finds the word used as if it described a type of material, in a comparable way to an adjective such as 'wooden' or 'steely'. Rather than simply indicating what is already assembled together, it is now used in a way that makes assumptions about the nature of what is assembled. It has become a word that designates two distinct things: a process of assembling; and a type of material, distinct from others. Latour shows why 'the social' cannot be thought of as a kind of material or domain, and disputes attempts to provide a 'social explanations' of other states of affairs. While these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the past, the very success of the social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the original meaning of 'the social' to redefine the notion, and allow it to trace connections again. It will then be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences, but using more refined tools. Drawing on his extensive work examining the 'assemblages' of nature, Latour finds it necessary to scrutinize thoroughly the exact content of what is assembled under the umbrella of Society. This approach, a 'sociology of associations', has become known as Actor-Network-Theory, and this book is an essential introduction both for those seeking to understand Actor-Network Theory, or the ideas of one of its most influential proponents.

Author : Bruno Latour
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 519 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2013-08-19
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780674728554

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An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence by Bruno Latour Pdf

In a new approach to philosophical anthropology, Bruno Latour offers answers to questions raised in We Have Never Been Modern: If not modern, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? An Inquiry into Modes of Existence offers a new basis for diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time of ecological crisis.

Author : Peter-Paul Verbeek
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2010-11-01
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 0271046562

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What Things Do by Peter-Paul Verbeek Pdf

How are all these things affecting us? How can their role in our lives be understood? What Things Do answers these questions by focusing on how technologies mediate our actions and our perceptions of the world.

Author : Bruno Latour
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2012-10-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780674076754

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We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour Pdf

With the rise of science, we moderns believe, the world changed irrevocably, separating us forever from our primitive, premodern ancestors. But if we were to let go of this fond conviction, Bruno Latour asks, what would the world look like? His book, an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith. What does it mean to be modern? What difference does the scientific method make? The difference, Latour explains, is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, between human and thing, distinctions that our benighted ancestors, in their world of alchemy, astrology, and phrenology, never made. But alongside this purifying practice that defines modernity, there exists another seemingly contrary one: the construction of systems that mix politics, science, technology, and nature. The ozone debate is such a hybrid, in Latour’s analysis, as are global warming, deforestation, even the idea of black holes. As these hybrids proliferate, the prospect of keeping nature and culture in their separate mental chambers becomes overwhelming—and rather than try, Latour suggests, we should rethink our distinctions, rethink the definition and constitution of modernity itself. His book offers a new explanation of science that finally recognizes the connections between nature and culture—and so, between our culture and others, past and present. Nothing short of a reworking of our mental landscape, We Have Never Been Modern blurs the boundaries among science, the humanities, and the social sciences to enhance understanding on all sides. A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and replacing the rest with a broader, fairer, and finer sense of possibility.

Author : Bruno Latour
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : History
ISBN : 0674792912

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Science in Action by Bruno Latour Pdf

From weaker to stronger rhetoric : literature - Laboratories - From weak points to strongholds : machines - Insiders out - From short to longer networks : tribunals of reason - Centres of calculation.

Author : Bruno Latour,Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation Bruno LaTour
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2005-07-28
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780199256044

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Reassembling the Social by Bruno Latour,Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation Bruno LaTour Pdf

French sociologist Bruno Latour has previously written about the relationship between people, science and technology. In this book he sets out his own ideas about 'actor network theory' and its relevance to management and organisation theory.

Author : Björn Sonnenberg-Schrank
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 255 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2020-01-29
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9783030312879

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Actor-Network Theory at the Movies by Björn Sonnenberg-Schrank Pdf

This book is one of the first to apply the theoretical tools proposed by French philosopher Bruno Latour to film studies. Through the example of the Hollywood Teen Film and with a particular focus on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the book delineates how Teen Film has established itself as one of Hollywood’s most consistent and dynamic genres. While many productions may recycle formulaic patterns, there is also a proliferation of cinematic coming-of-age narratives that are aesthetically and politically progressive, experimental, and complex. The case studies develop a Latourian film semiotics as a flexible analytical approach which raises new questions, not only about the history, types and tropes of teen films, but also about their aesthetics, mediality, and composition. Through an exploration of a wide and diverse range of examples from the past decade, including films by female and African-American directors, urban and rural perspectives, and non-heteronormative sexualities, Actor-Network Theory at the Movies demonstrates how the classic Teen Film canon has been regurgitated, expanded, and renewed.

Author : Martin Paul Eve,Jonathan Gray
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 473 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2020-10-20
Category : Education
ISBN : 9780262362863

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Reassembling Scholarly Communications by Martin Paul Eve,Jonathan Gray Pdf

A range of perspectives on the complex political, philosophical, and pragmatic implications of opening research and scholarship through digital technologies. The Open Access Movement proposes to remove price and permission barriers for accessing peer-reviewed research work--to use the power of the internet to duplicate material at an infinitesimal cost-per-copy. In this volume, contributors show that open access does not exist in a technological vacuum; there are complex political, philosophical, and pragmatic implications for opening research through digital technologies. The contributors examine open access across spans of colonial legacies, knowledge frameworks, publics and politics, archives and digital preservation, infrastructures and platforms, and global communities.

Author : Bruno Latour,Steve Woolgar
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2013-04-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781400820412

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Laboratory Life by Bruno Latour,Steve Woolgar Pdf

This highly original work presents laboratory science in a deliberately skeptical way: as an anthropological approach to the culture of the scientist. Drawing on recent work in literary criticism, the authors study how the social world of the laboratory produces papers and other "texts,"' and how the scientific vision of reality becomes that set of statements considered, for the time being, too expensive to change. The book is based on field work done by Bruno Latour in Roger Guillemin's laboratory at the Salk Institute and provides an important link between the sociology of modern sciences and laboratory studies in the history of science.

Author : Graham Harman
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 215 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Electronic books
ISBN : 1783711981

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Bruno Latour by Graham Harman Pdf

Author : Bruno Latour
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2009-07-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780674039964

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Politics of Nature by Bruno Latour Pdf

A major work by one of the more innovative thinkers of our time, Politics of Nature does nothing less than establish the conceptual context for political ecology—transplanting the terms of ecology into more fertile philosophical soil than its proponents have thus far envisioned. Bruno Latour announces his project dramatically: “Political ecology has nothing whatsoever to do with nature, this jumble of Greek philosophy, French Cartesianism and American parks.” Nature, he asserts, far from being an obvious domain of reality, is a way of assembling political order without due process. Thus, his book proposes an end to the old dichotomy between nature and society—and the constitution, in its place, of a collective, a community incorporating humans and nonhumans and building on the experiences of the sciences as they are actually practiced. In a critique of the distinction between fact and value, Latour suggests a redescription of the type of political philosophy implicated in such a “commonsense” division—which here reveals itself as distinctly uncommonsensical and in fact fatal to democracy and to a healthy development of the sciences. Moving beyond the modernist institutions of “mononaturalism” and “multiculturalism,” Latour develops the idea of “multinaturalism,” a complex collectivity determined not by outside experts claiming absolute reason but by “diplomats” who are flexible and open to experimentation.

Author : Graham Harman
Publisher : re.press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics by Graham Harman Pdf

Prince of Networks is the first treatment of Bruno Latour specifically as a philosopher. It has been eagerly awaited by readers of both Latour and Harman since their public discussion at the London School of Economics in February 2008. Part One covers four key works that display Latour’s underrated contributions to metaphysics: Irreductions, Science in Action, We Have Never Been Modern, and Pandora’s Hope. Harman contends that Latour is one of the central figures of contemporary philosophy, with a highly original ontology centered in four key concepts: actants, irreduction, translation, and alliance. In Part Two, Harman summarizes Latour’s most important philosophical insights, ...

Author : Bruno Latour
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 1996-04-01
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9780674265318

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Aramis, or The Love of Technology by Bruno Latour Pdf

Bruno Latour has written a unique and wonderful tale of a technological dream gone wrong. The story of the birth and death of Aramis—the guided-transportation system intended for Paris—is told in this thought-provoking and fictional account by several different parties: an engineer and his professor; company executives and elected officials; a sociologist; and finally Aramis itself, who delivers a passionate plea on behalf of technological innovations that risk being abandoned by their makers. As the young engineer and professor follow Aramis’s trail—conducting interviews, analyzing documents, assessing the evidence—perspectives keep shifting: the truth is revealed as multilayered, unascertainable, comprising an array of possibilities worthy of Rashomon. This charming and profound book, part novel and part sociological study, is Latour at his thought-provoking best.

Author : John R. Wagner
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2013-08-30
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780857459671

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The Social Life of Water by John R. Wagner Pdf

Everywhere in the world communities and nations organize themselves in relation to water. We divert water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers to our homes, workplaces, irrigation canals, and hydro-generating stations. We use it for bathing, swimming, recreation, and it functions as a symbol of purity in ritual performances. In order to facilitate and manage our relationship with water, we develop institutions, technologies, and cultural practices entirely devoted to its appropriation and distribution, and through these institutions we construct relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality. Relying on first-hand ethnographic research, the contributors to this volume examine the social life of water in diverse settings and explore the impacts of commodification, urbanization, and technology on the availability and quality of water supplies. Each case study speaks to a local set of issues, but the overall perspective is global, with representation from all continents.

Author : Bruno Latour
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2023
Category : Organizational behavior
ISBN : 1383039658

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Reassembling the Social by Bruno Latour Pdf

French sociologist Bruno Latour has previously written about the relationship between people, science and technology. In this book he sets out his own ideas about 'actor-network-theory' and its relevance to management and organisation theory.