Bruno Latour is a
FrenchThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
sociologist of science and
anthropologistAnthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
and an influential theorist in the field of
Science and Technology StudiesScience, technology and society is the study of how social, political, and cultural values affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how these, in turn, affect society, politics and culture...
(STS). After teaching at the École des Mines de Paris (
Centre de Sociologie de l'InnovationThe Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation is a research center at the Ecole des Mines de Paris, France....
) from 1982 to 2006, he is now Professor and vice-president for research at
Sciences Po ParisThe Institut d'études politiques de Paris , simply referred to as Sciences Po , is a public research and higher education institution in Paris, France, specialised in the social sciences. It has the status of grand établissement, which allows its admissions process to be highly selective...
(2007), where he is associated with the Centre de sociologie des organisations (CSO).
He is best known for his books
We Have Never Been ModernWe Have Never Been Modern is a 1991 book by Bruno Latour, originally published in French as Nous n'avons jamais été modernes : Essai d'anthropologie symétrique ....
(1991; English translation, 1993),
Laboratory LifeLaboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts is a 1979 book by sociologists of science Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar.This influential book in the field of science studies presents an anthropological study of Roger Guillemin's scientific laboratory at the Salk Institute...
(with
Steve WoolgarStephen Woolgar is a British sociologist. He has worked closely with Bruno Latour, with whom he co-authored Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts ....
, 1979) and
Science in ActionScience in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society is an influential book by Bruno Latour. The English edition was published in 1987 by Harvard University Press. It is written in a text-book style, and contains a full featured approach to the empirical study of science and...
(1987). Although his studies of scientific practice were at one time associated with social constructionist approaches to the philosophy of science, Latour has diverged significantly from such approaches. Latour is best known for withdrawing from the subjective/objective division and re-developing the approach to work in practice. Along with
Michel CallonMichel Callon is a Professor of Sociology at the Ecole des Mines de Paris and member of the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation. He is an influential author in the field of Science and Technology Studies and one of the leading proponents of Actor-network theory with Bruno Latour.In recent years ,...
and
John LawJohn Law is a sociologist currently on the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University and key proponent of Actor-network theory. Actor-network theory, sometimes abbreviated to ANT, is a social science approach for describing and explaining social, organisational, scientific and technological...
, Latour is one of the primary developers of
actor-network theoryActor–network theory, often abbreviated as ANT, is a distinctive approach to social theory and research which originated in the field of science studies...
(ANT), a constructionist approach influenced by the
ethnomethodologyEthnomethodology is an ethnographic approach to sociological inquiry introduced by the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel . Ethnomethodology's research interest is the study of the everyday methods people use for the production of social order...
of
Harold GarfinkelHarold Garfinkel was a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is known for establishing and developing ethnomethodology as a field of inquiry in sociology.-Biography:...
, the generative
semioticsSemiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
of Greimas, and (more recently) the sociology of
DurkheimDavid Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...
's rival
Gabriel TardeJean-Gabriel De Tarde or Gabriel Tarde in short French sociologist, criminologist and social psychologist who conceived sociology as based on small psychological interactions among individuals , the fundamental forces being imitation and innovation.- Theory :Among the concepts...
.
In 2007, Latour was listed as the 10th most-cited intellectual in the humanities and social sciences by
The Times Higher Education Guide.
Overview
Latour is related to a well-known family of winemakers from Burgundy, but is not associated with the similarly named estate in
BordeauxBordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
.
As a student, Latour originally focused on
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and was deeply influenced by
Michel SerresMichel Serres is a French philosopher and author, celebrated for his unusual career.-Life and career:...
. He quickly developed an interest in
anthropologyAnthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, and undertook fieldwork in
Côte d'IvoireThe Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...
which resulted in a brief monograph on decolonization, race, and industrial relations.
After spending more than 20 years at the
Centre de sociologie de l'innovationThe Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation is a research center at the Ecole des Mines de Paris, France....
at the École des Mines in
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Latour moved in 2006 to the
Institut d'Etudes Politiques de ParisThe Institut d'études politiques de Paris , simply referred to as Sciences Po , is a public research and higher education institution in Paris, France, specialised in the social sciences. It has the status of grand établissement, which allows its admissions process to be highly selective...
, where he is the first occupant of a Chair named for Gabriel Tarde. In recent years he has also served as one of the curators of successful art exhibitions at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in
KarlsruheThe City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, including "Iconoclash" (2002) and "Making Things Public" (2005).
On 22 May 2008, Latour was awarded an honorary doctorate by the
Université de MontréalThe Université de Montréal is a public francophone research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It comprises thirteen faculties, more than sixty departments and two affiliated schools: the École Polytechnique and HEC Montréal...
on the occasion of an
organizational communicationOrganizational communication is a subfield of the larger discipline of communication studies. Organizational communication, as a field, is the consideration, analysis, and criticism of the role of communication in organizational contexts....
conference held in honor of the work of
James R. TaylorJames Renwick Taylor is Professor Emeritus at the of the Université de Montréal, which he founded in the early 1970s.Drawing from research in fields such as organizational psychology James Renwick Taylor (born in 1928) is Professor Emeritus at the of the Université de Montréal, which he founded...
, on whom Latour has had an important influence.
Laboratory Life
After his early career efforts, Latour shifted his research interests to focus on laboratory scientists. Latour rose in importance following the 1979 publication of
Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts with co-author
Steve WoolgarStephen Woolgar is a British sociologist. He has worked closely with Bruno Latour, with whom he co-authored Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts ....
. In the book, the authors undertake an
ethnographicEthnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
study of a
neuroendocrinologyNeuroendocrinology is the study of the extensive interactions between the nervous system and the endocrine system, including the biological features of the cells that participate, and how they functionally communicate...
research laboratory at the Salk Institute. This early work argued that naïve descriptions of the
scientific methodScientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
, in which theories stand or fall on the outcome of a single experiment, are inconsistent with actual laboratory practice.
In the laboratory, Latour and Woolgar observed that a typical experiment produces only inconclusive data that is attributed to failure of the apparatus or experimental method, and that a large part of scientific training involves learning how to make the subjective decision of what data to keep and what data to throw out. To an untrained outsider, Latour and Woolgar argued the entire process resembles not an unbiased search for truth and accuracy but a mechanism for ignoring data that contradicts scientific orthodoxy.
Latour and Woolgar produced a highly heterodox and controversial picture of the sciences. Drawing on the work of
Gaston BachelardGaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...
, they advance the notion that the objects of scientific study are
socially constructed within the laboratory—that they cannot be attributed with an existence outside of the instruments that measure them and the minds that interpret them. They view scientific activity as a system of beliefs, oral traditions and culturally specific practices— in short, science is reconstructed not as a procedure or as a set of principles but as a culture. Latour's 1987 book
Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society is one of the key texts of the
sociology of scientific knowledgeThe sociology of scientific knowledge ' is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing "with the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity."...
in which he famously wrote his Second Principle as follows: "Scientist and engineers speak in the name of new allies that they have shaped and enrolled; representatives among other representatives, they add these unexpected resources to tip the balance of force in their favor."
Latour's position and findings provoked vehement rebuttals. Gross and Leavitt argue that, when applied to non-scientific contexts, Latour's position becomes absurd: if a group of coworkers in a windowless room were debating whether or not it were raining outside and went outdoors to discover raindrops in the air and puddles on the soil, the rain, on Latour's hypothesis, would have been socially constructed. Similarly, philosopher
John SearleJohn Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...
argues that Latour's "extreme social constructivist" position is seriously flawed on several points, and furthermore has inadvertently "comical results."
The Pasteurization of France
After a research project examining the sociology of
primatologistsPrimatology is the scientific study of primates. It is a diverse discipline and researchers can be found in academic departments of anatomy, anthropology, biology, medicine, psychology, veterinary sciences and zoology, as well as in animal sanctuaries, biomedical research facilities, museums and zoos...
, Latour followed up the themes in
Laboratory Life with
Les Microbes: guerre et paix (published in English as
The Pasteurization of France in 1984). In it, he reviews the life and career of one of France's most famous scientists
Louis PasteurLouis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist born in Dole. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax. His experiments...
and his discovery of microbes, in the fashion of a political biography. Latour highlights the social forces at work in and around Pasteur's career and the uneven manner in which his theories were accepted. By providing more explicitly ideological explanations for the acceptance of Pasteur's work more easily in some quarters than in others, he seeks to undermine the notion that the acceptance and rejection of scientific theories is primarily, or even usually, a matter of experiment, evidence or reason. Another work,
Aramis, or, The Love of TechnologyAramis, or the Love of Technology, was written by French sociologist/anthropologist Bruno Latour. Aramis was originally published in French in 1993; the English translation by Catherine Porter, copyrighted in 1996, ISBN 9780674043237, is now in its fourth edition . Latour describes his text as...
focuses on the history of an unsuccessful mass-transit project.
Actor-Network Theory
More recently Latour has turned to more "theoretical" and programmatic works. In the late 1980s and 1990s, he was one of the key thinkers in
actor-network theoryActor–network theory, often abbreviated as ANT, is a distinctive approach to social theory and research which originated in the field of science studies...
. His more theoretical books include
Science in Action,
Pandora's Hope, and perhaps his most popular work,
We Have Never Been Modern, originally published as
Nous n’avons jamais été modernes : Essais d’anthropologie symétrique.
Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?
In a lengthy 2004 article, Latour questioned the fundamental premises on which he'd based most of his career, asking, "Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies?" He undertakes a trenchant critique of his own field of study and, more generally, of social criticism in contemporary academia. He suggests that critique, as currently practiced, is bordering on irrelevancy. To maintain any vitality, Latour argues that social critiques require a drastic reappraisal: “our critical equipment deserves as much critical scrutiny as the Pentagon budget.” (p. 231) To regain focus and credibility, Latour argues that social critiques must embrace
empiricismEmpiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
, to insist on the “cultivation of a stubbornly realist attitude -- to speak like
William JamesWilliam James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
”. (p. 233)
Latour suggests that about 90% of contemporary social criticism displays one of two approaches which he terms “the fact position and the fairy position.” (p. 237) The fact position is
anti-fetishistA fetish is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a man-made object that has power over others...
, arguing that “objects of belief” (e.g., religion, arts) are merely concepts onto which power is projected; the “fairy position” argues that individuals are dominated, often covertly and without their awareness, by external forces (e.g., economics, gender). (p. 238) “Do you see now why it feels so good to be a critical mind?” asks Latour: no matter which position you take, “You’re always right!” (p. 238-239) Social critics tend to use anti-fetishism against ideas they personally reject; to use “an unrepentant positivist” approach for fields of study they consider valuable; all the while thinking as “a perfectly healthy sturdy realist for what you really cherish.” (p. 241) These inconsistencies and double standards go largely unrecognized in social critique because “there is never any crossover between the two lists of objects in the fact position and the fairy position.” (p. 241)
The practical result of these approaches being taught to millions of students in elite universities for several decades is a widespread and influential “critical barbarity” that has—like a malign
virusA virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...
created by a "
mad scientistA mad scientist is a stock character of popular fiction, specifically science fiction. The mad scientist may be villainous or antagonistic, benign or neutral, and whether insane, eccentric, or simply bumbling, mad scientists often work with fictional technology in order to forward their schemes, if...
" -- thus far proven impossible to control. Most troubling, Latour notes that critical ideas have been appropriated by those he describes as conspiracy theorists, including global warming skeptics and the
9/11 Truth movement9/11 Truth movement is a collective name for loosely affiliated organizations and individuals who question the accepted account of the September 11, 2001, attacks....
: “Maybe I am taking conspiracy theories too seriously, but I am worried to detect, in those mad mixtures of knee-jerk disbelief, punctilious demands for proofs, and free use of powerful explanation from the social neverland, many of the weapons of social critique.” (p. 230)
We Have Never Been Modern
Latour's work,
We Have Never Been ModernWe Have Never Been Modern is a 1991 book by Bruno Latour, originally published in French as Nous n'avons jamais été modernes : Essai d'anthropologie symétrique ....
, was first published in 1991, and was translated into English by Catherine Porter in 1993. It was originally published as
Nous n’avons jamais été modernes : Essais d’anthropologie symétrique in French.
Latour encourages the reader in this anthropology of science to re-think and re-evaluate our mental landscape. He evaluates the work of scientists and contemplates on the contribution of the
scientific methodScientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
to knowledge and work, blurring the distinction across various fields and disciplines.
Latour argues that society has never really been modern and promotes anti-modernism (or non-modernism) over
postmodernismPostmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
(or
modernismModernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
). His stance is that we have never been modern and minor divisions alone separate humanity now from other collectives. Latour views post-modernism as an era that annuls the entire past in its wake, and therefore he presents the anti-modern reaction as accepting of such entities as spirit, rationality, liberty, society, God, or even the past. Post-moderns, according to Latour, view the modern world as a total and irreversible invention that completely breaks with the past. In contrast, the anti-modern approach even accepts the possibility of post-modernism where the entire past has been annulled. Still, Latour refers to pre-modernism as illegitimate as post-moderns have never been critical enough to reflect that a yesteryear or an Old Regime does not exist.
Latour attempts to prove through case studies the fallacy in the old object/subject and subject/society compacts of modernity, which can be traced back to Plato. He refuses the concept of “out there” versus “in here”. He renders the object/subject distinction as simply unusable and charts a new approach towards knowledge, work, and circulating reference. Latour considers anti-moderns to be playing on a different field, one vastly different than that of post-moderns. He refers to it as much broader and much less polemical, a creation of an unknown territory, which he playfully refers to as the Middle Kingdom.
Pandora's Hope
Pandora's Hope (1999) marks a return to the themes Latour explored in
Science in ActionScience in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society is an influential book by Bruno Latour. The English edition was published in 1987 by Harvard University Press. It is written in a text-book style, and contains a full featured approach to the empirical study of science and...
and
We Have Never Been ModernWe Have Never Been Modern is a 1991 book by Bruno Latour, originally published in French as Nous n'avons jamais été modernes : Essai d'anthropologie symétrique ....
. It uses independent but thematically linked essays and case studies to question the authority and reliability of scientific knowledge. Latour uses a narrative, anecdotal approach in a number of the essays, describing his work with pedologists in the Amazon rainforest, the development of the pasteurization process, and the research of French atomic scientists at the outbreak of the Second World War. Latour states that this specific, anecdotal approach to science studies is essential to gaining a full understanding of the discipline: "The only way to understand the reality of science studies is to follow what science studies does best, that is, paying close attention to the details of scientific practice" (24). Some authors have criticized Latour's methodology, including Katherine Pandora, a history of science professor at the University of Oklahoma. In her review of
Pandora's Hope, Katherine Pandora states:
"[Latour's] writing can be stimulating, fresh and at times genuinely moving, but it can also display a distractingly mannered style in which a rococo zeal for compounding metaphors, examples, definitions and abstractions can frustrate even readers who approach his work with the best of intentions (notwithstanding the inclusion of a nine-page glossary of terms and liberal use of diagrams in an attempt to achieve the utmost clarity)".
In addition to his epistemological concerns, Latour also explores the political dimension of science studies in
Pandora's Hope. Two of the chapters draw on Plato's
Gorgias as a means of investigating and highlighting the distinction between content and context. As Katherine Pandora states in her review:
"It is hard not to be caught up in the author's obvious delight in deploying a classic work from antiquity to bring current concerns into sharper focus, following along as he manages to leave the reader with the impression that the protagonists Socrates and Callicles are not only in dialogue with each other but with Latour as well."
Although Latour frames his discussion with a classical model, his examples of fraught political issues are all current and of continuing relevance: global warming, the spread of mad cow disease, and the carcinogenic effects of smoking are all mentioned at various points in
Pandora's Hope. In Felix Stalder's article "Beyond constructivism: towards a realistic realism", he summarizes Latour's position on the political dimension of science studies as follows: "These scientific debates have been artificially kept open in order to render impossible any political action against these problems and those who profit from them".
Reassembling the Social
In
Reassembling the Social (2005), Latour continues a reappraisal of his work, developing what he calls a “practical
metaphysicsMetaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
,” which calls “real” anything that an actor (one who we are studying) claims as a source of motivation for action. So if someone says, “I was inspired by God to be charitable to my neighbors,” we are obliged to recognize the “ontological weight” of their claim, rather than attempting to replace their belief in God’s presence with “social stuff,” like class, gender,
imperialismImperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
, etc. Latour’s nuanced metaphysics demands the existence of a plurality of worlds, and the willingness of the researcher to chart ever more. He argues that researchers must give up the hope of fitting their actors into a structure or framework, but Latour believes the benefits of this sacrifice far outweigh the downsides: “Their complex metaphysics would at least be respected, their recalcitrance recognized, their objections deployed, their multiplicity accepted.”
For Latour, to talk about
metaphysicsMetaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
or
ontologyOntology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
–what really is–means paying close empirical attention to the various, contradictory institutions and ideas that bring people together and inspire them to act. Here is Latour's description of metaphysics:
If we call metaphysics the discipline . . . that purports to define the basic structure of the world, then empirical metaphysics is what the controversies over agencies lead to since they ceaselessly populate the world with new drives and, as ceaselessly, contest the existence of others. The question then becomes how to explore the actors' own metaphysics.
A more traditional metaphysician might object, arguing that this means there are multiple, contradictory realities, since there are "controversies over agencies"–since there is a plurality of contradictory ideas that people claim as a basis for action (God, nature, the state, sexual drives, personal ambition, and so on). This objection manifests the most important difference between traditional philosophical metaphysics and Latour's nuance: for Latour, there is no "basic structure of reality" or a single, self-consistent world. An unknowably large multiplicity of realities, or "worlds" in his terms, exists–one for each actor’s sources of
agencyIn the social sciences, agency refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. By contrast, "Structure" refers to the factors of influence that determine or limit an agent and his or her decisions...
, inspirations for action. Actors bring "the real" (metaphysics) into being. The task of the researcher is not to find one "basic structure" that explains agency, but to recognize "the metaphysical innovations proposed by ordinary actors". Mapping those metaphysical innovations involves a strong dedication to
relativismRelativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration....
, Latour argues. The relativist researcher "learns the actors' language," records what they say about what they do, and does not appeal to a higher "structure" to "explain" the actor's motivations. The relativist "takes seriously what [actors] are obstinately saying" and "follows the direction indicated by their fingers when they designate what 'makes them act'". The relativist recognizes the plurality of metaphysics that actors bring into being, and attempts to map them rather than reducing them to a single structure or explanation.
Central concepts
- Actant
In narrative theory, actant is a term from the actantial model of semiotic analysis of narratives.-In Narratology:Due credit must be paid to Algirdas Julien Greimas , professor of Semiotics who is widely credited with producing in 1966 the "actantial" model...
- Blackboxing
In science studies, the social process of blackboxing is based on the abstract notion of a black box. To cite Bruno Latour, blackboxing is "the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus...
- Actor-network
Actor–network theory, often abbreviated as ANT, is a distinctive approach to social theory and research which originated in the field of science studies...
- Obligatory passage point
The concept of Obligatory passage point was developed by sociologist Michel Callon in a seminal contribution to Actor-network theory: Callon, Michel , "Elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay"...
Main works
Originally published 1979 in Los Angeles,by
Sage PublicationsSAGE is an independent academic publisher of books, journals, and electronic products in the humanities and social sciences and the scientific, technical, and medical fields. SAGE was founded in 1965 by George McCune and Sara Miller McCune. The company is headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California,...
- Science In Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society
Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society is an influential book by Bruno Latour. The English edition was published in 1987 by Harvard University Press. It is written in a text-book style, and contains a full featured approach to the empirical study of science and...
, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., USA, 1987.
- "Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts", in Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, edited by Wiebe E. Bijker & John Law, MIT Press, USA, 1992, pp. 225–258.
- We Have Never Been Modern
We Have Never Been Modern is a 1991 book by Bruno Latour, originally published in French as Nous n'avons jamais été modernes : Essai d'anthropologie symétrique ....
(tr. by Catherine Porter), Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., USA, 1993.
- Aramis, or the love of technology
Aramis, or the Love of Technology, was written by French sociologist/anthropologist Bruno Latour. Aramis was originally published in French in 1993; the English translation by Catherine Porter, copyrighted in 1996, ISBN 9780674043237, is now in its fourth edition . Latour describes his text as...
, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., USA, 1996.
- Pandora's hope: essays on the reality of science studies, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., USA, 1999.
- Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy
Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences Into Democracy is an influential book by the French theorist and philosopher of science Bruno Latour. The book is an English translation by Catherine Porter of the French book, Politiques de la nature...
(tr. by Catherine Porter), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., USA, 2004.
- with Peter Weibel
Peter Weibel is an artist, curator and theoretician.Raised in Upper Austria he started to study French and cinematography in Paris...
(eds.) Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-12279-0.
- Reassembling the social: an introduction to Actor-network theory, Oxford ; New York, Oxford: University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-925604-4
See also
- Aramis
- Aramis, or the Love of Technology
Aramis, or the Love of Technology, was written by French sociologist/anthropologist Bruno Latour. Aramis was originally published in French in 1993; the English translation by Catherine Porter, copyrighted in 1996, ISBN 9780674043237, is now in its fourth edition . Latour describes his text as...
- Technological determinism
Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that presumes that a society's technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values. The term is believed to have been coined by Thorstein Veblen , an American sociologist...
- Science wars
The science wars were a series of intellectual exchanges, between scientific realists and postmodernist critics, about the nature of scientific theory which took place principally in the US in the 1990s...
- Social construction of technology
Social construction of technology is a theory within the field of Science and Technology Studies. Advocates of SCOT -- that is, social constructivists -- argue that technology does not determine human action, but that rather, human action shapes technology...
- Graphism thesis
In sociology of science, the graphism thesis is a proposition of Bruno Latour that graphs are important in science.Research has shown that one can distinguish between hard science and soft science disciplines based on the level of graph use, so it can be argued that there is a correlation between...
- Mapping controversies
Mapping controversies is a course taught in Science studies, stemming from the writings of the French sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour. It focuses exclusively on the controversies surrounding scientific knowledge rather than the established scientific facts or outcomes...
External links