In this book Bruno Latour brings together these different approaches to provide a lively and challenging analysis of science, demonstrating how social context..

Latour is a world famous and widely published French sociologist who has written with great eloquence and perception about the relationship between people, science, and technology. He is also closely associated with the school of thought known as Actor Network Theory. In this book he sets out for the first time in one place his own ideas about Actor Network Theory and its relevance to management and organization theory.

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 ...

Chapter 1 FROM ORDER TO DISORDER 5 mins. John enters and goes into his office. He says something very quickly about having made a bad mistake. He had sent the review of a paper. . . . The rest of the sentence is inaudible. 5 mins.

Bruno Latour was once asked : "Do you believe in reality?" This text is an attempt to answer this question.

From the book: What is to be done with political ecology? Nothing. What is to be done? Political ecology!

The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of Nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of Nature have been continuously developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, (...) since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of Nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at Nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name "Gaia" for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on "natural religion", Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of Nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime. (shrink)

Science studies has often been against the normative dimension of epistemology, which made a naturalistic study of science impossible. But this is not to say that a new type of normativity cannot be detected at work inscience studies. This is especially true in the second wave of studies dealing with the body, which has aimed at criticizing the physicalization of the body without falling into the various traps of a phenomenology simply added to a physical substrate. This article explores the (...) work of Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret in that respect, and shows how it can be used to rethink the articulation between the various levels that make up a body. (shrink)

The author of the present paper argues that while trying to explain the institutional success of the science and its broad social impact, it is worth throwing aside the arguments concerning the universal traits of human nature, changes in the human mentality, or transformation of the culture and civilization, such as the development of capitalism or bureaucratic power. In the 16th century no new man emerged, and no mutants with overgrown brains work in modern laboratories. So one must also reject (...) the Great Divide between the cultures of the scientific and pre-scientific and replace it with multiple, uncertain and unexpected ‘not-so-great divides’, which can be described in meticulous anthropological studies. Although the achievements of science are certainly spectacular, and the gap between scientific practice and other areas of activity is so obvious, this does not mean that one must look for the “great” reasons behind this situation. One should rather focus on quite down-to-earth practices and tools used by scientists. A significant part of their activities can be described by referring to the craft of writing, reading and transforming of various types of inscriptions , and broadly understood visualization – their combining, performing, interpreting, confronting, comparing, shifting, shuffling etc. The important role of these tools and methods is especially visible in situations of scientific controversy. It is so because scientific controversies are won by the one able to muster on the spot the largest number of well aligned and faithful allies, and the technology of writing, printing and visualizing play a special role in mobilizing them. These are necessary to ensure that certain factors can be mobile – easy to move from place to place, and yet, immutable – not undergoing deformation as a result of the movement. This way, scientists are able to not only diffuse different types of factors relevant to the dispute and the process of constituting science, but also concentrate them in the centers of calculation, where, through accumulation, one can take actions not available elsewhere. (shrink)

Another monumental ZKM publication, redefining politics as a concern for things around which the fluid and expansive constituency of the public gathers; with contributions by more than 100 writers and artists.

Technology is always limited to the realm of means, while morality is supposed to deal with ends. In this theoretical article about comparing those two regimes of enunciation, it is argued that technology is on the contrary characterized by the `ends of means' that is the impossibility of being limited to tools; technical artefacts are never tools if what is meant by this is a transmission of function in a mastered way. Once this modification of the meaning of technology is (...) accepted, then it is possible to relate technology, in a totally different way, to morality which is not about values, but about the exploration of ends. (shrink)

Latour in this essay criticizes and abandons the approach to science studies—in which the object of study is presumed to be inert and passively circulating amid networks of practices, institutions, authorities, and historical events — that he took in “The ‘Pédofil’ of Boa Vista,” an article published in the spring 1995 issue of Common Knowledge. Here he argues that Whitehead’s neglected text Process and Reality offers the possibility of a radical historical realism that puts the scientific object and the scientist’s (...) laboratory on the same footing. His case study is of the Lille laboratory where, in 1858, Pasteur identified a yeast responsible for lactic fermentation. Even as Pasteur acted to cause the yeast to emerge, he felt—in a way that practicing scientists often attest—that he was “led” to do so by the propensity of things. Whitehead enables us to understand that it was not Pasteur alone who altered the representation of fermentation; the fermentation itself modified its manifestation. Hence there is historicity not only on the human side of scientific discovery—the story of Pasteur and his yeast—but also historicity on the nonhuman side—the story of the yeast and its Pasteur. (shrink)

Comment combler le fossé apparemment infranchissable séparant la science (chargée de comprendre la nature) et la politique (chargée de régler la vie sociale), séparation dont les conséquences - affaires du sang, de l'amiante, de la vache folle... - deviennent de plus en plus catastrophiques? L'écologie politique a prétendu apporter une réponse à ce défi. Mais après de fracassants débuts, elle peine à renouveler la vie publique... Dans ce livre qui fait suite à Nous n'avons jamais été modernes (La Découverte, 1991), (...) Bruno Latour propose une nouvelle façon de considérer l'écologie politique. La nature a toujours constitué l'une des deux moitiés de la vie publique, celle qui rassemble le monde commun que nous partageons tous, l'autre moitié formant ce qu'on appelle la politique, c'est-à-dire le jeu des intérêts et des passions. D'un côté ce qui nous unit, la nature, de l'autre ce qui nous divise, la politique. Et c'est pourquoi il est faux de prétendre que le souci de la nature caractériserait l'écologie politique : car à cause des controverses scientifiques qu'elle suscite, à cause de l'incertitude sur les valeurs qu'elle provoque, elle oblige à abandonner la nature comme mode d'organisation publique. La question devient donc : comment penser enfin la politique sans la nature? Pour Bruno Latour, la solution repose sur une profonde redéfinition à la fois de l'activité scientifique (à réintégrer dans le jeu normal de la société) et de l'activité politique (comprise comme l'élaboration progressive d'un monde commun). Ce sont les conditions et les contraintes de telles redéfinitions qu'il explore avec une grande rigueur dans cet ouvrage important. A la croisée de la philosophie des sciences et de la philosophie politique, ce livre s'adresse à ceux qui s'intéressent à l'écologie, aux controverses scientifiques, au rôle des experts dans les débats publics, et, plus généralement, à ceux qui estiment que la question de la démocratie doit s'étendre aux sciences elles-mêmes. (shrink)

The Prince and the Wolf contains the transcript of a debate which took place on February 5, 2008 at the London School of Economics (LSE) between the prominent French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher Bruno Latour and the Cairo-based American philosopher Graham Harman.

Political enunciation remains an enigma as long as it is considered from the standpoint of information transfer. It remains as unintelligible as religious talk. The paper explores the specificty of this regime and especially the strange link it has with the canonical definition of enunciation in linguistics and semiotics. The ‘political circle’ is reconstituted and thus also the reasons why a ‘transparent’ or ‘rational'political speech act destroys the very conditions of group formation.

Bruno Latour is best known for his work in the cultural study of science. In this pamphlet he turns his attention to another worthy pursuit: the project of peace. As one might expect, Latour gives us a radically different picture of this project than Kant or the philosophes, asserting that the West has been in a constant state of war both with other cultures and its own—although unwittingly so. Read through the lens of his trademark take on "the modern," his (...) arguments are original, thoughtful, and, as usual, provocative. (shrink)

Biology and politics have always been permeable to one another, trading metaphors back and forth. This is nowhere more blatant than when people claim to talk about ‘the planet’ as a whole. James Lovelock’s concept of Gaia has often been interpreted as a godlike figure. By reviewing in some detail a critical assessment of Lovelock’s Gaia by one scientist, Toby Tyrrell, the paper tries to map out why it is so difficult for natural as well as social scientists not to (...) confuse Gaia with some sort of Providence. (shrink)

On the face of it, there is no connection between the social theory developed by Ulrich Beck under the name of `second modernization' and the post-ethnomethodological argument developed by Bruno Latour and his colleagues under the name of actor-network theory. Yet they are both concerned with empirical evidence of a major shift in modernity. Hence the idea of elaborating an empirical test to probe the extent to which `second modernization' is a real phenomenon, or rather, as is suggested here, a (...) shift in our interpretation of what modernity has always been about. (shrink)

The development of science studies has an important message for political theory. This message has not yet been fully articulated. It seems that the science studies field is often considered as the extension of politics to science. In reality, case studies show that it is a redefinition of politics that we are witnessing in the laboratories. To the political representatives should be added the scientific representatives. Thanks to a book by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, it is possible to reconstruct (...) the origin of this divide between the two sets of representatives. A definition of modernism is offered. Then the article explains how to interpret the shift to "nonmodernism, " that is, a historical period when the two branches of politics get together again. (shrink)

The author of the present paper argues that while trying to explain the institutional success of the science and its broad social impact, it is worth throwing aside the arguments concerning the universal traits of human nature, changes in the human mentality, or transformation of the culture and civilization, such as the development of capitalism or bureaucratic power. In the 16th century no new man emerged, and no mutants with overgrown brains work in modern laboratories. So one must also reject (...) the Great Divide between the cultures of the scientific and pre-scientific and replace it with multiple, uncertain and unexpected ‘not-so-great divides’, which can be described in meticulous anthropological studies. Although the achievements of science are certainly spectacular, and the gap between scientific practice and other areas of activity is so obvious, this does not mean that one must look for the \"great\" reasons behind this situation. One should rather focus on quite down-to-earth practices and tools used by scientists. A significant part of their activities can be described by referring to the craft of writing, reading and transforming of various types of inscriptions (records), and broadly understood visualization – their combining, performing, interpreting, confronting, comparing, shifting, shuffling etc. The important role of these tools and methods is especially visible in situations of scientific controversy. It is so because scientific controversies are won by the one able to muster on the spot the largest number of well aligned and faithful allies, and the technology of writing, printing and visualizing play a special role in mobilizing them. These are necessary to ensure that certain factors can be mobile – easy to move from place to place, and yet, immutable – not undergoing deformation as a result of the movement. This way, scientists are able to not only diffuse different types of factors relevant to the dispute and the process of constituting science, but also concentrate them in the centers of calculation, where, through accumulation, one can take actions not available elsewhere. (shrink)

The introduction of the long-term history of the Earth into the preoccupations of historians has triggered a crisis because it has become impossible to keep the “planet” as one single entity outside of history properly understood. As soon as the planetary intruded into history, it became impossible to keep it as one naturalized background. By problematizing the planetary, Dipesh Chakrabarty has forced philosophers, historians and anthropologists to extend pluralism to the very ground on which history was supposed to unfold. Hence (...) Bruno Latour’s attempt at counting the number of “planets” whose attractions are simultaneously being felt today on any political question. Each of his eight planets are defined by the disconnect between where they are situated and where they are imagined to be moving, which means that each planet is led by a different and incommensurable philosophy of history. Such a “fictional planetology” is then discussed by Chakrabarty, who reviews the difficulties historians have had in taking the nonhuman as a historical agent and then adds to Latour’s count a new planetary body which further complicates the geopolitical situation. The result of their joint effort is to shift questions of philosophy of history to philosophy of geography. (shrink)

Technology is epistemology’s poor relative. It still carries the baggage of a definition of matter handed down to it by another odd definition of scientific activity. The consequence is that many descriptions of “things” have nothing “thingly” about them. They are simply “objects” mistaken for things. Hence the necessity of a new descriptive style that circumvents the limits of the materialist definition of material existence. This is what has been achieved in the group of essays on “Thick Things” for which (...) this note serves as an afterword. (shrink)

Including empirical examples and theoretical clarifications on many of the analytical issues raised in his recently published Down to Earth, this conversation with Bruno Latour and his collaborator, Danish sociologist Nikolaj Schultz, offers key insights into Latour’s recent and ongoing work. Revolving around questions on political ecology and social theory in our ‘New Climatic Regime’, Latour argues that in order to have politics you need a land and you need a people. This interview present reflections on such politics, such land (...) and such people, and it ends with a call for a sociology that takes up the task of connecting the three by investigating what he and Schultz call ‘geo-social classes’. The interview was conducted by Jakob Stein in Paris in November 2018. (shrink)