Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies) [Hardcover]

Bruno Latour (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0199256047 | ISBN-13: 978-0199256044

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 a misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon, it is used to indicate a stabilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon. 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 explanation' 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

`Latour's book can also serve, not so much as a model to copy, but certainly as a source of inspiration for how to write a social science text: vividly, engagingly, eloquently.' Organization Studies

About the Author

Bruno Latour is a Professor at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation, Ecole Nationale Sup�rieure des Mines de Paris. Having been trained as a philosopher, then an anthropologist, Bruno Latour specialized in the analysis of scientists and engineers at work, and published works on philosophy, history, sociology, and the anthropology of science. He is the author of Laboratory Life (Princeton University Press), We Have Never Been Modern (Harvard University Press), and Pandora's Hope: Essays in the Reality of Science Studies (Harvard University Press).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199256047
• ISBN-13: 978-0199256044
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,215,125 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Clearest ANT, February 18, 2006

By 

young blaze (nomadic) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies) (Hardcover)

Perhaps it has a lot to do with the book being written in English (or at least it appears to have been, there is no translator listed), but this is by far the most lucid thing I've read by Latour. In a way it's a radical break, he finally embraces his troubled intellectual child Actor Network Theory, stops expecting its meaning to magically emerge from the context and sets forth exploring what it actually is and how it can work.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Latour de force, December 13, 2007

By 

Reader (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies) (Paperback)

This book is a "paradoxical" endeavour on a number of counts, and I'm drawing here on the Greek etymology of the word meaning `beyond received opinion.' While on the surface it purports to be an introduction to a particular research methodology--presumably for the benefit of social science PhD students--appealing to common sense, at the same time it is also a philosophical tour de force, engaging with metaphysical and ontological issues of the highest order.

It is quite possible to read it in a few days, as it is written in a colourful style peppered with amusing metaphors and examples, but it is more likely that a number of reads are required to fully experience what this book has to offer (unless you are an ANT enthusiast already). In the end it is a thought experiment and it will either work for you or it won't. You will either come away hating actor-network-theory for the rest of your life or you will have a conversion experience and you will never be able to look at baboons and the map of the London Underground quite the same way again.

In many ways this book reminds me of Heidegger's Being and Time, but the differences might be more important than the similarities. For one Latour completes the book as promised in the introduction, in contrast to Heidegger. But also Latour is a lot more specific and optimistic about the outcomes of his `deconstruction' of traditional sociology, as opposed to Heidegger's pessimistic and rather vague conclusions stemming from his destruction of traditional metaphysics.

In this sense Latour's Reassembling the Social is not so much an introduction to a theory as a guide or handbook to practical living. However the practical or empirical metaphysics he proposes for (re)assembling a better world is far from being a quick-fix solution: it asks for a tireless, on-going effort to collect and rearrange the world, morsel by morsel, just like an ant.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars another model for a non-Durkheimeian sociology, August 22, 2008

By 

ingonyama "ingonyama" (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies) (Paperback)

This is a book which deserves a wide reading in the social sciences for its brazen and determined effort to deeply problematize the notion of the "social."

At the same time, as I read the first few chapters, I had a sense of deja vu. The program Latour is putting forth--at least initially-- appears not so different from that of Fredrik Barth -- not Barth's early transactionalist stuff, but his later work on the anthropology of knowledge. Specifically,

Barth, F.
1992 Towards greater naturalism in conceptualizing societies. In Conceptualizing Society. Kuper, A., eds. Pp. 17--33. : Routledge.

and

Barth, F.
1993 Balinese worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

put forth a very similar approach to the "social." Barth himself is a great admirer of Latour (see his praise for Laboratory Life and Science in Action in his 2002 piece in Current Anthropology) but Latour--at least here--doesn't seem to be reading Barth....

Latour is also taking great pains to distance himself from Bourdieu's reflexive sociology, and from critics who would label ANT as postmodernist. Highly recommended if you're interested in this sort of thing.