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

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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.

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.

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.

A very good tutorial given by Latour. Not difficult to follow even for readers with no background in sociology.

Simply the best introduction to ANT available. Latour's prose seems effortlessly easy here; the concepts are accessible, the insights stark, and the organization lucid. In its first section you will find the presentation of the case which motivates the use of ANT so compelling that you may begin to wonder how, and why, other approaches can properly be called sociology. There is a charming, funny, and helpful middle section in which Latour writes in dialog. A testament to the degree with which one can engage this work: not a single one of its 262 pages in my text avoided some highlighting, underlining, or maringal notes. Since many readers will be familiar with "We Have Never Been Modern" it is important to note that "Reassembling the Social" is altogether more focused. Its target is smaller, so this is no mystery. But here you find a concrete and practical account of how to treat objects and actors in an appropriately relative way, so as to render them both full participants in stabilizing the social. Put short, a masterwork.

Given our experiences in late-modernity outrun our pre-developed concepts especially in innovation Latour claims that sociologists should themselves be part of innovation experiences. He portrays a new type of sociology (the one including objects) by which one can describe rather than prescribe. Latour initiates the difference between ANT and Sociology of Social(SOS), claiming that the latter chooses its tools from repertoire of agreed-upon criteria (pre-developed concepts) while in ANT we must follow the traces left by the actors. What is left we shall name as a society of actors and works. ANT analyst must himself participate and experinece the phenomena in a "here-and-now" perceptual sense and then conceptualize what he has experienced. In Latour's argument all things including human and non-human are mediators by which action is not merely transfered but also transformed to a new state. Both the actor and its associated action undergo a metamorphosis process in each mode of action. Consequently we have Five sources of Uncertainty:
1.Groups may form and depart for tyrrany of distance and proximity is removed
2.Action may be done by others and we can not fully anticipate in advance the nature of agencies and the outcome
3. Things have agency no matter how much man has the power to control
4. In the realm of things matter of fact prevails whereas in the combination of "things and human" matter of fact trasforms to matter of concern. In other words in the new relam i.e. "socio-technical realm" matter of scientific facts combines with the matter of cognitive concern.
5. Writing down experienced accounts
Hence, It's a call of Heraclitus aphorism i.e. "you can not step in the same river twice" along with Existentialism philosophy. Both you and the river change during the course of action. But you must expereince this change to percieve it. It could not be described completely by merely using pre-developed concepts. Your experience precedes your pre-developed concepts about the river and your reflection when crossing the river. Latour sometimes complicate his arguments by using difficult expressions, terminologies and long Gallic statements, but his words are very insightful, and his message is invaluable after-the-fact.
One issue which I didn't find in this book was responsibility and "responsible reflection". In other words Latour doesn't open the question about self-responsibility of actors that ANT analyst should follow. ANT analyst is not permitted to give advice to actors. He can only observe and expereince. This is ironically a matter of concern not a matter of fact that might be considered in his future arguments, given that Engineers and Scientists, for example, from ANT perspective are actors which should only watched not advised responsibly. To sum up ANT is to follow the "Dislocation of Action" and "opening eyes to see who is acting within any site; where the consequence of this action may travel; where are the likely sources that provoke action and actors"; "how sequence and consequence of sites change the nature of action" and the like. The Network we could envisage through resolving questions as such shall be mapping out and named as Society. Hence, late modernity is an entity that must be reassembled through ANT lens.