This page was created by Collin Hardwick.
Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory.
Discipline/Field: Sociology, Science Studies, Philosophy
Year: 2005
Main Arguments & Concepts
Reassembling The Social is one part description of the actor-network theory ‘method’ (though Latour does not like the term) and one part intervention into the way the social scientists study “society.” According to Latour, contemporary sociology, which he terms “sociology of the social” treats the “social” a substance rather than a means to describe connections between things (1). This approach worked OK before interventions in modernism, when society and nature were assumed separate. But now that this dichotomy is considered problematic, sociology is bumping up against self-inflicted limitations.Actor-Network Theory, then, offers another way of approaching the social sciences, actually focusing more on how not to study society than mandating a particular method (142). ANT is not a method for studying networks, but rather a networked approach to studying things, following the various actants (human and non-human) who influence one’s object of study. The goal is to avoid hasty claims about structures of power, but rather to describe the research object and actants without a rush towards explanation. In that vein, ANT is anti-structuralist, as structuralism removes the agency that actants require.
Quotes
“The society stands in the way of sociology and politics is not so surprising for those of us in science studies who saw earlier how nature, too stood in the way. Both monsters are born in the same season and for the same reason: nature assembles non-humans apart from from the humans; society collects humans apart from the non-humans. As I have shown elsewhere at length, both are twin freaks generated to stifles th every possibility of rightful composition of the collective” (164).“It’s not that purposeful humans, intentional persons, and individual souls are the only interpretive agents in a world of matters of fact devoid of any meaning by itself. What is meant by interpretations, flexibility, and fluidity is simply a way to register the vast outside to which every course of action has to appeal in order to be carried out. This is not true just for human actions, but for every activity. Hermeneutics is not a privilege of humans but, so to speak, a property of the world itself. The world is not a solid continent of facts sprinkled by a few lakes of uncertainties, but a vast ocean of uncertainties speckled by a few islands of calibrated and stabilized forms” (244-245)
Notes
In the dialogue chapter, Latour advices that the student use context (and its related academic terminology) only as “shorthand or to quickly fill the parts of your picture that make no difference to you, but don’t believe they explain anything.” This made me think of some of the trouble with cultural criticism -- if your study is just on the hunt for something like ‘power’ you are sure to find it. However, if you use ‘power’ (or neoliberalism, or sexism ... ) as a shorthand “part of the picture” then you can account for it, while continuing looking for things that are less presumed.Latour is kind of hard on ethnographers, but his argument reminded me a lot of Stewart and Tsing, who both resists totalizing explanations for their observations.
The dialogue with the student was similarly unforgiving, but it was illustrative of some of the problems with social criticism. Reading a lot of critical theory can give the impression that everyone is just a ‘docile body’ subject to structures of power, without any ability to act. While I do think it’s important to understand the way that possible actions are circumscribed by discourse (or ideology, or hegemony, however you want to put it), this approach can create a worldview where the researcher is the only actant in the lot.
Related
Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand PlateausFoucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge
Foucault, Discipline & Punish
Latour, We Have Never Been Modern
Stewart, A Space on the Side of the Road
Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection
