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.
Producer - European Platform for Digital Humanism at @arselectronica. Previously @riat_at. Tweets my own.
Vale Bruno Latour. Reassembling the Social was his first text I read, published in the last year of my art school undergrad it totally shifted my understanding of role of artists in society. Still continues to inspire how I produce programs like #STUDIOTOPIA at @ArsElectronica. https://t.co/AEIXFAHlNX
Org theory loyalist w social innov tendencies, concern for nascent mkts, systembuilding/unbuilding. U Oxford, Wolfson College; former Stanford, Northwestern
@MatthewWeait63 Indeed. Bruno Latour gave one of the early @UniofOxford @OUPAcademic Clarendon Lectures at @oxfordSBS, one outcome of which was 'Reassembling the social. @PaoloQuattrone @Steve_New_ @AndrewTStephen @soumitradutta
vagabond. seafarer. diarist. wreck. here we go mother on the shipless ocean. pity us, pity the ocean, here we go. – anne carson, from 'decreation'
#RIP Bruno Latour, dead at 75. "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." [from Reassembling The Social, 2015]