What makes us modern? This is a classic question in philosophy as well as in political science. However it is often raised without including science and technology in its definition. The argument of this book is that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology. This division allows the formidable expansion of the Western empires. However it has become more and more difficult to maintain this distance between science and politics. Hence the postmodern predicament - the feeling that the modern stance is no longer acceptable but that there is no alternative. The solution, advances one of France's leading sociologists of science, is to realize that we have never been modern to begin with. The comparative anthropology this text provides reintroduces science to the fabric of daily life and aims to make us compatible both with our past and with other cultures wrongly called pre-modern.

We Have Never Been Modern

Scientific work is heterogeneous, requiring many different actors and viewpoints. It also requires cooperation. The two create tension between divergent viewpoints and the need for generalizable findings. We present a model of how one group of actors managed this tension. It draws on the work of amateurs, professionals, administrators and others connected to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, during its early years. Extending the Latour-Callon model of interessement, two major activities are central for translating between viewpoints: standardization of methods, and the development of 'boundary objects'. Boundary objects are both adaptable to different viewpoints and robust enough to maintain identity across them. We distinguish four types of boundary objects: repositories, ideal types, coincident boundaries and standardized forms.

and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39

Scientific work is heterogeneous, requiring many different actors and viewpoints. It also requires cooperation. The two create tension between divergent viewpoints and the need for generalizable findings. We present a model of how one group of actors managed this tension. It draws on the work of amateurs, professionals, administrators and others connected to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, during its early years. Extending the Latour-Callon model of interessement, two major activities are central for translating between viewpoints: standardization of methods, and the development of `boundary objects'. Boundary objects are both adaptable to different viewpoints and robust enough to maintain identity across them. We distinguish four types of boundary objects: repositories, ideal types, coincident boundaries and standardized forms.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/285080.pdf

Institutional Ecology, `Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39:

How to Do Things With Words

This paper outlines a new approach to the study of power, that of the sociology of translation. Starting from three principles, those of agnosticism (impartiality between actors engaged in controversy), generalised symmetry (the commitment to explain conflicting viewpoints in the same terms) and free association (the abandonment of all a priori distinctions between the natural and the social), the paper describes a scientific and economic controversy about the causes for the decline in the population of scallops in St. Brieuc Bay and the attempts by three marine biologists to develop a conservation strategy for that population. Four ‘moments’ of translation are discerned in the attempts by these researchers to impose themselves and their definition of the situation on others: (a) problematisation: the researchers sought to become indispensable to other actors in the drama by denning the nature and the problems of the latter and then suggesting that these would be resolved if the actors negotiated the ‘obl...

Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay

In this article, we explore the potential of actor network theory and feminist material semiotics as a set of tools for critical policy analysis. We describe their focus on material heterogeneity, ontological multiplicity and performativity, and consider how this both generates political and policy possibilities and impossibilities and also creates the potential for change. We explore this by considering the British policy response to the 2001 foot and mouth disease epidemic, which we treat as a case of ontological multiplicity, and ask what might have happened if policy makers had recognized and responded to this multiplicity.

ANT, multplicity and policy

O "depois" da teoria do actor-rede: complexidade, nomeaçao e topologia

Metrics and Fluids

Having considered knowledge at a tacit and a manual level, we now wish to explore the notion of theory within the network model. The reader will recall that network theory rests upon the assumption that human beings are endowed with the capacity to notice similarities between perceptual objects and associations despite the fact that, formally, all objects and associations of objects are unique and never repeated. A network of workable classes is built up by ignoring the visible differences between cases and by assuming that it is the similarities which should be exclusively attended to. Objects are treated as ‘the same’ even though, in strict terms, they are different.

The Acquisition of Social Coherence Conditions: Metaphor and Theory

In previous chapters we have often referred to the role of social coherence conditions. These, we have suggested, are absolutely essential in determining the choice of similarity relations, given that the environment provides a more or less unlimited range of possibilities. Social coherence conditions were mentioned in other contexts, for instance, in the case of the indirect acquisition of classes and links. We noted that it is not necessary for the perceptual lumps that are associated in a network to be learned from direct physical experience. Most British adults know that vipers have a dangerous bite, though few have observed anyone, let alone themselves, being bitten. So the acquisition of social coherence conditions is clearly indispensable if the network theory is realistic. How, then, are social coherence conditions acquired?

John Law

Papers

ANT, multplicity and policy

O "depois" da teoria do actor-rede: complexidade, nomeaçao e topologia

Metrics and Fluids

The Acquisition of Social Coherence Conditions: Metaphor and Theory

The Acquisition of Social Coherence Conditions: Perception