scispace - formally typeset
Journal ArticleDOI

Technology is society made durable

Bruno Latour
- 01 May 1990 - 
- Vol. 38, pp 103-131
TLDR
In this article, it is argued that power and domination are simply different values of variables that should be studied in their whole range, instead of using different tools to analyse power and weakness.
Abstract
Is it possible to devise a set of concepts that could replace the technology/society divide? This set of new concepts - association and substitution - might help to rephrase some of the traditional questions of social order and especially that of the durability of domination of power. However, instead of using different tools to analyse power and weakness, it is argued that power and domination are simply different values of variables that should be studied in their whole range. By reconstructing networks it is argued that a full description of power and domination may be obtained.

read more

Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

From sectoral systems of innovation to socio-technical systems: Insights about dynamics and change from sociology and institutional theory

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors make four contributions to the approach by addressing some open issues in the sectoral systems of innovation (SOSI) approach, namely, explicitly incorporating the user side in the analysis, suggesting an analytical distinction between systems, actors involved in them, and the institutions which guide actor perceptions and activities.
Journal ArticleDOI

The nature of theory in information systems

TL;DR: The essay addresses issues of causality, explanation, prediction, and generalization that underlie an understanding of theory, and suggests that the type of theory under development can influence the choice of an epistemological approach.
Journal ArticleDOI

Notes on the theory of the actor-network: ordering, strategy and heterogeneity.

TL;DR: The actor-network theory as discussed by the authors is a body of theoretical and empirical writing which treats social relations, including power and organization, as network effects and argues that society and organization would not exist if they were simply social.
Journal ArticleDOI

Bricolage versus breakthrough: distributed and embedded agency in technology entrepreneurship

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors develop a perspective on technology entrepreneurship as involving agency that is distributed across different kinds of actors, and explicate this perspective through a comparative study of processes underlying the emergence of wind turbines in Denmark and in United States.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Tyranny of Transparency

TL;DR: In this paper, an academic and a social anthropologist have discussed making the invisible visible, taking its title from a paper by Tsoukas (The Tyranny of Light), the result is a short excursu...
References
More filters
Book

Relativity: The Special and the General Theory

TL;DR: A handsome annotated edition of Albert Einstein's celebrated book on relativity was published in 2017 as discussed by the authors, along with commentaries by Hanoch Gutfreund and Jurgen Renn that examine the evolution of Einstein's thinking and cast his ideas in a modern context.
Journal ArticleDOI

On the Methods of Long-Distance Control: Vessels, Navigation and the Portuguese Route to India:

John Law
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that long-distance control depends upon the creation of a network of passive agents (both human and non-human) which makes it possible for emissaries to circulate from the centre to the periphery in a way that maintains their durability, forcefulness and fidelity.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Electrification of America: the System Builders

TL;DR: The hedgehog and the fox as mentioned in this paper are defined as those "who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate" Foxes, in contrast, pursue many ends, "often unrelated and even contradictory" Berlin categorizes Dante, Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, and Proust among the hedgehogs.
Journal ArticleDOI

Technology and the Market: George Eastman and the Origins of Mass Amateur Photography

TL;DR: From the time of the introduction of commercial photography in 1839 until the late 1870s, the technical complexities of the photographic process were so great that only professional photographers and a very few avid amateurs chose to pursue the practice as mentioned in this paper.