Jeremy Price pointed me to Ulises Mejias’ review of Bruno Latour’s latest book (2005) Reassembling the Social. Given my interest in Actor Network Theory or ANT, I was curious to see how the book was received. I googled the title and review to see if there were other write-ups on the book. I found Collin Brooks review on his blog. These two reviews are written through the lens of different interests. Ulises Meijias from an educational technology view and Collin Brooks from a literary view.
The central theme of these postings look into Latour’s redefinition of the social. Latour sees the ‘social’ not as a static configuration but as an aggregation of actors and objects (that use to be subsumed under the word ‘actant’ but I didn’t see the word mentionned) interconnected around a controversy. The social is not something a priori but something that is ‘constructed’ from the connections actors establish between people and objects, which redefine and reshape the social according to a situation. Latour’s definition is processual in that it is deployed around shared stakes that organize the network. [This is very similar to Engestrom’s understanding, discussed earlier]. The mapping is from the center out, from the issue out. The three steps identified are : deployment, stabilization and composition. I need to read the book to comment further here.
Collin Brooks elaborates on the difference between intermediaries and mediators. Intermediaries are conduits, supports that transport or transmit from one point to another (neutral ?); they connect. Mediators on the other hand, have the potential to change what passes through them. He quotes: “Mediators transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry” (p.39). (what does he list as mediators? language, technologies, etc) It seems Latour is concluding sociology is not a sociology of the social but one of associations. Groups are thus redifined as performative : existing through their definitions, not a priori. Objects are participants “interactants”. Latour moves away from facts and redifines these as concerns, making room for their subjective construction. Finally the social is a provisional composite assemblage.
Ulises makes inferences about social software, and wonders if code is taking over the social, but concludes it is “a delegation of agency, not a surrender”. With a quote from Latour, he concludes technologies trace the social, making visible what was once virtual. What follows about technology is to me not so clear. I wonder if technology collapsed as a homogenous ‘entity’ is presented as a constitutive and creative tool or a conduit for connections (mediator or intermediary?). I’m not clear on this part. If the social is constituted from its parts working together, then technology (which ever type) is part of the constitution and organizing of the social. It supports, defines and shapes it. It makes possible and constrains according to its properties alongside how it is used. The term technology needs unpacking the same way the term social is being reconfigured and reconceptualized from the inside out.
Finally I’d like to say that a such a ‘distributed constructivist approach’ situates actors in environments of artifacts and other actors and organizes them around shared ‘concerns’. What tugs at my mind are the residues from past processes. What happens to what is created by aggregates of actors and their tools? How do they inform (how do they fit in the theory) the moving reconfiguring picture of the social? Processes eventually lead to products and structures. Do these new products products and structures become newer artifacts that are called into the picture later on? How does the theory treat what remains (a core, a ‘noyau”)? I need to read how he treats “products” “structures” and “uses” in a theory of movement like his. Very postmodernistic, even if he would contest such a notion given the fact we were never modern!
I also wonder how Latour’s controversy emanating social fits with the object centered sociality understanding of Karin Knorr Cetina? Both attend to object-relations or connections to objects. The latter is interested in objects as the organizing feature of rapprochements; while Latour sees discursive concerns as organizing forces of actors and objects. Much more reading and pondering is needed here. Thank you to both Collin Brooks and Ulises Mejias for this food for thought.