REASSEMBLING THE SOCIAL The Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies are jointly organised by Oxford University Press and the Sa¨ıd Business School. Every year a leading internationalacademicisinvitedtogiveaseriesoflecturesonatopicrelated to management education and research, broadly defined. The lectures form thebasisofabooksubsequentlypublishedbyOxfordUniversityPress. CLARENDON LECTURES IN MANAGEMENT STUDIES: TheModernFirm OrganizationalDesignforPerformanceandGrowth JohnRoberts ManagingIntellectualCapital Organizational,Strategic,andPolicyDimensions DavidTeece ThePoliticalDeterminantsofCorporateGovernance PoliticalContext,CorporateImpact MarkRoe TheInternetGalaxy ReflectionsontheInternet,Business,andSociety ManuelCastells BrokerageAndClosure AnIntroductiontoSocialCapital RonBurt ReassemblingtheSocial AnIntroductiontoActor-Network-Theory BrunoLatour Science,Innovation,andEconomicGrowth(forthcoming) WalterW.Powell TheLogicofPosition,TheMeasureofLeadership PositionandInformationintheMarket(forthcoming) JoelPodolny GlobalCompaniesinthe20thCentury(forthcoming) LeslieHannah Reassembling the Social An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory Bruno Latour 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxfordox26dp OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwidein Oxford NewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto Withofficesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress intheUKandincertainothercountries PublishedintheUnitedStates byOxfordUniversityPressInc.,NewYork (cid:1)BrunoLatour2005 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker) Firstpublished2005 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, withoutthepriorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress, orasexpresslypermittedbylaw,orundertermsagreedwiththeappropriate reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment, OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover andyoumustimposethesameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable TypesetbySPIPublisherServices,Pondicherry,India PrintedinGreatBritain onacid-freepaperby BiddlesLtd.,King’sLynn,Norfolk ISBN0-19-925604-7 978-0-19-925604-4 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 TothedoctoralstudentsIhadthegoodfortuneofaccompanyingthrough someoftheirtravails Figure1 This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Introduction:HowtoResumetheTaskofTracing Associations 1 PartI:HowtoDeployControversies AbouttheSocialWorld IntroductiontoPartI:LearningtoFeedoffControversies 21 FirstSourceofUncertainty:NoGroup,OnlyGroupFormation 27 SecondSourceofUncertainty:ActionIsOvertaken 43 ThirdSourceofUncertainty:ObjectstooHaveAgency 63 FourthSourceofUncertainty:MattersofFactvs. MattersofConcern 87 FifthSourceofUncertainty:WritingDownRiskyAccounts 121 OntheDifficultyofBeinganANT:AnInterludein theFormofaDialog 141 PartII:HowtoRenderAssociations TraceableAgain IntroductiontoPartII:WhyisitsoDifficultto TracetheSocial? 159 HowtoKeeptheSocialFlat 165 FirstMove:LocalizingtheGlobal 173 SecondMove:RedistributingtheLocal 191 ThirdMove:ConnectingSites 219 viii Contents Conclusion:FromSocietytoCollective—Canthe SocialBeReassembled? 247 Bibliography 263 Index 281 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book has passed through many avatars. It began almost thirty yearsagowhenIhadthechanceofbeingtaughtprimatesociologyby Shirley Strum and her baboons in Kenya. Although that project with Shirleyhasremainedinlimbo,ithasbeenthestapleofmyteachingof sociologytoyoungengineersattheSchoolofMinesinParis.When,in 1996,Iwasoffered to give theLeclerclectures inLouvain-la-Neuve,I decided it was about time to synthesize what I had learned from Michel Callon, John Law, Madeleine Akrich, Andy Barry, Annemarie Mol,AntoineHennion,andmanyothersinwhathadbecomeknown as‘Actor-Network-Theory’.Timeandagain,Ihavefoundthatreaders were puzzled not so much by our views on scientific practice and various other topics, but rather by the unusual meaning we gave to the words ‘social’ and ‘social explanations’. And yet, this alternative social theory has never been the object of a systematic introduction. Insteadofcomplainingthatthissmallschoolofthoughthadbecomea monster that had escaped its Frankensteinian makers, I decided it might be fairer to present interested readers with its intellectual architecture. It was only in 1999, when Barbara Czarniawska asked me to give a crash course in social theory ‘compatible with the needs of organiza- tion studies’, that I began to write down a complete draft. Although the present text has not made use of the transcript Barbara had so kindly arranged for,I owe much to her and to her Go¨teborg students for the organization of the material that, in addition, had been re- hearsed at the London School of Economics in the Department of Information Systems in the winters of 1999, 2000 and 2001. When myoldfriendSteveWoolgar,throughtheauspicesoftheSa¨ıdBusiness School,askedmetogivetheClarendonLectures inthefallof2002,I wroteanotherdraftwhichhassincebeendiscussedinvaryingdegrees of detail by Andrew Barry, Howie Becker, Geof Bowker, Franc¸ois Cooren, Didier Debaise, Gerard de Vries, Emilie Gomart, Fabian Muniesa, Noortje Marres, Shirley Strum, Albena Yaneva, Benedikte Zitouni, and Edgar Whitley that has resulted in this new version. Finally, it was submitted to a second round of critiques by Michael Flower,Jean-ToussaintLeca,MichaelLynch,PaoloQuattrone,Isabelle Stengers and Eduardo Vargas. I wish I could say that all remaining defectsaretheirsandnotmine.