From Sociology of Science to Symmetric Anthropology

Critique of Shapin & Schaffer Leviathan and the Air-Pump
Hobbes (science should replace nature, external laws, rationality, society is transcendental) vs. Boyle (experiment can happen outside of society, configuration)
Constructivism/Empiricism State

Serres: The Parasite
Quasi object:
This quasi-object is not an object, but it is one nevertheless, since it is not a subject, since it is in the world; it is also a quasi-subject, since it marks or designates a subject who, without it, would not be a subject. (1982a: 225)
- Marker of the subject
1986 Rome, The Book of Foundations
Serres, M. (with Bruno Latour) (1995) Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press
Latour’s cartoon: Both Hobbes and Boyle are wrong
- Two types of nature and Society (hard/soft)
- Dialectics (Miller): Reproduces the division

We don’t start from presupposed models; we look at artifacts. We can see how nature, hard and soft, and society, hard and soft, come into play.

From Symmetric Anthropology to ANT

Humans (H) and Non-Humans (NH)
- Existants in Descola 2005 (e.g. stem cells, embryos)
- Jagwars (Amazonian ontology)
Actors/“Actants” - subject of a predicate
- agency
Networks - a chain of associations between H and NH
- the question of the scale
Programme of action/Antiprogramme
- the key
Association & Substitution
Translation
- to deal with resistance
Punctualization
Delegation
Network is established out of processes; it’s not preestablished
- collectives, e.g. kinship
  - rituals for loose networks to happen, e.g. weddings, funerals

Aims:
- Not only to define “associations” and to follow networks in order to redefine the notion of “society” and “social”
The concept of Gaia (ultimate mixture of things)
Catholic: a movement against the Enlightenment
Latour’s Spirituality

agency is relational (the arrangement of H and NH)
mixing of H and NH
Users can change any stage of the design
NH: they are not instruments; they form social relations -> agency
- designers put scripts in devices
  - the driver is both autonomous and dependent
  - self-driving car: H’s agency is different
- agency (a H’s capacity for action can be changed)
program vs. anti-program (not following the designed usage)
design determines what can be delegated to users and machines
Design is a never-ending process.

humans and objects
society as a network of heterogeneous materials, not necessarily social
- knowledge: product or effect of a network of heterogeneous materials (agents, social institutions, machines, organizations…)
- social: patterned network of heterogeneous materials
- social order
Society and organization would not exist if they were simply social
Network is a verb
Question about social: HOW (not why)

Radical analysis: not celebrating the idea of humans on one side and objects on the other side
Punctualization: … as a whole shape
- precarious simplicatory of a complex network (e.g. a TV, a person)
- most of the time we are not even in a position to detect network complexities
Translation: transformation and the possibility of one thing may mean another
- Durability
- Spatial mobility
- Calculability
- Representation
“Society” recursively reproduces itself. It does so because it is materially heterogeneous
- power
- organizations
- hierarchies

1989: Bicentenary and fall of the Berlin Wall. Reflection about the future. What did we do wrong?
Modernity: fallacy. Understanding a separation between society and nature.
Background: Neoliberalism vs. Postmodernism, Relativism
- Kristeva
- Foucault
- Alternative to Marxist determinism
- Latour: proposes a different frame - questioning modernity (separation between nature and science)
  - not the same as Levi-Strauss -> categories
  - Latour: political relations vis-à-vis science
Hobbes vs. Boyle
Superior, Dominant vs. Inferior, Dominated
Quasi-objects, Hybrids
Social Act: Network composed by H and NH, Program/Antiprogram
Actor could be H or NH
Innovation process: Network H (experts + non-experts) + NH

Danger (Nature/External)
Risk (Rational, Control)
Overflows (Uncertainty), Socio-technical controversies
- Earthquake + Tsunami + Nuclear Plant = Out of Control
- Homosexuality: originally a mental disease -> cultural revolution -> WHO stopped regarding it as a disease

Sensitivity to Initial Conditions
Irreversibility of Time
Unpredictability (relation to Leroi-Gourhan)
- Density
- Specificity
- Intensity -> Sociotechnical system -> H-NH -> “Society”

(appearance of a linear system)

Latour hates dialectics
A network is imminent.
Innovation mobilizes social groups.
Whatever we have today is arbitrary.
Sociotechnical configurations are materialized through material culture. They conceal the networks they emerge, the arbitrariness.
The more complex sociotechnical systems become, the more unpredictable technology becomes.

Liability, ownership
As soon as the network is not smooth, it may be reformed.
The network is imminent.
When the technology is either stablized or obsolete, the social groups disappear.
Empirical approach
- not dealing with abstract ideas
The group of experts wonder why something didn’t work -> categories appear
In order to identify a problem, we need to punctualize.
- e.g. Arctic melting

Not specifying the types of agency
NH agency is not clear
- things can’t be given the same weight
Neutrality vis-à-vis the Network -> Flat
No social structures
- Human factors
- Rationalized (no emotional elements)
All these can be solved by being empirical
Methodological
Suspension of presupposed categories
- Humans have the reflexive ability to think of themselves as humans (on the conditions of humanity -> a configuration that changes)

Every society has a concept of humanity.
Perspectivism
- Jaguwar
  - process of equivalence
  - particularities of the human body (configurations)