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toteraltermann.bsky.social
Veit Braun
@toteraltermann.bsky.social
380 followers 320 following 580 posts
Property, biology & stuff. All opinions someone else's.

Out now: AT THE END OF PROPERTY @BrisUniPress.bsky.social
https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/at-the-end-of-property
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toteraltermann.bsky.social
Wer war Ulrich Beck? Wo kamen er und seine Ideen her? Was hieß Umwelt in der Ex-BRD? Was war die "Risikogesellschaft"? Kann man Risiken anfassen? Geht Gesellschaftstheorie ohne Bruch? Ist Demokratisierung gut? Feuilletonsoziologie – qui bono? Das und vieles mehr ...
Inhalt Was war die "Risikogesellschaft"? 3 RISIKOGESELLSCHAFT - VIER THESEN These I Materialität der Risiken 11 These II Gesellschaftstheorie ohne Brüche 12 These III Risiko der Demokratisierung 15 These IV Logik der Feuilletonsoziologie 18 FAZIT Mit und gegen *Risikogesellschaft* 22
November 11, 2025 at 8:40 AM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Morgen (Campus Westend, PEG 2.G102, 10-12 Uhr)!
Vick Kluzik & Veit Braun Beck to the Future 40 Jahre Risikogesellschaft Goethe Universität Frankfurt Forschungskolloquium Umweltsoziologie und Soziale Ökologie 12. November 2025
November 11, 2025 at 8:32 AM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
All my criticism of the MPG aside, I don't really think directors make all that much of a difference—precisely, as @rmcelreath.bsky.social points out, they are at the very top of a very big pyramid and don't have acces to its base.
November 10, 2025 at 10:47 AM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Förderquoten und Antragsvolumen der einzelnen DFG-Programme (über alles Fächer hinweg) ... 37,6 % Erfolgsquote im Heisenberg-Programm!

www.dfg.de/resource/blo...
November 8, 2025 at 6:02 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Big lessons for academia, too, in that one
November 6, 2025 at 11:25 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Yet Latour indeed embraces ANT once more in 1992: In another piece criticising the Brits for their softcore social constructivism. There seems to be a bigger concern than the reification of ANT in the early 90s for Latour: The advancement of science studies beyond the stale common sense of the 80s.
Latour, B. (1992). One More Turn after the Social Turn: Easing Science Studies into the Non-Modern World. In: E. McMullin (ed.) The Social Dimensions of Science, Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, pp. 275.
November 4, 2025 at 12:03 AM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
But if it delivers a pseudo-methodological blueprint (much of the dialogue is fictionalised like in The Making of the Law), it offers less than a 'theory' of the world: merely an attitude toward it.
Latour, B. (1996). Aramis, or the Love of Technology (C. Porter, Trans.). Harvard University Press, p. 19: The investigator does not have to take the discussion any further. He will en joy reading the h istorian, en joy crossing the mythical boundaries of PRTs, enjoy perusing the h istory of the tech nological requirements of coupling. But since his informants do not question the power of these things, in his own analysis PRTs and couplings will play the role of what is "in the air." Everybody breathes it in equal proportions. It creates no distinctions. None of the small bifurcations that will turn out to explain the project can be dependent on that vast background common to all projects. The infrastructure, even in the final instance, does not explain the fragile superstructure of the Aramis vehicles. If that indifference to the general "framework" is shocking, let's say that our sociology prefers a local history whose framework is defined by the actors and not by the investigator. Our local history will talk about Aramis, not about guided transportation, mechanical couplings, or monopolistic state capitalism. On the other hand, it will let the actors add whatever they choose to the framework; it will let them take it as far as they care to go.
November 3, 2025 at 11:34 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
So what about Latour's (1993) Aramis, or the Love of Technology? No 'actor-networks' in here, and 'network' leads an ambiguous existence in this book. But there are certainly nods to Callon's idea of the actor-network and previous arguments from 'Unscrewing the Big Leviathan' (1981)—and to Serres.
Latour, B. (1996). Aramis, or the Love of Technology. Harvard University Press, p. 133-134: What is required is not to "replace projects in their context," as the foolish expression goes, but to study the way the project is conlexlualized or decontextualized. To do that, the rigid, stuffy word "conlext" has to be replaced by the supple, friendly word "network." The big explanations in terms of politics, economics, organizalion, and technology always turn up, without fail: "It's politically unacceptable." "It isn't profitable." "Society isn't ready for it." " It's inefficient. " These explanations are always used precisely because they can't be worn out. They're not designed to explain—if that were the case, they would have to wear out in contact with the hard, contorted circumstances. Rather, they're intended to move from hand to hand and to serve, like the weasel in the children's game, to get rid of the problem by designating the one who failed to pay attention and got caught with the ring in his hand. II court, il court Ie furet Le furet d' la politique, II court, il court Ie furet Le furet d' la technique. The weasel is running, The political weasel; The weasel is running, The technological weasel. II est passe par ici Il repassera par là II court, il court Ie furet Le furet d' I'economie. He came this way; He'll go back that way. The weasel is running, The economic weasel.
November 3, 2025 at 11:19 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
... prompting Callon and Latour to jointly defend a series of more or less successful prototypes, including actor-networks, thus reinforcing the idea of ANT 'as a thing.' (Leaving all that aside, I think this is a really good and passionate text demonstrating the superiority of the 'Paris school.')
Callon, M. & Latour, B. (1992) Don't throw out the baby with the Bath school! (p. 347) Why is this reading by C& Y so inevitable? Because they cannot imagine any other yardstick for evaluating empirical studies than the one defined above, and they cannot entertain even for a moment another ontological status for society and for things. All the shifts in vocabulary like "actant" instead of "actor," "actor network" instead of "social relations," "translation" instead of "interaction," "negotiation" instead of "discovery," "immutable mobiles" and "inscriptions" instead of "proof" and "data," "delegation" instead of "social roles," are derided because they are hybrid terms that blur the distinction between the really social and human-centered terms and the really natural and object-centered repertoires. But who pro-
November 3, 2025 at 7:45 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
But, alas, just when it's on the way out, Andy Pickering, Harry Collins and Steven Yearley unnecessarily resurrect ANT as a theory (i.e., school). And Pickering introduces some unfortunately ahistorical labels for Latour's work (Science in Action; Pasteurization of France) ...
Index of Pickering, A. (ed.) (1992): Science as Practice and Culture, p. 469 Pickering, A. (1992) From Knowledge to Practice, p. 2: Latour and Steve Woolgar. The inspiration and fieldwork for this study came from the French author, who had no evident prior affiliation to SSK. The next laboratory-life book was The Manufacture of Knowledge (1981), produced by another continental independent, Karin Knorr Cetina. At the same time, in the United States, Harold Garfinkel, Michael Lynch, and Eric Livingston began to bring their distinctively ethnomethodological perspective to bear upon what goes on in the laboratory (and in mathematics) (Lynch, Livingston, and Garfinkel 1983, Lynch 1985, Livingston 1986); philosophers of science-Ian Hacking (1983), Nancy Cartwright (1983), Arthur Fine (1986)-began to develop a new empirically informed approach within their discipline that seemed to intersect in interesting ways with SSK; the Tremont group were developing their pragmatist and symbolic interactionist perspective on science studies (Fujimura, Star, and Gerson 1987); and an anthropologist, Sharon Traweek (1988), was studying the particle physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Back in England, the discourse analysis program of Mulkay and Nigel Gilbert (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984) led, in the texts of Mulkay (1985), Woolgar (1988), and Malcolm Ashmore (1989), into "reflexivity" and "new literary forms"-genres that turned the techniques of SSK back on itself. On the continent again, Bruno Latour (1987, 1988) went his own way, articulating an "actor network" approach to science studies in collaboration with Michel Callon, thus founding the "Paris School." And so on.
November 3, 2025 at 7:35 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
No mentioning in Bijker's and Law's afterword either. A meager six entries for actor-network 'model/approach' rather than 'theory' in a book of 300+ pages. It almost feels like ANT is on its way out by 1992 ...
The index of Bijker & Law (1992) Shaping Technology/Building Society (p. 351), showing only six instances of 'actor-network' for the whole book, compared to about ten times as many for actor/actants
November 3, 2025 at 7:22 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Unsurprisingly, 'actors' and 'networks' do not feature in Akrich's and Latour's glossary of 'proto-ANT'/'post-Greimasian' terms, which is all about scripts
9 A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Setniotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies Madeleine Akrich and Bruno Latour
November 2, 2025 at 10:37 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Very fond also of this new addition by @huhnholz.bsky.social
October 29, 2025 at 4:55 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Excited to announce that the process of reinstating my humanity is nearing completion
A considerable part of my brain, almost fully functional
October 29, 2025 at 10:54 AM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
And having read this once more, I agree with 1992's Latour that STG was a much more interesting and fruitful approach than actor-networks that would have saved us from many a trouble (and in turn caused us some that ANT did spare us).
Latour, Bruno, G. (1992). Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts. In W. E. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping Technology/building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (pp. 225–258). MIT Press. To Robert Fox Again, might not the glory of the machines consist in their being without this same boasted gift of language? "Silence," it has been said by one writer, "is a virtue which render us agreeable to our fellow-creatures." Samuel Butler (Erewhon, chap. 23) Early this morning, I was in a bad mood and decided to break a law and start my car without buckling my seat belt. My car usually does not want to start before I buckle the belt. It first flashes a red light "FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT!", then an alarm sounds; it is so high pitched, so relentless, so repetitive, that I cannot stand it. After
October 26, 2025 at 11:18 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Akrich's chapter doesn't refer to ANT either, although the key words are all there: 'heterogeneous' is Law's favourite adjective, 'actant' is Latour's Greimasian inheritance, and of course 'networks' and 'human/non-human'. But the key term here is 'script', dating back to 1970s science studies.
Akrich, M. (1992). The De-Scription of Technical Objects. In W. E. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping technology/building society: Studies in sociotechnical change (p. 206). MIT Press. I am arguing, therefore, that technical objects participate in building heterogeneous networks that bring together actants of all types and sizes, whether human or nonhuman.3 But how can we describe the specific role they play within these networks? Because the answer has to do with the way in which they build, maintain, and stabilize a structure of links between diverse actants, we can adopt neither simple technological determinism nor social constructivism. Thus technological determinism pays no attention to what is brought together, and ultimately replaced, by the structural effects of a network. By contrast social contructivism denies the obduracy of objects and assumes that only people can have the status of actors. The problem is not one of deciding whether a technology should be seen as an instrument of progress or a new method for subjugating people. It is rather to find a way of studying the conditions and mechanisms under which the relations that define both our society and our knowledge of that society are susceptible to partial reconstruction.
October 26, 2025 at 10:44 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
There are three more highly important contributions to ANT in this volume by Madeleine Akrich and Bruno Latour (plus an afterword by Law and Bijker):
7 The De-Scription of Technical Objects 205 Madeleine Akrich 8 Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts 225 Bruno Latour 9 A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies 259 Madeleine Akrich and Bruno Latour
October 26, 2025 at 10:12 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Law and Callon (in the Bijker/Law volume) do not explicitly refer to ANT, though implicit references are there in the terms and the problem description. Note the reference to the structure/action split in social theory—Latour disavows of its reproduction through the very terms 'actor-network'!
Law, J., & Callon, M. (1992). The Life and Death of an Aircraft: A network Analysis of Technological Change. In W. E. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping Technology/building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (pp. 25-26). MIT Press. We are emphasizing this process of mutual shaping because it is important to understand that actors are not simply shaped by the networks in which they are located (although this is certainly true), but they also influence the actors with which they interact. In one way this is obvious, for the latter class of actors are themselves located in and shaped by a global network. However, the point is worth making explicitly because it breaks down an abstract distinction common in social analysis between (determined) actor and (determining) structure, or between content and context. Neighbors do indeed shape new actors as they enter into transactions with them, but they are in turn reshaped by their new circumstances. Latour, B. (1999). On recalling ANT. The Sociological Review, 47(S1), 15–25. The second nail that I'd like to hammer into the coffin is the word 'actor' in its hyphenated connection with the notion of 'network'. From day one, I objected to the hyphen because inevitably it would remind sociologists of the agency/structure cliche, or, as we say in French, of the 'pont aux ones' of social theory. Most of the misunderstandings about ANT have come from this coupling of terms, one that is much too similar to the traditional divides of social theory.
October 26, 2025 at 10:08 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
❤
October 21, 2025 at 9:20 AM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Practice is what people do
October 21, 2025 at 9:10 AM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
About to get murdered by not one but two people for this
October 20, 2025 at 11:55 AM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
There was a reply to the Latour/Mauguin/Teil paper by W. Bernard Carlson and Michal E. Gorman (who were also the anonymous referees for it???) in the 1992 volume of SSS to which Latour replies later that year—defending a *method* (STG), not a *theory* (ANT). Again no endorsement.
Latour, B. (1992). A Reply to Carlson and Gorman. Social Studies of Science, 22(1), 91-95. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312792022001005
October 18, 2025 at 4:25 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
From what I can tell, his first explixit *use* of ANT here: in a 1992 SSS paper with Philippe Mauguin and Geneviève Teil. But it's a paper that *problematises* the notion, instead proposing "socio-technical graphs" (STG) as an alternative (of course we know how that went down).
* ABSTRACT This paper reports on an attempt to create a new research tool, to follow the dynamics of science and technology. 'Socio-TechnicalAnalysis' develops new quantitative indicators and graphic representations with which to map the development of a scientific controversy, or a technical innovation. The aim of the paper is to describe this approach, to stimulate reflexion and criticism, and to launch what can only be a collective project. A Note on Socio-Technical Graphs Bruno Latour, Philippe Mauguin and Genevieve Teil We wish to report on an attempt to create a visual and conceptual space that might be of some use to scholars in the STS community, and to those of us engaged in teaching scientists and engineers. The aim of this Note is to stimulate reflection, to provoke criticism, and to exchange software and data in what can only be a collective project.' In order to map the development of a scientific controversy or of a technical innovation, the STS field has learned to doubt the dichotomy between nature, on the one hand, and society, on the other.2 It is not clear, however, what other narrative resources could replace the convenient alternation of 'not only ... but also' ('not only social factors but also objective ones'; 'not only technical constraints but also political factors'). Alternative narratives have been developed under the heading 'actor-network theory' that stress the heterogeneity and variability of associations of human and non- humans.3 Unfortunately, they are themselves made difficult to grasp because of the alternation between a social interpretation, that seems to reduce the content of science to a purely strategic show of force where might makes right, and a naturalistic interpretation that ap- pears to grant back to nonhumans the unproblematic presence of nature.4 It appeared to us that it would be of some advantage to
October 18, 2025 at 3:29 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Probably the first author outside of this immediate context to "apply" actor-network theory is Philip J. Vergragt in an SSS paper from 1988 on industrial innovation, crediting it to Callon alone.
Vergragt, P. J. (1988). The Social Shaping of Industrial Innovations. Social Studies of Science, 18(3), 483-513. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631288018003004
October 18, 2025 at 3:16 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Or is it Steven Shapin in the same year, who interestingly reads a term into a book ("Science in Action") which does not contain it? Not a single hit for "network" in my PDF of that book. But of course Shapin had read the Callon et al. volume to make sense of Latour's book.
Shapin, S. (1988). Following Scientists Around. Social Studies of Science, 18(3), 533–550. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631288018003007 p. 539 Shapin, S. (1988). Following Scientists Around. Social Studies of Science, 18(3), 533–550. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631288018003007 p. 540 Shapin, S. (1988). Following Scientists Around. Social Studies of Science, 18(3), 533–550. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631288018003007 p. 548
October 17, 2025 at 11:46 PM