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Reassembling the Social - An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R3,383
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Reassembling the Social - An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Hardcover)
Series: Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Reassembling the Social is a fundamental challenge from one of the
world's leading social theorists to how we understand society and
the 'social'. Bruno Latour's contention is that the word 'social'
as used by Social Scientists has become laden with assumptions to
the point where it has become
a misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon, it is
used to indicate a stabilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties
that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon.
Latour also finds the word used as if it described a type of
material, in a comparable way to an
adjective such as 'wooden' or 'steely'. Rather than simply
indicating what is already assembled together, it is now used in a
way that makes assumptions about the nature of what is assembled.
It has become a word that designates two distinct things: a process
of assembling: and a type of material,
distinct from others. Latour shows why 'the social' cannot be
thought of as a kind of material or domain, and disputes attempts
to provide a 'social explanation' of other states of affairs. While
these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the
past, the very success of the
social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the
present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise
constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the
original meaning of 'the social' to redefine the notion and allow
it to trace connections again. It will then
be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences,
but using more refined tools. Drawing on his extensive work
examining the 'assemblages' of nature, Latour finds it necessary to
scrutinize thoroughly theexact content of what is assembled under
the umbrella of Society. This
approach, a 'sociology of associations' has become known as
Actor-Network-Theory, and this book is an essential introduction
both for those seeking to understand Actor-Network-Theory, or the
ideas of one of its most influential proponents.
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