Bruno Latour
From Geography
Although he is interested in philosophy, history, sociology and anthropology, his main field of interest is science policy and research management. It are also these fields of science that hold his most work (see actor network theory).
Latour has written several books: Science in Action, the pasteurization of France and Laboratory life. The latter one is about Latour conducting fieldwork in the science laboratories at the Salk Institute in California, observing work on barium peptides (Macionis & Plummer, 2008, p.746). The study looks at how scientists talk about their work, the paperwork they generate, their publications. These examples are ways of constructing a scientific fact. He is best known for his book 'We've never been modern'. Characteristic for his work was his social constructionist approach. Together with Callon en Law, Latour was one of the developers of the actor network theory (Latour,1987).
Actor network theory
The actor network theory (ANT) is focused on networks of relations and interactions between actors in a technological setting. In short, ANT studies networks in which actors (human and non-human) influence each other. The ANT does not assume that technology and reality are socially constructed. Social practices are not the outcome of interaction between people but the focus is more on non-human entities. The aim of ANT is explaining difficult networks within a scientific setting. In this case, people try to bring difficult research and studies back to a lab situation. When everybody needs to improve and understand situations, you have to simplify everything. In this, Latour made a distinction between causal thinking and thinking in networks. In terms of causal thinking you can assume that every occasion or actor has influence on the other etc. In terms of network thinking you can assume that a number of actors and theories cause an occasion or shift. That is also why Latour speaks in terms of actants instead of actors, because not every actor has an active rol (a wall can also be an actor). There isn't a hierarchy in it. Every actor in a network has an equal influence on a change or occasion, but he gaves human actors a bigger role than non-human actors. He calls actors like technology and humans entities. These actors don't have a meaning by themselves, they get their meaning by relations with other actors (Law & Hassard, 1999).
Therefore it could make sense to use the ideas of Latour to explain spatial change. Dropping the subject-object antagonism is one of the fundamental parts of his theory. When we study spatial change, it is neither social nor technical aspects where we have to look at. “Fact and opinion do not exist as autonomous phenomena.” (Latour, 1993). It are propositions, associations of humans and non-humans, who are going through a process before they become instituted as actors in the collective.
References
-Latour, B. (n.d). Biography. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/biography. Found on 24-10-'12.
-Latour, B. (1987). Science In Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Harvard University Press: Cambridge Mass.
-Latour, B. (1993). “We have never been modern”. Prentice Hall: Harvester Wheatsheaf
-Law, J. & Hassard J. (1999) “Actor-Networktheory and after” Blackwell publishers: London
-Macionis, J. & Plummer, K. (2008). Sociology. A global introduction. 4th editon, Pearson Education LTD
Contributors
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