Attachments, you say? … How a concept collectively emerges in one research group

Can we interrogate a concept in a manner that is compatible with what the concept itself conveys, while also remaining connected with the specific site in which the concept is being used? This essay undertakes such an exercise with the notion of attachment, as it emerged at the Center for the Sociology of Innovation (CSI) in France, starting in the 1990s. Having played a role in the history I am going to narrate, I will use self-analysis as a resource, even if a somewhat equivocal one. I will explore the virtues that we have collectively lent to the term attachment over the years. To do this, I will contrast three moments when we used it with different orientations at the CSI: to examine economic performativity (Callon); in the critique of emancipation (Latour); and in questioning amateurs’ and caregivers’ activity (myself). I will then briefly address how this relates to sociologists’ necessary commitment in worlds ‘still in process of making’ (W. James).

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