Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory by Bruno Latour

In Reassembling the Social, Bruno Latour elucidates a set of ideas that are provocative, difficult, and potentially tremendously important for any kind of social analysis. Latour’s project is fundamentally to alter the way we depict, and thus conceive of, social interaction and organization. The name, Actor-Network Theory (ANT), sounds like a variation on a theme that has already become quite familiar: people are organized in networks. Most social science disciplines have long since embraced this concept, and so we have social network analysis, policy network analysis, social movement networks, networks of governance, and so on. ANT, however, is a distant cousin. Developed by Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law in the mid-1980s, it is associated with the field now known as Science and Technology Studies. ANT became known especially for the claim that nonhumans exert agency in our networks and our world. In addition to his well-regarded research, Latour became known for distancing himself from the ‘‘school’’ he helped to create. With this book, he seems to have changed his mind—if only to lay out some fundamentals. There is no such thing as The Social, Latour asserts, let alone a social network. The concept is a depiction of processes, and like the picture of the pipe in René Magritte’s famous image, it too easily permits us to trade a two-dimensional representation for a multi-dimensional reality. Latour takes issue not primarily with the representational aspect of social theory, but with the implications of its being poorly drawn. We need representations, of course—but ANT trains a new lens on how we construct them, and what makes it into the picture. To put it briefly, a network is not a thing, but its actors often are. Latour’s main premise is that an amalgamation of social entities, when studied, described, and analyzed, tends rapidly to lose any sense of its constituent connections International Public Management Journal