The concepts of hierarchical organization, genetic determinism and biological specificity have played a crucial role in biology as a modern experimental science since its beginnings in the nineteenth century. The idea of genetic information and genetic determination was at the basis of molecular biology that developed in the 1940s with macromolecules, viruses and prokaryotes as major objects of research often labelled “reductionist”. However, the concepts have been marginalized or rejected in some of the research that in the late 1960s began (...) to focus additionally on the molecularization of complex biological structures and functions using systems approaches. This paper challenges the view that ‘molecular reductionism’ has been successfully replaced by holism and a focus on the collective behaviour of cellular entities. It argues instead that there are more fertile replacements for molecular ‘reductionism’, in which genomics, embryology, biochemistry, and computer science intertwine and result in research that is as exact and causally predictive as earlier molecular biology. (shrink)

Drawing on recent interdisciplinary, multidimensional research on civic and religious education in northern Europe, this article explores disciplinary epistemological economies in an era of mounting discontent with the narrowness of mono-disciplinary analyses of complex social and educational issues. It is argued in the article that under conditions of sufficient world complexity, interdisciplinarity provides for a more cogent scholarly approach to educational structures and phenomena than either of the logics of mono-, multi- and transdisciplinarity—the main extant alternatives. It is shown in (...) both conceptual and empirical terms that these alternatives cannot accommodate social and educational diversity, complexity and sprawl other than thinly, hence should mainly be endorsed by universities and research funders for other than epistemological reasons or when there is agreement that the object subjected to analysis is correspondingly thin and isolated. As education in and of itself is a remarkably complex social phenomenon and field of study, it is concluded that interdisciplinary environments may typically be expected to provide a stronger potential for assessing and understanding it. (shrink)

This paper examines the challenges to critical realism posed by the ways in which the original postmodern sensibility has transformed into various forms of anti-humanism, trans-humanism, and post-humanism. These transformations, largely growing out of poststructuralism, are reinforced by developments in psychology and computer science but also incorporate a new turn toward ontology in alternate forms of realism such as Object-Oriented-Ontology. This paper identifies what is new and what is old in these trends and argues that, while there is something to (...) be learned from them, some of which implicitly and even explicitly borrow from CR, the humanist orientation of CR continues to deserve defense. (shrink)

Among the contemporary philosophers using the concept of the Anthropocene, Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers are prominent examples. The way they use this concept, however, diverts from the most common understanding of the Anthropocene. In fact, their use of this notion is a continuation of their earlier work around the concept of a ‘parliament of things.’ Although mainly seen as a sociology or philosophy of science, their work can be read as philosophy of technology as well. Similar to Latour’s claim (...) that science is Janus-headed, technology has two faces. Faced with the Anthropocene, we need to shift from technologies of control to technologies of negotiations, i.e., a parliament of things. What, however, does a ‘parliament of things’ mean? This paper wants to clarify what is conceptually at stake by framing Latour’s work within the philosophy of Michel Serres and Isabelle Stengers. Their philosophy implies a ‘postlinguistic turn,’ where one can ‘let things speak in their own name,’ without claiming knowledge of the thing in itself. The distinction between object and subject is abolished to go back to the world of ‘quasi-objects’ (Serres). Based on the philosophy of science of Latour and Stengers the possibility for a politics of quasi-objects or a ‘cosmopolitics’ (Stengers) is opened. It is in this framework that their use of the notion of the Anthropocene must be understood and a different view of technology can be conceptualized. (shrink)

Introduction to a special issue of the journal entitled 'Gilbert Simondon: media and technics'.

Nobel-price winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen introduced in 2000 the concept of the Anthropocene as the name for the successor geological period to the Holocene. The Holocene started about 12,000 years ago and is characterized by the relatively stable and temperate climatic and environmental conditions that were conducive to the development of human societies. Until recently, human development had relatively little impact on the dynamics of geological time. Although disagreement exists over the exact birth date of the Anthropocene, it is (...) indisputable that the impact of human activity on the geo-climatic environment became more pronounced from the industrial revolution onwards, leading to a situation in which humans are now widely considered to have an eco-geologically critical impact on the earth's bio-physical system. The most obvious example is the accumulation of greenhouse gases like CO2and Methane (CH4) in the atmosphere and the changes this induces in climatic dynamics. Others are the growing homogenization of biodiversity as a result of human-induced species migration, mass extinction and bio-diversity loss, the manufacturing of new (sub-)species through genetic modification, or the geodetic consequences resulting from, for example, large dam construction, mining and changing sea-levels. (shrink)

In this article, two different claims about nature are discussed. On the one hand, environmental philosophy has forced us to reflect on our position within nature. We are not the masters of nature as was claimed before. On the other hand there are the recent developments within synthetic biology. It claims that, now at last, we can be the masters of nature we have never been before. The question is then raised how these two claims must be related to one (...) another. Rather than stating that they are completely irreconcilable, I will argue for a dialogue aimed to discuss the differences and similarities. The claim is that we should not see it as two successive temporal phases of our relation to nature, but two tendencies that can coexist. (shrink)

Research on the status and experience of women in academia in the last 30 years has challenged conventional explanations of persistent gender inequality, bringing into sharp focus the cumulative impact of small scale, often unintentional differences in recognition and response: the patterns of 'post-civil rights era' dis­crimination made famous by the 1999 report on the status of women in the MIT School of Science. I argue that feminist standpoint theory is a useful resource for understanding how this sea change in (...) understanding gender inequity was realized. At the same time, close attention to activist research on workplace environment issues suggests ways in which our understanding of standpoint theory can fruitfully be refined. I focus on the implications of two sets of distinctions: between types of epistemic injustice (and correlative advantage) that may affect marginalized knowers; and between the resources of situated knowledge and those of a critical standpoint on knowledge production. (shrink)

Issues of communication and the possibilities for the transformation of perspectives through an experimental dialogue resulting in a mutual, open, receptive, and non-judgmental consideration of the other are addressed in this paper from transdisciplinary theoretical and conceptual standpoints. The warrant for cultivating this type of communicative ability is based on arguments resulting from the assumption of widespread confusion and conflict in intrapersonal, interpersonal, intergroup, and ecological relations across the globe. I argue that there are two distinct classes of “reasons” for (...) this proposed practice of dialogue. First is recognition of the need for human individuals to engage in a regular and systematic “social maintenance” of embodied consciousness to forestall the continuous colonization of the past/future on the living present that embodied consciousness entails. Second is the teaching of a skill to creatively and respectfully engage with others in a mutual transformation of perspectives. This paper addresses the general problem of perspectives and reflexivity at the root of the communication phenomenon and by extension – to its scale and to its pathologies in individuals and collectives. It is argued that suspension of judgment, assumption, and habit helps interlocutors to recognize the possibility of holding one's history in a tensional abeyance and to focus on the living present independent of habitualized and reified identities and the embodied manner in which we unconsciously carry ourselves as social or “universalized selves” in social situations. (shrink)

This article criticizes recent suggestions that the current ELSI research field should accommodate a new direction towards a ‘post-ELSI’ agenda. Post-ELSI research seeks to avoid the modernist division of responsibility for technical and social issues said to characterize ELSI research. Collaboration and integration are consequently the key terms of post-ELSI strategies that are to distinguish it from ELSI strategies. We argue that this call for a new direction relies on an inadequate generalized analysis of ELSI research as modern that will (...) affect the construal of post-ELSI strategies. We are concerned that the call for post-ELSI shift will exclude imaginative proposals and intellectual freedom by narrowing down the scope and methodologies of ELSI and thereby missing opportunities to play a critical and constructive normative role. Instead of framing current trends in ELSI research as a radical and progressive shift from ELSI to post-ELSI, we suggest an alternative story of expansion and diversification described in terms of a drift from ELSA 1 to ELSA 2, pertaining to acronyms in use in Europe. ELSI research has never been modern. It has been experimenting from the very start on ways to mesh the works of humanist, social and natural scientist in order to bridge and build alignments of emerging scientific and societal goals and matters of concern. The development from ELSA 1 to ELSA 2 expands in our account the range of intellectual and methodological capacities of analysis and engagement of complex and dynamic science-society relationships. We present three areas of ELSA expertise to illustrate that the expertise within the field builds on scholarly achievements within the humanities, social sciences as well as the natural sciences. The plurality of disciplinary background of ELSA researchers represents a valuable diversity that enables mutual criticism and formulations of complementary approaches that together constitute a viable ELSA field. (shrink)

This article argues that actor-network theory, as an alternative to critical theory, has lost its critical impetus when examining commodification in healthcare. The paper claims that the reason for this, is the way in which actor-network theory’s anti-essentialist ontology seems to black box 'intentionality' and ethics of human agency as contingent interests. The purpose of this paper was to open the normative black box of commodification, and compare how Marxism, Habermas and ANT can deal with commodification and ethics in healthcare. (...) Moreover, a new account of 'intentionality' in critical thinking was elaborated. Using Strawson's analysis of 'reactive attitudes and resentment,' the ethical implications of commodification in health care were examined as an assessment of intentions. Synthesizing critical theory with the relational materialism of actor-network theory, this article advances a new approach that seeks to bridge interdisciplinary boundaries, and guide actor-network theory in a critical and humanist direction. Providing new theoretical insights on commodification and 'intentionality' in health care. (shrink)

This paper goes beyond critiques of western philosophical notions of space as passive, feminine, and unintelligent by reconfiguring containment as an active process. The author draws on work in the history of technology, on a cybernetic epistemology that emphasizes the interdependence of organism and environment, and on intersubjectivist psychoanalytic theories of the maternal provision. A more unexpected ally is found in Heidegger, whose writings on holding and supply are read in ways that contribute to the development of an urgently required (...) philosophy of container technologies. (shrink)

Recent debates about the Grameen Bank’s microlending practices depict participating female borrowers as having fundamentally empowering or disempowering experiences. I argue that this discursive framework may be too reductive: it can conceal how technique and technology simultaneously facilitate relations of dependence and independence; and it can diminish our capacity to understand and assess innovative development initiatives.

What constitutes legitimate killing? How do our concerns over animal death fit with respect to our broader beliefs about the conservation or destruction of the ‘natural’ world? What does this mean for how we think about our own existence? This ethnography concerns itself with such questions as they have played out in a series of entangled conflicts with, and over, the non-human world; specifically, historically rooted tensions over the inception of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area in Queensland Australia and (...) contemporary arguments over the ‘hunting’ and ‘management’ of feral pigs (Sus scrofa), an ‘exotic’ pest species. Similarities evident in the politics of natural heritage and animal death illuminate two distinct contemporary strategies for confronting existential struggles over life, death and destruction. (shrink)

The article attempts to bridge semiotics with species conservation and management. Biosemiotic and cultural semiotic methodology is applied in the analysis of a case study – the early occurrence of the golden jackal in Estonia. Nine semi-structured interviews were carried out with the local inhabitants of the Matsalu region, professional zoologists and environmental officials who were involved in the golden jackals’ discourse. The interviews were analyzed for interactions between golden jackals and humans, expected ecological effects of golden jackals, communication between (...) different interest groups and central cultural motifs used to interpret the new species. It is argued that in the development of this discourse, the golden jackals’ own activity has played an essential role. At the same time, human cultural models also influence the interpretation of a new species to a considerable degree. Two of such models – the opposition of the own and the alien and the “settler’s” narrative – are brought out and analyzed. The effect of the fear of the unknown is also specified. To improve human communication about new or invasive species, it is suggested to raise awareness of the underlying cultural models and to use integrative communication as the developing discourse is dynamical and constantly changing for all interest groups. For a semiotic study of species management, it is suggested to combine methodology from biosemiotics, cultural semiotics and actor-network theory. (shrink)

Two popular, yet highly controversial concepts of non-human agency from two different fields of knowledge are compared in this essay: the theory of the Selfish Gene, introduced into neo-Darwinian evolutionary biology by Richard Dawkins, and Actor-Network Theory, as brought forward in Science & Technology Studies by Bruno Latour. It is argued that the two theories, despite all apparent differences, share key motifs and motivations when they try to forward knowledge in their respective fields by adopting a vocabulary that aims at (...) metaphorical redescriptions of the origins of intentionality – in both senses: as purposefulness of action and as meaning. (shrink)

In this thesis I outline a view of primary legislation from a systems perspective. I suggest that systems theory and, in particular, autopoietic theory, as modified by field theory, is a mechanism for understanding how society operates. The description of primary legislation that I outline differs markedly from any conventional definition in that I argue that primary legislation is not, and indeed cannot be, either a law or any of the euphemisms that are usually accorded to an enactment by a (...) parliament. I cite two reasons for such a conclusion. The primary reason for my conclusion is that I see primary legislation as being an output of a particular subsystem of society, while the law is the output of another subsystem of society. I argue that these outputs are the discrete products of separate subsystems of society. I argue that primary legislation should be viewed as a trinity. The first state of this trinity is that, upon enactment, primary legislation is a brute fact in that it is but a thing and the only property of this thing is that of being a text. The second state of this trinity is that following the act of enactment, the thing enacted will be reproduced and this reproduction is a separate thing that will sit in some repository until used. The third state of this trinity is that, upon use, this thing that is primary legislation will be transformed into an object and the user will attribute such functions and attributes to that object as are appropriate to the context within which the object is used. The thing has therefore become an object and an institutional fact. The second reason for my conclusion that primary legislation is not a law relates to the fact that the thing that is primary legislation is a text and the only function of a text is that it is available to be read. That is to say, of itself, a text is incapable of doing anything: it is the reader who defines the status of the text and attributes functions and attributes. Upon use, primary legislation thus becomes a censored input for future action and one of these actions may be some statement by a court of law. I assert that the view of primary legislation that has been accepted within the body politic is the product of the discourse of a particular subsystem of society that I have designated 'the legal practice', and I outline why and how this has occurred. Outlining a view about primary legislation also necessitates outlining a view as to the nature of the law. I assert that the law is a myth and I see this myth as a product of the discourse of the legal practice. I have asserted that although it is the judges that state the law, such statements flow from the discourse of those who practise the law. (shrink)

New pharmacological therapies, often dubbed `lifestyle drugs', demonstrate the enactment of yet another interface between technologies and bodies that promises a re-fashioning of the body with transformative, life-enhancing results. This article analyzes the emergence of one lifestyle drug, Viagra, from a technoscience studies perspective, conceptualizing Viagra as a new medical technology of the body. Through an analysis of promotional materials for Viagra, we argue that this pharmaceutical device performs ideological work through its discursive scripts that serves to reinforce and augment (...) dominant cultural narratives in relation to material bodies, particularly those of hegemonic masculinity and male (and female) sexuality. We conclude that Viagra carries the potential to reify and reinforce these dominant and hegemonic narratives, while at the same time, through ensuring an open market for heterogeneous users, it provides spaces for alternatives to these normative ideals and assumptions. (shrink)

World War II research into cryptography and computing produced methods, instruments and research communities that informed early research into artificial intelligence and semi-autonomous computing. Alan Turing and Claude Shannon in particular adapted this research into early theories and demonstrations of AI based on computers’ abilities to track, predict and compete with opponents. This formed a loosely bound collection of techniques, paradigms, and practices I call crypto-intelligence. Subsequent researchers such as Joseph Weizenbaum adapted crypto-intelligence but also reproduced aspects of its antagonistic (...) precepts. This was particularly true in the design and testing of chat bots. Here the ability to trick, fool, and deceive human and machine opponents was a premium, and practices of agent abuse were admired and rewarded. Recognizing the historical genesis of this particular variety of abuse can help researchers develop less antagonistic methodologies. (shrink)

Australia is currently experiencing a prolonged period of water scarcity that is challenging a diverse range of water-dependent activities ranging from household gardening to horticultural production to the viability of riverine ecosystems. The political and ecological importance of water in Australia is not, however, only a recent phenomenon. For the majority of Australia’s settled history, water politics, economics, culture and engineering have reflected and embodied a dynamic relationship between Australian hydrology and Australian society. This essay examines that relationship by first (...) reviewing the work of the Australian historical geographer, Emeritus Professor J. M. Powell. For 40 years Powell has been writing about the process of natural resource appraisal and management in Australia and he has been Australia’s leading authority on the role of water in that process for most of that time. The essay then argues for an extension of Powell’s work by applying the insights provided by the scholars Karl Wittfogel, Donald Worster and Eric Swyngedouw. Their work, it is argued, suggests the possibility of a more nuanced understanding of water in Australia than that currently offered by the majority of the Australian literature, and ultimately provides some tools for thinking ourselves out of the current water crisis. (shrink)

The article begins with Derrida’s etymology of the word ‘archive’: a privileged site to which records are officially consigned and in which they are guarded by legal authority. It explores contemporary variations on the theme of archive. The cases presented include efforts to construct scholarly archives that stand as personal monuments, struggles over the collection and consignment of records during official investigations of government scandals, and the ‘popular archive’ produced by the media spectacle surrounding the O. J. Simpson trial. The (...) discussion orients to these archives not only as sources of documentary information but also as sites of historical struggle over the writing, collection, consignment, destruction and interpretation of writings. (shrink)

A major problem with the emerging sociological literature on cosmopolitanism is that it has not adequately theorized mechanisms that mediate the presumed causal relationship between globalization and the development of cosmopolitan orientations. To solve this problem, I draw on Bruno Latour's actor- network theory to theorize the development of three key elements of cosmopolitanism: cultural omnivorousness, ethnic tolerance, and cosmopolitics. ANT illuminates how humans and nonhumans of multiple nationalities develop attachments with one another to create network structures that sustain cosmopolitanism. (...) ANT also helps the sociology of cosmopolitanism become more reflexive and critical of its implicit normative claims. (shrink)

Central to several current philosophical projects is determining which conversational conventions will best locate and accommodate all the required participants. This article follows Troy Paddock’s lead in exploring a number of conventions currently on offer, particularly Heidegger’s aesthetic nearness-to-hand and Latour’s scientific Actor-Network-Theory. This article also introduces Donald Davidson’s social triangulation as a complementary model of approach: one thatimplicates propositional agents in potentially revealing relations. It concludes that a close study of implicational, as distinct from inferential, argument and judgment may (...) prove profitable in establishing a secure and productive environment, and may foster the emergence of modeling techniques and metrics that could help in designing such conversations. (shrink)

This paper points out the need for an analytical and ontological reorientation of the field of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). It is argued that even though this field is heterogeneous it is marred by general problems of conceptualising the co-constitutive relations between humans and technologies. This is demonstrated through readings of several recent CSCW analyses. It is then suggested that a conceptual improvement can be facilitated by paying attention to newer scientific studies, here exemplified by Pickering, Haraway and Latour.

This thesis explores the relationship between occupations and the ontology of the social. I begin by drawing a distinction between the messianic and the modern as concentrated in the affective transformation of vocation into occupation. I then, in the Introduction, sketch an ontic-ontological contrast proper to the modern, between modernity, as the collective problematization of social diversity, and the contemporary, as the plural ground of need which provides a source for these problematizations. I argue that this distinction will enable me (...) to shed new light on the occupational as a distinctly modern event. In Part I, I begin by providing a reading of Durkheim in which I argue that the occupational is to be understood ontologically, but no longer by means of the theorization of society and social types. This kind of theorization, exemplified in Durkheim's concept of solidarity, contains a fundamental ambiguity between this concept's ontological senses of original diversity and of unity in diversity. Durkheim's thought is thus first intelligible in terms of an implicit evolutionary sense of coherence or `need of wholeness.' However, the explicit evolutionary framework and its central typological difference between the mechanical and organic is an attempt to resolve the ambiguity that must fail because it addresses primarily a distinction of obligation rather than a distinction of need. Obligation is shown to be a concept of facticity which overcodes and obscures the distinction of need. I then go on to argue that sociality can be better accounted for in terms of a continuity of social becoming which is revealed in a perspective of modernity purged of the modernist tendency to metaphorize this continuity in terms such as `solidity' (Durkheim) and `flow' (Tarde). This perspective is the irreducibly plural perspective of the contemporary, which, I conclude Part I by suggesting, lies in a sense of merging with a social outside. In Part II, I turn to investigate the outside by discussing the social thought of Bergson and Deleuze. Bergson's thought is presented as an alternative to the deductivesociologistic approaches of Durkheim and Tarde, because it attempts to critically affirm the smooth duration of social continuity. However, I argue that the notion of `open society' that Bergson presents is still too tied to a model of rare spirituality and hence to the messianic perspective. I then proceed to a social-theoretical analysis of Deleuze's oeuvre, in order to show how he uses elements of a thought of continuity from Tarde (microsociology) and from Bergson (multiplicity), but that he is able to transcend the family-model-centeredness of Tarde and the rare-spiritual-modelcenteredness of Bergson, by theorizing non-modelled figures of transformative affective multiplicity inscribed within the actual, ie. `full particularities'. In my concluding chapter, I show how the intellectual trajectory which takes us from Durkheim to Deleuze can be analysed as a movement from a doctrine or relatively passive notion of social externality towards a more active social image of the outside. In particular, I am concerned to show how this image of the outside can be recontextualized in terms of a movement of occupation that can be thought of as always combining a sense of the contemporary with a sense of modernity. (shrink)

Latour is widely considered a critic and renewer of research in the social sciences. The ecologically minded Left has also acclaimed him as a theorist interested in bringing nature back both into sociological theory and into society and politics. To enable a more detailed discussion of Latour’s claims, I will here outline his theory and the ways in which it is related to classical theory, such as Durkheim, and the methodology of the interpretive paradigm, such as Schütz. My thesis is (...) that Latour’s empirical studies may be read as unfolding the methodological consequences of the interpretive paradigm, and that his early work is a brilliant proof of Durkheim’s theory of the morphology of social facts. Latour has now elaborated the insights he gained from concrete laboratory studies toward a general theory of the social, of society, and of politics. These generalizations have made his theory at least partly problematic. The political implication of Latour’s theory of society is a generalization of the call for equality to encompass everything; in other words, Latour criticizes the exclusion of nonhuman entities from political representation. The paper closes by discussing the political consequences of this proposal. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s radical critique of technology has fundamentally stigmatized modern technology and paved the way for a comprehensive critique of contemporary Western society. However, the following reassessment of Heidegger’s most elaborate and influential interpretation of technology, The Question Concerning Technology, sheds a very different light on his critique. In fact, Heidegger’s phenomenological line of thinking concerning technology also implies a radical critique of ancient technology and the fundamental being-in-the-world of humans. This revision of Heidegger’s arguments claims that The Question Concerning (...) Technology indicates a previous unseen ambiguity with respect to the origin of the rule of das Gestell. The following inquiry departs from Heidegger’s critique of modern technology and connects it to a reassessment of ancient technology and Aristotle’s justification of slavery. The last part of the paper unfolds Heidegger’s underlying arguments in favor of continuity within the history of technology. According to these interpretations, humans have always strived to develop modern technology and to become truly modern in the Heideggerian sense. The danger stemming from the rule of das Gestell is thus not only transient and solely directed toward contemporary Western society, but also I will argue that humans can only be humans as the ones challenged by the rule of das Gestell. (shrink)

Analysis of the debate concerning the appropriate way of researching the effects of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments highlights the controversial issue of the mind–body bond in medical research. The article examines a range of approaches, extending from outright opposition to CAM research, through the demand to employ only rigorous trials, to suggestions to use a hierarchy of evidence, up to practice‐based research proposals. These diverse approaches are analysed using theoretical concepts from the field of sociology of science and (...) knowledge. The article uses the concept of “hybrid knowledge” to denote the knowledge being constructed in late modern CAM discourse—knowledge that hybridises differentiated and even contradictory modern categories of knowledge. The article suggests that the different approaches taken by sociologists of science and knowledge, such as strong anti‐dualism and the assertion that there are differences in our understanding of the natural and the cultural–social terrain, are all useful and are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The article seeks to clarify the debate concerning the appropriate way of researching CAM and to contribute to the ongoing development and application of sociology of knowledge. (shrink)

Biopolitical analyses of census -taking usually focus on human censuses and consider how human experience is shaped by the practice. Instead, this article looks at the proposed global biodiversity census, which aims to take inventory of every species on earth as a response to anthropogenic species extinction. I suggest that it is possible to extend and modify Foucault's concept of biopower to consider contemporary human-nonhuman interactions. Specifically, I argue that an ecologically-extended version of biopower offers a useful way to conceptualise (...) how power circulates in the practices that surround the biodiversity census, and that it points us towards thinking about how analyses of power, authority, and community can consider ecological, rather than purely human, locations and networks. (shrink)

This article is about our relationship with things; about the abundant material geographies that surround us and constitute the very possibility for us to be the beings that we are. More specifically, it is about the question of the possibility of an ethical encounter with things (qua things). We argue, with the science and technology studies tradition (and Latour in particular), that we are the beings that we are through our entanglements with things, we are thoroughly hybrid beings, cyborgs through (...) and through – we have never been otherwise. With Heidegger we propose that a human-centred ethics of hybrids will fail to open a space for an ethical encounter with things since all beings in the sociomaterial network – humans and non-human alike – end up circulating as objects, enframed as ‘standing reserve’, things-for-the-purposes-of the network. We suggest that what is needed is an ethos beyond ethics, or the overcoming of an ethics – which is based on the will to power – towards an ethos of letting be. We elaborate such a possibility with the help of Heidegger, in particular with reference to the work of Graham Harman and his notion of ‘tool-being’. From this we propose, very tentatively, an ethos that has as its ground a poetic dwelling with things, a way of being that lets being be (Gelassenheit). We show how such a poetic dwelling, or ethos of Gelassenheit, may constitute the impossible possibility of a very otherwise way of being with things – an ethos of a ‘community of those who have nothing in common’ as suggested by Alphonso Lingis. (shrink)

This article demonstrates that our more sophisticated theories of law lead us to a point where we are no longer able to distinguish law from culture, or society, or the market, or politics or anything of the sort. Not only are the various terms inextricably intertwined (something that other thinkers have observed) but we are no longer in a position to articulate any relations between these various terms at all. It is with this latter realization that the dedifferentiation problem kicks (...) in. Because the various terms cannot be disentangled, we find ourselves in the odd position where there is nothing of any positive character to be said about their relations. Each is already the other and, thus, they can have no relation. This is rather bad news for the ways in which we have traditionally conceived theories of law—indeed any theory that gets off the ground by distinguishing law from a discrete something else (which, on first glance, would seem to include all legal theory). (shrink)

(1996). The economic consequences of Bruno Latour. Social Epistemology: Vol. 10, Economic Metaphors in Science Studies, pp. 193-208. doi: 10.1080/02691729608578814.

In this article, Thomas Kuhn’s theory of incommensurable paradigms learned through exemplars is discussed as a theory of acculturation akin to those of cultural anthropology. Yet his hermeneutic approach results in a classic problem, referred to here as the paradox of objective relativism. A solution, at least for observers of contemporary cultures, is drawn from Kuhn’s own writings: a fieldwork method of “going native.” It is argued that Kuhn’s views are as important a corrective for anthropologists studying native systems of (...) knowledge as they have been for philosophers and sociologists of science. The epistemological and disciplinary implications of such a methodology are discussed. (shrink)

In this article I re-examine Adorno's and Horkheimer's account of the disenchantment of nature in Dialectic of Enlightenment . I argue that they identify disenchantment as a historical process whereby we have come to find natural things meaningless and completely intelligible. However, Adorno and Horkheimer believe that modernity not only rests on disenchantment but also tends to re-enchant nature, because it encourages us to think that its institutions derive from, and are anticipated and prefigured by, nature. I argue that Adorno's (...) Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory show how constellations and artworks generate an alternative form of reenchantment which is critical of modernity and its domination of nature. This form of re-enchantment finds natural beings to be mysteriously meaningful because they embody histories of immeasurable suffering. This experience engenders guilt and antipathy to human domination over nature. (shrink)

The stakes are very high in many struggles over cultural property, not only because the property is itself valuable, but also because property rights of many kinds hinge on cultural identity. However, the language of property rights and possession, and the standards for establishing cultural rights, is founded in antiquated and essentialized concepts of cultural continuity and cultural purity. As cultural property and culturally-defined rights become increasingly valuable in the global marketplace, disputes over ownership and management are becoming more and (...) more intense. Using the example of a recent lawsuit over logging on Mayan Indian reservations in the Central American country of Belize, this paper argues that cultural essentialist positions are no longer tenable. Assigning exclusive ownership of globally important resources to any group or entity on purely cultural grounds is likely to prolong conflict instead of creating workable management structures. The author instead advocates a concept of “stakeholding” which acknowledges the legitimate interests of diverse individuals and groups. (shrink)

This survey of major developments in North American philosophy of science begins with the mid-1960s consolidation of the disciplinary synthesis of internalist history and philosophy of science (HPS) as a response to criticisms of logical empiricism. These developments are grouped for discussion under the following headings: historical metamethodologies, scientific realisms, philosophies of the special sciences, revivals of empiricism, cognitivist naturalisms, social epistemologies, feminist theories of science, studies of experiment and the disunity of science, and studies of science as practice and (...) culture. A unifying theme of the survey is the relation between historical metamethodologists and scientific realists, which dominated philosophical work in the late 1970s. I argue that many of the alternative cognitive naturalisms, social epistemologies, and feminist theories that have been proposed can be understood as analogues to the differences between metamethodological theories of scientific rationality and realist accounts of successful reference to real causal processes. Recent work on experiment, scientific practice, and the culture of science may, however, challenge the underlying conception of the field according to which realism and historical rationalism (or their descendants) are the important alternatives available, and thus may take philosophy of science in new directions. (shrink)

Despite a recent resurgence of interest in social ontology, the standard conceptualization of social/cultural objects reiterates dichotomies such as nature and culture, subjectivity and objectivity: the objective components of a social/cultural environment are usually divided into their material substratum, natural or manufactured, and their imposed or assigned social import. Inert materiality and subjectively or intersubjectively assigned meanings and functions remain distinct as constitutive aspects of a reality that is intuitively experienced as a whole. In contrast—by means of examining a broad (...) range of natural/cultural entities—I propose an experiential or visceral ontology of the social, which addresses the comprehensive nature of our experience of cultural objects, as well as their perpetual transmutability within the space between nature and culture, objectivity and subjectivity. This perspective allows for a cathexis of meaning in the material constitution of cultural entities—in contrast to a mere imposition of detachable layers of meaning—and suggests a reconsideration of our unexamined perception of social/political action as editorial supervision and correction. Moreover, I point out the centrality of the concept of practice for recovering the lived sense of social things, since practice, by virtue of its inalienable informality, constitutes the field of Protean renewal of this sense. I understand my approach as complementary to the body-turn in contemporary social theory, since I extend the postulation of meaningfulness in the objective aspect of subjective existence towards its lived surroundings, which are here perceived as engaged in a process of meaningful practiced reciprocations with corporeal subjectivities. (shrink)

The article defines a new referential problem of ethnographic description: the verbalization of the “silent” dimension of the social. As a documentary procedure, description has been devalued by more advanced recording techniques that set a naturalistic standard concerning the reification of qualitative “data.” I discuss this standard from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge and replace it by a challenge unknown to all empirical procedures relying on primary verbalizations of informants. Descriptions have to solve the problems of the voiceless, (...) the silent, the unspeakable, the pre-linguistic, and the indescribable. Ethnography puts something into words, which did not exist in language before. To respond to this task, descriptions have to turn away from the logic of recording and develop into a theory-oriented research practice. (shrink)

This essay enacts a philosophy of science education inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's figurations of rhizomatic and nomadic thought. It imagines rhizomes shaking the tree of modern Western science and science education by destabilising arborescent conceptions of knowledge as hierarchically articulated branches of a central stem or trunk rooted in firm foundations, and explores how becoming nomadic might liberate science educators from the sedentary judgmental positions that serve as the nodal points of Western academic science education theorising. This (...) is demonstrated by commencing two rhizomatic textual assemblages that generate questions, provocations and challenges to dominant discourses and assumptions of contemporary science education. The first of these addresses cultural representations of Sir Isaac Newton and the second makes multiple, hybrid connections among the parasites, mosquitoes, humans, technologies and socio‐technical relations signified by malaria. (shrink)

This paper explores the sense in which modern societies can be said to be rational. Social rationality cannot be understood on the model of an idealized image of scientific method. Neither science nor society conforms to this image. Nevertheless, critique is routinely silenced by neo-liberal and technocratic arguments that appeal to social simulacra of science. This paper develops a critical strategy for addressing the resistance of rationality to rational critique. Romantic rejection of reason has proven less effective than strategies that (...) conceptualize modern artefacts, systems, and organizations as rationally underdetermined. This approach first appears in Marx's analysis of capitalist economics. Although he lacks the concept of underdetermination, Marx gets around the silencing effect of social rationality with something very much like it in his discussion of the length of the working day. Frankfurt School Critical Theory later blended romantic elements with Marxian ones in a suggestive but ambiguous mixture. The concept of underdetermination reappears in contemporary science and technology studies, now clearly articulated and philosophically and sociologically elaborated. But somewhere along the way the critical thrust was diluted. Critical theory of technology attempts to recover that thrust. Here its approach is generalized to cover the three main forms of social rationality. (shrink)

The following paper continues discussions within this journal about how the work of Delueze and Guattari can inform radical pedagogy. Building primarily on Noel Gough's 2004 paper, we take up the challenge to move towards a more creative form of 'becoming cyborg' in our teaching. In contrast to work that has focused on Deleuzian theories of the rhizome, we deploy Guattari's work on institutional schizoanalysis to explore the role of group creativity in radical pedagogy. The institutional therapies of Felix Guattari's (...) schizoanalytic practice in the 1950s and 1960s and, before him, the Francophone educationalist Celestin Freinet, who founded the Modern School Movement, are explored and used to illuminate examples of some of our own attempts to set the classroom up as a space for collective engagement. We conclude by exploring how this understanding of the class as subject group may be used to mobilise action and de-stabilise the coordinates of existing academic divisions of labour. (shrink)

In this paper we examine attempts to reframe the ethics of nature-society relations. We trace a postmodern turn which reflects a distrust of overarching moral codes and narratives and points towards a more nuanced understanding of how personal moral impulses are embedded within, and inter-subjectively constituted by, contextual configurations of self and other. We also trace an ethical turn which reflects a critique of anthropocentrism and points towards moves to non-anthropocentric frames in which the othernesses and ethics of difference are (...) shaped by an acknowledgement that human and non-human agency are relationally bound and assembled in networks and places. These turns suggest the need for a more sensitive 'ethical mindfulness' which is grounded in particular space-time contexts. Throughout the paper we draw on research we have conducted on the interconnections between trees and places, and in particular we describe three specific tree-places - an urban square, an urban cemetery and an orchard - which provide grounded contexts of encounter and potential for ethical mindedness. We conclude that notions of intrinsicality, otherness, enchantment and hybridity are helpful in configuring the search for grounded ethical mindfulness, both for and in nature. (shrink)