Drawing on the work of Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers on the history of chemistry, this article develops the idea that drug molecules can be understood as ‘informed materials’. This study argues that molecules should not be viewed as discrete objects, but as constituted in their relations to complex informational and material environments. Through a case study of commercial pharmaceutical R&D, the article examines the role of combinatorial and computational chemistry in enriching the informational and material environment of potential drug (...) molecules. Within the contemporary pharmaceutical laboratory, experiments on molecules can be conducted not just in vitro and in vivo but also, according to researchers, in silico. Molecules come to exist not just as physical reagents but also as elements of arrays, libraries and databases of other molecules, and in a virtual form in computer simulations and virtual libraries. Molecules are also understood by researchers to exist in a ‘chemical space’ of other different molecules, where the notion of chemical space is used both to refer to differences in molecular structure and to territories owned or occupied by particular firms. The article argues that pharmaceutical companies do not merely discover molecular structures that potentially could exist, but also invent novel forms of chemical entity. (shrink)

The last few years have seen increasing research interest in moods and atmospheres. While this trend has been accompanied by growing interest in the history of the wordStimmungin other disciplines, this has not yet been the case within philosophy. Against this background, this paper offers a conceptual history of the wordStimmung, focusing on the period from Kant to Heidegger, as this period is, presumably, less known to researchers working with notions like mood, attunement or atmosphere today. Thus, considering this period (...) might provide conceptual resources not yet considered in current debate.Stimmunghas the remarkable feature of encompassing the entire semantic field of mood and atmosphere, insofar as both subjects and objects can literally be inStimmung.Stimmungmight refer to the state or condition of being attuned, which is understood as a dispositional state, as well as the process or act of attuning, which includes self-activating and foreign-determined forms of attuning. The word was first used for the tuning of musical instruments, but was quickly transferred to the fields of aesthetics, psychology, and physiology. This paper will focus on the contrast between the psychological canonization ofStimmungas a type of mental state, and the use ofStimmungas an untranslatable, irreducible metaphor with unique semantic force allowing for original theorizing. (shrink)

The notion of `memes' as replicators similar to genes, but concerned with cultural units, was put forward by Dawkins (1976). Blackmore (1999) used this notion to elaborate an ambitious theory designed to account for numerous aspects of human evolution and psychology. Her theory is based on the human capacity for imitation, and although the operation of the `memes' is said to be purely mechanical, the figurative language used implies that their `actions' are purposive. This article will show that imitation had (...) been regarded as important for human advance well before Darwinism. Moreover, at the end of the 19th century descriptions of the functioning of imitation in society had been put forward that closely parallel those given by Blackmore. Hence it is argued that what is convincing about her thesis is not new, and what is new is speculative and highly questionable. (shrink)

Despite their common core in statistics, insurance and epidemiology propel two different forms of solidarity. In insurance, the collective is a source of protection, thanks to the pooling of risks; in epidemics by contrast, the group remains the source of danger for the individual. The aim of this paper is to highlight the conceptions of community and solidarity at play in epidemics in contradistinction to insurance, with a focus on the shift introduced by big data and algorithms. Paradoxically, while the (...) new technologies and epidemiology share a common view on the relation between the individual and the collective, tracing apps were not widely adopted in the Covid-19 crisis. This reluctance to use current technologies for the sake of epidemic containments highlights, beyond legitimate interrogations, a confusion between two imaginaries of the social: insurance solidarity where the interdependence is a source of rights, and epidemic solidarity that imposes duties. (shrink)

This article examines how Georges Bataille, one of the celebrated precursors of the postmodern death of a linguistic subject, is also a Nietzschean, pre-Freudian thinker who offers us an account of the birth of an affective subject. If critics still tend to recuperate Bataille within a “metaphysics of the subject,” the present article shows that the central concept of his thought needs to be reconsidered in the light of his debt to Pierre Janet’s “psychology of the socius,” an interpersonal psychology (...) that transgresses precisely this metaphysics. In line with contemporary theoretical developments, Bataille’s account of the birth of the subject out of the laughter of the socius offers us a theoretical model to rethink the foundations of subjectivity in relational, mimetic terms. (shrink)

According to a recent and prominent view, a ‘we-perspective’ arises out of a dyadic I-you relation involving a special form of reciprocity in which I relate to another as a you – as somebody who is also attending and addressing me. As important as this argument might be, one obvious limitation lies in that it typically applies to dyadic forms of ‘we’ which are bound to the here and now of face-to-face interactions between ‘ad hoc pairs of individuals’. Drawing inspiration (...) from Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason and Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, I will argue that in order to trace a way out of this impasse, one needs to shift the theoretical focus from dyadic face-to-face (immediate) relations of reciprocity between I and You, self and other to ternary relations of ‘mediated reciprocity’ involving the figure and the functions of a third party (le tiers). (shrink)

This article describes the historical abandonment of the distinctive conception of the social dimensions of cognition, emotion and behavior embraced by American social psychologists in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is suggested that part of the reason why the original conception of the social was abandoned by American psychologists was because of its association with theories of the “group mind,” the apparent threat it posed to cherished principles of rationality and autonomy, and the impoverished conception of the (...) social inherited from European crowd theorists that came to inform the experimental study of social groups. It is suggested that while these factors partly explain the neglect of the social in American social psychology, none represent particularly good reasons for abandoning the original conception of the social. Consequently there are in principle no impediments to the revival of the theoretical and experimental study of the social dimensions of cognition, emotion and behavior in contemporary American social psychology. (shrink)

This article revisits the case of Woody Allen’s mockumentary Zelig via Friedrich Nietzsche’s diagnostic of mimicry in The Gay Science. It argues that the case of the “human chameleon” remains contemporary for both philosophical and political reasons. On the philosophical side, I argue that the case of Zelig challenges an autonomous conception of the subject based on rational self-sufficiency by proposing a relational conception of the subject open to mimetic influences that will have to await the discovery of mirror neurons (...) in the 1990s in order to find an empirical confirmation. On the political side, I say that Zelig foregrounds the power of authoritarian leaders in the 1930s to cast a spell on both imitative crowds and publics in terms that provide a mimetic supplement to Hannah Arendt’s account of the “banality of evil”. The philosophical purchase of Zelig’s cinematic dramatization of a mimetic subject is that it reveals how the “inability to think” characteristic of the case of Eichmann rests on unnoticed affective principles constitutive of the all-too-human penchant for “mimicry” the film dramatises. Thus reframed, the human chameleon reflects the dangers of mimetic dispossessions that reached massive proportions in the past century and continue to cast a shadow on the present century. (shrink)

L’histoire officielle de la discipline veut que la psychologie sociale française, née et morte aussitôt à la fin du XIXe siècle, ait connu une longue éclipse pour renaître seulement dans les années 1950 sous influence américaine. Cette disparition dans la première moitié du XXe siècle serait due à la domination de la sociologie durkheimienne qui passe pour être hostile à la psychologie. Cet article remet en cause cette vision traditionnelle. Il montre que la sociologie durkheimienne s’est elle-même définie comme une (...) psychologie collective et qu’elle a su, à partir des années 1910 environ, ouvrir un véritable dialogue avec les psychologues au sein de l’université. L’idée durkheimienne que les catégories les plus fondamentales de la pensée sont déjà des constructions sociales provoqua chez les psychologues une véritable petite révolution intellectuelle. Elle les obligea en effet à sortir du champ étroit de la psychophysiologie qu’avaient promu depuis 1870 les fondateurs tels Taine et Ribot, en réaction contre le spiritualisme. Cette nouvelle psychologie sociale a influencé la plupart des grands psychologues de l’époque (Blondel, Dumas, Janet, Meyerson, Wallon), mais le temps et les hommes lui ont manqué pour s’institutionnaliser. De fait, elle disparaît avec la mort de ses principaux artisans (Blondel et Halbwachs) et l’oubli parfois volontaire pratiqué par leurs successeurs. (shrink)

Dis/Abling Practices: Rethinking Disability The paper discusses how ordinary acts of everyday life make up the complex and contingent scenarios of disabilities that create enabling and disabling (dis/abling) practices. Drawing on qualitative empirical data the societal visibility and relevance of dis/abling practices are analyzed by connecting disability studies and sociological ideas with insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS). The essay explores how (visual) dis/ability is the outcome of human and non-human configurations and suggests that dis/ability can be understood neither (...) as an individual bodily impairment nor as a socially attributed disability. Rather, dis/ability refers to complex sets of heterogeneous practices that (re-)associate bodies, material objects, and technologies with sensory practices. These practices, the paper concludes, draw attention to the multiple processes that (re-) concatenate the conduct of human affairs. (shrink)

Marquée à juste titre par le mouvement des Annales, l’historiographie française a intériorisé lidée qu’avant 1929 dominait ce que Henri Berr avait stigmatisé sous le nom d’ « histoire traditionnelle » : une histoire politique et individualiste ne tenant pas compte des déterminations collectives, sociales ou mentales. La fameuse Introduction aux études historiques de Langlois et Seignobos (1898) serait l’expression de ce «positivisme» qu’aurait initié Gabriel Monod, fondateur de la Revue historique en 1876. Cette vision traditionnelle de l’histoire de la (...) discipline est globalement remise en cause dans cet article qui montre que les années 1870-1930 sont au contraire un moment central dans l’historiographie tant au plan institutionnel qu’au plan intellectuel, qui nous intéresse surtout ici. C’est en effet dès cette époque que s’est cristallisée laspiration à faire de l’histoire une science sociale, ce qui se comprend aisément dès lors qu’on contextualise cette histoire et que l’on replace cette discipline dans l’ensemble du champ des sciences sociales. Les années 1890–1914 voient même se développer fortement une histoire économique et une histoire sociale. 1929 apparaît alors moins comme une révolution que comme une accélération dans une direction déjà marquée. (shrink)

In 2015, observers argued that the fourth agricultural revolution had been initiated. This article focuses on one part of this high-tech revolution: the origin, development, applications, and user value of unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Institutional changes connected to the UAS innovation are analyzed, based on a Swedish case study. The methods included autoethnography. The theoretical frame was composed by four perspectives: innovation, institutions, sustainability, and ethics. UAS can help farmers cut costs and produce higher quantity with better quality, and also (...) has environmental benefits. However, this promising innovation was exposed to institutional forces and suddenly became subordinated the Act of Camera Surveillance. This study illuminates how legislative institutions can inhibit responsible innovation. The study shows that different ethical perspectives can collide with each other. (shrink)

Imitation and mirroring processes are necessary but not sufficient conditions for children to develop human sociality. Human sociality entails more than the equivalence and connectedness of perceptual experiences. It corresponds to the sense of a shared world made of shared values. It originates from complex ‘open’ systems of reciprocation and negotiation, not just imitation and mirroring processes that are by definition ‘closed’ systems. From this premise, we argue that if imitation and mirror processes are important foundations for sociality, human inter-subjectivity (...) develops primarily in reciprocation, not just imitation. Imitation provides a basic sense of social connectedness and mutual acknowledgment of existing with others that are ‘like me.’ However, it does not allow for the co-construction of meanings with others. For human sociality to develop, imitation and mirroring processes need to be supplemented by an open system of reciprocation. Developmental research shows that from the second month, mirroring, imitative, and other contagious emotional responses are by-passed. Imitation gives way to first signs of reciprocation (primary intersubjectivity), joint attention to objects (secondary intersubjectivity), the emergence of values that are jointly represented and negotiated with others (tertiary intersubjectivity), and eventually the development of an ethical stance accompanying theories of mind by 4 years of age. We review this development and propose that if mirroring processes enable individuals to bridge their subjective experiences, human inter-subjectivity proper develops from reciprocal social exchanges that lead to value negotiation and mutual recognition, both cardinal trademarks of human sociality. (shrink)

The paper addresses the scarcity of research on the new rich in urban anthropology. It argues that sumptuary spending is meant to establish and display an honourable ascendancy, and stems from a need for public recognition. This is particularly visible in the palaces of the nouveau riche in Eastern Europe. Too often, these buildings are unduly ethnicized; the paper claims that this ideological approach aims at denying Easter European Roma the possibility of taking part in the urban competition of the (...) new rich and at excluding them from the wider urban context of the new rich in the post-Socialist territories, from Bucharest to Batumi and Astana. From Roma businessmen to a parvenu doctor in Cluj, the identity strategies of the new rich resemble each other. They draw on universal artistic heritage to create an image of ancient virtue for their owners. (shrink)

Foodscapes, the ways and places in which human beings interact with food, are dominated by the global agri-food system. In many ways, it has never been easier to access such varieties or quantities of food. Be it in restaurants, supermarkets or local markets, food is often only a quick purchase away from the plate. In spite of that, there are persons who choose to follow alternative paths, moving away from reliance on the conventional system by engaging in practices of food (...) self-reliance. In this paper, using the analytical lenses of behavioural, social innovation and social practice theories, we explore why and how people strive for self-reliance and self-governing their foodscapes. We apply these lenses to data gathered from site visits and in-depth interviews with those engaged in self-reliant practices in Flanders. The practices we encountered range from permaculture to transition towns and illustrate the diverse alternative foodscapes found in Flanders. Our research reveals that while practices—and the people who engage in them—may at first appear distinct, they have commonalities as well, including similar values, needs, goals and more. These diverse elements combine to create, reshape and sustain practices within foodscapes. By further understanding the motivational, biogeophysical and social underpinnings that enable them we reveal a diverse, yet connected, continuum of practices. (shrink)

Usually, the shape of the future is seen as the result of a cultural flow that, according to some privileged cultural variable, like technology, goes undisturbed towards its own outcome. This is a quite naive attitude that has been very rarely successful. Both conventional technology and technology of the artificial show that, within culture, ‘demons’ are always active trying to exploit or even bypass standards in order to give birth to unexpected novelties. This is true within the pure technology area (...) and even more in its artistic extensions. Therefore, no deterministic process is going on but, rather, a permanent remixing of chances that makes any prophecy impossible. (shrink)

This article was first published in City, Territory and Architecture, volume 5, Article number : 4 under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. We thank the authors for the permission to republish it here.: The recent, rich scholarship on rhythms, following in the wake of Lefebvre's book Éléments de rythmanalyse, proves that rhythmanalysis is an important sensitising notion and research technique. Despite its increasing recognition, - Urbanisme – Nouvel article.

Collective memory, social memory, professional memory: although these notions are in current use when we name the shared (or assumed to be shared) representations of the past, they are very ambiguous. The point at issue is to show how memories can become common to some or to all members of a group . In this paper, I shall base my arguments on the simplest situation imaginable: The sharing of a memory of an olfactory experience by two individuals, namely one of (...) my informants – a gravedigger – and myself. We can try to explain this shared olfactory memory, or the imagination of this sharing, by taking two facets into consideration. First of all, we must learn to take seriously those few seconds when a shared experience of the sensory world took shape between the anthropologist and his informant. Secondly, we must attempt to answer both of the following questions: what is the nature of this sharing? And what conditions make it possible? In the first part of this text, I examine the issue of the nature of sharing by weighing up its aspects as I consider protomemory, memory and metamemory. In the second part, I outline one of the essential conditions of sharing: the existence of what I call sociotransmitters. For the most part, my attention remains focused on that particular moment when the gravedigger said, “Smell this!” , and when what was at stake was to save the interaction. (shrink)

A review of the paradigms of social influence – suggestion, imitation, normalization, conformity, compliance, conversion – leads me to diagnose a triple malaise: the shrinkage of paradigms to cognitive dual-processing theories of information; the dominant methodology of laboratory experiments falls short of the reality of (mass) communication; and the focus of social influence on inter-subjectivity is only half of the story. I will suggest two extensions of social influence theory to include mass media communication and the inter-objectivity of artefacts. We (...) need to be able to conceptualize the modalities of why, how and to what effect somebody might put up a wall to influence neighbours instead of contenting themselves with putting up a public note ‘Do not trespass!’. Social influence by fait accompli needs to be within the remit of social psychology, otherwise it loses its relevance in a technological society where artefacts mediate most inter-personal relations. (shrink)

This essay aims to explore imitation in social contexts. The argument that summarizes my claim is that the perception of other people’s behaviour conditions the agent in imitating that behaviour, as evidence from social psychology holds (Bargh and Chartrand in J Pers Soc Psychol 76(6):893–910, 1999; Bargh and Ferguson in Psychol Bull 126(6):925–945, 2000; Bargh and Ferguson in Trends Cogn Sci 8(1):33–39, 2004), but what the agent perceives and experiences becomes potential motives for her actions only through her identification with (...) a particular way of being and acting. Therefore, although the agent’s actions are conditioned by perceptual stimuli, the latter are not the cause of the actions. The agent is the ultimate cause. That is, a convergence between perceptual stimuli and conscious will. I take this latter conclusion to suggest a compatibilist approach whereby action in a social situation would require the perceptual conditioning as much as the freedom and consciousness of the agent. (shrink)

First, this article will outline the metaphysics of `the social' that implicitly and explicitly connects the work of classical and contemporary cosmopolitan sociologists as different as Durkheim, Weber, Beck and Luhmann. In a second step, I will show that the cosmopolitan outlook of classical sociology is driven by exclusive differences. In understanding human affairs, both classical sociology and contemporary cosmopolitan sociology reflect a very modernist outlook of epistemological, conceptual, methodological and disciplinary rigour that separates the cultural sphere from the natural (...) objects of concern. I will suggest that classical sociology — in order to be cosmopolitan — is forced (1) to exclude non-social and non-human objects as part of its conceptual and methodological rigour, and (2) consequently and methodologically to rule out the non-social and the non-human. Cosmopolitan sociology imagines `the social' as a global, universal explanatory device to conceive and describe the non-social and non-human. In a third and final step the article draws upon the work of the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde and offers a possible alternative to the modernist social and cultural other-logics of social sciences. It argues for a inclusive conception of `the social' that gives the non-social and non-human a cosmopolitan voice as well. (shrink)

This paper revisits the different notions of influence, persuasion and influencebound subjects. It illustrates and critiques the dominant prevailing concept of influence and its effects, which, though diversely denominated and presented through various theories, always comes down to reaffirming the relationship of dominance and the possibility of the nullification of the subject within the relationship with the other. With this aim, it studies the classical theories of interpersonal influence and brings to attention some of the bodies of information which have (...) been systematically neglected or set aside, particularly concerning suggestion, possession, mesmerism and somnambulism. (shrink)

The paper critically reconstructs the crowd psychological heritage in phenomenological and social science emotion research. It shows how the founding figures of phenomenology and sociology uncritically adopted Le Bon’s crowd psychological imagery as well as what I suggest calling the disease model of emotion transfer. Against this background, it can be examined how Le Bon’s understanding of emotional contagion as an automatic, involuntary, and uncontrollable mechanism has remained a dominant force in emotion research until today. However, a closer look at (...) phenomenological descriptions and empirical investigations of how emotion’s spread shows that there is little evidence supporting Le Bon’s crowd psychological framework. Thus, I suggest that the disease model should be dismissed in favor of more plausible approaches to interpersonal emotion dynamics. (shrink)

The concepts of “collective” and “social” are routinely confused, with claims about collective facts and their necessity justified by evidence that involves only social or interactional facts. This is the case with Harry Colllins’ argument for tacit knowledge as well. But the error is deeply rooted in the history of philosophy, in the notion of shared presuppositions popularized by neo-Kantianism, which confused logical claims of necessity with factual claims about groups. Claims of this neo-Kantian kind have difficulties shared by Collins’s (...) argument for Collective Tacit Knowledge. The alternative, a fully social account of our capacities of understanding and interpretation, avoids these difficulties and allows for a model of tacit knowledge that serves the supposed explanatory needs that the “collective” part of Collins’s account purports to meet. (shrink)

The history of innovation as a category is dominated by economists and by the contribution of J. A. Schumpeter. This paper documents the contribution of a neglected but influential author, the American sociologist William F. Ogburn. Over a period of more than 30 years, Ogburn developed pioneering ideas on three dimensions of technological innovation: origins, diffusion, and effects. He also developed the first conceptual framework for innovation studies—based on the concept of cultural lags—which led to studying and forecasting the impacts (...) of technological innovation on society. All in all, Ogburn has been as important to the sociology of technology as Robert K. Merton has been to the sociology of science and Schumpeter to the economics of technological innovation. (shrink)