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This text provides a summary of various interviews with Bruno Latour, a scholar known for his interdisciplinary work on ecology and the socioecological crisis. Latour discusses topics such as the origins and spread of COVID-19, the acceleration of the world system after 1989, the concept of the Anthropocene, redefining territory, the role of universities, the intersection of ecology and religion, the social construction of science, the impact of digital networks on politics, the importance of philosophy, and his hopes for the future. While some may disagree with Latour's arguments, he is recognized as a thought-provoking and influential scholar. [Extracted from the article]

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Bruno Latour's concept of translation provides ways to both extend the 'material turn' in translation studies and conceptualise translation as process. This concept cannot be understood apart from Latour's critique of Modern epistemology which requires an alternative conception of temporality and, in the context of the Anthropocene, provides a means to imagine futures and pasts beyond the tropes of growth vs contraction or progress vs regression. In this article, Latour's concept of translation is read through Anna Tsing's anthropological account of the matsutake mushroom trade, engaging this thick descriptive case-study to further develop translation as times of indeterminate encounters. This approach provides a means to conceptualise translation in terms of material agency, from which notions of translation-as-meaning, and linguistic translation can be more credibly theorised, contributing both within and beyond translation studies to discussions on new materialist philosophy and its implications, arguing for the importance of translational thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 9 October 2022, Bruno Latour died. His death was widely and deeply mourned. He is a great loss to sociology. This article takes Latour's death as cue to make an initial posthumous assessment of his work. It argues that, with Latour's death, sociology is at a cross-roads which in some ways reprises the Tarde-Durkheim debate. When Tarde died in 1904, the Durkheimian school became dominant. After Latour's death, this article considers whether that history might now been reversed with a subsidence of the Durkheimian tradition. The article argues it should not. While recognising Latour's ingenious creativity and his massive contribution to sociology, the article rejects Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Despite the many strengths of ANT and the extraordinary influence it has exerted, the article dissects the actant to claim that ANT is a flawed project. It argues in order to avoid accusations of determinism, the status of the actant was always ambiguous in ANT. As a result, although Latour consistently denied the power of human social groups, his analyses eventually relied upon surreptitious appeals to them. The neo-Durkheimian currents which are evident in contemporary sociology should re-assert themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I consider the construction of patents as social practices. The goal is to observe patents in action, that is, to catch patents in the act of becoming patents. This method of “following the action” is well established in the sociology of science. Similar consideration of the artifices by which a new patent is staged reveals parallels to the known staging of technical papers, including the recruitment of rhetorical allies, se¬mantic fortification against subsequent challenges, and trials of cognitive strength. In each situation, assertions become stabilized facts only if subsequent recipients are in¬duced to accept them as such. However, the patent is formed in a process that largely sidesteps the mechanisms of peer review and material experimentation, substituting in¬stead legal and procedural affordances to facilitate closure. Thus, following the action from which the stabilized patent is fabricated reveals the patent as a uniquely legal, rather than technical, social object.

Significant attention has been given to how artificial intelligence (AI) can be utilized by society and in scientific fields in recent years. This article explores how AI tools utilized in various fields have been and can be applied to ecological restoration projects, their affiliated benefits and drawbacks, and what those tools depend on. While restoration efforts can benefit from such tools, individual and institutional values primarily drive project goals. As such, AI tools are constrained in their usefulness in restoration because they can only factor in value‐oriented variables to a certain degree. In fact, certain restoration practices may be so value‐laden that the use of AI may bias a restoration project in a manner which could lead to undesired outcomes. This article posits that AI can be integrated into ecological restoration projects, but that practitioners (and academics) should recognize the complexity of what AI tools are before they use them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This Crossing Boundaries stems from two events: the recent STS-Italia conference (Bologna, June 2023) and the 4S/ESOCITE conference (Cholula, December 2022). Both events dedicated a space for reflecting on Bruno Latour’s intellectual legacy, inviting some of the scholars who had the chance and the privilege to work with him. The text opens with a reflection by Madeleine Akrich on her two-decade experience working alongside Latour and on the multifaceted nature of his contributions to sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. The text continues with a contribution by Huub Dijstelbloem, who explores Latour’s magmatic thinking, emphasizing the transformative power of his ideas. Annalisa Pelizza traces two key associations in Bruno Latour’s intellectual trajectory. The first one traces back to Latour’s early engagement with the semiotics of the “École de Paris” and Greimas’ theory of enunciation, emphasizing the local context of the French semiotic debate. The second association delves into Latour’s connection with technofeminism and Donna Haraway’s material-semiotics, highlighting a global dialogue initiated in the late 1980s. Finally, Paolo Landri underlines the transformative potential of Latour’s vocabulary in the context of education, underlying the interdisciplinary connections fostered by following Latour.

This article focuses on efforts by indigenous activists to oppose a mega-development in the middle of the Two Rivers Urban Park (TRUP) at the River Club site in Observatory, Cape Town. In the article we argue that, even though the mega-development ultimately went ahead, intense contestation surrounding Khoi cultural heritage contributed towards opening up the 'black box' of urban development in Cape Town, as well as pressuring the developers to accommodate some of the demands of indigenous activists and environmentalists. We also examine why and on what terms it was even possible for a small group of indigenous activists to temporarily halt a mega-development driven by powerful actors, including Amazon, the City of Cape Town and private developers. Drawing inspiration from Bruno Latour's notion of the black box, we show how these anti-development activists were able to interrupt the construction process and create the conditions for opening up to public and legal scrutiny opaque urban development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper rescues Deirdre McCloskey's ideas about Rhetoric in Economics and some issues left out in subsequent discussions. There is a parallel between the ideas of McCloskey and Bruno Latour, and the complementarities of their perspectives are very relevant for the development of Economics. Some reflections are here offered to improve the practice of Economics, which are related to the social constructions of facts in the field, to the internalization of political aspects, and to the importance of alternating between fact and fiction in a dynamic that does not result in a zero-sum game, underlining the characteristic of Economics as being inherently rhetorical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- This study aims to analyze the different ways of conceptualizing Floridi's concept of inforg concerning the applicability of this concept in information science and the philosophy of information. Design / methodology / approach -- The study uses a theoretical analysis of the background and implications of three different conceptualizations of the inforg phenomenon and examines them theoretically. Results -- The first two approaches are based on Floridi and refer to the inforg as an entity and the inforg as an information organism. The study shows that Floridi's conception of the inforg needs to be more consistent and complimented. The third conception, the inforg as a distributed dynamic actor in a network, attempts to remove some of the limitations of the previous conceptions, offering its original conception in which the inforg is a dynamic distributed structure that is temporally and situationally variable depending on the specific forms and goals of information interactions. Originality / value -- The third approach we propose allows inforg to be used in the new concepts of authorship, citation ethics, and information retrieval or to describe sociotechnical systems, especially in emerging systems with generative artificial intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I re-examine the well-known distinction between rootedness and uprootedness that Emmanuel Levinas draws in his short text "Heidegger, Gagarin and Us" (1961). This distinction addresses the relation between men and place either as an attachment to place (paganism, Heidegger) or as a freedom with regard to place (Judaism, Gagarin). I question this opposition from a contemporary perspective in environmental philosophy, namely from the growing awareness of the interconnectedness between place and Earth. I contend that this new perspective changes the understanding of dwelling today because of Earth's exteriority with regard to place. I argue that this exteriority is neither infinite nor a totality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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ABSTRACT This paper rescues Deirdre McCloskey’s ideas about Rhetoric in Economics and some issues left out in subsequent discussions. There is a parallel between the ideas of McCloskey and Bruno Latour, and the complementarities of their perspectives are very relevant for the development of Economics. Some reflections are here offered to improve the practice of Economics, which are related to the social constructions of facts in the field, to the internalization of political aspects, and to the importance of alternating between fact and fiction in a dynamic that does not result in a zero-sum game, underlining the characteristic of Economics as being inherently rhetorical.

Este artículo indaga en la trayectoria intelectual de Bruno Latour (1947-2022), enfatizando cuatro hilos que permiten desplazarnos por distintos momentos de su pensamiento: (1) el concepto de inscripción, (2) la metáfora de los monstruos, (3) la noción de lo híbrido y (4) la alusión a la metamorfosis. Comprendiendo estos hilos como conceptos laterales, a partir de ellos se abre un recorrido por la obra de Latour desde sus inicios en la filosofía teológica, pasando por los estudios de laboratorio, su asociología y su proyecto ecológico tardío. Una vez hecho este recorrido, se indaga en los rendimientos de las herramientas que ofrecen Latour y la teoría del actor-red (TAR) para hacer investigación científico-social en Latinoamérica.

This article discusses two seemingly unrelated but homologous challenges to established sociological thinking, namely machine learning technologies and postcolonial critique. Both of these confront conventional human-centric sociological notions. Where the rise of machine learning should prompt sociologists to take the agency of nonhuman systems seriously, postcolonial critique challenges the idea of Eurocentric human agency. I discuss whether this dual agency challenge can be addressed through Latour's actor-network theory and Luhmann's sociological systems theory – both of which explicitly aim to transcend classical human-centric approaches. I argue that Latour's work can align with postcolonial sociology. However, despite broadening the notion of agency, his actor-network concept remains strongly human-centric. It merely expands the range of actors with which humans engage rather than analysing interactions among nonhuman actants, such as machine learning systems. In contrast, such interactions can be understood through Luhmann's theorisation, which, however, can be subjected to postcolonial critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are at least five obstacles to the viability of ideology critique as a method of analysis in current conditions: (1) there is no ideology-free, God's-eye view through which the critical theorist can analyze other ideologies; (2) few people really believe in explicit ideological justifications for exploitation and domination today, a widespread skepticism that could annul the warrant for ideology critique; (3) conspiracy theories and identity politics have superseded more universalistic and structural forms of critique, which, due to their real and superficial similarities with ideology critique, represent troublesome competitors; (4) ecological degradation is undermining the possibility of the free future that ideology critique implicitly anticipates; and (5) due to the decline of radical labor movements and near-absolute control of consciousness by the culture industry, the audience for ideology critique is so small and distracted that thoughtful, written analyses of ideology may be pointless. Despite these obstacles, I defend ideology critique as a viable and beneficial method. Barrier (5) is the only obstacle that I think has the potential to deliver a death blow to ideology critique in the foreseeable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay raises the question of material hermeneutics in Heelan's philosophy of techno-science. For Heelan, a continental philosophy of technoscience, referring to Husserl and Heidegger and especially to Merleau-Ponty, features hermeneutic contexts of mathematics and measurement as well as laboratory observation, including what the later Heelan spoke of as "portable laboratories," for the sake of objectivity and "meaning making." For Paul Feyerabend, this material practice corresponded to the use of both techniques of observation and instrumentation, and not less "propaganda" in the case of Galileo which practice for Heelan included the ontological status of measures and numbers as well as apprenticeship in what Heelan called "contingent local practical cultural milieus." The essay includes a discussion of Heidegger on mathematics and Bruno Latour on pasteurization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the educational challenge of responding to the pending ecological crisis (and many other future apocalyptic scenarios that haunt our imagination). It seems we are living in a time when we have given up on the idea that progress is possible or desirable, and this questions education at its roots. In order to find a proper educational response that befits our time, it is requested that we gain a new sense of orientation (which is no longer aimed at progress). This is an idea I pick up from the recent work of Bruno Latour, which is the focus of the first part of the paper. In the second part, I start fleshing out what this new orientation could look like by turning to the work of Immanuel Kant (usually regarded as one of the most outspoken defenders of education geared to progress). Nonetheless, I try to read Kant against himself , so as to show how orientation can be understood in a non-modernist manner. I connect this in the third part to the radically immanent and empiricist work of William James, and draw out in the final section how a combined reading of Kant and James offers the orientation we need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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With some justification, Michel Serres claimed that he was one of the first to make ecology a central question for philosophy. Many of his books explore the ecological emergency and spell out the need to include the more-than-human in any ethical and political response. Yet Serres' thought has been generally neglected in scholarly debate outside France. To highlight the importance of Serres' philosophy, I contrast aspects of his work with Latour's sustained search for a political ecology. I contend that Serres' thought overlaps with but also challenges Latour's approach that has increasingly turned for inspiration to the theory of Gaia proposed by Lovelock and Margulis. I argue that drawing from science, history, fables, the humanities and his own experience, Serres brings together a narrative of the commonality of all living and non-living things that exposes a contractable obligation and formulates the grounding for a new politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is academic work accomplished within a curriculum that has been established through a digital education infrastructure, and what, exactly, does an academic member of staff do within this digital context? Reflecting on the empirical findings of a three-year ethnography of a distributed medical education curriculum delivered across two university campuses in Canada, this paper demonstrates that the ways in which work that has typically been characterized as academic is enacted within this curriculum, positioned as a socio-technological network, through a heterogeneous network of people and materials. Drawing on the philosophical anthropology of Bruno Latour, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, this paper positions the individual academic member of staff as one amongst many network elements within the digital platform across which academic work is generated and circulated. The paper argues that studies of digitally-mediated higher education can equally rest on small and localized instances of practice as well as on cross-boundary or institutional explorations, and offers ways of thinking that are informed by Latour's philosophical anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this short tribute to the work of Tom O’Regan, I focus on his earliest publications, in the decade from the mid-1980s. This was both the time I knew him best and the period when he wrote most discursively and theoretically.

The article begins from Richard Rorty’s idea that literature is a way of expanding the sensitivity and sense of loyalty to other people. These are the competencies that are to help build a democratic community. Can this idea be extended to non-humans as well? The article argues that literature has narrative tools to build a sense of loyalty not only to animals but also – an even more complicated case – to plants. The text discusses these tools by using the example of Richard Powers’s novel The Overstory. The article considers that the basis for understanding how these tools work lies in the concept of the actor – understood according to the assumptions of the actor-network theory – namely as that which makes a difference in the world by changing other actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his works on ecological philosophy, Bruno Latour develops an interesting perspective on religion and pluralism. He proposes a new worldview, in which religion is reinterpreted in view of a Gaian philosophy. He extends 'pluralism' beyond the anthropocentrism that dominates modern humanism. In his book Facing Gaia Latour includes nonhuman beings in a larger community and works towards a larger concept of eco-humanism. In this paper, I try to reconstruct his position by showing that the philosophical foundation for his interpretation of religion could be called 'terrarism' and is to be classified as a form of new materialism. This new interpretation of materialism has postmodernist origins (inspired by Gilles Deleuze), but it is not identical to it, because Latour distances himself from 'postmodernism'. He wants to positively contribute to a new ontology. My point is that Latour's 'terrarist' grounding of religious pluralism obstructs any foundation of transcendence and, finally, congests a really pluralistic ecumene because he still adheres to the postmodernist idea that we should renounce to a unitary principle of being. His ideas on eco-humanism and pluralistic ecumene could gain momentum if we opened ourselves to a more holistic and spiritual way of thinking, retaking Lovelock's conception of Gaia. However, Latour's new-materialistic interpretation of 'animism' can be seen as a positive contribution to a new perspective of the world that definitively sets 'materialism' aside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his lifetime, Bruno Latour (1947-2022) made many provocative and controversial arguments, such as about the nature of the practices of the natural sciences, and against standard social scientific forms of critique. Running through many of Latour's interventions, aimed at what he took to be stultifying forms of academic and intellectual orthodoxy, was a concern with the nature of truth. Whether emphasising how science fabricates its 'facts', or in having to deal with uncomfortable similarities between that sort of analysis and the attacks on the allegedly fraudulent nature of climate science by climate sceptics, or in presenting the societal bases of standard forms of social critique as fictitious, Latour was constantly engaged in battles about and polemics concerning what counts as truths and truthfulness. In this paper, we consider the nature of some of the main contours of Latour's battles about and with truths. We present an account of his practice in a critical light. Sometimes that involves stepping outside of the 'anti-critical' frame of reference he sought to construct and impose on how philosophy, sociology and other ways of thinking are done, but it also sometimes involves using that apparatus, while turning it against the intentions of the author. The purpose of this paper is not to try out-do Latour in the dismissal of intellectual positions other than one's own. Instead, we focus on other types and levels of failure in the career-long endeavours and engagements with matters of truth of this curious but undoubtedly unavoidable figure, 'Bruno Latour'. We end by speculating if more 'Bruno Latours' will be fabricated in the service of new modes of truth-creation in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Durante la década de 1950 Karlheinz Stockhausen adhirió a los principios modernistas promovidos por la Escuela de Darmstadt que dieron lugar al desarrollo del serialismo integral. En su búsqueda de renovación del lenguaje musical, Stockhausen intentó aplicar esta técnica a la composición de obras electrónicas en el laboratorio de la WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) en Colonia. Este artículo indaga, por medio del concepto de mediación técnica propuesto por Bruno Latour, cómo el intercambio de propiedades entre humanos y no humanos propiciado por el laboratorio fue modificando el proyecto serial. Como resultado de ese proceso, Stockhausen compuso una serie obras que no pudieron ser completamente prefiguradas a priori, hecho que demandó la creación de nuevas formas de escucha y notación musical. A partir de ello, buscaremos caracterizar la práctica compositiva de Stockhausen desde una perspectiva no modernista, haciendo hincapié en el carácter híbrido y relacional de los eventos musicales.

This article offers an in-depth analysis of the concept of translation in Bruno Latour's oeuvre – an ambiguous and constantly morphing term. It considers the various conceptual reformulations of translation throughout his writing, concentrating on its fundamental importance for the operation of his modes of existence. A special emphasis is put on the influence of A. J. Greimas's semiotics on Latour's theoretical framework. The aim here is to trace how translation is different from transformation, and why it remains a core concept in Latour's work, despite the fact that he strays far beyond the confines of linguistics alone in his theorisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on a tantalizing footnote by Anne-Marie Christin, my article analyses the illustrated editions of André Gide's Le Voyage d'Urien in tandem. It looks at the 1893 edition, a collaboration between Gide and Maurice Denis, and the 1928 edition, featuring illustrations by Alfred Latour. I explore the impact the two sets of illustrations might have on our reading of Urien's travels, demonstrating the potential these divergent visuals have to (re)shape our perceptions of the narrative's central journey. The co-existence of these editions also helps us ask how the illustrations add to and even disrupt conceptions of the reading process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]