Customer Reviews
A Latour de force - By: Reader, 13 Dec 2007 
This book is a "paradoxical" endeavour on a number of counts, & I'm drawing here on the Greek etymology of the word meaning `beyond received opinion.' While on the surface it purports to be an introduction to a particular research methodology--presumably for the benefit of social science PhD students--appealing to common sense, at the same time it is also a philosophical tour de force, engaging with metaphysical & ontological issues of the highest order.
It is quite possible to read it in a few days, as it is written in a colourful style peppered with amusing metaphors & examples, but it is more likely that a number of reads are required to fully experience what this book has to offer (unless you are an ANT enthusiast already). In the end it is a thought experiment & it will either work for you or it won't. You will either come away hating actor-network-theory for the rest of your life or you will have a conversion experience & you will never be able to look at baboons & the map of the London Underground quite the same way again.
In many ways this book reminds me of Heidegger's Being & Time, but the differences might be more important than the similarities. For one Latour completes the book as promised in the introduction, in contrast to Heidegger. But also Latour is a lot more specific & optimistic about the outcomes of his `deconstruction' of traditional sociology, as opposed to Heidegger's pessimistic & rather vague conclusions stemming from his destruction of traditional metaphysics.
In this sense Latour's Reassembling the Social is not so much an introduction to a theory as a handbook or guide to practical living. However the practical or empirical metaphysics he proposes for (re)assembling a better world is far from being a quick-fix solution: it asks for a tireless, on-going effort to collect & rearrange the world, morsel by morsel, just like an ant.
