Hi,

I have recently and with great pleasure been reading Bruno Latour’s introduction to his own field, namely Actor-Network-Theory in Reassembling the Social from 2005. It is a polemic book that wrestles with so-called critical sociology or, more broadly, the “sociology of the social” (which designates the Durkheimian line of sociology).

As I understand it, Latour wants to break with the idea of collective forces and social factors that act in the world before or “above” the presence of actors. (That Latour understands actors in a broad sense is of minor importance to my point here). For him, the social should not be taken for granted—rather it has to be traced by the sociologist through the network of the actors, where network has a dynamic character, it is constantly in the making. In more plain terms, a social factor such as a “culture” is not something with an independent (i.e., in the Durkheimian sense) structure or effect on individuals/actors. By way of contrast, culture is made and continuously remade, and the role of the sociologist is to trace that making, rather than assuming the social as a factor that is always already there.

I have been studying sociology for about 6½ years, and when I read Reassembling the Social, again and again I thought about Weber’s famous doctrine of methodological individualism. In a letter to a dear friend, Weber stated that sociology should be freed from the use of Kollektivbegriffe, i.e., concepts based on collective phenomena. However, Weber did not imply—as emphasized by Boudon—that collective phenomena aren’t an important part of sociology, but rather that collective phenomena are not the explanans of a sociological inquiry, but rather the explanandum. In other words, Kollektivbegriffe is not what explains a social phenomenon, but is what has to be explained. For Weber, the explanans is the disaggregate individual, hence the term methodological individualism. Explaining collective phenomena, a social aggregate, is thus best achieved if we “break down” the constituent parts of the social aggregate and look at how the individuals were lead to act as they did, so to produce the social aggregate.

Whether one agrees with Weber or not—or more generally with the doctrine of methodological individualism—I see a fundamental, methodological similarity between Latour and Weber. Both want to break with the idea of social aggregates as something that is always already in the world and, therefore, also to be taken for granted in sociological inquiries (in a sense a “sociological a priori”). Rather, the social as an aggregate is assembled by actors (Latour’s term) or produced by actors’ motives and actions (Weber’s term), and the role of the sociologist is to trace (Latour’s term) or understand (Weber’s term) the pathways making or producing the social aggregate. That Latour and Weber would disagree on many other things, especially the role played by meaning, is evident, but nonetheless I find a strong similarity between the two sociologists in their fundamental understanding of the social and what social inquiries should be concerned with.

What is your opinion?

/Kristian

I think the similarity you see is definitely there. And yes, the big disagreement between L and W would be over Weber's definition of social action as intentional activity by individuals (in Latour, there are lots more other kinds of action). However, I think Latour mystifies unnecessarily, and puts much too much language over what could be said much simpler. In fact, I think the entire sociological traditional stemming from Simmel (including network analysis, social psychology, most of math soc) already does what Latour suggests by simply not positing anything "social" that's not reducible to properties of individuals or of connections between them (though ok, Latour also wants physical things in there--but that's a compatible addition). I think the best thing to get out of Latour is the lesson of "stay empirical, don't invent invisible forces or secret motivations, and avoid big abstractions". But I am not at all certain that his own theory, with its weird mystifications of intentionality and bizarre causal relationships, actually follows that advice. I completely agree with his rejection of social metaphysics, but do not understand why he feels like he needs to build up a new metaphysics in its place. (Though I am waiting to see if someone with a less baroque writing sensibility can produce a clear and concise rendition of "Reassembling the Social" before passing final judgment).

I am less sure about Latour and Weber, seeing more connections between Marx and Latour. One problem with Weber is that, for all his "methodological individualism" it is not at all clear that he ever practiced what he preached on that front. A major problem with ties between Latour and Weber is that Weber was happy to talk about the ineluctability of "rationalization" on the one hand and types of rationality, charisma, authority, bureaucracy, etc, on the other. Latour would reject all of this more or less out of hand.

But this points to the major problem at the heart of Latour's project. Initially, his work started off unpacking stable, black-boxed phenomena... showing the production and instability. A decade later, actor-networking was a means of exploring ever-looser articulations and associations. A further decade later, and now ANT is the appropriate means for approaching the sociology of (new, innovative) associations and Sociology, more or less traditionally conceived is the appropriate means for approaching stabilized networks. Problems arise in that we're never presented with a means, or heuristic, for telling if we are looking at the actor-networkings of new associations or sociological black boxes - phenomena which are always intertwined but never acknowledged by Latour to be so. But, worse, Latour won't let us speak about stabilized network-actions when doing ANT because to do so is to appeal to invisible forces (rather than to draw on stable analyses).

I think what Latour wants is a relational epistemontology like Marx, but he doesn't want to deal with the issues of quantity-quality necessary to make sense of such an approach and to work with and transparently address the boundaries between associations and the social, between who/what was followed and who/what wasn't... in short, Latour doesn't want to address his own boundary practices... which represents a major political problem and is why I so much prefer Haraway to Latour.

There may be a connexion but does this "methodological individualism" stand up?
Consider this (its somewhat problematically sarcastic I'm afraid but the conclusions do seem to make sense).

Just a slightly off-topic comment for Kristian:

I know you probably just read it for pleasure, but will you be applying it to something too? I often find the actual empirical uses of ANT to be a showcase of its analytical and theoretical strength, so I was just wondering if you are aiming at something specific with your question or if was just a case of (rather sophisticated) sociological reflection?

First of all, I agree with ECHOecho's point about Simmel. I think that my initial argument would have been more or less the same, had I replaced Weber with Simmel (to me, they both stand for the same way of thinking sociological methodology).

@ Lars
My post was a result of sociological reflection more than a how-to-use problematique. I fully agree with you that ANTs have a way of talking more about being an ANT than actually doing the ANT-stuff! Latour also mentions this point in the introduction to the aforementioned book. If I were to make a "social aggregate analysis" that wouldn't "take the social for granted", I would rather use a methodologically individualistic approach based on some simplified notion of individuals, focusing on their motives and reasons. As I see it, ANT has a way of mixing up their methodology with the empirical phenomenon they want to study (and therefore runs into a kind of naturalistic fallacy). ANT doesn't confront theory with data, but has this "things are complex, let us be complex"-attitude, and generally I do not like that line of argument. In that respect I am much more Popper than Latour ;)

All the best
Kristian