Postscript
The broad approaches to the philosophy and social studies of science outlined in this and in the previous chapters have continued to have their advocates, but one approach, in particular, has attracted attention - from both advocates and critics.
This is the ‘reflexive’ development of social studies of science and technology pioneered by Bruno Latour, Steve Woolgar, Michel Callon and others - and loosely known as ‘actor-network theory’. I say ‘loosely, since advocates of this approach tend to resist the term ‘theory’. Their work is marked by a strong commitment to detailed case studies of specific episodes, with the implication that theoretical generalizations are always likely to abstract from this complexity in ways that are misleading.Some of those influenced by this approach now readily concede that earlier formulations, such as those criticized in our first edition (pp. 66-70), can be dispensed with (see Law and Hassard 1999; Law 2004, 2007). Still, they argue, the central ‘intuitions’ of the approach retain their value. In defence of what he calls ‘after-ANT’, John Law characterizes it as ‘a form of attentiveness and respect to the world’ (Moog and Stones 2009: 68; see also Law 2009). This means, among other things, that nothing is simply social - but is always at the same time ‘material’ Perhaps, the main concept here is that of ‘practice’, with the emphasis on intertwined meanings and materiality - and the ‘messiness’ of such practices. Another feature of the approach as represented by Law is the importance of relations - complex and heterogeneous relations through which ‘things’, ‘beings’ and ‘actors’ get their identities, and are even ‘generated’. Above all, there is a strong sense of the inadequacy of any discursive account of ‘reality’ to do full justice to its complexity - and there may be as many ‘realities’ as there are ways of ‘constructing’ reality in discourse.
The attempt to take seriously the complexity of the events and episodes that figure in the case studies produced by this approach is commendable. Also of value is the inclusion, as with the earlier versions of the actor-network approach, of the non-human elements in human social practices. However, some of the criticisms of the earlier version presented in our first edition seem still to apply. In particular, the resistance to developing general theoretical ideas in favour of rather unspecific ‘intuitions’ makes it difficult to see how the approach might be tested. A valuable argument for the compatibility of Marxian realist analysis and actor-network theory is Castree (2002).
The work of Latour, Haraway and Beck is helpfully described in its relation to environmental politics by White, Rudy and Gareau (2016). Though they have several reservations about this body of writing (some of which chime with comments made in this chapter), they nevertheless see key features of it ‘at its best' as offering a valuable way forward. Key concepts for them are ‘hybridity’ ‘entanglement’ and ‘plurality’ (hence ‘natures' not ‘nature’, ‘ecologies’ not ‘ecology’). The drift of the argument seems to be to avoid the sort of high theory that loses its focus on the daily struggles in the household, factory or specific community, and to recognize, instead, that there is no ‘pure’ nature or society, just a multitude of complex assemblages or associations of objects, artefacts, living beings and human social agents. This opens up a field for analysis of the many prefigurative projects, experiments in democratic planning, social movements of resistance and imaginative delineations of possible ‘socio-natural futures’.
While the repetition of the metaphor ‘hybridity’ is evocative, it runs the risk of simply carrying forward the dualist heritage it is designed to displace: a hybrid is a mixture of two different kinds - ‘nature’ and ‘society’? A further difficulty is that it offers a verbal ‘solution’ to the theoretical problem of specifying the different ways in which, for example, material productive practices combine together specific material objects, substance or processes with human or mechanical agencies under specific conditions which enable or constrain the practice.
These combinations (which I referred to elsewhere as ‘intentional structures’) are at work in all human material and social practices, but take radically different forms, with radically different consequences. The term ‘hybridity’ takes us only a little way towards the necessary analysis of these forms (see discussion in Chapter 15).While giving at least qualified support to Latour and versions of actor-network theory, White, Rudy and Gareau (2016) do argue that these approaches underestimate the ‘sticky obduracy’ of some key social processes and institutional forms, such as ‘capital and the processes of capital accumulation, bureaucracy and the advanced divisions of labour, nation-state boundaries and political interests, patriarchy, racism, imperialism and so on’ (p. 133). Given their recognition of the large-scale systematics of ecological degradation, and the significance of capital accumulation, in particular, it is disappointing that their political analysis has little to offer in terms of meeting the challenge posed by these enormous concentrations of power. This is not to say that anyone else has a convincing story to tell. Rather, the point is that use of concepts such as ‘hybridity’ and ‘entanglement’ to characterize the social, economic and political realities they problematize, as well as their alternative ‘critical hybrid worldview’ tends to efface the scale of the challenge. Their rather swift dismissal of eco-Marxist approaches and rejection of ‘an anticapitalist politics that resists all in the name of organic purity’ (White, Rudy and Gareau 2016: 126) seem to avoid engagement with the more creative work going on within these traditions and movements.
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