John Law

This stimulating book is about what went wrong with 'research methods'. Its controversial argument is radical, and at times, even revolutionary.-publisher description.

Mess in Social Science Research

After Method

Kevin Evans

Carrie Galbraith

Recounts the exploits of the underground mystery and counterculture club, describing many of their pranks and staged hoaxes, including SantaCon and the Burning Man festival, and explains the society's significance in modern flash mob culture.

Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society

Michel Callon

Sociology of Science in the Real World

Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology

Peter Lodge

Science for Social Scientists

DIVIn Aircraft Stories noted sociologist of technoscience John Law tells “stories” about a British attempt to build a military aircraft—the TSR2. The intertwining of these stories demonstrates the ways in which particular technological projects can be understood in a world of complex contexts. Law works to upset the binary between the modernist concept of knowledge, subjects, and objects as having centered and concrete essences and the postmodernist notion that all is fragmented and centerless. The structure and content of Aircraft Stories reflect Law’s contention that knowledge, subjects, and—particularly— objects are “fractionally coherent”: that is, they are drawn together without necessarily being centered. In studying the process of this particular aircraft’s design, construction, and eventual cancellation, Law develops a range of metaphors to describe both its fractional character and the ways its various aspects interact with each other. Offering numerous insights into the way we theorize the working of systems, he explores the overlaps between singularity and multiplicity and reveals rich new meaning in such concepts as oscillation, interference, fractionality, and rhizomatic networks. The methodology and insights of Aircraft Stories will be invaluable to students in science and technology studies and will engage others who are interested in the ways that contemporary paradigms have limited our ability to see objects in their true complexity./div

Decentering the Object in Technoscience

Aircraft Stories

Stories

The Space Between

Annemarie Mol

These essays examine complexity from a variety of perspectives and cover an array of case studies and topics that include market behaviour, medical interventions, aeronautical design, the governing of supranational states, ecology, road-building, meteorology and the science of complexity itself.

Social Studies of Knowledge Practices

Complexities

John Hassard

Actor network theory is a powerful approach which combines the insights of post-structuralism with an analysis of the materials of social life. This controversial and path-breaking volume extends ANT beyond studies of technology, power and organisation to the body, subjectivity, politics, and cultural difference, and puts it into cutting-edge dialogue with feminism, anthropology, psychology and economics.

Actor Network Theory and After

In this important theoretical and empirical statement John Law argues against the purity of post-enlightenment political and social theory, and offers an alternative post-modern sociology. Arguing in favor of a sociology of verbs, he suggests that power, organizations, mind-body dualisms, and macro-micro distinctions may all be understood as the local performance of recursive modes of social ordering. Drawing on a range of theoretical traditions including actor-network theory, verstehende sociology, and the writing of Michel Foucault, he explores the production of materials - including agents and architectures - and their importance for these modes of ordering. The book, which draws on organizational ethnography to develop its argument, is essential reading for all those interested in social theory, materialism, or the sociology of organizations at the end of the era of high modernity.

Social Ordering and Social Theory

Organising Modernity

Le système, 1716-1720. Les mémoires justificatifs. L'histoire des finances pendant la régence

Considérations sur le commerce et sur l'argent

With a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money. First Published at Edinburgh 1705

Money and Trade Considered

Being the Time of the Yearly Meeting of the Children Educated in the Charity-Schools, in and about the Cities of London and Westminster

A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London: on Thursday June 1, 1797

Wiebe E. Bijker

Building on the influential book The Social Construction of Technological Systems, this volume carries forward the project of creating a theory of technological development and implementation that is strongly grounded in both sociology and history. Technology is everywhere, yet a theory of technology and its social dimension remains to be fully developed. Building on the influential book The Social Construction of Technological Systems, this volume carries forward the project of creating a theory of technological development and implementation that is strongly grounded in both sociology and history. The 12 essays address the central question of how technologies become stabilized, how they attain a final form and use that is generally accepted. The essays are tied together by a general introduction, part introductions, and a theoretical conclusion. The first part of the book examines and criticizes the idea that technologies have common life cycles; three case studies cover the history of a successful but never produced British jet fighter, the manipulation of patents by a French R&D company to gain a market foothold, and the managed development of high-intensity fluorescent lighting to serve the interests of electricity suppliers as well as the producing company. The second part looks at broader interactions shaping technology and its social context: the question of who was to define "steel," the determination of what constitutes radioactive waste and its proper disposal, and the social construction of motion pictures as exemplified by Thomas Edison's successful development of the medium and its commercial failure. The last part offers theoretical studies suggesting alternative approaches to sociotechnologies; two studies argue for a strong sociotechnology in which artifact and social context are viewed as a single seamless web, while the third looks at the ways in which a social program is a technology.

Studies in Sociotechnical Change

Shaping Technology / Building Society

An exploration of the slums of London's Whitechapel area, exposing its grim poverty and the dire consequences of Victorian attitudes towards the dispossessed. The scenes of slum life ae incisively viewed through the eyes of a young captain in the Salvation Army, whose sense of moral outrage leads him on a journey through the despair of the East End ghetto. In his work within London's netherworld there is a manifestation of both desperation and hope which mirrored Harkness's own evolving vision of Christian socialism. Not only an important social documentary of the times, In Darkest London is also a text in the history of late Victorian ideas and values.

In Darkest London

In Scare Tactic, John W. Law artfully resurrects the intriguing life and outrageously splendid work of legendary horror film director, William Castle. Clearly written and thoroughly researched, Scare Tactic is the only book of its kind, delivering a complete biography of Castle - surveying not only the multiple influences on Castle’s career but also the importance of the man himself. Law’s fascination with Castle is contagious, but he cuts through the ballyhoo and showmanship to deliver the facts in an articulate and insightful manner. Anyone interested in the history of cinema, the horror movie genre, cult films, or the cinema of exploitation would do well to read Law’s study, since - in the tradition of P.T. Barnum - Castle is one of the most important showmen the American cinema has ever known.

The Life & Films of William Castle

Scare Tactic

Law et les chemins de fer, ou curieuse histoire des agioteurs de la rue Quincampoix en 1719, pour servir à l'instruction des agioteurs de la bourse en 1845

Technology is everywhere, yet a theory of technology and its social dimension remainsto be fully developed. Building on the influential book The Social Construction of TechnologicalSystems, this volume carries forward the project of creating a theory of technological developmentand implementation that is strongly grounded in both sociology and history. The 12 essays addressthe central question of how technologies become stabilized, how they attain a final form and usethat is generally accepted. The essays are tied together by a general introduction, partintroductions, and a theoretical conclusion.The first part of the book examines and criticizes theidea that technologies have common life cycles; three case studies cover the history of a successfulbut never produced British jet fighter, the manipulation of patents by a French R&D company togain a market foothold, and the managed development of high-intensity fluorescent lighting to servethe interests of electricity suppliers as well as the producing company.The second part looks atbroader interactions shaping technology and its social context: the question of who was to define"steel," the determination of what constitutes radioactive waste and its proper disposal, and thesocial construction of motion pictures as exemplified by Thomas Edison's successful development ofthe medium and its commercial failure.The last part offers theoretical studies suggestingalternative approaches to sociotechnologies; two studies argue for a strong sociotechnology in whichartifact and social context are viewed as a single seamless web, while the third looks at the waysin which a social program is a technology.Wiebe E. Bijker is Associate Professor at the Universityof Limburg, The Netherlands. John Law is Professor in Sociology at the University of Keele,Staffordshire, England.

Shaping Technology/building Society

Evelyn Ruppert

How might we think differently? This book is an attempt to respond to this question. Its contributors are all interested in non-standard modes of knowing. They are all more or less uneasy with the restrictions or the agendas implied by academic modes of knowing, and they have chosen to do this by working with, through, or against one important Western alternative - that of the baroque. Why the baroque? One answer is that the baroque made space for and fostered many forms of otherness. It involved knowing things differently, extravagantly, excessively, and in materially heterogeneous ways, and it apprehended that which is other and could not be caught in a cognitive or symbolic net. It also involved knowing in ways that did not gather into a single point and knew itself to be performative. As part of a great Western division between rationalist and non-rationalist modes of knowing, the baroque is therefore a possible resource for creating ways of knowing differently - a storehouse of possible alternative techniques. To say this is not to say that it is the right mode of knowing. The book's authors do not seek to create a 'baroque social science' whatever that might be, but instead work in a range of ways to explore how drawing on the 'resources of the baroque' can help us to think differently.

John Law

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