Professor Bruno Latour
Professor, vice-president for research and director of the Master of experimentation in arts and politics at Sciences Po, Paris
Research Interests
Bruno Latour was trained first as a philosopher and then as an anthropologist. After field studies in Africa and California he specialized in the analysis of scientists and engineers at work. In addition to work in philosophy, history, sociology and anthropology of science, he has collaborated in many studies in science policy and research management. He has written Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, Science in Action and The Pasteurisation of France. He has also published a field study on an automatic subway system, Aramis or the Love of Technology and an essay on symmetric anthropology, 'We Have Never Been Modern'. He has also published a series of essays, Pandora's Hope: Essays in the Reality of Science Studies.
In a series of books in French he has been exploring the consequences of science studies on different traditional topics of the social sciences: religion in Sur le Culte Moderne des Dieux Faitiches, and Jubiler ou lesTourments de la Parole Religieuse, and social theory in Paris Ville Invisible, a photographic essay on the technical & social aspects of the city of Paris -now available on the web in English: Paris Invisible City. After having directed several theses on various environmental crises, he published a book on the political philosophy of the environment Politics of Nature. After a long period of field-work on one of the French Supreme Courts, he published a monograph L a Fabrique du Droit-Une Ethnographie du Conseil d'Etat in 2002. From 1982 to 2007, he was Professor at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines in Paris and, for various periods, visiting professor at UCSD, at the London School of Economics and in the history of science department of Harvard University. He curated two major international exhibitions in Karlsruhe at the ZKM center, with Peter Weibel, Iconoclash, beyond the image wars in science, religion and art and Making Things Public, The atmospheres of democracy.
Recent Publications
Books:
(2009) The Making of Law. Oxford: Polity Press.
(2005) Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (co-edited with Peter Weibel), Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
(2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory , Oxford) Oxford University Press.
(2002) La Fabrique du Droit. Une Ethnographie du Conseil d'Etat, Paris: La Découverte.
(2002) with Peter Weibel Iconoclash. Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art , Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press and Karlsruhe , Germany : ZKM.
(1999) Pandora's Hope:Essays on the Reality of Science Studies , Cambridge , Mass: Harvard University Press.
(1987) Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society , Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
(1979) with Steve Woolgar Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts , Los Angeles and London : Sage.