A Review of: “The Politics of Nature by Bruno Latour

This art icle was downloaded by: [ 134.117.153.99] On: 03 July 2013, At : 12: 31 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK The Communication Review Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t p:/ / www.t andfonline.com/ loi/ gcrv20 A Review of: “The Politics of Nature by Bruno Latour” Chris Russill a a Depart ment of Communicat ion St udies, Universit y of Ot ago Published online: 16 Aug 2006. To cite this article: Chris Russill (2005) A Review of: “ The Polit ics of Nat ure by Bruno Lat our” , The Communicat ion Review, 8:2, 265-276, DOI: 10.1080/ 10714420590947764 To link to this article: ht t p:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 10714420590947764 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Taylor & Francis m akes every effort t o ensure t he accuracy of all t he inform at ion ( t he “ Cont ent ” ) cont ained in t he publicat ions on our plat form . However, Taylor & Francis, our agent s, and our licensors m ake no represent at ions or warrant ies what soever as t o t he accuracy, com plet eness, or suit abilit y for any purpose of t he Cont ent . Any opinions and views expressed in t his publicat ion are t he opinions and views of t he aut hors, and are not t he views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of t he Cont ent should not be relied upon and should be independent ly verified wit h prim ary sources of inform at ion. 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ISSN 1071-4421 print / 1547-7487 online DOI: 10.1080/10714420590947764 Chris Russill Department of Communication Studies, University of Otago The 82Taylor Taylor GCRV 58263 2 1 2005 Book 10.1080/10714420590947764 1 Communication Review && Francis, FrancisTaylor Inc.Review and Francis 325 Chestnut StreetPhiladelphiaPA191061071-44211547-7487 Downloaded by [134.117.153.99] at 12:31 03 July 2013 “NOW BACK TO PRAGMATISM . . . ”1: THINKING ABOUT PUBLICS WITH BRUNO LATOUR Bruno Latour has done an amazing thing. He has written a book about publics entirely unaffected by Jurgen Habermas’s work or the industry surrounding it. He seeks not to defend or extend, not to prop up or knock down, not to reject or even escape. Latour is somehow simply unconcerned with all the public sphere “talk” dominating critical discourse, never offering so much as a mention or endnote. What he proposes instead is to take seriously the contemporary experience of publics, particularly as these are implicated in environmental problems or, as it is more commonly phrased, “ecological crises.” What emerges is surprising for both its novelty and familiarity: a radical empiricism for the Twenty-first century. I have often wondered what a genuinely and unapologetically pragmatist view of publics would look like—one that didn’t feel it had to justify the endeavor up front, anchor it to familiar landmarks, or cross-fertilize it with more fashionable views. I do not doubt it is badly needed. But with so many invested in public sphere talk, and with it so well institutionalized, is it possible to be unconcerned with Habermas? Even the development communication people at the World Bank cite him these days. Where could one find the intellectual space to gain a hearing for the proposal without it getting too quickly mapped into familiar polemics, existing discourses, and contemporary habits of thought? For a return to a radically empirical attitude requires nothing less than a complete reconstruction of our received critiques of scientific knowledge and technical expertise, a significant rethinking of our approach to values, and a recasting of the matter of agency. The prospects for a successful articulation of radical empiricism in its implications for communication and renewing public life are not good and probably less propitious than when William James and John Dewey first set out. Nonetheless, the way remains to be tried and Latour’s choice to navigate it by way of environmental crises is an inspired one. For even if our present mess is not a direct result of failing to adopt a more radical empiricism, one of the more promising ways of dealing with these intractable 1 Latour (2004a). Downloaded by [134.117.153.99] at 12:31 03 July 2013 266 Book Review problems is by taking up the Jamesian view. Moreover, it offers the opportunity to shift terrain and vocabularies, such that Latour can leave behind the accumulated baggage from decades of squabbles about the problems of academics to focus on the problems of collectives. Well, almost. He certainly tries hard. Gone is most of the language of actor-network theory, semiotic translation, war, and quasi-objects.2 In their place, we hear of recalcitrance, articulation, experimentation, and matters of concern. While not entirely novel, these are put to genuinely innovative usage. But if one were to describe the book in a sentence, it is an extension of the implications of his work in science studies for politics, discussion, and public life. Latour says as much and proceeds straightforwardly enough: first by sketching the key findings and implications of science studies (Latour, 2004c, pp. 8–17), then by pointing to contemporary ecological crises as renewing the relevance and urgency of recognizing this work (Latour, 2004c, pp. 18–25) and then by redescribing how one might approach environmental issues if one were to learn radical empiricism or, as he prefers, experimental metaphysics. A large part of the book, however, is a ground-clearing exercise. In this respect, it carries on Latour’s project of jettisoning modernism into new territory. The key characteristic of modernism requiring abandonment is its tendency to bifurcate, the product of which are those dualistic poles modern thought constantly bounces between: object/subject, determinacy/ indeterminacy, necessity/freedom, order/chaos, nature/culture, physical/ mental, science/social construction, reality/representation, the world out there/consciousness, etc. In 1987 Latour suggested a way of refiguring how we think about these through a hybrid actor-network theory; in 1993, he took on modernism directly to hybridize democratic theory, advocating for a “parliament of things”; in 1999, he wrote two books aiming to definitely finish it off—one fighting it out in science studies, Pandora’s Hope, the other reconstructing democratic publics on the terrain won through that effort. The Politics of Nature is the slightly revised English translation of that second effort, though Latour here continues to permit himself a number of tirades against modernism, a habit prompting a nagging concern. Is it really these environmental crises that alter the way we think about things or is this simply a convenient realm for appropriating examples to settle old epistemological scores? In more than one place, it appears Latour is continuing to settle old scores. All but the already converted are likely to think so for a number of reasons. For one, it seems science studies has sent its missionaries into every field of practice and Latour himself is painting in broad strokes 2 Latour (1998) declares actor-network theory dead although it seems prepared to walk again in a new book due out in 2005 from Oxford University Press. Downloaded by [134.117.153.99] at 12:31 03 July 2013 Book Review 267 these days, extending his reach into religion, law, politics, environmentalism, and museum installations among other interests. Secondly, Latour is famous for having described intellectual inquiry in militaristic terms, speaking of allies, battles, self-aggrandizing heroes, strategic networking, and unseemly struggles for persuasion. When Latour implores us to shift “from a warlike version of public life to a civil version” at a key juncture in the book, how serious is he about asking us to lay down our arms (2004c, p. 61)? Third, Latour does not appear familiar or much concerned with any of the environmental work done in political theory, sociology, communication, critical theory, geography, or the diverse histories of environmental movements and activism. He characterizes such work broadly and often dismissively, references only sporadically, and considers no specific issue or example in any extended detail. Finally, in a move that appears to justify this neglect, he believes the entire premise of much of this work must be abandoned. He believes the call to bring considerations of “nature” to the center of human inquiry will accomplish nothing and only continue to confuse public discussion. Does Latour, as Hacking (1999) put it, have his own agenda (p. 40)? Or does he adequately characterize the experience of publics implicated in complex environmental issues? If Latour increasingly links his vision of public life to Dewey’s work, it is because Dewey was the first person to fully realize that scientific knowledge and technical expertise would soon be central to all sorts of urgent sociopolitical issues and that our prevailing ways of coping with this fact—blind assimilation based on unwarranted faith or hurried rejection based on undisciplined skepticism—would distort if not destroy public life in its contribution to key problems and institutions affecting our lives. Our usual epistemological tendencies would not only reinforce each other, such that when celebratory faith meets uncritical skepticism each gain strength and confidence only in the weaknesses of the opposing position, but would paralyze our ability to respond to pressing problems. Dewey spent five decades or so trying to work out a reconceptualization of inquiry in line with James’s radical empiricism to enable us to deal with such problems and renew public life. It failed. In fact, it failed so miserably when pragmatist views on dialogue and communication were revived by James Carey, Richard Rorty, and Jurgen Habermas, the inquiry part got left out. This despite Dewey’s (1927/1954) insistence that democratic publics would require a vision in which inquiry and communication were “indissolubly wedded” (p. 184). Latour sees the problem exactly as Dewey did. He doesn’t think you can get by without some image of scientific activity. He is certain the one you have is deeply impoverished and in large part responsible for the evisceration of public life. Either you hold some view of representational 268 Book Review Downloaded by [134.117.153.99] at 12:31 03 July 2013 realism or you have rejected it in such a way as to make scientific practice and knowledge incomprehensible. Neither of these is quite right and there is no going forward until we have a more adequate account of scientific practice. Latour has worked hard now for over Twenty-five years attempting to dislodge prevailing views with a provocative blend of empirical fieldwork, methodological rules, and some illuminating—not to mention funny—rhetorical redescription. Perhaps only half the period Dewey spent, but still a prodigious effort to be sure! Latour states the ongoing difficulty this problem poses most directly as a decision: Either we can keep on offering the same introductions, to modify the image that readers have of scientific practice, or we can take this literature for granted and tackle the truly interesting problems that arise in a multitude of fields as soon as we have modified the theory of science that was paralyzing us previously. (2004c, p. 263) Immediately the questions pile up. What is this paralyzing image of scientific practice? What are the bad consequences entailed by adhering to it? What might change in giving it up? What is Latour’s counterproposal? What literature, arguments, and evidence can he offer in support of it? What would follow if we substituted Latour’s revised account for our prevailing views? What blockages are there to doing so? Is Latour’s strategy for overcoming these sufficient? These questions tend to trail all the baggage of the science wars/culture wars in tow, prompting polemical replies as often as genuine answers—and before one knows it, the war is on. Depending on where you side, Alan Sokel or Bruno Latour is public enemy number one. Does Latour’s focus on publics, his recent interest in pragmatism, and his new vocabulary advocating for a shift “from matters of fact to matters of concern” allow us to bypass these polemics and move forward? Probably not. We might as well tackle the problem head-on then. Here is Alan Sokel in Le Monde on January 31, 1997, responding to Latour’s response to the “Sokel hoax”: To better appreciate the ambiguities in Latour's theses, let us reread the Third Rule of Method from his book Science in Action: “Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Nature's representation, not the consequence, we can never use the outcome—Nature—to explain how and why a controversy has been settled.” We obviously have here a profound confusion between “Nature’s representation” and “Nature”, that is, between our theories about the world and the world itself. Depending on how one resolves the ambiguity (using twice “Nature’s representation” or “Nature”), one can obtain the truism Book Review 269 Downloaded by [134.117.153.99] at 12:31 03 July 2013 that our scientific theories are the result of a social process (as the socalled traditional sociology of science had demonstrated perfectly well); or the radically idealist claim that the external world is created by scientists’ negotiations; or again the truism that the outcome of a scientific controversy cannot be explained solely by the state of the world; or else the radically constructivist claim that the state of the world can play no role when one explains how and why a controversy has been settled. Much of Sokel’s initial concerns were regarding whether or not one could or should explain scientific practice without taking into account truth or falsity. That concern was fostered by the belief that to do so would require no longer invoking empirical evidence and that this tendency would lead to the idea that empirical evidence was unimportant or did not exist. From the 1979 study, to the 1999 attempt to bypass the science wars, to this 2004 work, Latour maintains empirical evidence is real and truth exists. In his earliest science study, Latour and Woolgar (1979) used the example of an assembly line to suggest the stance they took regarding how facts were made. I prefer to see Latour as proposing a life cycle analysis of the products of science—its truths and falsities—such that we see how verity emerges from procedures and operations of verification (pp. 95–96). Latour’s most well-known work emphasizes militaristic metaphors and talk of networks, traits we will discuss below, but his concern here is how matters of fact emerge from matters of concern. Latour is not advocating irrationalism but an attitude that “has the advantage of replacing something that is not open to discussion and can be debated, and of binding together the two notions of objective science and controversy” (2004c, p. 63). We will need to become more precise about the basis of Sokel’s (1998) objections, for he does not appear to object to Latour’s Rule of Method as a methodological principle. More importantly, Jonas Salk of the Salk Institute in San Diego, where Latour carried out his fieldwork for Laboratory Life, did not. Salk (1979) did, however, share the same sorts of concerns that Sokel expresses in citing rule three from Science in Action. In the 1979 study, we find that rule expressed as a finding based on the empirical evidence of Latour’s micro-sociological field observations dating from October 1975 to August 1977. Argument between scientists transforms some statements into figments of one’s subjective imagination, and others into facts of nature. The constant fluctuation of statements’ facticity allowed us approximately to describe the different stages in the construction of facts, as if a laboratory was a factory where facts were produced on an assembly 270 Book Review Downloaded by [134.117.153.99] at 12:31 03 July 2013 line. The demystification of the difference between facts and artifacts was necessary for our discussion (at the end of Chapter 4) of the way in which the term fact can simultaneously mean what is fabricated and what is not fabricated. By observing artefact construction, we showed that reality was the consequence of the settlement of a dispute rather than its cause. Although obvious, the point has been overlooked by many analysts of science, who have taken the difference between fact and artefact as given and miss the process whereby laboratory scientists strive to make it a given (Latour & Woolgar, 1979, p.236). Everything rides on if and how we accept this 1979 finding or the 1987 rule or the experimental metaphysics Latour develops to accommodate them in The Politics of Nature. This becomes an extraordinarily complex tangle of issues we certainly cannot hope to resolve here, and probably not ever. But perhaps some clarity might be had. Sokel (1997, 1998) fastens on this statement (perhaps the most important one in Latour’s work) several times as an example of “sloppy thinking and glib relativism,” which he thinks intentionally conflates the distinction between reality (or nature) and our representations of it (or our social constructions). Is this the case? Yes. In The Politics of Nature, it is never ambiguous: “I am aiming at blurring the distinction between nature and society durably, so that we will never have to go back to distinct sets, with nature on the one side and the representations that humans make of it on the other” (2004c, p. 36). Here is where the serious entanglements arise. Latour’s claim is taken to mean the distinction simply doesn’t exist, with the consequence that he does not believe in or find relevance for empirical evidence or reality (Sokel, 1997). The Politics of Natureseems to advocate this in the strongest possible terms. When Latour points to comparative anthropology (2004c, pp. 42–49) to argue that non-Western cultures do not operate with the distinction, and to suggest that we need not operate with it as we do, the opportunity for confusion is immense. When Latour appears to ask and answer the question “does nature exist” in the negative, it seems he has lost his mind. The almost single-minded willfulness with which Latour pursues the project of overturning this distinction is what prompts Hacking’s (1999) view that Latour has his own agenda. What is Latour doing here? The 1979 finding or 1987 rule find their meaning through observation of the following tendency: to take what is the product or outcome of inquiry and read it back into the process of inquiry. That is simple enough to grasp. The difficulties are introduced as we try to evaluate the status of the claim and the consequences this creates. The first consequence of this tendency is that we badly misconstrue our processes of inquiry as a result. We clean it up, we rationalize it, we take Downloaded by [134.117.153.99] at 12:31 03 July 2013 Book Review 271 the formal presentation of our research papers too seriously, and don’t notice all the “micro” practices which are an integral part of inquiry. We forget all the mediations and operations we went through and the transformations these had on our thinking. Salk saw value in Latour’s work for its ability to illuminate such practices. When Latour and Woolgar (1979) claim the finding is “obvious” but often overlooked, they mean that in looking at how science is made you should be radically empirical. You can say people believe global warming by saying it is true or a fact. But if you are careful, and if you watch the process by which that fact emerges, you will list all the arguments and evidence that support this belief and its acceptance, and you will notice that never once does one say you must believe global warming simply because it is a fact or the truth. To say that adds nothing to the arguments and evidence that support the belief is shorthand for all the mediations that go into the acceptance of that fact.3 The second consequence is more serious and extends beyond matters of scientific practice. Latour claims his work demonstrates how statements become facts through a series of technical mediations and practical operations, such that facts genuinely emerge and are constructed through these practices. If you watch closely how inquiry works—if you really study scientific practices as practiced—you will see that the distinction between objective fact and subjective thought is often variable, often not clear, and only becomes stable and clear through a process of inquiry. You will see how matters of fact emerge from matters of concern, how any given state of affairs was at one time a proposition for dealing with a problematic or perplexing situation. This would seem to indicate that facts are not timeless and in no sense precede the processes of inquiry. The belief that facts are timeless is an issue worth battling over since, for Latour, what then happens is we generalize it into a statement about the nature of reality. Facts and objects are things of this world, they exist and are real—therefore, reality is what is factual and objective. Latour’s broad goal or agenda is to dislodge that generalization. He believes ecological crises point to a generalized shift in how we see the world. We are shifting from the view that reality is simply given as a matter of fact to treating it as a matter of perpetual concern, such that facts and objects no longer exclusively “form the background of the common landscape” (2004c, p. 24). Why does this matter? If we allow the prevailing view to hold, then that which is not reducible to the factual and objective—the imaginary and the valued—is not real but merely subjective or human construction. Suddenly we are trapped by the dualisms of modernism. And not only have we botched the construction of facts, but that of values too—where do they reside? In our heads and hearts? Is nature itself to be 3 Hacking (1999) is helpful in clarifying this point and a useful guide in general. Downloaded by [134.117.153.99] at 12:31 03 July 2013 272 Book Review intrinsically valued? Are we affirming the neoclassical view that reduces values to matters of individual preference or are we broaching an intrinsic value theory, such that there are ultimate ends and objective values in accord with which we must live? How did this happen? A purposive distinction evolved through practical activities has become an ontological dualism irrevocably characterizing the nature of reality (2004c, p. 90). We generalized a particularly useful set of relations, fact relations or object relations, into an ontological statement. Other times people will generalize the other way, such that the whole universe is viewed as conscious, yet the foolishness with which representational realism and panpsychicism view one another rarely prompt genuine concern about the underpinnings of their own view. Perhaps worse, they imagine their opposite number as the only alternative imaginable, an alternative each finds simply ridiculous for excluding experiences they hold sacred. In short, one sort of relation has become the context or condition upon which all other relations and outcomes take place. But is Latour right? Do facts emerge wholly through inquiry or is there a sense in which they are timeless and not strongly reducible to the processes from which they emerged? Or to pose the question another way, are facts in no way related to the processes through which they emerge, or are they wholly dependent and somehow reducible to those practical operations that appear to give birth to them? And could one give a similar account of values in relation to processes of valuation, able to overcome both the naturalistic and subjectivist turn given to questions of desire or preference formation? On this view, Latour would not be debunking the aggrandizing tendencies of physicists but advocating for a more thoroughgoing experimentalism, extending to our conventional ways of formulating and communicating issues regarding valuation. If he is right, the formation, appraisal, and conflict of values becomes a matter of openly describable and observable practices, no longer hidden someplace in our heads or behind the clouds (2004c, p. 136). Much of what we make of this depends on how you take Latour’s work. Did Latour come by his view as a result of “observing” science in action, as the 1979 study suggests? Or are his observations simply one way of describing the practical operations of scientific practice, guided by the methodological postulate cited above, where Latour (1987) describes scientific activity as Janus-faced, as either in-the-making or ready-made? Or is all this a result of holding to an experimental metaphysics, an idiosyncratic view Latour has used to guide his fieldwork collection, methodological guideposts, and interpretation? Or, to put it more complexly, what sorts of relations are obtained between empirical evidence/experience, scientific propositions/statements/facts, methodological postulates, Downloaded by [134.117.153.99] at 12:31 03 July 2013 Book Review 273 and theoretical articulations of consequences not obviously implied by sets of statements? And how do differing views on ontology and metaphysics redirect any of that? Latour is doing metaphysics even when he claims in a number of places not to be doing so (2004c, pp. 61, 82). His frequent invocation of William James’s (1909/1996) notion of a “pluriverse” is taken from James’s lecture series, A Pluralistic Universe, which is the most complete expression of James’s unfinished vision for a radical empiricism. When Latour ties his view to the odd-sounding assumption that what is subjective and objective, what is human and nonhuman, can “exchange properties,” that is expressing the key assumption radical empiricism makes about experience (2004c, p. 61). When Latour argues that ecological crises are marking a shift from our conventional notion of objects and facts, “which always form the background of the common landscape,” to matters of concern, uncertainty, and perplexity, and when he is careful to include both the factual and problematic as now figuring in this background (as opposed to misunderstandings that can arise from claiming a “progressive transformation of all matters of fact into disputed states of affair,” (2004c, pp. 24–25)), then his position is almost indistinguishable from Dewey’s characterization of existence as an admixture of the stable and precarious. The point is not to enroll Latour as a pragmatist. The point is that James (1909/1996, 1912/1996) and Dewey (1925/1988) forwarded these very positions in works on metaphysics. It seems to me Latour is right to claim his opponents hold metaphysical views. But why does he claim not to be doing metaphysics, and then come clean only later in the book, when he claims it is really a choice “between going back to the old metaphysics of nature or practicing an experimental metaphysics” (2004c. p. 130)? I am reminded of the story John Durham Peters (1999) tells about William James in concluding his book on the idea of communication: He had been given charge of a turtle’s heart for a popular lecture on physiology by one of his Harvard Medical School professors. The lecturer was demonstrating that the heart would pulsate when certain of its nerves were stimulated, and the pulsations were projected on the screen in front of Sanders Theatre. Halfway through the lecture, James realized the heart was not responding, so he took it upon himself, in a sudden and almost automatic response to the emergency, to make the proper motions on the screen by manipulating his forefinger such that the audience would not fail to gain a true understanding of the heart’s physiology. (Peters, 1999, p. 265) Peters tells this story in concluding that knowing does not simply obey a criterion of accurate representation, but must include our ability to deal Downloaded by [134.117.153.99] at 12:31 03 July 2013 274 Book Review with problems encountered in life; communication is not simply fidelity to an original, but responsibility to an audience or public. These stories can sound more scary than profound, however, when Latour positions himself as a diplomat (2004c, p. 221), a role he associates with betrayal and what appears to be occasional lying. One probably needs a broader understanding of Peters’s book to fully grasp the extent of Latour’s contribution to our thinking on publics. Despite the stunning breadth of Peters’s book and its introductory chapter, “The Problem of Communication,” it is framed by a set of concerns articulated by William James (pp. 4–5, 31). The problem of communication, that it is “at once bridge and chasm” (p. 5), teaches us that communication understood as responsibility to an other (or audience, or public) is perhaps irrevocably torn between a pragmatist emphasis on coordinated action requisite for democratic practice, and a thoroughgoing philosophy of difference ever attentive to the exclusion of voices and otherness. Peters’s emphasis tends to fall with James’s attention to difference and otherness as the context for considerations of communication, yet in a way that often presents the problem, the bridge-chasm duality of communication, as intractable (p. 31). Latour maintains and even seeks to definitively institutionalize this intractability, with his proposal for separate houses of Parliament in a way that emphasizes the requirements of democratic coordination (2004c, p. 119). But Latour repeatedly emphasizes we must not shy away from the issues of evaluation and exclusion that pervade democratic coordination: “Too bad—it is indeed this power to establish a hierarchy among incommensurable positions for which the collective must now take responsibility” (2004c, pp. 113, 145–46, 152, 158, 173, 176, 191–92, 203). There is no easy way of summarizing the tasks and procedures Latour lays out. The complex presentation of this proposal is at the heart of the book, draws the lion’s share of Latour’s own attention, and results in a provocative refiguring of democratic tasks and the contributions of various professions therein. But that “too bad” can be misleading or draw our attention away from an understated and perhaps more crucial point, one lending itself well to Peters’s own insistence on attending to difference in the context of requirements for democratic practice. One finds references to Dewey’s view of publics scattered throughout Latour’s endnotes, which—while familiar enough—might be taken not simply inspirationally (as is usually the case) but almost operationally. Dewey (1927/1954) is well known for holding that democracy entails that those indirectly and seriously affected by activities and issues having consequences for their lives participate in these matters of concern. Without a conception of inquiry, however, we have no account and no procedures by which people “learn to be affected,” a preliminary condition for the constitution of Downloaded by [134.117.153.99] at 12:31 03 July 2013 Book Review 275 pragmatist publics. Instead, Dewey’s account is reduced to moral exhortation or a regulative ideal. Here, then, is Latour’s most genuine innovation and contribution to our thinking on publics. Latour’s commitment to providing descriptions that prompt us to think differently as opposed to representing the already known (such that we learn to register “subtler and subtler distinctions that strike more and more forcibly” (2004c, p. 84) much as one learns to taste wine, hear music and register scents), situates the lessons of a philosophy of difference not simply as intractably linked but as constitutively related to a thoroughly participatory vision of democracy (Latour, 2004b). Latour’s emphasis on the tasks of articulation rather than representation, and the ability to think and see differently rather than reiterate and inform about the given, point to the central problem for reviving a pragmatist account of publics inspired by Dewey’s view. How is it we learn to be affected? For certainly this is requisite to participating in publics, if a public is understood as a realm for participating in decisions on issues having consequences that affect our lives. At times, Latour seems to have scarcely noticed he has offered an account of learning to be affected not reducible to rhetorical redescriptions simply in service of struggles for persuasion, but that he has pointed out how inquiry is intimately related to democratic practice. His strong emphasis on maintaining and institutionalizing an intractable separation, however, demonstrates his wariness about reading a politics off of such an account too quickly. One is left at the end of the day not with democratic politics as entailed, but with democratic publics as freshly rethought and a heck of a lot of hard work. Whether or not this account of thinking as experimentation—as taking things differently—will be taken as an adequate one of scientific practice and so enable us to “bring the sciences into democracy” as the book promises remains a matter of not inconsequential concern. REFERENCES Dewey, J. (1925/1988). Experience and nature. In J.A. Baydston (Ed.), The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–53: Vol.1: 1925. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. (1927/1954). The public and its problems. Athens: Ohio University Press. Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? London: Harvard University Press. James, W. (1909/1996). A pluralistic universe. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. James, W. (1912/1996). Essays in radical empiricism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Interview with Bruno Latour: Decoding the collective experiment. Received January 30, 2005, from http://agglutinations.com/archives/000040.html Downloaded by [134.117.153.99] at 12:31 03 July 2013 276 Book Review Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (Eds.). (1979). Laboratory life: The social construction of scientific facts. London: Sage Publications. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. (C. Porter, Trans.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1998). On recalling ANT. From Lancaster University, Department of Sociology website: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/papers/LatourRecalling-ANT.pdf Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s hope: Essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2004b). How to talk about the body? The normative dimension of science studies. Body & Society, 10(2–3), 205–229. Latour, B. (2004c). The politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge: Havard University Press. Peters, J. D. (1999). Speaking into the air: A history of the idea of communication. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Salk, J. (1979). Introduction. In B. Latour & S. Woolgar (Eds.), Laboratory life: The social construction of scientific facts (pp. 11–14). London: Sage Publications. Sokel. A. (1997, January 31). Why I wrote my parody. Le Monde. Received January 30, 2005, from http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/le_monde_english.html Sokel, A. (1998). What the Social Text affair does and does not prove. Received January 30, 2005, from http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/noretta.html