Actor–network theory

Graham Harman Graham Harman (born May 9, 1968) is a professor at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He is a contemporary philosopher of metaphysics, who attempts to reverse the linguistic turn of Western philosophy. Harman is associated with Speculative Realism in philosophy, which was the name of a workshop that also included the philosophers Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, and Quentin Meillassoux.[2] Biography[edit] Lindisfarne Association The Lindisfarne Association (1972-2012) was a group of intellectuals of diverse interests organized by cultural historian William Irwin Thompson for the "study and realization of a new planetary culture". It was inspired by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead's idea of an integral philosophy of organism, and by Teilhard de Chardin's idea of planetization.[1][2] In his book Reimagination of the World, Thompson described his reasons for naming his group after Lindisfarne, an island with a famous monastery (once inhabited by Saint Cuthbert) just off the coast of Northumberland in the North East of England: "Although I used the word as a symbol of a small group of people effecting a transformation from one system to another, the word also brought with it the archetypical associations of a small group of monks holding onto ancient knowledge in a fallen world, a world that would soon overrun them during the Viking terror

Latour on factishes and belief Before moving on to work on Spinoza and the concept of aberrant monism, I want to add one more post on Latour. I hope that between this and previous posts there may emerge a relatively coherent picture of my reading of Latour. I also hope to indicate how Latour’s thought can become, and ought to become, an effective tool in countering a number of the presuppositions of contemporary neoliberal politics, or what Mark Fisher aptly calls capitalist realism. As usual, feel free to point out the errors of my ways. As contradictory as it may seem, Latour argues that ‘construction’ and ‘autonomous reality’ are to be understood as synonymous. Among the neologisms Latour uses to elaborate this point is ‘factish,’ being a combination of fact and fetish.

John Law John Law is a sociologist currently on the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University and key proponent of Actor-network theory. Actor-network theory, sometimes abbreviated to ANT, is a social science approach for describing and explaining social, organisational, scientific and technological structures, processes and events. It assumes that all the components of such structures (whether these are human or otherwise) form a network of relations that can be mapped and described in the same terms or vocabulary. Developed by two leading French STS scholars, Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, Law himself, and others, ANT may alternatively be described as a 'material-semiotic' method. Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (/ləˈtʊər/; French: [latuʁ]; born 22 June 1947) is a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.[3] He is especially known for his work in the field of science and technology studies (STS).[4] After teaching at the École des Mines de Paris (Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation) from 1982 to 2006, he became Professor at Sciences Po Paris (2006–2017), where he was the scientific director of the Sciences Po Medialab. He retired from several university activities in 2017.[5] He was also a Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics.[6][7] Latour's monographs earned him a 10th place among most-cited book authors in the humanities and social sciences for the year 2007.[10] Biography[edit]

The Palm at the End of the Mind: Relatedness, Religiosity, and the Real: Amazon.co.uk: Michael Jackson In many societies, and for many people, religiosity is only incidentally connected with texts or theologies, church or mosque, temple or monastery. Drawing on a lifetime's ethnographic work among people for whom religion is not principally a matter of faith, doctrine, or definition, Michael Jackson turns his attention to those situations in life where we come up against the limits of language, our strength, and our knowledge, yet are sometimes thrown open to new ways of understanding our being-in-the-world, new ways of connecting with others. Through sixty-one beautifully crafted essays based on sojourns in Europe, West Africa, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and taking his cue from Wallace Stevens' late poem, "Of Mere Being", Jackson explores a range of experiences where 'the palm at the end of the mind' stands 'beyond thought', on 'the edge of space', 'a foreign song'.

Michel Serres Michel Serres (born 1 September 1930) is a French philosopher and author. Life and career[edit] The son of a barge man, Serres entered France's naval academy, the École Navale, in 1949 and the École Normale Supérieure ("rue d'Ulm") in 1952. He aggregated in 1955, having studied philosophy. He spent the next few years as a naval officer before finally receiving his doctorate in 1968, and began teaching in Paris. Approach from Actor-Network Theory This theory offers the explanation that a system consists of actors, objects, and the relationships between the two. Most importantly, Actor-Network Theory (ANT) claims that all of these three components are of equal importance. This means that the user is no more important to the system than the object she is interacting with. This theory has some famous proponents including John Law, Bruno Latour and Yrgo Engestrom.

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Deleuze (French: [ʒil dəløz]; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), both co-written with Félix Guattari. His metaphysical treatise Difference and Repetition (1968) is considered by many scholars to be his magnum opus.[2] Life[edit]

Emergent Properties - International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences 4 - Behavioral science - Деловая библиотека Back Emergence and emergent properties are concepts that are used across many scientific disciplines. They are the key elements of a theoretical and methodological tradition—most prominently represented in the 1920s—claiming that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. This amounts to saying that the properties of a whole (systemic qualities) cannot be deduced by summing or averaging the properties of its com­ponents (nondeducibility thesis). Vice versa, the ap­pearance of genuinely novel properties characterizing compounds or systems as wholes (i.e., emergent properties) cannot be solely predicted from knowing the properties of the constituents and their relations.

Stanislav Grof Biography[edit] As founding president of the International Transpersonal Association (founded in 1977), he went on to become distinguished adjunct faculty member of the Department of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a position he remains in today. Grof was featured in the film Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within, a 2006 documentary about rediscovering an enchanted cosmos in the modern world.[3] He was also featured in five other documentaries.[4] Teachings[edit] Grof distinguishes between two modes of consciousness: the hylotropic and the holotropic.[5] The hylotropic[6] refers to "the normal, everyday experience of consensus reality

Rhizome (philosophy) "As a model for culture, the rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the original source of 'things' and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those 'things.' A rhizome, on the other hand, is characterized by 'ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.' Rather than narrativize history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a 'rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.' The planar movement of the rhizome resists chronology and organization, instead favoring a nomadic system of growth and propagation. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1980.

Ethnomethodology Ethnomethodology is the study of methods people use for understanding and producing the social order in which they live.[1] It generally seeks to provide an alternative to mainstream sociological approaches.[2] In its most radical form, it poses a challenge to the social sciences as a whole.[3] On the other hand, its early investigations led to the founding of conversation analysis, which has found its own place as an accepted discipline within the academy. According to Psathas, it is possible to distinguish five major approaches within the ethnomethodological family of disciplines.[4] Definition[edit]