Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory is a book written by Bruno Latour and published in 2005. This text presents Latour’s revolutionary theory concerning the interaction between people in a society and what he calls “the social.”
Bruno Latour is a French writer as well as a philosopher and sociologist. His most famous works actually deal with his studies in science and technology, though he has also done significant work in anthropology and sociology. Though most known for his work in academia and as a professor, Latour actually recently retired from a few of his responsibilities at various universities he had connections with in 2017. His most recent work that has taken the academic world by storm is his development of the actor network theory, abbreviated as ANT, along with Michel Callon and John Law.
The actor network theory is a novel, constructionist approach influenced by multiple theories of literary scientist Algirdas Julien Greimas and sociologists Harold Garfinkel and Gabriel Tarde. Heavily cited by writers in both the humanities and the social sciences, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory delves deep into Latour’s various developments on the ANT. Taking away all the assumptions that we, and many social scientists assume to be true, that deal with society and the world “social” itself, Latour makes new connections and forges a new path to developing definitions that reconstruct how we understand the actor network theory and sociology.
