Bruno Latour

Actor-network theory examines how outcomes emerge from networks containing both human participants and nonhuman elements such as machines, documents, and institutions. Latour developed this approach alongside scholars including Michel Callon and John Law.

Laboratory Life studies scientists at the Salk Institute as they produce papers, inscriptions, and accepted scientific claims. Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar treated the laboratory ethnographically, focusing on scientific practice rather than presenting facts as finished products.

Latour argued that modern societies claim to separate nature from culture while continually producing hybrids that combine science, politics, technology, and social life. We Have Never Been Modern was first published in French in 1991.

Latour resisted explanations that treat "society" as a ready-made force behind every event. In books such as Reassembling the Social, he instead asked researchers to trace the specific associations through which a social order is assembled.