Citation

Mills T. Br. J. Sociol. 2018; 69(2): 286-305.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, London School of Economics and Political Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1468-4446.12306

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper offers a defence of sociology through an engagement with Actor Network Theory (ANT) and particularly the critique of ?critical? and politically engaged social science developed by Bruno Latour. It argues that ANT identifies some weaknesses in more conventional sociology and social theory, and suggests that ?critical? and ?public? orientated sociologists can learn from the analytical precision and ethnographic sensibilities that characterize ANT as a framework of analysis and a research programme. It argues, however, that Latour et al. have too hastily dispensed with ?critique? in favour of a value neutral descriptive sociology, and that the symmetrical and horizontalist approach adopted in ANT is particularly ill-suited to the development of scientific knowledge about social structures. It argues that a more straightforwardly realist sociology would share many of the strengths of ANT whilst being better able to interrogate, empirically and normatively, the centres of contemporary social power.

Keywords

actor network theory; Bruno Latour; critical sociology; critique; realism; social structure