Warning,
This mail is very long because I quoted many from Latour's paper although
what I wrote is not so long.
The paper I mainly quoted is as follows:
Bruno Latour, "On actor-network theory: A few clarifications"
appeared in the webpage of ANT, (Centre for Social Theory and Technology
(CSTT), Keele University, UK Home - STOT Resources - ANT Resource - Bruno
Latour's Paper),
I restart the issue of time by commenting on this Latour's paper.
In this paper, entitled "On actor-network theory: A few clarifications", he
pointed out the relation between ANT and ethnomethodology as follows;
.............(Latour)
instead of starting from universal laws
-social or natural- and to take local contingencies as so many queer
particularities that should be either eliminated or protected, it starts
from irreducible, incommensurable, unconnected localities, which then, at a
great price, sometimes end into provisionnaly commensurable connections.
Through this foreground/background reversal ANT has some affinity with the
order out of disorder or chaos philosophy (Serres, 1983; Prigogine and
Stengers, 1979) and many practical links with ethnomethodology (Garfinkel
and Lynch's principle in Lynch 1985).
.......................................(Latour)
Then he continues the issues of far/close, large scale/small scale, and
inside/outside.
Regarding the issue of far/close, he emphasizes that ANT is free from
geographical, spacial metaphor.
................................(Latour)
However, geographical proximity is the result of a science, geography, of a
profession, geographers, of a practice, mapping system, measuring,
triangulating. Their definition of proximity and distance is useless for
ANT -or it should be included as one type of connections, one type of
networks as we will see below. All definitions in terms of surface and
territories come from our reading of maps drawn and filled in by
geographers. Out of geographers and geography, 'in between' there own
networks, there is no such a thing as a proximity or a distance which would
not be defined by connectibility. The geographical notion is simply another
connection to a grid defining a metrics and a scale (Jacob, 1990). The
notion of network helps us to lift the tyranny of geographers in defining
space and offers us a notion which is neither social nor 'real' space, but
associations.
.................................(Latour)
In short, the connections by using a phone and e-mail cannot be understood
by spacial metaphor anymore.
The technologies such as a phone and a computer network require us to
rethink the meaning of connections, relations or associations, that as free
from spacial metaphor.
SEE Bronfenbrenner's like figure of "eco-system" that is spaciallly
represented.(The meaning of context or contextualism here is quite
different from that of situated approach.)
I should add one more thing to Latour.
In the previous mail to Jay, I wrote about the modern thematic map in the
following.
"For example, a modern thematic map is one of good examples.
Thematic maps describe industrial configuration, networks of
transportation of a nation based on various statistic data and
huge survey by army or other govermental institutions. Just like other
filing systems like records of students, examination in school, a thematic
map makes visible of "macro", that is "the nation" or "people in the
nation".
The thematic maps has been produced by geographical practice and
they spacially represent a nation.
It is possible to say that, as the result, our understanding "macro" has
strongly been constrained by spacial metaphor.
On the other hand, that is paradoxical, by producing and using these
artifacts or maps, various new connections among various places have been
established and these newly organized connections cannot be understood by
spacial metaphor anymore.
Here let me go back to Latour again. He is going to the issue of
micro-macro dichotomy after the issue of far/close.
............................(Latour)
Small scale/large scale: the notion of network allows us to dissolve the
micro- macro- distinction that has plagued social theory from its inception.
The whole metaphor of scales going from the individual, to the nation state,
through family, extended kin, groups, institutions etc. is replaced by a
metaphor of connections. A network is never bigger than another one, it is
simply longer or more intensely connected. The small scale/large scale
model has three features which have proven devastating for social theory:
it is tied to an order relation that goes from top to bottom or from bottom
to up-as if society really had a top and a bottom-; it implies that an
element
'b' being macro-scale is of a different nature and should be studied thus
differently from an element 'a' which is micro-scale; it is utterly unable
to follow how an element goes from being individual -a- to collective -b-
and back.
.........................................(Latour)
Anyway, I agree on Latour's claim that we should be free from spacial
metaphor in oder to understand technologically organized practices and
"soceity".
Now let me go back to the issue of time.
The following is part of Mike's last mail about time.
*****************************(Cole)
I really love Mead's reflections on time and have been inspired by you to
go back to them. The experience that led me to think of the term
"mesogenetic" came from an experience that echoes Mead, but differs from
it. It is written up in some detail in the paper in Martin et al book on
Sociocultural theory honoring Sylvia Scribner, and in checking I see that I
did not cite it in *Cultural Psychology*. The experience was one of
writing a report about the first several years of trying to sustain 5thD's
in Solana Beach.
Of course, when I started the report, I had a nicely built up explanation
for why things had turned out as they did. As part one of my research
methods, I had tape recorded conversations with key institutional players
in four institutions where the 5thD was started.
When I listened to those tapes 5 years later, I was shocked because I could
now "see" the future in a way that the Mike Cole I was listening to talk
with people on the tape could not. I could from "the future" occupy a
particular "past" and the second time around I could interpret remarks that
people
made in a totally different light. I could discriminate statements with
long term import from ones without it.
None of this invalidates what Mead wrote, but for me, at least, it
enriches it. Thanks to the tape recorder, which did not exist in Mead's
time, I could see time, so to speak, from two sides. Thanks to film and
video, a Garfinkel, Sachs, Ueno, McDermott, Suchman, etc. can interact with
the phenomena they study in brief time segments. Etc.
*************************** (Cole)
Various calenders, schedulers and time scales are spacially represented
artifacts of time. (It will be another issue how is the mutual constitution
of practices and various artifacts concerning time.)
Because of that, people tend to think that time is something that can be
mapped into space such as micro, meso, macro.
These artifacts make people naturally use spacial metaphor of time.
On the other hand, that is really paradoxical again, by using these spacial
artifacts, people can reorganize various connections with "past", "present"
and "future".
The connections among "past", "present" and "future" one made by using
these artifacts cannot be understood by spacial metaphor.
So, it is much interesting for me to be free from spacial metaphor in order
to understand the use of spacial represented maps of time.
Actually, it is possible to say that taperecoders and VCR tapes reorgainze
the relation among "the past" ,"the present" and "the future" if compared
with lists, documents and other inscriptions that record "the past".
However, I cannot understand why this reorganization with a taperecorder
and a VCR tape is formulated as "meso".
The category of "meso" looks like disturbing to understand Mike's
interesting expereince of seeing the VCR tape of 5 years before.
The interesting point of Mead is that his formulating "the past" and "the
present" is not constrained to the spacially mapped, ordinary sequectial
time scale.
I go back to Latour's effort to try to go beyond micro-macro dichotomy.
I also checked Latour's paper "On interobjectivity" on MCA.
It seems to me that there is no differece between Latour and
ethnomethodology concerning paying attention to material things and
technological artifacts.
Especially, recently, there is not sharp distinction between Latour,
situated approach and/or ethnomethodology anymore in this point as long as
he does not take the stance of too strong technological determinisim.
I think that his formulating interactionism as micro and traditional
sociology as macro in this paper looks like echo of micro-macro dichotomy
and it is just wrong although I agree on his effort to try to go beyond
micro-macro dichotomy.
The problem of Latour's MCA paper, I think, is that he used the term
localizing and globalizing that is again strongly constrained by spacial
metaphor. He sometimes slips down.
It is really difficult to be free from micro-macro dichotomy or spacial
metaphor of society.
Naoki Ueno
NIER, Tokyo