New book: Agency without Actors?

Passoth, J., B. Peuker & M. Schillmeier (Eds) (2012) Agency without Actors? Rethinking Collective Action. London/New York: Routledge

Contents:

Note on Contributors 1. Introduction Part 1: Events, Suggestions, Accounts 2. Suggestion and Satisfaction: On the Actual Occasion of Agency by Paul Stronge and Mike Michael 3. Science, Cosmopolitics and the Question of Agency: Kant’s Critique and Stengers’ Event by Michael Schillmeier 4. Questioning the Human/Non-Human Distinction by Florence Rudolf 5. Agency and “Worlds” of Accounts: Erasing the Trace or Rephrasing the Action? by Rolland Munro Part 2: Contribution, Distribution, Failures 6. Distributed Agency and Advanced Technology, Or: How to Analyze Constellations of Collective Inter-Agency by Werner Rammert 7. Distributed Sleeping and Breathing: On the Agency of Means in Medical Work by Cornelius Schubert 8. Agencies’ Democracy: “Contribution” as a Paradigm to (Re)thinking the Common in a World of Conflict by Jacques Roux 9. Reality Failures by John Law Part 3: Interaction, Partnership, Organization 10. “What’s the Story?” Organizing as a Mode of Existence by Bruno Latour 11. Researching Water Quality with Non-Humans: An ANT Account by Christelle Gramaglia & Delaine Sampaio Da Silva 12. Horses – Significant Others, People’s Companions, and Subtle Actors by Marion Mangelsdorf

Videos of recent Latour talks

• Watch video: “Ecological Crises, Digital Humanities and New Political Assemblies,” Azim Premji University, 23 March 2012
• Watch video: “Reenacting Science,” Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, 20 February 2012
• Watch video: “From Critique to Composition,” Dublin City University, 17 February 2012

Speculative Heresy

Excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at this symposium on 15-16 October, 2012. Also a reminder that the Millennium conference’s call for papers is over in a week. Be sure to submit an abstract soon if you’d like to participate.

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Invitation to a Symposium,
Faculty of the Social Sciences, Lund University, October 15-16, 2012

Matter Matters: The Social Sciences Beyond the Linguistic Turn

Keynote speakers
Diana Coole, University of London
Samantha Frost, University of Illinois
Graham Harman, American University in Cairo
Hans Ruin, Södertörn University College
Nick Srnicek, London School of Economics

According to the main mantra of the linguistic turn, sociopolitical reality is linguistically constituted. For all their differences, theoretical orientations such as constructivism, deconstruction, discourse analysis, and conceptual history share the underlying assumption that the study of linguistic entities holds the key to knowledge of the sociopolitical world. Yet there is a growing concern that the linguistic turn has…

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Object-Oriented Philosophy

The four original Speculative Realists only met together once– in April 2007 at Goldsmiths. (I deliberately capitalize the phrase Speculative Realism– here it’s a proper name for a group, not a definite description.)

But starting next week, the Freie Universität in Berlin is going to have us consecutively rather than simultaneously.

Click HERE for details.

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At the limits of individual human rationality…

…the social steps in and takes over – at least in my home town of Bournemouth. Should you get so drunk on a Saturday night between 10pm and 3am that you can no longer rely on your cognitive and physical capacities or your gadgets to get home, do not despair: Safe Bus will come to your rescue.

Bournemouth Safe Bus aims to help drunken party-goers

POLICE in Bournemouth say the Safe Bus will be hitting the town centre every Saturday night this year to help the town’s vulnerable people and drunken partygoers. (…) Inspector Dean O’Connor, of Bournemouth and Poole Police, said: “The Safe Bus helps people who are drunk, injured or lost. Those who have come out, had too much to drink, lost their mobile phone and can’t get home. It’s for those who have fallen over and are injured, those who have become a victim of an assault, or those who are just so intoxicated they are unable to look after themselves.”