Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (2005–) [EN, ES]
Filed under book | Tags: · actor-network theory, network, social science, theory
“Reassembling the Social is a fundamental challenge from one of the world’s leading social theorists to how we understand society and the ‘social’. Bruno Latour’s contention is that the word ‘social’ as used by social scientists has become laden with assumptions to the point where it has become a misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon, it is used to indicate a stabilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon. Latour also finds the word used as if it described a type of material, in a comparable way to an adjective such as ‘wooden’ or ‘steely’. Rather than simply indicating what is already assembled together, it is now used in a way that makes assumptions about the nature of what is assembled. It has become a word that designates two distinct things: a process of assembling: and a type of material, distinct from others. Latour shows why ‘the social’ cannot be thought of as a kind of material or domain, and disputes attempts to provide a ‘social explanation’ of other states of affairs. While these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the past, the very success of the social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the original meaning of ‘the social’ to redefine the notion and allow it to trace connections again. It will then be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences, but using more refined tools. Drawing on his extensive work examining the ‘assemblages’ of nature, Latour finds it necessary to scrutinize thoroughly the exact content of what is assembled under the umbrella of Society. This approach, a ‘sociology of associations’ has become known as Actor-Network-Theory, and this book is an essential introduction both for those seeking to understand Actor-Network-Theory, or the ideas of one of its most influential proponents.”
Publisher Oxford University Press, 2005
ISBN 0199256047, 9780199256044
301 pages
Reassembling the Social (English, updated on 2012-7-17)
Reensamblar lo social (Spanish, trans. Gabriel Zadunaisky, 9 MB, added 2016-1-13)
Pirates of the Digital Millennium: How the Intellectual Property Wars Damage Our Personal Freedoms, Our Jobs, and the World Economy
Filed under book | Tags: · copyright, free culture, intellectual property, law, privacy
Covers intellectual property wars: every side, the implications, the economics, the law, the ethics, the players, and the realities, including the findings of a 57-country digital piracy research project and survey and focus group research.
Pirates of the Digital Millennium: How the Intellectual Property Wars Damage Our Personal Freedoms, Our Jobs, and the World Economy
By John Gantz, Jack B. Rochester
Edition: illustrated
Published by Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2004
ISBN 0131463152, 9780131463158
294 pages
Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory
Filed under book | Tags: · cyberspace, literary theory, new media, technology, textuality
Computers were once thought of as number-crunching machines; but for most of us it is their ability to create worlds and process words that have made them into a nearly indispensable part of life. As Jacques Leslie puts it, if computers are everywhere, it is because they have grown into “poetry machines.” The term “cyberspace” captures the growing sense that beyond – or perhaps on – the computer screen lies a “New Frontier” both enticing and forbidding, a frontier awaiting exploration, promising discovery, threatening humanistic values, hatching new genres of discourse, and alerting our relation to the written word. The purpose of this book is to explore the concepts of text and the forms of textuality currently emerging from the creative chaos of electronic technologies. The essays gathered here address several needs in cybertext criticism: they engage in a critical, though not hostile, dialogue with the claims of the first generation developers and theorists; they search for a middle ground between a narrowly technical description of the works and general considerations about the medium; they outline a poetics tailor-made for electronic textuality, and they relate cybertexts to the major human, aesthetic and intellectual concerns of contemporary culture. Within the general territory of electronic textuality, they focus on three areas. The first section examines how postmodern thought has theorised the textual products of the recent electronic revolution, and how, conversely, these new forms of textuality challenge postmodern thought and call for an expansion of the analytical repertory of literary theory. The second section debates how, in an age that ties the sense of self to a sense of embodiment, identity is affected by the power of electronic technology to create virtual doubles of the body, and how it can it be constructed through electronic writing. The last section gathers three “performance texts” which complete a feed-back loop between electronic and print culture, as they turn the critical investigation of cyberspace textuality into a quest for new forms of literary theoretical writing.
Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory
By Marie-Laure Ryan
Contributor Marie-Laure Ryan
Edition: illustrated
Published by Indiana University Press, 1999
ISBN 0253334659, 9780253334657
285 pages