Thomas P. Hughes: Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (1983)

“A unique comparative history of the evolution of modern electric power systems. Networks of Power not only provides an accurate representation of large-scale technological change but also demonstrates that technology itself cannot be understood or directed unless placed in a cultural context. For Thomas Hughes, both the invention of the simplest devices (like the lightbulb itself) and the execution of the grandest schemes (such as harnessing the water power of the Bavarian Alps) fit into an overarching model of technological development. His narrative is an absorbing account of the creative genius, scientific achievements, engineering capabilities, managerial skills, and entrepreneurial risks behind one of the most commonplace amenities of the modern age.” (from the back cover)

The book was awarded the Dexter Prize by the Society for the History of Technology.

Publisher The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993
ISBN 0801846145, 9780801846144
474 pages

Review (John Neufeld, EH.net)
Review (Barry Barnes, Social Studies of Science)
Review (ZH, Innovation Group CNS UCSB)
Review (Stephen H. Cutcliffe, Technology and Culture)
Review (Mercedes Arroyo, Biblio 3W, in Spanish)

Publisher
Google books

PDF (updated on 2013-9-16 to OCR’d version)

François Cusset: French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States (2003–) [FR, EN]

“During the last three decades of the twentieth century, a disparate group of radical French thinkers achieved an improbable level of influence and fame in the United States. Compared by at least one journalist to the British rock ‘n’ roll invasion, the arrival of works by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari on American shores in the late 1970s and 1980s caused a sensation.

Outside the academy, “French theory” had a profound impact on the era’s emerging identity politics while also becoming, in the 1980s, the target of right-wing propagandists. At the same time in academic departments across the country, their poststructuralist form of radical suspicion transformed disciplines from literature to anthropology to architecture. By the 1990s, French theory was woven deeply into America’s cultural and intellectual fabric.

French Theory is the first comprehensive account of the American fortunes of these unlikely philosophical celebrities. François Cusset looks at why America proved to be such fertile ground for French theory, how such demanding writings could become so widely influential, and the peculiarly American readings of these works. Reveling in the gossipy history, Cusset also provides a lively exploration of the many provocative critical practices inspired by French theory. Ultimately, he dares to shine a bright light on the exultation of these thinkers to assess the relevance of critical theory to social and political activism today—showing, finally, how French theory has become inextricably bound with American life.”

Publisher La Découverte, Paris, 2003
ISBN 2707146730
373 pages

English edition
Translated by Jeff Fort, With Josephine Berganza and Marlon Jones
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2008
ISBN 0816647321, 9780816647323
388 pages

Reviews: Jennifer Ferng (Leonardo), Juliet J. Fall (Foucault Studies), Ethan Kleinberg (NPDR), Bridie Lonie (Junctures, FR).

Publisher (FR)
Publisher (EN)

French Theory: Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Cie et les mutations de la vie intellectuelle aux États-Unis. (French)
French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. (English)

Bruno Latour: An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns (2012–) [FR, EN]

“In this new book, Bruno Latour offers answers to questions raised in We Have Never Been Modern, a work that interrogated the connections between nature and culture. If not modern, he asked, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? Over the last twenty-five years, Latour has developed a research protocol different from the actor-network theory with which his name is now associated—a research protocol that follows the different types of connectors that provide specific truth conditions. These are the connectors that prompt a climate scientist challenged by a captain of industry to appeal to the institution of science, with its army of researchers and mountains of data, rather than to “capital-S Science” as a higher authority. Such modes of extension—or modes of existence, Latour argues here—account for the many differences between law, science, politics, and other domains of knowledge.

Though scientific knowledge corresponds to only one of the many possible modes of existence Latour describes, an unrealistic vision of science has become the arbiter of reality and truth, seducing us into judging all values by a single standard. Latour implores us to recover other modes of existence in order to do justice to the plurality of truth conditions that Moderns have discovered throughout their history. This systematic effort of building a new philosophical anthropology presents a completely different view of what Moderns have been, and provides a new basis for opening diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time when all societies are coping with ecological crisis.”

French edition
Publisher La découverte, Paris, 2012
504 pages

English edition
Translated by Catherine Porter
Publisher Harvard University Press, 2013
ISBN 0674724992, 9780674724990
520 pages

Reviews: Muecke (of FR ed., Los Angeles Review of Books, 2012), Norton (Interstitial, 2013), Hennion (Science, Technology, & Human Values, 2013), Davis (Reviews in Cultural Theory, 2014), Dusek (NDPR, 2014), Hebbing (Diffractions, 2014), Foster (Science and Technology Studies, 2014), Choat (Global Discourse, 2014).
Commentary: Skirbekk (Radical Philosophy, 2015).

Another Turn after ANT: An Interview with Bruno Latour by John Tresch (Social Studies of Science)
An Introduction to AIME by Latour, video, 16 min.

Participatory web platform of the project
Author
Publisher (FR)
Publisher (EN)

Enquête sur les modes d’existence. Une anthropologie des Modernes (French, added on 2013-9-26)
English translation was removed on 2013-9-20 upon request of the publisher.