1. What contributions have the authors mentioned in the paper "Disassembling actor-network theory" ?
One of the strikingly iconoclastic features of actor-network theory is its juxtaposition of the claim to be a realist perspective with denials that supposedly natural phenomena existed before scientists “ made them up ”.. This paper explains and criticises such arguments in the work of Bruno Latour.. By combining referent and reference in the concept of assemblages, Latour provides a superficially viable way to reconcile these apparently incompatible claims.. This paper will argue, however, that this conflation of referent and reference leads Latour ’ s ontology into difficulties that can only be resolved by abandoning it in favour of a more conventional – critical – realism.. 1 Acknowledgements: this paper has benefited from my discussions with Bob Carter and Frederic Vandenberghe, with members of the Centre for Critical Realism ( including Roy Bhaskar, Nick Hostettler, Lee Martin, and Nick Wilson ), and with the Loughborough University Social Theory Reading Group ( including Daniel Chernilo ).. I would also like to thank this journal ’ s anonymous reviewers for a very productive set of comments.
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2. What is Latour’s intention on the first reading of hisontology?
On the first reading of hisontology, he would be committed to denying the existence of a world beyond that with which humans are engaged, and thus to an extreme form of anthropocentrism that conflicts with his insistence on treating the human and nonhuman symmetrically.
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3. What is the key to Latour’s new ontology?
Reforging its concepts requires nothing less than a complete reinvention of ontology, and the central concept in Latour’s new ontology is the concept of an assemblage, though many different terms are used in his work to refer to essentially this same concept – actor-networks, actants, actors, entelechies, monads and articulations, for example.
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4. What is the argument used to deny that the authors can access the world beyond us?
18 This argument is routinely deployed to deny that the authors can access the world beyond us at all, whereas Latour wants to say that the authors can and do access this world, but that the world which the authors access takes a form that combines the actual phenomena with epistemic associations.
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