Les limites de la symétrie

Abstract

This article introduces the debate over Bruno Latour’s book, Changer de société. Refaire de la Sociologie (Paris, La Découverte, 2006). Is it necessary to agree with Latour’s attempt to reinvent sociology as a whole? The quality of his writing enables the emergence of a kind of theoretical fiction whose richness must be noted, but whose limits appear rather quickly when less talented authors attempt to follow his example. Nevertheless, while his ideas should serve to stimulate the whole of the sociological field, the goal he proposes in this book-- to reconstruct sociology while rejecting the majority of it-- seem destined to be unsuccessful.

Keywords

• Bruno Latour
• actor-network
• pragmatic sociology
• sociology of associations
• symmetry