Bruno Latour

1. Introduction

Bruno Latour (1947–2022) was a French thinker whose work reshaped how scholars understand science, technology, politics, and the very idea of “society.” Trained in philosophy but working mainly in sociology and anthropology, he became best known for actor-network theory (ANT), for his critique of “modernity,” and for his late interventions in debates on climate change and the Anthropocene.

Latour’s central claim is that entities usually treated as separate—nature, society, facts, technologies, institutions—are better understood as outcomes of heterogeneous networks of humans and nonhumans. Rather than starting from fixed categories such as “the social” or “the natural,” he proposed to “follow the actors” as they build durable connections, stabilize facts, and compose political collectives.

His work occupies a distinctive position at the crossroads of science and technology studies (STS), philosophy of science, social theory, and environmental humanities. Proponents view him as a key figure in the “material turn” and in post-humanist thought; critics raise questions about his constructivism, his style of argument, and the political implications of his approach.

Latour wrote in an accessible, often narrative mode, drawing on detailed case studies of laboratories, legal disputes, technological projects, and climate politics. These empirical inquiries were consistently tied to broader philosophical questions about realism and constructivism, agency, modernity, and political representation. Across his career, he moved from micro-analyses of scientific practice to large-scale attempts to rethink the ontology of the “moderns” and the conditions for politics on a changing planet.

2. Life and Historical Context

Latour was born in 1947 in Beaune, Burgundy, into a Catholic family involved in winemaking and law. Commentators often note that this provincial, legal-bureaucratic and religious milieu later informed his sensitivity to institutions, documents, and rituals. He studied philosophy and theology in the tumultuous period of the late 1960s, defending a doctorate in philosophy at the Université de Tours in 1975 on biblical exegesis.

Soon after, Latour undertook fieldwork in what was then the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire), during a period marked by decolonization, Cold War geopolitics, and development projects. This experience oriented him toward anthropology and to the study of how institutions and beliefs are practically sustained, rather than merely doctrinally stated.

From the late 1970s, Latour worked in and around emerging science and technology studies. His ethnographic research at the Salk Institute in California, in collaboration with Steve Woolgar, occurred against a backdrop of escalating investment in biomedical research and critical reassessments of scientific authority following events such as the Vietnam War and environmental controversies.

In France, he held positions at institutions including the École des Mines and later Sciences Po, moving between academic sociology, philosophy, and public debate. His career unfolded alongside larger intellectual shifts: the decline of structuralism, the rise of post-structuralism and French theory, the institutionalization of STS, and later, intensified concern with globalization, digitalization, and climate change.

3. Intellectual Development

Latour’s intellectual trajectory is often described in phases, each reworking rather than abandoning earlier concerns.

From Philosophy and Theology to Anthropology

His early training in philosophy and theology focused on interpretation, belief, and revelation. In later retrospectives, he suggested that biblical exegesis sensitized him to how texts gain authority through institutional and material supports. Fieldwork in the Ivory Coast then shifted his attention from abstract doctrines to anthropological observation: how people, organizations, and objects together produce what counts as “truth” or “development.”

Laboratory Ethnography and Science Studies

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Latour’s collaboration with Steve Woolgar and interaction with emerging STS networks redirected his efforts to scientific practice. Laboratory Life and subsequent studies of Louis Pasteur and microbiology extended anthropological techniques into laboratories and archives, encouraging him to treat scientists as “natives” with distinctive rituals, technologies, and inscriptions.

Actor-Network Theory and Critique of Modernity

From the mid-1980s through the 1990s, working alongside Michel Callon and John Law, Latour developed actor-network theory. This period generalized insights from laboratory ethnography to infrastructures, markets, and politics, while We Have Never Been Modern articulated a broader diagnosis of “the moderns” and their division between nature and society.

Plural Ontology and Ecological Turn

In the 2000s, Latour pursued a more explicit ontological project with An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, proposing multiple, irreducible “modes” of being. Simultaneously, texts such as Politics of Nature and later Facing Gaia and Down to Earth marked an ecological and political turn, integrating Earth system science, climate politics, and renewed attention to religious and legal practices into a comprehensive rethinking of the “collective” in the Anthropocene.

4. Major Works and Projects

Latour’s oeuvre ranges from detailed case studies to large-scale systematic projects. Many commentators group his major works into thematic clusters.

Key Monographs and Studies

These works develop the empirical and conceptual foundations of actor-network theory and Latour’s critique of the nature/society divide.

Systematic and Programmatic Works

These texts move from case studies to explicit methodological and ontological formulations.

Late Ecological and Political Interventions

These late works integrate earlier concerns—networks, representation, modes of existence—into reflections on climate crisis and planetary politics, while engaging broader publics beyond academic STS and philosophy.

5. Core Ideas: Actor-Network Theory and Beyond

Latour’s core ideas revolve around rethinking agency, sociality, and reality in terms of networks of humans and nonhumans, while later extending this framework into a pluralist ontology.

Actor-Network Theory (ANT)

ANT proposes that what are usually called “social,” “technical,” or “natural” factors should be examined symmetrically as actors or actants whose capacities depend on their place in a network. A scientific fact, a legal rule, or a technological system is seen as the stabilized outcome of many translations, negotiations, and material operations.

Key features typically attributed to Latour’s version of ANT include:

Proponents argue that this allows finer-grained descriptions of how power, knowledge, and technology interact. Critics suggest it may flatten important distinctions (e.g., between humans and artifacts).

Beyond ANT: Collectives and Modes of Existence

Latour later framed his work less under the ANT label and more in terms of collectives and modes of existence:

• A collective is a provisional gathering of humans and nonhumans that must be progressively composed and represented, replacing the idea of a purely human “society.”
• Modes of existence are distinct ways entities persist and are tested—such as scientific [REF], legal [LAW], religious [REL], or political [POL] modes—each with its own trajectory and criteria of validity.

This move aimed to acknowledge ontological plurality while avoiding both reduction to science and radical relativism. Commentators differ on whether this represents a significant change from ANT or a systematic restatement of earlier commitments.

6. Methodology: Following the Actors

Latour’s methodological hallmark is the injunction to “follow the actors”. Rather than starting with predefined structures—such as “the economy,” “the state,” or “society”—he proposes tracing how actors themselves define and connect with one another.

Principles of Inquiry

Characteristic elements of this methodology include:

Latour’s laboratory ethnographies exemplify this approach: he observes how notes, samples, diagrams, instruments, and institutional hierarchies collectively produce stabilized “facts.”

Reassembling the Social

In Reassembling the Social, Latour contrasts “the social as a substance” with “the social as association.” He argues that:

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Instead of taking for granted what a social actor is, we follow the actors themselves, as they define one another, move, and transform.

— Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social

The methodological claim is that “social explanations” should not invoke an underlying social realm (e.g., class, culture) as a cause; instead, analysts should redescribe how connections are forged and maintained. Supporters hold that this yields richer accounts of innovation, expertise, and organization. Critics argue that it can underplay structural factors such as capitalism, patriarchy, or colonialism, which they see as not easily reducible to local networks.

Latour’s later work extends this method to law, religion, and politics, while insisting that different modes of existence may require adapted descriptive tools and criteria of success.

7. Philosophical Contributions and Debates

Though institutionally located in sociology and STS, Latour’s work sparked extensive philosophical debate in metaphysics, epistemology, and political philosophy.

Constructivism and Realism

Latour is often associated with social constructivism for claiming that scientific facts are “constructed.” However, in Pandora’s Hope he insists that construction is precisely what gives facts their robust reality:

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Facts are not made up; they are made. And the making of facts is what we have to study if we want to understand what reality is.

— Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope

Some philosophers classify this as a form of “constructivist realism” or pragmatist realism. Supporters see it as overcoming the dichotomy between naive realism and radical relativism; critics contend that Latour’s vocabulary blurs distinctions between epistemic and ontological claims.

Metaphysics of Relations and Agency

ANT and the modes of existence project contribute to debates on relational ontology and distributed agency. Latour’s notion of actants inspired comparisons with process philosophy, Deleuzian metaphysics, and speculative realism. Proponents argue that his work helps decenter the human and foreground material agency. Opponents worry that this “flat ontology” minimizes moral and phenomenological differences between humans and nonhumans.

Modernity, Secularization, and Critique

We Have Never Been Modern intervenes in discussions of modernity and secularization by arguing that moderns never truly separated nature and society. This challenges accounts of modernity as a rupture based on rationalization and disenchantment. Some philosophers and historians embrace this as a powerful diagnosis of hybridization; others argue that it underestimates institutional changes in law, religion, and science.

Latour also engaged with critical theory, notably in debates over whether ANT offers a viable form of critique. His essay “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam?” questions certain styles of debunking and has been read both as a renewal of critical practice and as a retreat from systemic analysis, depending on commentators’ perspectives.

8. Political Ecology, Gaia, and the Anthropocene

In his later work, Latour turned explicitly to ecological crisis and the Anthropocene, revisiting earlier concerns with nonhuman agency and political representation.

Political Ecology and Representation of Nonhumans

In Politics of Nature, Latour argues that traditional politics treats “Nature” as an external backdrop, while environmentalism often invokes Science as an unquestionable arbiter. He instead proposes a political ecology in which nonhumans are represented through institutionalized procedures of articulation, testing, and negotiation. The central unit becomes the collective—an evolving assembly of humans and nonhumans deciding who and what is to be included.

Supporters see this as a way to democratize expertise and to avoid both technocracy and anti-scientific populism. Critics question how nonhuman representation can be operationalized and whether the model adequately addresses power asymmetries and global inequalities.

Gaia and the New Climatic Regime

Drawing on Earth system science and reinterpreting the Gaia hypothesis, Latour describes Gaia as a reactive, fragile assemblage of interlinked processes rather than a harmonious super-organism:

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There is no longer any outside: the earth has become a political actor, a being that reacts to our actions.

— Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia

In Facing Gaia and Down to Earth, he argues that the “new climatic regime” undermines the modern separation between politics and nature. He introduces the figure of the terrestrial: a political subject defined by concrete attachments and dependencies to specific territories and beings, contrasted with both nationalist “locals” and abstract “globals.”

These works engage debates on the Anthropocene, offering one influential account of how political theory might respond when Earth itself appears as an actor. Some commentators embrace this as a novel “geosocial” ontology; others question whether the Gaia framing risks obscuring socio-economic drivers like capitalism or colonialism by attributing agency to the planet as a whole.

9. Impact on Science Studies and the Humanities

Latour is widely regarded as a central figure in science and technology studies, with influence radiating into numerous humanities and social science fields.

Transformation of Science Studies

His early laboratory ethnographies helped shift science studies from internalist histories or external social explanations toward practice-based, constructivist accounts. ANT provided a shared vocabulary—actants, networks, translation, inscriptions—that has been adopted, adapted, and contested in sociology, history of science, and anthropology.

Some STS scholars view Latour’s work as foundational; others criticize a perceived neglect of macro-structural factors such as institutions, capitalism, or gender.

Wider Humanities and Social Sciences

Latour’s ideas have been taken up in:

• Geography and anthropology, for studying infrastructures, urban ecologies, and human–nonhuman relations.
• Literary and cultural studies, especially in the “new materialisms” and “post-humanism,” where ANT offers tools for analyzing objects, media, and environments.
• Art, architecture, and design, where networks, mediation, and the representation of nonhumans inform curatorial and design practices.
• Environmental humanities, where his concepts of Gaia, political ecology, and the terrestrial shape debates on the Anthropocene.

Reception has been mixed. Admirers emphasize the cross-disciplinary reach and generative vocabulary; critics highlight difficulties of applying ANT to normative questions, and argue that Latour’s style can be rhetorically powerful yet conceptually elusive. Nonetheless, his work remains a common reference point and a frequent subject of both emulation and critique across contemporary humanities scholarship.

10. Legacy and Historical Significance

Latour’s legacy is often discussed in terms of his role in consolidating science and technology studies, introducing influential conceptual tools, and reshaping discussions of modernity and ecological politics.

Historically, he is situated among late-20th-century French thinkers who challenged classical distinctions between subject and object, nature and culture, and fact and value. Commentators frequently compare his impact on STS to that of Michel Foucault on historical sociology, noting his combination of empirical case studies with broad theoretical claims.

In philosophy of science, Latour is credited with helping to dislodge simple dichotomies between realism and constructivism, and with foregrounding the material and institutional labor behind scientific facts. In political and environmental thought, his late work is cited as a key contribution to Anthropocene discourse and to efforts to rethink representation beyond the human.

Assessments differ. Some scholars see Latour as a transformative figure whose ideas will remain central to future discussions of technology, ecology, and politics. Others regard his work as emblematic of a particular moment—post-structuralist and postmodern turns in the humanities—whose limitations (regarding power, normativity, or economics) have since become apparent. Even critical commentators, however, generally acknowledge his role in opening new lines of inquiry and in foregrounding the entanglement of knowledge, materiality, and politics in late-20th and early-21st-century thought.