Latour, Bruno

Bruno Latour (1947– ) is a French philosopher, social scientist, and professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and is very influential in the ways in which other social scientists think about technology and science. Latour is well known because he believes that technology plays a more critical role in social issues than many of his contemporaries. This is because technologies possess properties, affordances, capacities to act, and the ability to influence and affect social situations. For Latour, this grants technologies a form of citizenship, by which he asserts that due to their capacity to make a difference in society, they should be granted greater social recognition of their contribution to history and social life in general. Although this has clear application for social ...