This is a chapter that asks questions about where we are with politics now that actor network theory and its semiotic relatives have reshaped ontology. They have reshaped it by underlining that the reality we live with is one performed in a variety of practices. The radical consequence of this is that reality itself is multiple. An implication of this might be that there are options between the various versions of an object: which one to perform? But if this were the case then we would need to ask where such options might be situated and what was at stake when a decision between alternative performances was made. We would also need to ask to what extent are there options between different versions of reality if these are not exclusive, but, if they clash in some places, depend on each other elsewhere. The notion of choice also presupposes an actor who actively chooses, while potential actors may be inextricably linked up with how they are enacted. These various questions are not answered, but illustrated with the example of anaemia, a common deviance that comes in (at least) clinical, statistical and pathophysiological forms.

This is a paper about the topological presuppositions that frame the performance of social similarity and difference. It argues that 'the social' does not exist as a single spatial type, but rather performs itself in a recursive and topologically heterogeneous manner. Using material drawn from a study of the way in which tropical doctors handle anaemia, it explores three different social topologies. First, there are 'regions' in which objects are clustered together, and boundaries are drawn round each cluster. Second, there are 'networks' in which distance is a function of relations between elements, and difference a matter of relational variety. These two forms of spatiality are often mobilized in social theory. However, we argue that there are other kinds of social space, and here consider the possible character of a third, that of 'fluid spatiality'. In this, places are neither delineated by boundaries, nor linked through stable relations: instead, entities may be similar and dissimilar at different locations within fuid space. In addition, they may transform themselves without creating difference.

Down to earthIn the past one of the more remarkable characteristics attributed to scientific facts was their universality. Once established in a single place, their validity was supposed to transport itself everywhere, free of cost and without effort. But no. It is already far too place oriented to put it like this. The faith in the universality of well-established facts depended on never asking where-questions at all. The universal was, well, universal. Which meant that universalism did not figure as a consequence of an attempt to add up, make links between, or otherwise relate various localities, but rather as something which transcended them.Over the last decades something has changed in our understanding of the sciences. To summarise: facts have been localised. Some context. The social studies of science are usually presented as a turn against the normativities of epistemology. While epistemologists were busy arguing about how science should proceed, social students of science went into laboratories and emerged with ethnographic stories about the ways in which science is actually practised. This shifted scholarly attention from the exigencies required of theory towards the textures of the practicalities of the laboratory. Labelling, marking, repeating, cleaning, numbering, noting, interpreting: these came to be known as the activities which compose science-in-action.Thus, or so the overviews tell, idealist wishful thinking was overcome and the harsh realities of scientific life were faced. The point of the harshness not being that fraud and treachery were being perpetrated, but rather that the practice of science requires an enormous amount of laborious, meticulous, and routine manipulation of artefacts. Glamour disappears. Deference to science is no longer required. Epistemology has been defeated, or so the story goes. But, while this is not wrong, other things have been going on too. The process of tracking down`science' in the laboratory rather than in theory not only implied that normative epistemology gave way to ethnographic realism.Abstract. This paper explores the spatial characteristics of science and technology. Originally seen as universal, and therefore outside space and place, studies in science, technology, and society (STS) located it first in specific locations ölaboratoriesöand then in narrow networks linking laboratories. This double location implied that science is caught up in and enacts two topological forms öregion and networkösince objects in networks hold their shape by freezing relations rather than fixing Euclidean coordinates. More recent STS work suggests that science and technology also exist in and help to enact additional spatial forms. Thus some technoscience objects are fluid, holding their form by shifting their relations. And yet others achieve constancy by enacting simultaneous absence and presence, a topological possibility which we call here fire. The paper concludes by arguing that the`global' includes and is enacted in all four of these topological systems.

This is a chapter that asks questions about where we are with politics now that actor network theory and its semiotic relatives have reshaped ontology. They have reshaped it by underlining that the reality we live with is one performed in a variety of practices. The radical consequence of this is that reality itself is multiple. An implication of this might be that there are options between the various versions of an object: which one to perform? But if this were the case then we would need to ask where such options might be situated and what was at stake when a decision between alternative performances was made. We would also need to ask to what extent are there options between different versions of reality if these are not exclusive, but, if they clash in some places, depend on each other elsewhere. The notion of choice also presupposes an actor who actively chooses, while potential actors may be inextricably linked up with how they are enacted. These various questions are not answered, but illustrated with the example of anaemia, a common deviance that comes in (at least) clinical, statistical and pathophysiological forms.

Э ТО статья о водяных насосах. Точнее, она о конкретном водяном насосе с ручным управлением-зимбабвийском втулочном насосе типа B. Это не критическая статья, но и не нейтральная, поскольку-так уж получилось-нам понравился… нет, даже больше… мы полюбили зимбабвийский втулочный насос во всех его многочисленных модификациях. Но даже если наше письмо и движимо привязанностью, это не упражнение в похвале. Мы хотим проанализировать особое качество, привлекающее нас в зимбабвийском втулочном насосе. Это его текучесть. Поэтому далее мы опишем разные проявления текучей природы этой технологии, столь развитой в своей простоте .