Volume 16, Issue 2, Spring 2012
Edwin Sayes
Pages 105-122
From the Sacred to the Sacred Object
Girard, Serres, and Latour on the Ordering of the Human Collective
The philosophy of Bruno Latour has given us one of the most important statements on the part played by technology in the ordering of the human collective. Typically presented as a radical departure from mainstream social thought, Latour is not without his intellectual creditors: Michel Serres and, through him, René Girard. By tracing this development, we are led to understand better the relationship of Latour’s work, and Actor-Network Theory more generally, to traditional sociological concerns. By doing so we can also hope to understand better the role that objects play in structuring society.