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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 致谢
This book has passed through many avatars. It began almost thirty years ago when I had the chance of being taught primate sociology by Shirley Strum and her baboons in Kenya. Although that project with Shirley has remained in limbo, it has been the staple of my teaching of sociology to young engineers at the School of Mines in Paris. When, in 1996, I was offered to give the Leclerc lectures in Louvain-la-Neuve, I decided it was about time to synthesize what I had learned from Michel Callon, John Law, Madeleine Akrich, Andy Barry, Annemarie Mol, Antoine Hennion, and many others in what had become known as ‘Actor-Network-Theory’. Time and again, I have found that readers were puzzled not so much by our views on scientific practice and various other topics, but rather by the unusual meaning we gave to the words ‘social’ and ‘social explanations’. And yet, this alternative social theory has never been the object of a systematic introduction. Instead of complaining that this small school of thought had become a monster that had escaped its Frankensteinian makers, I decided it might be fairer to present interested readers with its intellectual architecture.
这本书经历了许多化身。它始于大约三十年前，当时我有机会在肯尼亚被雪莉·斯特拉姆和她的狒狒教灵长类动物社会学。尽管与雪莉的那个项目一直处于悬而未决的状态，但它一直是我在巴黎矿业学院向年轻工程师教授社会学的主要内容。1996年，当我被邀请在新卢万的勒克莱尔讲座时，我决定是时候综合我从米歇尔·卡隆、约翰·劳、玛德琳·阿克里奇、安迪·巴里、安娜玛丽·莫尔、安东尼·亨尼翁和许多其他人那里学到的被称为“Actor-Network-Theory”的东西了。一次又一次，我发现读者并不是对我们对科学实践和其他各种主题的看法感到困惑，而是对我们赋予“社会”和“社会解释”这两个词的不同寻常的含义感到困惑。然而，这一另类社会理论从未成为系统介绍的对象。我没有抱怨这一小学派已经成为逃离弗兰肯斯坦制造者的怪物，而是认为向感兴趣的读者展示其智力架构可能更公平。
It was only in 1999, when Barbara Czarniawska asked me to give a crash course in social theory ‘compatible with the needs of organization studies’, that I began to write down a complete draft. Although the present text has not made use of the transcript Barbara had so kindly arranged for, I owe much to her and to her Göteborg students for the organization of the material that, in addition, had been rehearsed at the London School of Economics in the Department of Information Systems in the winters of 1999, 2000 and 2001. When my old friend Steve Woolgar, through the auspices of the Saïd Business School, asked me to give the Clarendon Lectures in the fall of 2002, I wrote another draft which has since been discussed in varying degrees of detail by Andrew Barry, Howie Becker, Geof Bowker, François Cooren, Didier Debaise, Gerard de Vries, Emilie Gomart, Fabian Muniesa, Noortje Marres, Shirley Strum, Albena Yaneva, Benedikte Zitouni, and Edgar Whitley that has resulted in this new version. Finally, it was submitted to a second round of critiques by Michael Flower, Jean-Toussaint Leca, Michael Lynch, Paolo Quattrone, Isabelle Stengers and Eduardo Vargas. I wish I could say that all remaining defects are theirs and not mine.
直到1999年，当Barbara Czarniawska要求我开设一门“符合组织研究需要”的社会理论速成班时，我才开始写一份完整的草稿。虽然现在的文本没有使用Barbara如此友好地安排的成绩单，但我非常感谢她和她的哥德堡学生组织了这些材料，此外，这些材料已经在1999年、2000年和2001年冬天在伦敦经济学院信息系统系排练过了。2002年秋天，我的老朋友史蒂夫·伍尔加在萨伊德商学院的赞助下邀请我来做克拉伦登讲座，我又写了一份草稿，后来安德鲁·巴里、豪伊·贝克尔、盖夫·鲍克、弗朗索瓦·库伦、迪迪埃·德贝斯、杰拉德·德弗里斯、艾米丽·戈玛特、法比安·穆尼萨、努尔杰·马雷斯、雪莉·斯特鲁姆、阿尔贝娜·亚涅瓦、贝内迪克特·齐图尼和埃德加·惠特利对草稿进行了不同程度的详细讨论，最终形成了这个新版本。最后，它被提交给第二轮批评，由迈克尔·弗劳尔、让-图桑·莱卡、迈克尔·林奇、保罗·夸特隆、伊莎贝尔·斯滕斯和爱德华多·巴尔加斯。我希望我能说，所有剩余的缺陷都是他们的，不是我的。
My greatest debt goes, however, to the doctoral students who have participated over the years in my ‘thesis-writing workshops’. In a discipline in which I have never been trained but to which I have never despaired of contributing, they have been my best and most patient teachers.
然而，我最感激的是多年来参加我的“论文写作研讨会”的博士生。在一个我从未接受过培训但我从未绝望地想为其做出贡献的学科中，他们是我最好、最有耐心的老师。
I hope that such a protracted and idiosyncratic genesis goes some way toward explaining the opinionated nature of this piece of work. . Now that this alternative social theory has been presented in an orderly fashion, , readers can decide to put it to use, , to distort it beyond recognition, , or, , most likely, , to drop it altogether——but this time knowingly! ! As for me, , I have finally discovered in writing this book the conditions under which I could be proud of being called a sociologist..I hope that such a protracted and idiosyncratic genesis goes some way toward explaining the opinionated nature of this piece of work. . Now that this alternative social theory has been presented in an orderly fashion, , readers can decide to put it to use, , to distort it beyond recognition, , or, , most likely, , to drop it altogether——but this time knowingly! ! As for me, , I have finally discovered in writing this book the conditions under which I could be proud of being called a sociologist..
我希望这样一个漫长而特殊的起源能在某种程度上解释这部作品固执己见的本质…既然这种另类社会理论已经以有序的方式呈现出来，读者可以决定使用它，扭曲它，使其面目全非，或者，最有可能的是，完全放弃它——但这次是故意的！！至于我，在写这本书时，我终于发现了我可以为被称为社会学家而自豪的条件…
Introduction: How to Resume the Task of Tracing Associations*
简介：如何恢复追查社团的任务* The argument of this book can be stated very simply: when social scientists add the adjective ‘social’ to some phenomenon, they designate a stabilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that, later, may be mobilized to account for some other phenomenon. There is nothing wrong with this use of the word as long as it designates what is already assembled together, without making any superfluous assumption about the nature of what is assembled. Problems arise, however, when ‘social’ begins to mean a type of material, as if the adjective was roughly comparable to other terms like ‘wooden’, ‘steely’, ‘biological’, ‘economical’, ‘mental’, ‘organizational’, or ‘linguistic’. At that point, the meaning of the word breaks down since it now designates two entirely different things: first, a movement during a process of assembling; and second, a specific type of ingredient that is supposed to differ from other materials.
这本书的论点可以非常简单地表述：当社会科学家在某种现象中加入形容词“社会”时，他们指的是一种稳定的状态，一系列联系，以后可以被动员起来解释其他一些现象。只要它指的是已经组装在一起的东西，而不是对组装的东西的性质做出任何多余的假设，这个词的这种使用就没有错。然而，当“社会”开始表示一种物质时，问题就出现了，好像这个形容词与“木制”、“钢铁”、“生物”、“经济”、“精神”、“组织”或“语言”等其他术语大致相当。在这一点上，这个词的意思被打破了，因为它现在指的是两个完全不同的东西：第一，组装过程中的运动；第二，一种特定类型的成分，应该不同于其他材料。
What I want to do in the present work is to show why the social cannot be construed as a kind of material or domain and to dispute the project of providing a ‘social explanation’ of some other state of affairs. Although this earlier project has been productive and probably necessary in the past, it has largely stopped being so thanks in part to the success of the social sciences. At the present stage of their development, it’s no longer possible to inspect the precise ingredients that are entering into the composition of the social domain. What I want to do is to redefine the notion of social by going back to its original meaning and making it able to trace connections again. Then it will be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences but with tools better adjusted to the task. After having done extensive work on the ‘assemblages’ of nature, I believe it’s necessary to scrutinize more thoroughly the exact content of what is ‘assembled’ under the umbrella of a society. This seems to me the only way to be faithful to the old duties of sociology, this ‘science of the living together’.1
在目前的工作中，我想做的是展示为什么社会不能被解释为一种物质或领域，并对为其他一些状态提供“社会解释”的项目提出异议。尽管这个早期的项目在过去是富有成效的，而且可能是必要的，但部分由于社会科学的成功，它在很大程度上已经停止了这样做。在他们发展的现阶段，不再可能检查进入社会领域组成的精确成分。我想做的是重新定义社会的概念，回到它的原始含义，并使其能够再次追踪联系。然后就有可能恢复社会科学的传统目标，但工具可以更好地适应这项任务。在对自然的“集合”做了大量工作后，我认为有必要更彻底地审视在社会保护伞下“集合”的确切内容。在我看来，这似乎是忠实于社会学旧职责的唯一方法，这是“共同生活的科学”。1在目前的工作中，我想做的是展示为什么社会不能被解释为一种物质或领域，并对为其他一些状态提供“社会解释”的项目提出异议。尽管这个早期的项目在过去是富有成效的，而且可能是必要的，但部分由于社会科学的成功，它在很大程度上已经停止了这样做。在他们发展的现阶段，不再可能检查进入社会领域组成的精确成分。我想做的是重新定义社会的概念，回到它的原始含义，并使其能够再次追踪联系。然后就有可能恢复社会科学的传统目标，但工具可以更好地适应这项任务。在对自然的“集合”做了大量工作后，我认为有必要更彻底地审视在社会保护伞下“集合”的确切内容。在我看来，这似乎是忠实于社会学旧职责的唯一方法，这是“共同生活的科学”。1
Such a project entails, however, a redefinition of what is commonly understood by that discipline. Translated from both the Latin and Greek, ‘socio-logy’ means the ‘science of the social’. The expression would be excellent except for two drawbacks, namely the word ‘social’ and the word ‘science’. The virtues that we are prepared nowadays to grant the scientific and technical enterprises bear little relation with what the founders of the social sciences had in mind when they invented their disciplines. When modernizing was in full swing, science was a rather powerful urge to be prolonged indefinitely without any misgivings to slow its progress down. They had no idea that its extension could render it almost coextensive with the rest of social intercourse. What they meant by ‘society’ has undergone a transformation no less radical, which is thanks in large part to the very expansion of the products of science and technology. It is no longer clear whether there exists relations that are specific enough to be called ‘social’ and that could be grouped together in making up a special domain that could function as ‘a society’. The social seems to be diluted everywhere and yet nowhere in particular. So, neither science nor society has remained stable enough to deliver the promises of a strong ‘socio-logy’.
然而，这样一个项目需要重新定义该学科的普遍理解。“社会科学”从拉丁语和希腊语翻译过来，意思是“社会科学”。除了两个缺点，即“社会”一词和“科学”一词之外，这个表达方式非常好。我们现在准备授予科技企业的美德与社会科学的创始人发明学科时的想法几乎没有关系。当现代化如火如荼时，科学是一种相当强大的冲动，要求无限期地延长，而不会有任何减缓其进步的顾虑。他们不知道它的扩展会使它几乎与其他社会交往一样广泛。他们所说的“社会”经历了同样激进的转变，这在很大程度上要归功于科学和技术产品的扩展。现在已经不清楚是否存在足够具体的关系来被称为“社会”，并且可以组合在一起组成一个可以作为“社会”功能的特殊领域。社会似乎在任何地方都被稀释了，但在任何地方都没有特别的地方。因此，科学和社会都没有保持足够的稳定来兑现强大的“社会科学”的承诺。
In spite of this double metamorphosis, few social scientists have drawn the extreme conclusion that the object as well as the methodology of the social sciences should be modified accordingly. After having been so often disappointed, they still hope to reach one day the promised land of a true science of a real social world. No scholars are more aware of this painful hesitation than those who, like me, have spent many years practicing this oxymoron: ‘sociology of science’. Because of the many paradoxes triggered by this lively but more than slightly perverse subfield and the numerous changes in the meaning of ‘science’, I think time has come to modify what is meant by ‘social’. I therefore wish to devise an alternative definition for ‘sociology’ while still retaining this useful label and remaining faithful, I hope, to its traditional calling.
尽管发生了这种双重变化，但很少有社会科学家得出这样的极端结论，即社会科学的对象和方法论应该相应地进行修改。在经历了如此多次的失望之后，他们仍然希望有一天能到达一个真正的社会世界的真正科学的乐土。没有哪个学者比像我这样花了多年时间实践这个矛盾修饰法的人更清楚这种痛苦的犹豫：“科学社会学”。由于这个活跃但有点反常的子领域引发了许多悖论，以及“科学”含义的许多变化，我认为现在是修改“社会”含义的时候了。因此，我希望为“社会学”设计一个替代定义，同时仍然保留这个有用的标签，并希望忠于它的传统使命。
What is a society? What does the word ‘social’ mean? Why are some activities said to have a ‘social dimension’? How can one demonstrate the presence of ‘social factors’ at work? When is a study of society, or other social aggregates, a good study? How can the path of a society be altered? To answer these questions, two widely different approaches have been taken. Only one of them has become common sense—the other is the object of the present work.
什么是社会？“社会”一词是什么意思？为什么有些活动被称为具有“社会维度”？人们如何证明“社会因素”在工作中的存在？什么时候对社会或其他社会总量的研究是一项好的研究？如何改变社会的道路？为了回答这些问题，人们采取了两种截然不同的方法。其中只有一种已经成为常识——另一种是目前工作的对象。
The first solution has been to posit the existence of a specific sort of phenomenon variously called ‘ ‘society’, ‘’, ‘social order’, ‘’, ‘social practice’, ‘’, ‘social dimension’, ’, or ‘ ‘social structure’. ’. For the last century during which social theories have been elaborated, , it has been important to distinguish this domain of reality from other domains such as economics, , geography, , biology, , psychology, , law, , science, , and politics. . A given trait was said to be ‘ ‘social’ ’ or to ‘ ‘pertain to society’ ’ when it could be defined as possessing specific properties, , some negative——it must not be ‘ ‘purely’ ’ biological, , linguistic, , economical, , natural——and some positive——it must achieve, , reinforce, , express, , maintain, , reproduce, , or subvert the social order. . Once this domain had been defined, , no matter how vaguely, , it could then be used to shed some light on specifically social phenomena——the social could explain the social——and to provide a certain type of explanation for what the other domains could not account for——an appeal to ‘ ‘social factors’ ’ could explain the ‘ ‘social aspects’ ’ of non–social phenomena..
第一种解决方案是假设存在一种特定的现象，不同地称为“社会’, ‘’, ‘社会秩序’, ‘’, ‘社会实践’, ‘’, ‘社会维度”或“社会结构”。在社会理论得到阐述的上个世纪，将现实领域与经济、地理、生物学、心理学、法律、科学和政治等其他领域区分开来是很重要的。当一个特定的特征可以被定义为具有特定的属性时，它被称为“社会的”或“与社会有关的”，有些消极的——它不能是“纯粹的”生物的、语言的、经济的、自然的——还有一些积极的——它必须实现、加强、表达、维持、繁殖或颠覆社会秩序。一旦这个领域被定义，不管多么模糊，它就可以用来揭示一些具体的社会现象——社会可以解释社会——并为其他领域无法解释的事情提供某种类型的解释——诉诸“社会因素”可以解释非社会现象的“社会方面”…
For instance, although it is recognized that law has it own strength, some aspects of it would be better understood if a ‘social dimension’ were added to it; although economic forces unfold under their own logic, there also exists social elements which could explain the somewhat erratic behavior of calculative agents; although psychology develops according to its own inner drives, some of its more puzzling aspects can be said to pertain to ‘social influence’; although science possesses its own impetus, some features of its quest are necessarily ‘bound’ by the ‘social limitations’ of scientists who are ‘embedded in the social context of their time’; although art is largely ‘autonomous’, it is also ‘influenced’ by social and political ‘considerations’ which could account for some aspects of its most famous masterpieces; and although the science of management obeys its own rules, it might be advisable to also consider ‘social, cultural, and political aspects’ that could explain why some sound organizational principles are never applied in practice.
例如，尽管人们认识到法律有其自身的力量，但如果在其中增加一个“社会维度”，法律的某些方面会得到更好的理解；尽管经济力量在其自身的逻辑下展开，但也存在社会因素，可以解释计算主体有些不稳定的行为；尽管心理学是根据其自身的内在驱动力发展的，但其中一些更令人困惑的方面可以说与“社会影响”有关；尽管科学拥有自己的动力，但其追求的某些特征必然受到科学家的“社会限制”的“束缚”，这些科学家“嵌入了他们那个时代的社会背景”；尽管艺术在很大程度上是“自主的”，但它也受到社会和政治“考虑”的“影响”，这可以解释其最著名杰作的某些方面；尽管管理学遵守自己的规则，但也不妨考虑社会、文化和政治方面可以解释为什么一些健全的组织原则从未在实践中应用。
Many other examples can easily be found since this version of social theory has become the default position of our mental software that takes into consideration the following: there exists a social ‘context’ in which non-social activities take place; it is a specific domain of reality; it can be used as a specific type of causality to account for the residual aspects that other domains (psychology, law, economics, etc.) cannot completely deal with; it is studied by specialized scholars called sociologists or socio-(x)—‘x’ being the placeholder for the various disciplines; since ordinary agents are always ‘inside’ a social world that encompasses them, they can at best be ‘informants’ about this world and, at worst, be blinded to its existence, whose full effect is only visible to the social scientist’s more disciplined eyes; no matter how difficult it is to carry on those studies, it is possible for them to roughly imitate the successes of the natural sciences by being as objective as other scientists thanks to the use of quantitative tools; if this is impossible, then alternative methods should be devised that take into account the ‘human’, ‘intentional’, or ‘hermeneutic’ aspects of those domains without abandoning the ethos of science; and when social scientists are asked to give expert advice on social engineering or to accompany social change, some sort of political relevance might ensue from these studies, but only after sufficient knowledge has been accumulated.
许多其他的例子可以很容易地找到，因为这个版本的社会理论已经成为我们的心理软件的默认位置，它考虑到以下几点：存在一个非社会活动发生的社会“背景”；它是现实的一个特定领域；它可以用作一种特定类型的因果关系来解释其他领域（心理学、法律、经济学等）无法完全处理的残余方面；它是由称为社会学家或社会学家的专门学者研究的-（x）-“x”是各种学科的占位符；由于普通代理人总是“在”一个包含他们的社会世界中，他们充其量只能是这个世界的“线人”，最坏的情况是，对它的存在视而不见，其全部效果只有社会科学家更有纪律的眼睛才能看到；不管进行这些研究有多困难，它由于使用了定量工具，他们有可能像其他科学家一样客观地大致模仿自然科学的成功；如果这是不可能的，那么应该设计替代方法，考虑到这些领域的“人”、“有意”或“解释学”方面，而不放弃科学精神；当社会科学家被要求就社会工程提供专家建议或伴随社会变革时，这些研究可能会产生某种政治相关性，但只有在积累了足够的知识之后。
This default position has become common sense not only for social scientists, but also for ordinary actors via newspapers, college education, party politics, bar conversations, love stories, fashion magazines, etc.2 The social sciences have disseminated their definition of society as effectively as utility companies deliver electricity and telephone services. Offering comments about the inevitable ‘social dimension’ of what we and others are doing ‘in society’ has become as familiar to us as using a mobile phone, ordering a beer, or invoking the Oedipus complex—at least in the developed world.
这一默认立场不仅已经成为社会科学家的常识，也成为普通演员通过报纸、大学教育、政党政治、酒吧谈话、爱情故事、时尚杂志等方式的常识。2社会科学传播他们对社会的定义就像公用事业公司提供电力和电话服务一样有效。对我们和其他人在“社会”中所做的事情不可避免的“社会维度”发表评论对我们来说已经变得像使用手机、点啤酒或调用俄狄浦斯情结一样熟悉——至少在发达国家是这样。
The other approach does not take for granted the basic tenet of the first. . ItIt claimsclaims thatthat therethere isis nothingnothing specificspecific toto socialsocial orderorder; ; thatthat therethere isis nono socialsocial dimensiondimension ofof anyany sortsort, , nono ‘ ‘socialsocial contextcontext’, ’, nono distinctdistinct domaindomain ofof realityreality toto whichwhich thethe labellabel ‘ ‘socialsocial’ ’ oror ‘ ‘societysociety’ ’ couldcould bebe attributedattributed; ; thatthat nono ‘ ‘socialsocial forceforce’ ’ isis availableavailable toto ‘ ‘explainexplain’ ’ thethe residualresidual featuresfeatures otherother domainsdomains cannotcannot accountaccount forfor; ; thatthat membersmembers knowknow veryvery wellwell whatwhat theythey areare doingdoing eveneven ifif theythey dondon’’tt articulatearticulate itit toto thethe satisfactionsatisfaction ofof thethe observersobservers; ; thatthat actorsactors areare nevernever embeddedembedded inin aa socialsocial contextcontext andand soso areare alwaysalways muchmuch moremore thanthan ‘ ‘meremere informantsinformants’; ’; thatthat therethere isis thusthus nono meaningmeaning inin addingadding somesome ‘ ‘socialsocial factorsfactors’ ’ toto otherother scientificscientific specialtiesspecialties; ; thatthat politicalpolitical relevancerelevance obtainedobtained throughthrough aa ‘ ‘sciencescience ofof societysociety’ ’ isis notnot necessarilynecessarily desirabledesirable; ; andand thatthat ‘ ‘societysociety’, ’, farfar fromfrom beingbeing thethe contextcontext ‘ ‘inin whichwhich’ ’ everythingeverything isis framedframed, , shouldshould ratherrather bebe construedconstrued asas oneone ofof thethe manymany connectingconnecting elementselements circulatingcirculating insideinside tinytiny conduitsconduits. . WithWith somesome provocationprovocation, , thisthis secondsecond schoolschool ofof thoughtthought couldcould useuse asas itsits sloganslogan whatwhat MrsMrs ThatcherThatcher famouslyfamously exclaimedexclaimed ((butbut forfor veryvery differentdifferent reasonsreasons!!)): ‘: ‘ThereThere isis nono suchsuch a thing as a society.’.’
另一种方法并不认为第一种方法的基本原则是理所当然的。.它声称没有任何特定于社会社会秩序的东西；；；那里没有任何分类的非社会社会维度维度，没有“社会社会背景”，没有“社会社会”标签或“社会社会”标签可能是attributedattributed的现实现实领域；；；非社会社会力量可用来“解释”“剩余的剩余特征”，其他领域无法解释；；；成员非常清楚他们在做什么，即使他们没有“tt”articulatearticulate到观察者的satisfactionsatisfaction；；；演员永远不会嵌入社会社会背景中社会社会，远远不是作为背景语境，在其中，everythingeverything是被框起来的，应该被解释为许多connectingconnecting元素中的一种，circulatingcirculating在微小的管道里有一些provocationprovocation，这是第二个思想学校可以使用的，因为它的口号是什么？撒切尔夫人著名地喊道：（但是因为非常不同的原因！！）：“没有社会这样的东西。”
If they are so different, , how could they both claim to be a science of the social and aspire to use the same label of ‘ ‘sociology’? ’? On the face of it, , they should be simply incommensurable, , since the second position takes as the major puzzle to be solved what the first takes as its solution, , namely the existence of specific social ties revealing the hidden presence of some specific social forces. . In the alternative view, ‘, ‘social’ ’ is not some glue that could fix everything including what the other glues cannot fix; ; it is what is glued together by many other types of connectors. . Whereas sociologists (or socio–economists, , socio–linguists, , social psychologists, , etc..) take social aggregates as the given that could shed some light on residual aspects of economics, , linguistics, , psychology, , management, , and so on, , these other scholars, , on the contrary, , consider social aggregates as what should be explained by the specific associations provided by economics, , linguistics, , psychology, , law, , management, , etc.3
如果他们如此不同，他们怎么能声称自己是一门社会科学，并渴望使用“社会学”的相同标签呢？从表面上看，它们应该是完全不可比较的，因为第二个位置把第一个位置作为解决方案的主要难题，即特定社会关系的存在揭示了一些特定社会力量的隐藏存在。在另一种观点中，“社会”不是某种可以修复一切的胶水，包括其他胶水无法修复的东西；它是由许多其他类型的连接器粘在一起的东西。而社会学家（或社会经济学家、社会语言学家、社会心理学家等）认为社会聚合是给定的，可以阐明经济学、语言学、心理学、管理学等的残余方面，而这些其他学者则相反，认为社会聚合应该由经济学、语言学、心理学、法律、管理等提供的具体关联来解释
The resemblance between the two approaches appears much greater, , however, , provided one bears in mind the etymology of the word ‘ ‘social’. ’. Even though most social scientists would prefer to call ‘ ‘social’ ’ a homogeneous thing, , it’’s perfectly acceptable to designate by the same word a trail of associations between heterogeneous elements. . Since in both cases the word retains the same origin——from the Latin root socius——it is possible to remain faithful to the original intuitions of the social sciences by redefining sociology not as the ‘ ‘science of the social’, ’, but as the tracing of associations. . In this meaning of the adjective, , social does not designate a thing among other things, , like a black sheep among other white sheep, , but a type of connection between things that are not themselves social..
然而，如果人们记住“社会”这个词的词源，这两种方法之间的相似之处似乎要大得多。尽管大多数社会科学家更愿意称“社会”为同质的东西，但用同一个词来表示异质元素之间的联系是完全可以接受的。因为在这两种情况下，这个词都保持着相同的起源——来自拉丁语词根社会——通过重新定义社会学而不是“社会科学”，而是对联系的追踪，就有可能保持对社会科学最初直觉的忠诚…在形容词的这个意义上，社会并不是指其他事物中的一个事物，就像其他白羊中的一只害群之马，而是指本身不是社会的事物之间的一种联系…
At first, , this definition seems absurd since it risks diluting sociology to mean any type of aggregate from chemical bonds to legal ties, , from atomic forces to corporate bodies, , from physiological to political assemblies. . But this is precisely the point that this alternative branch of social theory wishes to make as all those heterogeneous elements might be assembled anew in some given state of affairs. . Far from being a mind–boggling hypothesis, , this is on the contrary the most common experience we have in encountering the puzzling face of the social. . A new vaccine is being marketed, , a new job description is offered, , a new political movement is being created, , a new planetary system is discovered, , a new law is voted, , a new catastrophe occurs. . In each instance, , we have to reshuffle our conceptions of what was associated together because the previous definition has been made somewhat irrelevant. . We are no longer sure about what ‘ ‘we’ ’ means; ; we seem to be bound by ‘ ‘ties’ ’ that don’’t look like regular social ties..
起初，这个定义似乎是荒谬的，因为它有可能稀释社会学，使其意味着从化学键到法律关系的任何类型的集合，从原子力到法人团体，从生理到政治集会但这正是社会理论的这个替代分支希望提出的观点，因为所有这些异质元素可能会在某种特定的事态中重新组装起来这远非一个令人难以置信的假设，相反，这是我们在遇到社会令人困惑的面孔时最常见的经历一种新的疫苗正在上市，一种新的工作描述被提供，一场新的政治运动正在创造，一个新的行星系统被发现，一项新的法律被投票，一场新的灾难发生了。在每种情况下，我们都必须重新洗牌我们对什么是联系在一起的概念，因为以前的定义已经变得有些无关紧要了我们不再确定“我们”是什么意思；；我们似乎被看起来不像常规社会联系的“联系”所束缚…
The ever shrinking meaning of social
社会意义的不断缩小
There is a clear etymological trend in the successive variations of the ‘ ‘social’ ’ word family (Strum and Latour 1987). . It goes from the most general to the most superficial. . The etymology of the word ‘ ‘social’ ’ is also instructive. . The root is seq-, -, sequi and the first meaning is ‘ ‘to follow’. ’. The Latin socius denotes a companion, , an associate. . From the different languages, , the historical genealogy of the word ‘ ‘social’ ’ is construed first as following someone, , then enrolling and allying, , and, , lastly, , having something in common. . The next meaning of social is to have a share in a commercial undertaking. ‘. ‘Social’ ’ as in the social contract is Rousseau’’s invention. ‘. ‘Social’ ’ as in social problems, , the social question, , is a nineteenth–century innovation. . Parallel words like ‘ ‘sociable’ ’ refer to skills enabling individuals to live politely in society. . As one can see from the drifting of the word, , the meaning of social shrinks as time passes. . Starting with a definition which is coextensive with all associations, , we now have, , in common parlance, , a usage that is limited to what is left after politics, , biology, , economics, , law, , psychology, , management, , technology, , etc., ., have taken their own parts of the associations..
“社会”一词家族的连续变体有一个明显的词源趋势（Strum和Latour，1987年）。它从最一般的到最肤浅的。“社会”一词的词源也很有启发性。词根是seq-、-、secii，第一个意思是“跟随”。拉丁语社会表示同伴、同伴。从不同的语言来看，“社会”一词的历史谱系首先被解释为跟随某人，然后注册和结盟，最后，有共同点。社会的下一个含义是在商业事业中占有一席之地。社会契约中的“社会”是卢梭的发明。“社会”是指社会问题中的“社会问题”，是19世纪的创新。“社交”等平行词指的是使个人能够在社会中礼貌地生活的技能。从这个词的漂移中可以看出，随着时间的推移，社会的含义缩小了。从一个与所有联想共同延伸的定义开始，我们现在有，用俗话说，，一个仅限于政治、生物学、经济学、法律、心理学、管理、技术等之后留下的用法。，已经把自己的部分联想…
Because of this constant shrinking of meaning (social contract, , social question, , social workers), , we tend to limit the social to humans and modern societies, , forgetting that the domain of the social is much more extensive than that. . De Candolle was the first person to create scientometrics——the use of statistics to measure the activity of science——and, , like his father, , a plant sociologist (Candolle 1873//1987). . For him corals, , baboons, , trees, , bees, , ants, , and whales are also social. . This extended meaning of social has been well recognized by socio–biology (Wilson 1975). . Unfortunately, , this enterprise has only confirmed social scientists’ ’ worst fears about extending the meaning of social. . It’’s perfectly possible, , however, , to retain the extension without believing much in the very restricted definition of agency given to organisms in many socio–biological panoramas..
由于这种意义的不断缩小（社会契约、社会问题、社会工作者），我们倾向于将社会局限于人类和现代社会，而忘记了社会的领域远不止于此。.De Candolle 是第一个创建科学计量学的人——使用统计数据来衡量科学活动——并且和他的父亲一样，是一位植物社会学家（Candolle 1873//1987）。.对他来说，珊瑚、狒狒、树木、蜜蜂、蚂蚁和鲸鱼也是群居的。.社会的这种扩展含义已经被社会生物学所充分认可（Wilson 1975）。.遗憾的是，这家企业只证实了社会科学家对扩展社会意义的最大恐惧。.然而，完全有可能保留这种延伸，而不必太相信在许多社会–生物全景中赋予生物体的非常有限的能动性定义。
Thus, the overall project of what we are supposed to do together is thrown into doubt. The sense of belonging has entered a crisis. But to register this feeling of crisis and to follow these new connections, another notion of social has to be devised. It has to be much wider than what is usually called by that name, yet strictly limited to the tracing of new associations and to the designing of their assemblages. This is the reason why I am going to define the social not as a special domain, a specific realm, or a particular sort of thing, but only as a very peculiar movement of re-association and reassembling.
因此，我们应该共同做的事情的整体项目受到了质疑。归属感已经进入危机。但是，要记录这种危机感并遵循这些新的联系，必须设计另一个社会概念。它必须比通常所说的要宽泛得多，但严格限于追踪新的联想和设计它们的集合。这就是为什么我不打算将社会定义为一个特殊的领域、一个特定的领域或一种特定的事物，而只是一个非常奇特的重新联想和重新组合的运动。
In such a view, law, for instance, should not be seen as what should be explained by ‘social structure’ in addition to its inner logic; on the contrary, its inner logic may explain some features of what makes an association last longer and extend wider. Without the ability of legal precedents to draw connections between a case and a general rule, what would we know about putting some matter ‘into a larger context’?4 Science does not have to be replaced by its ‘social framework’, which is ‘shaped by social forces’ as well as its own objectivity, because its objects are themselves dislocating any given context through the foreign elements research laboratories are associating together in unpredictable ways. Those quarantined because of the SARS virus painfully learned that they could no longer ‘associate’ with parents and partners in the same way because of the mutation of this little bug whose existence has been revealed by the vast institution of epidemiology and virology.5 Religion does not have to be ‘accounted for’ by social forces because in its very definition—indeed, in its very name—it links together entities which are not part of the social order. Since the days of Antigone, everyone knows what it means to be put into motion by orders from gods that are irreducible to politicians like Creon. Organizations do not have to be placed into a ‘wider social frame’ since they themselves give a very practical meaning to what it means to be nested into a ‘wider’ set of affairs. After all, which air traveler would know the gate to go to without looking anxiously and repeatedly at the number printed on her boarding pass and circled in red by an airline attendant? It might be vacuous to reveal behind the superficial chats of politicians the ‘dark hidden forces of society’ at work, since without those very speeches a large part of what we understand to be part of a group will be lost. Without the contradictory spiels of the warring parties in Iraq, who in the ‘occupied’ or ‘liberated’ Baghdad will know how to recognize friend from foe?
在这种观点中，例如，法律不应被视为除了其内在逻辑之外，还应该由“社会结构”来解释的东西;相反，它的内在逻辑可以解释是什么使关联持续时间更长、范围更广的一些特征。如果没有法律先例在案例和一般规则之间建立联系的能力，我们将如何了解将某些问题“置于更大的背景中”？4 科学不必被其“社会框架”所取代，它“由社会力量塑造”以及它自己的客观性，因为它的对象本身正在通过研究实验室以不可预测的方式联系在一起的外来元素错位任何给定的背景。那些因 SARS 病毒而被隔离的人痛苦地了解到，由于这种小虫子的突变，他们无法再以同样的方式与父母和伴侣“交往”。宗教不必由社会力量“解释”，因为在其定义中——事实上， 正如它的名字一样——它将不属于社会秩序的实体联系在一起。自安提戈涅时代以来，每个人都知道被神灵的命令启动意味着什么，而这些命令对像克瑞翁这样的政治家来说是不可简化的。组织不必被置于“更广泛的社会框架”中，因为它们本身为嵌套在“更广泛的”事务中意味着什么赋予了非常实际的含义。毕竟，哪个航空旅客会知道要去的登机口，而不焦急地反复看登机牌上印着的号码，空乘人员会用红色圈出的数字呢？揭示政客们肤浅的聊天背后“社会的黑暗隐藏力量”可能是空洞的，因为如果没有这些演讲，我们所理解的群体中的很大一部分将丢失。如果没有伊拉克交战各方的相互矛盾的言论，在“被占领”或“解放”的巴格达，谁会知道如何辨别敌友？
And the same is true for all other domains.6 Whereas, in the first approach, every activity—law, science, technology, religion, organization, politics, management, etc.—could be related to and explained by the same social aggregates behind all of them, in the second version of sociology there exists nothing behind those activities even though they might be linked in a way that does produce a society—or doesn’t produce one. Such is the crucial point of departure between the two versions. To be social is no longer a safe and unproblematic property, it is a movement that may fail to trace any new connection and may fail to redesign any well-formed assemblage. As we are going to learn throughout this book, after having rendered many useful services in an earlier period, what is called ‘social explanation’ has become a counter-productive way to interrupt the movement of associations instead of resuming it.
6 在第一种方法中，每一项活动——法律、科学、技术、宗教、组织、政治、管理等——都可以与所有这些活动背后的相同社会聚合相关联并由其解释，而在第二版社会学中，这些活动背后不存在任何东西，即使它们可能以某种方式联系在一起，从而产生一个社会——或者不产生一个社会。这就是两个版本之间的关键出发点。社交不再是一个安全和没有问题的属性，它是一个可能无法追踪任何新联系的运动，也可能无法重新设计任何格式良好的组合。正如我们将在本书中学习到的那样，在早期提供了许多有用的服务之后，所谓的“社会解释”已经成为一种适得其反的方式，可以中断协会的运动，而不是恢复它。
According to the second approach, adherents of the first have simply confused what they should explain with the explanation. They begin with society or other social aggregates, whereas one should end with them. They believed the social to be made essentially of social ties, whereas associations are made of ties which are themselves non-social. They imagined that sociology is limited to a specific domain, whereas sociologists should travel wherever new heterogeneous associations are made. They believed the social to be always already there at their disposal, whereas the social is not a type of thing either visible or to be postulated. It is visible only by the traces it leaves (under trials) when a new association is being produced between elements which themselves are in no way ‘social’. They insisted that we were already held by the force of some society when our political future resides in the task of deciding what binds us all together. In brief, the second school claims to resume the work of connection and collection that was abruptly interrupted by the first. It is to help the interested enquirers in reassembling the social that this book has been written.
根据第二种方法，第一种方法的拥护者只是混淆了他们应该解释的内容和解释。它们始于社会或其他社会聚合体，而一个人应该以它们结束。他们认为社会本质上是由社会纽带构成的，而协会是由本身非社会的纽带组成的。他们想象社会学仅限于特定领域，而社会学家应该在任何有新的异质关联的地方旅行。他们相信社会总是已经存在，可供他们使用，而社会不是一种可见或假设的东西。只有当元素之间产生新的联系时（在试验中），它才能看到它留下的痕迹，而这些元素本身绝不是“社会的”。他们坚持认为，当我们的政治未来在于决定是什么将我们所有人联系在一起时，我们已经被某种社会的力量所控制。简而言之，第二学派声称要恢复被第一学派突然打断的联系和收藏工作。这是为了帮助感兴趣的询问者重新组合这本书所写的社会。
In the course of the book we will learn to distinguish the standard sociology of the social from a more radical subfamily which I will call critical sociology.7 This last branch will be defined by the following three traits: it doesn’t only limit itself to the social but replaces the object to be studied by another matter made of social relations; it claims that this substitution is unbearable for the social actors who need to live under the illusion that there is something ‘other’ than social there; and it considers that the actors’ objections to their social explanations offer the best proof that those explanations are right.
在本书的过程中，我们将学习区分标准的社会社会学和更激进的子家族，我称之为批判社会学7。最后一个分支将由以下三个特征来定义：它不仅局限于社会，而且用另一个由社会关系构成的问题取代了要研究的对象;它声称，这种替代对于需要生活在幻觉中的社会行为者来说是无法忍受的，他们认为那里有“社会之外”的东西;它认为行为者对他们的社会解释的反对提供了这些解释是正确的最好证明。
To clarify, I will call the first approach ‘sociology of the social’ and the second ‘sociology of associations’ (I wish I could use ‘associology’). I know this is very unfair to the many nuances of the social sciences l have thus lumped together, but this is acceptable for an introduction which has to be very precise on the unfamiliar arguments it chooses to describe as it sketches the well-known terrain. I may be forgiven for this roughness because there exist many excellent introductions for the sociology of the social but none, to my knowledge, for this small subfield of social theory8 that has been called—by the way, what is it to be called? Alas, the historical name is ‘actor-network-theory’, a name that is so awkward, so confusing, so meaningless that it deserves to be kept. If the author, for instance, of a travel guide is free to propose new comments on the land he has chosen to present, he is certainly not free to change its most common name since the easiest signpost is the best—after all, the origin of the word ‘America’ is even more awkward. I was ready to drop this label for more elaborate ones like ‘sociology of translation’, ‘actant-rhyzome ontology’, ‘sociology of innovation’, and so on, until someone pointed out to me that the acronym A.N.T. was perfectly fit for a blind, myopic, workaholic, trail-sniffing, and collective traveler. An ant writing for other ants, this fits my project very well!9 Ideally, the word sociology should work best, but it cannot be used before its two components—what is social and what is a science—have been somewhat revamped. As this book unfolds, I will use it more and more often though, reserving the expression ‘sociology of the social’ to designate the repertoire to which other social scientists, in my view, limit themselves too readily.
为了澄清，我将第一种方法称为“社会社会学”，第二种方法称为“协会社会学”（我希望我能使用“协会学”）。我知道这对我因此混为一谈的社会科学的许多细微差别来说是非常不公平的，但这对于一个引言来说是可以接受的，因为它必须非常精确地描述它选择描述的不熟悉的论点，因为它勾勒了众所周知的领域。我这种粗暴是可以原谅的，因为社会社会学有很多很好的介绍，但据我所知，对于社会理论的这个小子领域8，没有一个被称为——顺便说一句，它应该被称为什么？唉，历史上的名字是“演员网络理论”，这个名字是如此尴尬，如此令人困惑，如此毫无意义，以至于它值得保留。例如，如果一本旅游指南的作者可以自由地对他选择展示的土地提出新的评论，他肯定不能自由地改变它最常见的名称，因为最简单的路标是最好的——毕竟，“美国”这个词的起源就更加尴尬了。我准备放弃这个标签，转而使用更详细的标签，例如“翻译社会学”、“actant-rhyzome ontology”、“sociology of innovation”等等，直到有人向我指出，首字母缩略词 A.N.T. 非常适合盲人、短视、工作狂、嗅探和集体旅行者。一只蚂蚁为其他蚂蚁写作，这非常适合我的项目！9 理想情况下，社会学这个词应该效果最好，但在它的两个组成部分——什么是社会和什么是科学——已经被稍微修改之前，它不能被使用。随着本书的展开，我将越来越多地使用它，保留“社会学”这个说法，以指代其他社会科学家在我看来太容易将自己限制在哪些范围内。
How to find one’s way in the literature under the heading Actor-Network-Theory
如何在演员-网络-理论标题下的文献中找到自己的方式
Most of the relevant bibliography can be found on the excellent website ‘the Actor Network Resource’ maintained by John Law.10 The origin of this approach can be found in the need for a new social theory adjusted to science and technology studies (Callon and Latour 1981). But it started in earnest with three documents (Latour 1988b; Callon 1986; Law 1986b). It was at this point that nonhumans—microbes, scallops, rocks, and ships—presented themselves to social theory in a new way. As I will explain on p. 87 when reviewing the fourth uncertainty, it was the first time for me that the objects of science and technology had become, so to speak, social-compatible. The philosophical foundation of this argument was presented in the second part of (Latour 1988a) although in a form that made it difficult to grasp.
大多数相关的参考书目都可以在 John Law 维护的优秀网站“The Actor Network Resource”上找到10。这种方法的起源可以找到一种针对科学和技术研究的新社会理论的需求（Callon 和 Latour，1981 年）。但它从三份文件开始（Latour 1988b;Callon 1986 年;Law 1986b）。正是在这一点上，非人类——微生物、扇贝、岩石和船只——以一种新的方式将自己呈现给社会理论。正如我将在第 87 页回顾第四个不确定性时所解释的那样，对我来说，科学和技术的对象可以说是第一次变得社会兼容。这一论点的哲学基础在（Latour 1988a）的第二部分提出，尽管其形式使其难以理解。
Since then it has moved in many directions, being reviewed and criticized by many papers listed on Law’s website. Although there is no clear litmus test for ANT membership, some ad hoc and makeshift ones may be devised. Needless to say, this interpretation of ANT represents only my view. This book does not aim at a more collective presentation, only at a more systematic one. Here are some of the tests that I have found most useful.
从那时起，它向多个方向发展，受到了 Law 网站上列出的许多论文的审查和批评。虽然没有明确的 ANT 成员资格试金石，但可以设计一些临时和临时的试金石。毋庸置疑，这种对 ANT 的解释只代表了我的观点。这本书的目标不是更集体的介绍，而是更系统的介绍。以下是我发现最有用的一些测试。
One of them is the precise role granted to non-humans. They have to be actors (see the definition on p. 64) and not simply the hapless bearers of symbolic projection. But this activity should not be the type of agency associated up to now with matters of fact or natural objects. So if an account employs either a symbolic or a naturalist type of causality, there is no reason to include it in the ANT corpus even though it might claim to be. Conversely, any study that gives non-humans a type of agency that is more open than the traditional natural causality—but more efficient than the symbolic one—can be part of our corpus, even though some of the authors would not wish to be associated in any way with this approach. For instance, a biological book (Kupiec and Sonigo 2000) could pertain to ANT because of the new active role given to the gene.
其中之一是赋予非人类的确切角色。他们必须是演员（见第 64 页的定义），而不仅仅是象征性投射的不幸承载者。但这种活动不应该是迄今为止与事实或自然对象相关的代理类型。因此，如果一个账户采用象征性或自然主义类型的因果关系，那么就没有理由将其包含在 ANT 语料库中，即使它可能声称是。相反，任何赋予非人类一种比传统自然因果关系更开放、但比象征性因果关系更有效的能动性的研究，都可以成为我们语料库的一部分，即使一些作者不希望以任何方式与这种方法联系在一起。例如，一本生物学书（Kupiec 和 Sonigo 2000）可能与 ANT 有关，因为该基因被赋予了新的积极作用。
Another test is to check which direction the explanation is going in. Is the list of what is social in the end the same limited repertoire that has been used to explain (away) most of the elements? If the social remains stable and is used to explain a state of affairs, it’s not ANT. For instance, no matter how enlightening it has been for all of us, the Social Shaping of Technology (Bijker 1995) would not be part of the corpus since the social is kept stable all along and accounts for the shape of technological change. But McNeill (1976), although he is in no way an ANT author, would qualify for inclusion, since what is to be associated is being modified by the inclusion of rats, viruses, and microbes into the definition of what is to be ‘collected’ in an empire. In this way, a book like Cronon’s (1991) is certainly a masterpiece of ANT because no hidden social force is added to explain the progressive composition of the metropolis itself. The same would be true of the work done in distributed cognition (Hutchins 1995). This is also what has made much of the history of science and technology important for our program, and why sociology of art has been a continuous companion, especially through the influence of Hennion (1993).
另一个测试是检查解释的走向。最终什么是社会的清单是用来解释（消除）大多数元素的相同有限曲目吗？如果 social 保持稳定并用于解释事态，则它不是 ANT。例如，无论它对我们所有人来说多么具有启发性，技术的社会塑造 （Bijker 1995） 都不会成为语料库的一部分，因为社会始终保持稳定，并解释了技术变革的形状。但是 McNeill （1976），虽然他绝不是 ANT 的作者，但他有资格被纳入，因为要关联的内容正在被修改，将老鼠、病毒和微生物纳入帝国中要“收集”的定义中。从这个角度来看，像克罗农（Cronon，1991）这样的书无疑是ANT的杰作，因为没有添加任何隐藏的社会力量来解释大都市本身的进步构成。在分布式认知中所做的工作也是如此（Hutchins 1995）。这也是使科学技术史对我们的项目很重要的原因，也是为什么艺术社会学一直是一个持续的伴侣，特别是通过 Hennion （1993） 的影响。
A third and more difficult test would be to check whether a study aims at reassembling the social or still insists on dispersion and deconstruction. ANT has been confused with a postmodern emphasis on the critique of the ‘Great narratives’ and ‘Eurocentric’ or ‘hegemonic’ standpoint. This is, however, a very misleading view. Dispersion, destruction, and deconstruction are not the goals to be achieved but what needs to be overcome. It’s much more important to check what are the new institutions, procedures, and concepts able to collect and to reconnect the social (Callon et al. 2001; Latour 2004b).
第三个也是更难的测试是检查一项研究是否旨在重组社会，还是仍然坚持分散和解构。ANT 与后现代强调批判“伟大叙事”和“欧洲中心主义”或“霸权”立场相混淆。然而，这是一个非常具有误导性的观点。分散、破坏和解构不是要实现的目标，而是需要克服的目标。更重要的是检查哪些新的机构、程序和概念能够收集并重新连接社会（Callon 等人，2001 年;Latour 2004b）。
It’s true that in most situations resorting to the sociology of the social is not only reasonable but also indispensable, since it offers convenient shorthand to designate all the ingredients already accepted in the collective realm. It would be silly as well as pedantic to abstain from using notions like ‘IBM’, ‘France’, ‘Maori culture’, ‘upward mobility’, ‘totalitarianism’, ‘socialization’, ‘lower-middle class’, ‘political context’, ‘social capital’, ‘downsizing’, ‘social construction’, ‘individual agent’, ‘unconscious drives’, ‘peer pressure’, etc. But in situations where innovations proliferate, where group boundaries are uncertain, when the range of entities to be taken into account fluctuates, the sociology of the social is no longer able to trace actors’ new associations. At this point, the last thing to do would be to limit in advance the shape, size, heterogeneity, and combination of associations. To the convenient shorthand of the social, one has to substitute the painful and costly longhand of its associations. The duties of the social scientist mutate accordingly: it is no longer enough to limit actors to the role of informers offering cases of some well-known types. You have to grant them back the ability to make up their own theories of what the social is made of. Your task is no longer to impose some order, to limit the range of acceptable entities, to teach actors what they are, or to add some reflexivity to their blind practice. Using a slogan from ANT, you have ‘to follow the actors themselves’, that is try to catch up with their often wild innovations in order to learn from them what the collective existence has become in their hands, which methods they have elaborated to make it fit together, which accounts could best define the new associations that they have been forced to establish. If the sociology of the social works fine with what has been already assembled, it does not work so well to collect anew the participants in what is not—not yet—a sort of social realm.
诚然，在大多数情况下，诉诸社会社会学不仅是合理的，而且是必不可少的，因为它提供了方便的速记来指定集体领域已经接受的所有成分。避免使用诸如“IBM”、“法国”、“毛利文化”、“向上流动”、“极权主义”、“社会化”、“中下阶层”、“政治背景”、“社会资本”、“裁员”、“社会建构”、“个体代理”、“无意识驱动力”、“同伴压力”等概念是愚蠢和迂腐的。但是，在创新激增的情况下，当群体边界不确定的情况下，当要考虑的实体范围波动时，社会社会学不再能够追踪参与者的新联想。在这一点上，最后要做的是提前限制关联的形状、大小、异质性和组合。对于社会的方便速记，人们不得不用痛苦而昂贵的联想来代替。社会科学家的职责也相应地发生了变化：将行为者限制在提供一些知名案例的线人的角色已经不够了。你必须重新赋予他们能力，让他们能够编造自己的社会理论。你的任务不再是强加一些秩序，限制可接受实体的范围，教演员他们是什么，或者为他们的盲目练习增加一些反身性。用 ANT 的口号来说，你必须 “跟随演员自己”，即尝试赶上他们经常疯狂的创新，以便从他们那里了解集体存在在他们手中已经变成了什么，他们精心设计了哪些方法使其融合在一起，哪些账户可以最好地定义他们被迫建立的新协会。如果社会社会学对已经组装的东西运作良好，那么在不是——还不是——一种社会领域的东西中重新收集参与者就不那么有效了。
A more extreme way of relating the two schools is to borrow a somewhat tricky parallel from the history of physics and to say that the sociology of the social remains ‘pre-relativist’, while our sociology has to be fully ‘relativist’. In most ordinary cases, for instance situations that change slowly, the pre-relativist framework is perfectly fine and any fixed frame of reference can register action without too much deformation. But as soon as things accelerate, innovations proliferate, and entities are multiplied, one then has an absolutist framework generating data that becomes hopelessly messed up. This is when a relativistic solution has to be devised in order to remain able to move between frames of reference and to regain some sort of commensurability between traces coming from frames traveling at very different speeds and acceleration. Since relativity theory is a well-known example of a major shift in our mental apparatus triggered by very basic questions, it can be used as a nice parallel for the ways in which the sociology of associations reverses and generalizes the sociology of the social.
将这两个学派联系起来的一种更极端的方式是从物理学史中借用一个有点棘手的类比，并说社会社会学仍然是“前相对主义”的，而我们的社会学必须完全是“相对主义的”。在大多数普通情况下，例如变化缓慢的情况，前相对论框架是完全好的，任何固定的参考系都可以记录动作而不会发生太大的变形。但是，一旦事情加速，创新激增，实体成倍增加，人们就会拥有一个绝对主义的框架，生成的数据变得无可救药地混乱。这时必须设计一个相对论解决方案，以保持能够在参考系之间移动，并在以非常不同的速度和加速度行进的坐标系的轨迹之间重新获得某种可比性。由于相对论是一个众所周知的例子，它是由非常基本的问题引发我们心理器官的重大转变，因此它可以用作关联社会学逆转和概括社会学的方式的一个很好的平行线。
In what follows I am not interested in refutation—proving that the other social theories are wrong—but in proposition. How far can one go by suspending the common sense hypothesis that the existence of a social realm offers a legitimate frame of reference for the social sciences?11 If physicists at the beginning of the previous century were able to do away with the common sense solution of an absolutely rigid and indefinitely plastic ether, can sociologists discover new traveling possibilities by abandoning the notion of a social substance as a ‘superfluous hypothesis’? This position is so marginal, its chance of success so slim, that I see no reason to be fair and thorough with the perfectly reasonable alternatives that could, at any point, smash it into pieces. So, I will be opinionated and often partial in order to demonstrate clearly the contrast between the two viewpoints. In exchange for this breach of fairness, I will try to be as coherent as possible in drawing the most extreme conclusions from the position I have chosen to experiment with. My test will be to see how many new questions can be brought to light by sticking firmly, even blindly, to all the obligations that this new departure point is forcing us to obey. The final test will be to check, at the end of this book, if the sociology of associations has been able to take up the relay of the sociology of the social by following different types of new and more active connections, and if it has been able to inherit all that was legitimate in the ambition of a science of the social. As usual, the result of whether this has been successful or not will be up to the reader.
在接下来的内容中，我对反驳不感兴趣——证明其他社会理论是错误的——而是对命题感兴趣。如果暂停社会领域的存在为社会科学提供了合法的参考框架的常识性假设能走多远？11 如果物理学家在上个世纪初能够消除绝对僵化和无限可塑的以太的常识性解决方案， 社会学家能否通过放弃将社会物质视为“多余假设”的概念来发现新的旅行可能性？这个位置是如此微不足道，成功的机会是如此渺茫，以至于我认为没有理由公平和彻底地使用完全合理的替代方案，这些替代方案随时都可能将其粉碎。所以，我会固执己见，而且经常是片面的，以便清楚地证明这两种观点之间的对比。作为这种违反公平的交换，我将尝试从我选择试验的立场中得出最极端的结论，从而尽可能连贯。我的测试将是，看看通过坚定地、甚至盲目地坚持这个新出发点迫使我们遵守的所有义务，可以揭示多少新问题。最后的考验将是，在本书的结尾，检查协会社会学是否能够通过追踪不同类型的新的和更活跃的联系来承担社会社会学的接力，以及它是否能够继承社会科学的雄心壮志中的一切。像往常一样，这是否成功的结果将取决于读者。
For those who like to trace a discipline to some venerable ancestor, it is worth noting that this distinction between two contrasted ways of understanding the duties of social science is nothing new. It was already in place at the very beginning of the discipline (at least in France) in the early dispute between the elder Gabriel Tarde and Emile Durkheim, the winner.12 Tarde always complained that Durkheim had abandoned the task of explaining society by confusing cause and effect, replacing the understanding of the social link with a political project aimed at social engineering. Against his younger challenger, he vigorously maintained that the social was not a special domain of reality but a principle of connections; that there was no reason to separate ‘the social’ from other associations like biological organisms or even atoms; that no break with philosophy, and especially metaphysics, was necessary in order to become a social science; that sociology was in effect a kind of inter-psychology;13 that the study of innovation, and especially science and technology, was the growth area of social theory; and that economics had to be remade from top to bottom instead of being used as a vague metaphor to describe the calculation of interests. Above all, he considered the social as a circulating fluid that should be followed by new methods and not a specific type of organism. We don’t need to accept all of Tarde’s idiosyncrasies—and there are many—but in the gallery of portraits of eminent predecessors he is one of the very few, along with Harold Garfinkel, who believed sociology could be a science accounting for how society is held together, instead of using society to explain something else or to help solve one of the political questions of the time. That Tarde was utterly defeated by sociologists of the social to the point of being squeezed into a ghostly existence for a century does not prove that he was wrong. On the contrary, it simply makes this book even more necessary. I am convinced that if sociology had inherited more from Tarde (not to mention Comte, Spencer, Durkheim, and Weber), it could have been an even more relevant discipline. It still has the resources to become so as we will see at the end of this book. The two traditions can easily be reconciled, the second being simply the resumption of the task that the first believed was too quickly achieved. The factors gathered in the past under the label of a ‘social domain’ are simply some of the elements to be assembled in the future in what I will call not a society but a collective.
对于那些喜欢将一门学科追溯到某个可敬的祖先的人来说，值得注意的是，理解社会科学职责的两种截然不同的方式之间的区别并不是什么新鲜事。在这门学科的一开始（至少在法国），在老加布里埃尔·塔尔德 （Gabriel Tarde） 和获胜者埃米尔·涂尔干 （Emile Durkheim） 之间的早期争论中就已经存在了。12 塔尔德总是抱怨涂尔干通过混淆因果关系来放弃解释社会的任务，用旨在社会工程的政治项目取代了对社会联系的理解。与他年轻的挑战者相反，他极力坚持认为，社会不是现实的特殊领域，而是一种联系原则;没有理由将“社会”与生物有机体甚至原子等其他协会分开;不与哲学，尤其是形而上学决裂，就要成为一门社会科学;社会学实际上是一种跨心理学;13 创新研究，尤其是科学和技术的研究，是社会理论的增长领域;经济学必须从上到下重新塑造，而不是被用作描述利益计算的模糊隐喻。最重要的是，他认为社会是一种循环的液体，应该遵循新的方法，而不是一种特定类型的有机体。我们不需要接受塔尔德的所有特质——而且有很多——但在杰出前辈的肖像画廊中，他是极少数人之一，与哈罗德·加芬克尔（Harold Garfinkel）一起，他相信社会学可以成为一门解释社会如何维系在一起的科学，而不是利用社会来解释其他事物或帮助解决当时的政治问题之一。塔尔德被社会社会学家彻底打败，以至于被挤进一个幽灵般的存在一个世纪，这并不能证明他错了。相反，它只是使这本书更加必要。我确信，如果社会学从塔尔德那里继承了更多（更不用说孔德、斯宾塞、涂尔干和韦伯），它可能会成为一门更相关的学科。正如我们将在本书的结尾看到的那样，它仍然拥有成为这样的资源。这两个传统很容易调和，第二个传统只是恢复了第一个传统认为太快完成的任务。过去在“社会领域”标签下聚集的因素只是未来要组装的一些元素，我称之为一个集体，而不是一个社会。
Gabriel Tarde An alternative precursor for an alternative social theory
加布里埃尔·塔尔德 （Gabriel Tarde） 另类社会理论的另类先驱
Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904) was a judge and then a self-taught criminologist and became the predecessor of Bergson at the Collège de France. 加布里埃尔·塔尔德（Gabriel Tarde，1843-1904 年）是一名法官，后来又是一名自学成才的犯罪学家，后来成为法兰西学院柏格森的前任。
A few quotes will give an idea of the strong contrast between the two lines of thought. Here is Tarde’s definition of society: 几句引文可以说明这两种思路之间的强烈对比。以下是 Tarde 对社会的定义：
‘But this means that every thing is a society and that all things are societies. And it is quite remarkable that science, by a logical sequence of its earlier movements, tends to strangely generalize the notion of society. It speaks of cellular societies, why not of atomic societies? Not to mention societies of stars, solar systems. All of the sciences seem fated to become branches of sociology.’ (Tarde 1999: 58)
“但这意味着每件事都是一个社会，所有事物都是社会。而且，非常值得注意的是，科学通过其早期运动的逻辑顺序，倾向于奇怪地概括社会的概念。它谈到了细胞社会，为什么不谈原子社会呢？更不用说星星、太阳系的社会了。所有的科学似乎都注定要成为社会学的分支。（塔尔德 1999：58）
Most interestingly, Tarde was head of a statistical institute for many years and always believed simultaneously in monographies and quantitative data, but he disagreed with Durkheim on the type of quantum sociology had to trace.
最有趣的是，塔尔德多年来一直担任一家统计研究所的负责人，并且始终同时相信专著和定量数据，但他不同意涂尔干关于量子社会学必须追溯的类型。
Generalizing Leibniz’s monads, but without a God, Tarde’s projects reverses the link between micro and macro:
概括莱布尼茨的单子，但没有上帝，塔尔德的项目颠倒了微观和宏观之间的联系：
‘In a multitude of forms, though on a smaller scale, the same error always comes to light, namely, the error of believing that, in order to see a gradual dawn of regularity, order, and logic in social phenomena, we must go outside of the details, which are essentially irregular, and rise high enough to obtain a panoramic view of the general effect; that the source and foundation of every social coordination is some general fact from which it descends gradually to particular facts, though always diminishing in strength; in short, that man acts but a law of evolution guides him. I hold the contrary, in a certain sense.’ (Tarde 1899/2000: 75) “在多种形式中，尽管规模较小，但同样的错误总是显现出来，即错误地认为，为了看到社会现象的规律性、秩序和逻辑的逐渐出现，我们必须跳出本质上是不规则的细节，并上升到足够高的地方，以获得对一般效果的全景;每一种社会协调的源头和基础都是一些普遍的事实，它从中逐渐下降到特定的事实，尽管强度总是在减弱;简而言之，人的行为不过是进化法则的指导。在某种意义上，我持相反的看法。（塔尔德 1899/2000：75）
This explains the radical opposition with Durkheim, a generation younger than Tarde: 这解释了与比 Tarde 年轻一代的涂尔干的激进反对：
‘This conception is, in fact, almost the exact opposite of the unilinear evolutionists’ notion and of M. Durkheim’s. Instead of explaining everything by the supposed supremacy of a law of evolution, which compels collective phenomena to reproduce and repeat themselves indefinitely in a certain order rather than explaining lesser facts by greater, and the part by the whole—I explain collective resemblances of the whole by the massing together of minute elementary acts—the greater by the lesser and the whole by the part. This way of regarding phenomena is destined to produce a transformation in sociology similar to that brought about in mathematics by the introduction of infinitesimal calculus.’ (Tarde 1899/2000: 35) “事实上，这个概念几乎与单线性进化论者和涂尔干先生的概念完全相反。我不是用进化法则的所谓至高无上来解释一切，它迫使集体现象以一定的顺序无限期地复制和重复自己，而不是用更大的事实来解释较小的事实，用整体来解释部分——我通过微小的基本行为的集合来解释整体的集体相似性——更大的行为是较小的，整体是部分的。这种看待现象的方式注定会在社会学中产生类似于数学中引入无穷小微积分所带来的转变。（塔尔德 1899/2000：35）
The reason why Tarde may pass for an early ancestor of ANT is that his best example of a social connection is always history and sociology of science: Tarde 之所以可能被认为是 ANT 的早期祖先，是他关于社会联系的最佳例子始终是科学的历史和社会学：
‘As regards the structure of science, probably the most imposing of human edifices, there is no possible question. It was built in the full light of history, and we can follow its development almost from the very outset down to our own day…. Everything here originates in the individual, not only the materials but the general design of the whole and the detail sketches as well. Everything, including what is now diffused among all cultured minds and taught even in the primary school, began as the secret of some single mind, whence a little flame, faint and flickering, sent forth its rays, at first only within a narrow compass, and even there encountering many obstructions, but, growing brighter as it spread further, it at length became a brilliant illumination. Now, if it seems plainly evident that science was thus constructed, it is no less true that the construction of every dogma, legal code, government, or economic régime was effected in the same manner; and if any doubt be possible with respect to language and ethics, because the obscurity of their origin and the slowness of their transformations remove them from observation through the greater part of their course, is it not highly probable that their evolution followed the same path?’ (Tarde 1899/2000: 84–5) “至于科学的结构，这可能是人类最壮观的建筑，这是毫无疑问的。它是在历史的全部光照下建造的，我们几乎可以从一开始就关注它的发展，直到我们今天……这里的一切都源于个人，不仅是材料，还有整体的总体设计和细节草图。一切事物，包括现在在所有有教养的头脑中传播的，甚至在小学里所教授的，都是从某个单一思想的秘密开始的，在那里，一团微弱而摇曳的小火焰发出了它的光芒，起初只在一个狭窄的罗盘内，甚至在那里遇到了许多障碍，但随着它的进一步传播，它变得越来越亮， 它终于变成了一道灿烂的光芒。现在，如果科学是这样构建的，那么每一个教条、法典、政府或经济制度的构建都是以同样的方式进行的，这同样是正确的;如果说在语言和伦理方面有任何怀疑是可能的，因为它们的起源的模糊性和转变的缓慢性使它们在大部分过程中都无法被观察，那么它们的进化不是极有可能遵循同样的道路吗？（塔尔德 1899/2000：84-5）
The entities that Tarde is dealing with are not people but innovations, quanta of change that have a life of their own: Tarde 正在处理的实体不是人，而是创新，是具有自身生命的变化量：
‘This is why any social production having some marked characteristics, be it an industrial good, a verse, a formula, a political idea which has appeared one day somewhere in the corner of a brain, dreams like Alexander of conquering the world, tries to multiply itself by thousands and millions of copies in every place where there exists human beings and will never stop except if it is kept in check by some rival production as ambitious as itself.’ (Tarde 1895/1999: 96) “这就是为什么任何具有某些显著特征的社会生产，无论是工业产品、诗歌、公式、政治理念，有一天出现在大脑角落的某个地方，像亚历山大一样征服世界的梦想，都试图在每一个有人类存在的地方使自己乘以成千上万的复制品，除非它被一些竞争对手的生产所控制，否则永远不会停止雄心勃勃。（塔尔德 1895/1999：96）
What is most useful for ANT is that Tarde does not make the social science break away from philosophy or even metaphysics: 对 ANT 来说，最有用的是 Tarde 并没有让社会科学脱离哲学甚至形而上学：
‘To exist is to differ; difference, in one sense, is the substantial side of things, what they have most in common and what makes them most different. One has to start from this difference and to abstain from trying to explain it, especially by starting with identity, as so many persons wrongly do. Because identity is a minimum and, hence, a type of difference, and a very rare type at that, in the same way as rest is a type of movement and the circle a type of ellipse. To begin with some primordial identity implies at the origin a prodigiously unlikely singularity, or else the obscure mystery of one simple being then dividing for no special reason.’ (Tarde 1895/1999: 73) “存在就是不同;从某种意义上说，差异是事物实质性的一面，它们最大的共同点以及使它们最大的不同之处。我们必须从这种差异开始，避免试图解释它，尤其是从身份开始，就像许多人错误地所做的那样。因为同一性是一种最小差异，因此也是一种差异，而且是一种非常罕见的类型，就像静止是一种运动类型，而圆是一种椭圆类型一样。从某种原始身份开始，在起源上意味着一个极不可能的奇点，或者一个简单存在然后无缘无故地分裂的晦涩之谜。（塔尔德 1895/1999：73）
This book on how to use ANT for reassembling social connections is organized in three parts corresponding to the three duties that the sociology of the social has conflated for reasons that are no longer justified: 这本关于如何使用 ANT 重新构建社会联系的书分为三个部分，对应于社会社会学由于不再合理的原因而混为一谈的三项职责：
How to deploy the many controversies about associations without restricting in advance the social to a specific domain?How to deploy the many controversies about associations without restricting in advance the social to a specific domain? 如何在不提前将社交限制到特定领域的情况下部署关于协会的许多争议？如何在不提前将社交限制到特定领域的情况下部署关于协会的许多争议？
How to render fully traceable the means allowing actors to stabilize those controversies?How to render fully traceable the means allowing actors to stabilize those controversies? 如何使允许参与者稳定这些争议的手段完全可追溯？如何使允许参与者稳定这些争议的手段完全可追溯？
Through which procedures is it possible to reassemble the social not in a society but in a collective?Through which procedures is it possible to reassemble the social not in a society but in a collective?Through which procedures is it possible to reassemble the social not in a society but in a collective?Through which procedures is it possible to reassemble the social not in a society but in a collective? 通过哪些程序可以重新组合社会，而不是在一个社会中，而是在一个集体中？通过哪些程序可以重新组合社会，而不是在一个社会中，而是在一个集体中？通过哪些程序可以重新组合社会，而不是在一个社会中，而是在一个集体中？通过哪些程序可以重新组合社会，而不是在一个社会中，而是在一个集体中？
In the first part, I will show why we should not limit in advance the sort of beings populating the social world. Social sciences have become much too timid in deploying the sheer complexity of the associations they have encountered.14 I will argue that it’s possible to feed, so to speak, off controversies and learn how to become good relativists—surely an indispensable preparation before venturing into new territory. In the second part, I will show how it’s possible to render social connections traceable by following the work done to stabilize the controversies followed in the first part. Borrowing a metaphor from cartography, I could say that ANT has tried to render the social world as flat as possible in order to ensure that the establishment of any new link is clearly visible. Finally, I will conclude by showing why the task of assembling the collective is worth pursuing, but only after the shortcut of society and ‘social explanation’ has been abandoned. If it’s true that the views of society offered by the sociologists of the social were mainly a way of insuring civil peace when modernism was under way,15 what sort of collective life and what sort of knowledge is to be gathered by sociologists of associations once modernizing has been thrown into doubt while the task of finding the ways to cohabit remains more important than ever?
在第一部分中，我将说明为什么我们不应该提前限制社会世界中的那种生物。14 我将论证，可以说，从争议中汲取营养，学习如何成为优秀的相对主义者——这无疑是冒险进入新领域之前必不可少的准备。在第二部分中，我将展示如何通过遵循第一部分中为稳定争议所做的工作来使社会联系可追溯。借用制图学的比喻，我可以说 ANT 试图使社交世界尽可能平坦，以确保任何新链接的建立都清晰可见。最后，我将通过说明为什么组建集体的任务是值得追求的，但前提是放弃了社会和“社会解释”的捷径。如果社会社会学家提供的社会观点在现代主义进行时主要是确保公民和平的一种方式，那么15 一旦现代化受到质疑，而寻找共居方式的任务仍然比以往任何时候都更加重要，社团的社会学家将收集什么样的集体生活和什么样的知识呢？在第一部分中，我将说明为什么我们不应该提前限制社会世界中的那种生物。14 我将论证，可以说，从争议中汲取营养，学习如何成为优秀的相对主义者——这无疑是冒险进入新领域之前必不可少的准备。在第二部分中，我将展示如何通过遵循第一部分中为稳定争议所做的工作来使社会联系可追溯。借用制图学的比喻，我可以说 ANT 试图使社交世界尽可能平坦，以确保任何新链接的建立都清晰可见。最后，我将通过说明为什么组建集体的任务是值得追求的，但前提是放弃了社会和“社会解释”的捷径。如果社会社会学家提供的社会观点在现代主义进行时主要是确保公民和平的一种方式，那么15 一旦现代化受到质疑，而寻找共居方式的任务仍然比以往任何时候都更加重要，社团的社会学家将收集什么样的集体生活和什么样的知识呢？
In some ways this book resembles a travel guide through a terrain that is at once completely banal—it’s nothing but the social world we are used to—and completely exotic—we will have to learn how to slow down at each step. If earnest scholars do not find it dignifying to compare an introduction of a science to a travel guide, be they kindly reminded that ‘where to travel’ and ‘what is worth seeing there’ is nothing but a way of saying in plain English what is usually said under the pompous Greek name of ‘method’ or, even worse, ‘methodology’. The advantage of a travel book approach over a ‘discourse on method’ is that it cannot be confused with the territory on which it simply overlays. A guide can be put to use as well as forgotten, placed in a backpack, stained with grease and coffee, scribbled all over, its pages torn apart to light a fire under a barbecue. In brief, it offers suggestions rather than imposing itself on the reader. That said, this is not a coffee table book offering glossy views of the landscape to the eyes of the visitor too lazy to travel. It is directed at practitioners as a how-to book, helping them to find their bearings once they are bogged down in the territory. For others, I am afraid it will remain totally opaque, since the social ties to be traced will never resemble those they have been trained to follow.
在某些方面，这本书就像一本穿越一片完全平庸的领域的旅行指南——它只不过是我们习惯的社交世界——而且完全充满异国情调——我们必须学习如何在每一步中放慢脚步。如果认真的学者认为将科学介绍与旅行指南进行比较并不体面，那么请善意地提醒他们，“去哪里旅行”和“在那里值得一看的东西”只不过是一种用通俗易懂的英语说出通常以“方法”这个浮夸的希腊名字说的话，或者更糟糕的是， ‘方法论’。与“方法论述”相比，旅行书方法的优势在于，它不会与它简单地覆盖的领域相混淆。一本指南可以被使用，也可以被遗忘，放在背包里，沾满油脂和咖啡，到处乱涂乱画，书页被撕开，在烧烤架下点火。简而言之，它提供建议，而不是将自己强加给读者。也就是说，这不是一本咖啡桌书，为懒得旅行的游客提供光鲜亮丽的风景。它是一本针对从业者的指导书，帮助他们在陷入困境时找到自己的方向。对于其他人来说，恐怕它会保持完全不透明，因为要追踪的社会纽带永远不会与他们被训练要追随的社会纽带相似。