A conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful actors, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable. The term has a pejorative connotation, implying that the appeal to a conspiracy is based on prejudice or insufficient evidence. Conspiracy theories resist falsification and are reinforced by circular reasoning: both evidence against the conspiracy and an absence of evidence for it, are re-interpreted as evidence of its truth, and the conspiracy becomes a matter of faith rather than proof.
Gabriel Tarde was a French sociologist, criminologist and social psychologist who conceived sociology as based on small psychological interactions among individuals, the fundamental forces being imitation and innovation.
Actor–network theory (ANT) is a theoretical and methodological approach to social theory where everything in the social and natural worlds exists in constantly shifting networks of relationships. It posits that nothing exists outside those relationships. All the factors involved in a social situation are on the same level, and thus there are no external social forces beyond what and how the network participants interact at present. Thus, objects, ideas, processes, and any other relevant factors are seen as just as important in creating social situations as humans. ANT holds that social forces do not exist in themselves, and therefore cannot be used to explain social phenomena. Instead, strictly empirical analysis should be undertaken to "describe" rather than "explain" social activity. Only after this can one introduce the concept of social forces, and only as an abstract theoretical concept, not something which genuinely exists in the world. Although it is best known for its controversial insistence on the capacity of nonhumans to act or participate in systems or networks or both, ANT is also associated with forceful critiques of conventional and critical sociology. Developed by science and technology studies (STS) scholars Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, the sociologist John Law, and others, it can more technically be described as a "material-semiotic" method. This means that it maps relations that are simultaneously material and semiotic. It assumes that many relations are both material and semiotic.
In the social sciences, social structure is the patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of the individuals. On the macro scale, social structure is the system of socioeconomic stratification, social institutions, or, other patterned relations between large social groups. On the meso scale, it is the structure of social network ties between individuals or organizations. On the micro scale, it can be the way norms shape the behavior of individuals within the social system.
The science wars were a series of intellectual exchanges, between scientific realists and postmodernist critics, about the nature of scientific theory and intellectual inquiry. They took place principally in the United States in the 1990s in the academic and mainstream press. Scientific realists argued that scientific knowledge is real, and accused the postmodernists of having effectively rejected scientific objectivity, the scientific method, empiricism, and scientific knowledge. Postmodernists interpreted Thomas Kuhn's ideas about scientific paradigms to mean that scientific theories are social constructs, and philosophers like Paul Feyerabend argued that other, non-realist forms of knowledge production were better suited to serve people's personal and spiritual needs.
Macrosociology is an approach to sociology which emphasizes the analysis of social systems and populations on a large scale, at the level of social structure, and often at a necessarily high level of theoretical abstraction. Microsociology, by contrast, focuses on the individual social agency. Macrosociology also concerns individuals, families, and other constituent aspects of a society, but always does so in relation to larger social system of which they are a part. Macrosociology can also be the analysis of large collectivities. Human populations are considered a society to the degree that is politically autonomous and its members to engage in a broad range of cooperative activities. For example, this definition would apply to the population of Germany being deemed a society, but German-speaking people as a whole scattered about different countries would not be considered a society. Macrosociology deals with broad societal trends that can later be applied to the smaller features of a society. To differentiate, macrosociology deals with issues such as war, distress of Third World nations, poverty, and environmental deprivation, whereas microsociology analyses issues such as the role of women, the nature of the family, and immigration.
Theories of technology attempt to explain the factors that shape technological innovation as well as the impact of technology on society and culture. Most contemporary theories of technology reject two previous views: the linear model of technological innovation and technological determinism. To challenge the linear model, today's theories of technology point to the historical evidence that technological innovation often gives rise to new scientific fields, and emphasizes the important role that social networks and cultural values play in shaping technological artifacts. To challenge technological determinism, today's theories of technology emphasize the scope of technical choice, which is greater than most laypeople realize; as science and technology scholars like to say, "It could have been different." For this reason, theorists who take these positions typically argue for greater public involvement in technological decision-making.
John Law, is a sociologist and science and technology studies scholar, currently on the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University and key proponent of Actor-network theory. Actor-network theory, sometimes abbreviated to ANT, is a social science approach for describing and explaining social, organisational, scientific and technological structures, processes and events. It assumes that all the components of such structures form a network of relations that can be mapped and described in the same terms or vocabulary.
Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences Into Democracy is a book by the French theorist and philosopher of science Bruno Latour. The book is an English translation by Catherine Porter of the French book, Politiques de la nature. It is published by Harvard University Press.
Practice theory is a theory of how social beings, with their diverse motives and their diverse intentions, make and transform the world which they live in. It is a dialectic between social structure and human agency working back and forth in a dynamic relationship. Practice theory, as outlined by Sherry Ortner, "seeks to explain the relationship(s) that obtain between human action, on the one hand, and some global entity which we call 'the system' on the other". The approach seeks to resolve the antinomy between traditional structuralist approaches and approaches such as methodological individualism which attempted to explain all social phenomena in terms of individual actions.
Mapping controversies (MC) is an academic course taught in science studies, stemming from the writings of the French sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour. MC focuses exclusively on the controversies surrounding scientific knowledge rather than the established scientific facts or outcomes. Thus, it helps sociologists, anthropologists and other social scientists get insights not into scientific knowledge per se, but rather into the process of gaining knowledge. Thus, MC sheds light on those intermediate stages corresponding to the actual research process and pinpoints the connections between scientific work and other types of activities.
Graham Harman is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. His work on the metaphysics of objects led to the development of object-oriented ontology. He is a central figure in the speculative realism trend in contemporary philosophy.
Sociorobotics is a field of research studying the implications, complexities and subsequent design of artificial social, spatial, cultural and haptic behaviours, protocols and interactions of robots with each other and with humans in equal measure. Intrinsically taking into account the structured and unstructured spaces of habitation, including industrial, commercial, healthcare, eldercare and domestic environments. This emergent perspective to robotic research encompasses and surpasses the conventions of Social robotics and Artificial society/social systems research. Which do not appear to acknowledge that numerous robots and humans are increasingly inhabiting the same spaces which require similar performances and agency of social behaviour, particularly regarding the commercial emergence of workplace, personal and companion robotics.
In actor-network theory (ANT), translation is the process that allows a network to be represented by a single entity, which can in itself be an individual or another network.
The term 'interessement' is French-English, and is synonymous with the word 'interposition'. It was first used by Michel Callon. It is used within the scientific tradition known as actor-network theory, in association with translation and the formation of networks. Various devices can be used in the interessement phase of a translation process, to strengthen the association between actors, and support the structure of the network.
Cyborg anthropology is a discipline that studies the interaction between humanity and technology from an anthropological perspective. The discipline is relatively new, but offers novel insights on new technological advances and their effect on culture and society.
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors, sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for analyzing the structure of whole social entities as well as a variety of theories explaining the patterns observed in these structures. The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics.
Social objects are objects that gain meaning through processes of reification. Studies of this phenomenon have its origins in classical cognitive sociology, the historical traditions of the sociology of knowledge and phenomenology. A prominent work in this regard is The Rules of the Sociological Method, in which Emile Durkheim suggested the dictum, "The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things." This has led researchers to investigate the social and cultural contingencies of how "objects" cognitively become objects.
