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Professor John Law

Professor

Associated research centres and groups: Centre for Science Studies

Current Teaching

• 'Understanding Social Thought', SOCL 200: the Sociology undergraduate theory core course.
• 'The Sociology of Disasters', SOCL 311: an undergraduate course on catastrophic failures and their orgins.
• 'Science, Technology and Society', SOC 906: team-taught with Vicky Singleton, this is the STS core course for the new Society, Technology and Nature MA programme.
• 'Researching Technoscience', SOCL 931: team-taught with Claire Waterton, this is the STS methods course for the new Society, Technology and Nature MA programme.
• 'Analysing Qualitative Data', FASS 513: I co-ordinate this faculty PhD training course

I also co-supervise postgraduates on topics including: nanomedicine, bariatric surgery, prosthesis and disability, library information systems, food and taste, traffic engineering, waste recycling, pre-natal testing, and the Eastern European political transition.

Research Interests

• Current books ....
• After Method: Mess in Social Science Research,Routledge, London, 2004 (Amazon.co.uk, & Amazon.com)
• Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in Technoscience,Duke UP, 2002 (Amazon.co.uk, & Amazon.com)
• Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices (co-edited with Annemarie Mol), Duke UP 2002 (Amazon.co.uk & Amazon.com)
• Reissued in print-on-demand format Organizing Modernity, Blackwell

I moved to Lancaster in 1998 after many years at Keele University working in sociology and science and technology studies (STS). I greatly enjoy Lancaster for its interdisciplinarity, its enthusiasm for a mix of cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, feminist theory and - most particularly - STS. After ten years at Lancaster I remain profoundly impressed by the commitment of its staff and students to talking across disciplinary boundaries, and their lack of concern with hierarchy or status. The result is a stunning intellectual milieu of I feel most privileged to be a part. I also greatly appreciate the area - on the edge of the Lake District - the most beautiful part of England, and one with which I have strong family ties. Walking and cycling calls on those clear days when the Lakeland hills are etched on the horizon.

I am a member of the Centre for Science Studies. This is an interdisciplinary research centre with its own MA and PhD programmes, drawing on staff in Sociology, Women's Studies, History and Management Science. Again this is a most creative intellectual and personal mix. Our staff and students are outstanding, a mix with the talent and the will to help to build a new cultural studies of science that is sensitive to partialities, to asymmetries, and to the textures of the material.

In my own work I think about the textures of the material which make and are made by the world in a way which produces an extraordinary mix of fragility and obduracy. In this I find myself thinking about and working on difficult social and technical circumstances such as the 2001 UK foot and mouth epidemic, the recent smaller scale 2007 infection, and questions of farm animal welfare.

I also increasingly think about and appreciate the elusive, things that don't quite fit: fluids that don't fit networks; agape which doesn't fit the contemporary enthusiasm for accountability; passions and spiritualities that could never be 'reasonable'; aesthetics that do not fit rationalities; fractional entities which do not fit singularity and unambiguity; and methods for thinking about and condensing some of these fluidities. The empirical list of topics is the same. In looking at farming and animals, disasters, objects, systems and subjectivities I'm interested in things that escape, that do not fit.

I'm also bothered by the deletions in this Othering. Things that don't quite fit help to make the things that do, but then they get lost. I've become concerned with this invisible work, with asymmetries, and with their apprehension. Increasingly I find myself thinking about allegory, and modes of appreciation and apprehension that don't fit formal representation. This is an erosive sentiment. What should academics do if they do not make things explicit? Perhaps this is a methods issue, so long as we appreciate that 'method' is broad. I drafted a book on the topic, After Method: Mess in Social Science Research, which appeared in 2004, and I am currently developing this concern in work on animals, farming and foot and mouth disease.

Along the way it has been my privilege to work and write with a series of talented friends: Vicky Singleton and John Urry here at Lancaster, Kevin Hetherington formerly of Lancaster and now at the Open University, Ingunn Moser in Oslo, Ivan da Costa Marques in Rio de Janeiro, Michel Callon in Paris and especially Annemarie Mol from Twente and Utrecht in the Netherlands. Theory tells us that authorship is collective, and such is my experience.

Science Studies, Actor-Network and STS Links

• The Actor Network Resource is available in Version 2.
• A page on STS Frequently Asked Questions is available
• The Centre for Science Studies has its own home page

Books and Publications on ANT and After:

Many of my publications are online. Here are some recent publications with brief descriptions:

• John Law and Vicky Singleton (2009), 'A Further Species of Trouble? Disaster and Narrative', From Mayhem to Meaning: The Cultural Meaning of the 2001 Outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in the UK. M. Doering and B. Nerlich. Manchester, Manchester University Press, 229-242. (The 2001 foot and mouth epizootic was ambivalent, bringing goods as well as bads).
• John Law (2009, forthcoming), 'The Materials of STS' in Dan Hicks and Mary Beaudry (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies, Oxford, Oxford University Press. (Surveys the STS material-semiotic approach)
• Law, John (2009, forthcoming), 'Assembling the World by Survey: Performativity and Politics', Cultural Politics. (On the performativity of social survey research)
• Law, John (2008), 'Practising Nature and Culture: an Essay for Ted Benton', in Sandra Moog and Rob Shields (eds), Nature, Social Relations and Human Needs: Essays in Honour of Ted Benton, London: Palgrave, pp 65-82. (A festschrift for Ted Benton. Explores the non-coherence of the 2001 foot and mouth epizootic).
• Law, John (2008), 'On STS and Sociology', The Sociological Review, 56, 4, 623-649. (Compares and contrasts STS with sociology, and explores the performativity of social research methods).
• John Law (2008), 'Actor-Network Theory and After', in Bryan S. Turner, The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory 3rd Edition, Oxford: Blackwell, 141-168. ('Actor-network theory' is a diverse set of empirical practices with a sensibility to materiality, process, uncertainty and specificity, and is seriously misunderstood if it is treated as a theory separarable from those practices.)
• John Law and Annemarie Mol (2008), 'Globalisation in Practice: On the Politics of Boiling Pigswill,' Geoforum, 39. 1. 133-143. (Politics is not necessarily about discourse or discussion. It may be embedded in inarticulate practices).
• John Law and Annemarie Mol (2008), 'The Actor-Enacted: Cumbrian Sheep in 2001' in Lambros Malafouris and Carl Knappett, Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach, Springer, New York, pp. 55-77. (On animal agency: sheep in Cumbria in 2001 were enacted and they also acted).
• Law, John (2008), Culling, Catastrophe and Collectivity', Distinktion, 16, 61-76. (A critical account of the culling policy in the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic).
• John Law (2007), Making a Mess with Method. The Sage Handbook of Social Science Methodology. W. Outhwaite and S. P. Turner. Sage, London and Beverly Hills: 595-606. (Methods also enact what they describe).
• John Law (2007), Pinboards and Books: Juxtaposing, Learning and Materiality. Education and Technology: Critical Perspectives, Possible Futures. D. Kritt and L. T. Winegar. Lanham, Maryland, Lexington Books. (Explores the pinboard as a device for relating not very coherent realities)
• John Law, (2006), 'Disaster in Agriculture, or Foot and Mouth Mobilities', Environment and Planning A, 38: 227-239. (High input, hight output northern agriculture is extremely vulnerable to catastrophic failure).
• Michel Callon and John Law (2005), 'On Qualculation, Agency and Otherness', Society and Space, 23, 717-733. (Calculability is limited both by absence of calculation and excess thereof).
• John Law and Vicky Singleton (2005), 'Object Lessons, Organization 12 (3): 331-355. (Non-coherent realities generate or arise out of a 'fire' topology of absent-presence).
• John Law and Annemarie Mol (eds) (2005), special issue of Society and Space, on Boundaries: Materialities, Difference and Continuities. (Essays by Brian Bloomfield, Steve Brown, Michel Callon, Monica Degen, Rebeccal Ellis, Steve Hinchliffe, Matthew Kearnes, Marianne Lien, David Middleton, Annemarie Mol, Lars Risan, Vicky Singleton, David Turnbull, Theo Vurdubakis, Claire Waterton, and Sarah Whatmore).
• Annemarie Mol and John Law (2004), 'Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies. The Example of Hypoglycaemia', The Body and Society 10 (2-3): 43-62.
• John Law and John Urry (2004), 'Enacting the Social', Economy and Society 33 (3): 390-410. (Social science produces social realities: it is performative).
• John Law (2004), After Method: Mess in Social Science Research, Routledge, London. (Social research methods are performative, but recognise and enact non-coherent realities poorly).
• Michel Callon, John Law and John Urry (eds) (2004), Society and Space, on Absent Presence: Localities, Globalities and Method. (Essays by Michael Bull, Michel Callon, Kevin Hetherington, Christian Licoppe, Donald Mackenzie, Alexandre Mallard, Ivan da Costa Marques, Tiago Moreira, Mimi Sheller, Nigel Thrift, and John Urry).
• John Law (2004), And if the Global Were Small and Non-Coherent? Method, Complexity and the Baroque." Society and Space 22, 13-26. (Contrasts romantic holism and its asumptions about complexity and scale with a monadological of baroque alternative that discovers complexity and size within sensuous materiality).
• John Law and Vicky Singleton (2003), Allegory and Its Others. Knowing in Organizations: a Practice Based Approach. D. Nicolini, S. Gherardi and D. Yanow. New York, M.E.Sharpe: 225-254. (Non-coherent realities may sometimes be grasped allegorically).
• John Law and Annemarie Mol (2002), 'Local Entanglements or Utopian Moves: an Inquiry into Train Accidents', Utopia and Organization. M. Parker. Oxford, Blackwell: 82-105. (Systems depend on messy imprecision to work. This reality is poorly recognised after serious accidents).
• John Law (2002), Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in Technoscience, Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press. (Definitely 'after' ANT, an exploration of the non-coherent object).
• John Law and Annemarie Mol (eds) (2002), Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices, Durham, North Carolina., Duke University Press. (Essays by Andrew Barry, Steve Brown, Michel Callon, Chunglin Kwa, John Law, Nick Lee, Annemarie Mol, Laurent Thévenot, Marilyn Strathern, Charis Thompson. (Focus on complexity, including ANT complexity)
• Kevin Hetherington and John Law (eds) (2000), Society and Space, Vol. 18, No. 3. (Essays by Marianne de Laet, Takashi Harada, Kevin Hetherington and Nick Lee, John Law, Nigel Thrift, and Sarah Whatmore)
• John Law and John Hassard (eds) (1999), Actor Network Theory and After, Blackwell and Sociological Review, Oxford.(ISBN 0 631 21194 2). (Essays by Steve Brown, Michel Callon, Rose Capdevila, Anni Dugdale, Emilie Gomart, Antoine Hennion, Kevin Hetherington, Nick Lee, Annemarie Mol, Ingunn Moser, Bruno Latour, John Law, Paul Stenner, Marilyn Strathern and Helen Verran. The emphasis in the book is definitely on the 'after'.)

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Associated Keywords: Agriculture, Animals, Biosecurity, Disasters, Environment, Epistemology, Farming, Feminist cultural studies of science and technology, Foot and mouth disease, Methodology, Nano, Nanomedicine, Ontics, Ontology, Science and technology, Science and technology studies, Science studies, Science, technology and society, Sociology, Technoscience

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