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Organizing Uncertainties: The mapping controversies project

"Matters of fact have become matters of concern. The problem is that we have no shared habits to navigate controversial topics and uncertain spaces. It is thus vitally important to explore new media to see whether or not it is possible to obtain a new form of objectivity that take controversies into account and their multiple contradictory cosmograms"
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour is one of the world's leading sociologists and social theorists. From 1982 to 2006, he was professor at the Centre de sociologie de l'Innovation at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines in Paris and, for various periods, visiting professor at UCSD, at the London School of Economics and in the History of Science Department of Harvard University. He is now professor at Sciences Po, Paris, associated with the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations (CSO), where he is also the Vice-President for research.
After field studies in Africa and California he specialized in the analysis of scientists and engineers at work. In addition to work in philosophy, history, sociology and anthropology of science, he has collaborated into many studies in science policy and research management. His publications in this area include Laboratory Life, Science in Action, and The Pasteurization of France.
He also published a field study of an automatic subway system Aramis or the love of technology and an essay on what he terms symmetric anthropology We Have Never Been Modern. In a series of books in French he has been exploring the consequences of science studies on different traditional topics in the social sciences: religion in Sur le culte moderne des dieux faitiches, and Jubiler ou les tourments de la parole religieuse, and social theory in Paris ville invisible, a photographic essay on the technical & social aspects of the city of Paris (now available on the web in English Paris Invisible City).
After a long period of field work in one of the French supreme Courts, he published a monograph La Fabrique du droit-une ethnographie du Conseil d'Etat (to be published in English in December, 2009). A presentation of the social theory he developed with his colleagues in Paris is available under the title: Reassembling the Social, an Introduction to Actor Network Theory.
The Department of Organization (IOA) will host a Public Lecture series at CBS on the theme of 'Organizing Uncertainty' during the academic year 2009/10. The aim of the series is to bring to the School internationally renowned scholars whose work has had a distinctive impact on the social and human sciences in general, and the study of various aspects of contemporary organizational life in particular. Professor Latour's Visit to CBS is hosted by IOA in association with the International Centre for Business and Politics (CBP) and the French Embassy.
The lecture will be followed by a reception and book launch hosted by Hans Reitzels Forlag
For registration and further information contact
Katja Høeg Tingleff, Department of Organization:
kht.ioa@cbs.dk
Registration by e-mail before 22 October.

Time: 30.10 2.00 -4.00


Place: Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3,
2000 Frederiksberg


Room: SPs01 BG Fond Auditorium




Last updated by Anje Schmidt 27/10/2009