John Law
First published 1992

Introduction

Just occasionally we find ourselves watching on the sidelines as an order comes crashing down...  Commissars, moguls and captains of industry disappear from view... when the hidden trapdoors of the social spring open we suddenly learn that the masters of the universe may also have feet of clay....

 How is that, at least for a time, they made themselves different from us? By what organisational means did they keep themselves in place and overcome the resistances that would have brought them tumbling down much sooner? How was it we colluded in this? These are some of the key questions of social science. And they are the questions that lie at the heart of "actor-network theory"

full text (PDF)