Organising Modernity
Social Ordering and Social Theory
1. Edition October 1993
228 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
In this important theoretical and empirical statement John Law
argues against the purity of post-enlightenment political and
social theory, and offers an alternative post-modern sociology.
Arguing in favor of a sociology of verbs, he suggests that power,
organizations, mind-body dualisms, and macro-micro distinctions may
all be understood as the local performance of recursive modes of
social ordering.
Drawing on a range of theoretical traditions including
actor-network theory, verstehende sociology, and the writing of
Michel Foucault, he explores the production of materials -
including agents and architectures - and their importance for these
modes of ordering. The book, which draws on organizational
ethnography to develop its argument, is essential reading for all
those interested in social theory, materialism, or the sociology of
organizations at the end of the era of high modernity.
1. Introduction 1
2. Networks and Places 31
3. Histories, Agents and Structures 52
4. Irony, Contingency and Mode of Ordering 73
5. Contingency, Materialism and Discourse 94
6. Rankings 115
7. Dualisms and Gradients: Notes on the Material Forms of Ordering 137
8. Enterprise, Trust and Distrust 163
9. Postscript 185
References 196
Index 206
in political and economic turmoil. His notion of the 'mode of
ordering' draws on post-structuralist theory to create a striking
and critical vision of modernity. His book is also an impassioned
reply to those on left or right who believe that it is possible to
design the perfect society. Who said nothing good came of
Thatcherism?" Michel Callon, Centre de Sociologie de
l'Innovation, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines, Paris
"Professor Law's analysis offers challenges at many levels - to
what we understand by laboratory management, to the nature of
connections between science studies and wider social theory in
throwing light on it, and on the relationship of author to subject.
His most sustained challenge is to the role of the reader, who is
never allowed to relax into passivity in tackling this open and
honest book." Peter Healey, The Science Policy Support
Group
"This is a book that reanimates the old idea of the
'sociological imagination' and which continually captivates the
reader with its restless questioning, its intellectual honesty and
its sheer craft." Robert Cooper, University of Lancaster