Heterogeneities_DOTnet
research projects

Method, non-coherence and performativity

If the world is non-coherent, then what are the methods we need to know it, to enact it, and to live well in it? This is my core question in a continuing series of substantive projects, both within natural and social science. Recent publications include the following.

• John Law (2011), 'Collateral Realities', in Fernando Domínguez Rubio and Patrick Baert (eds), The Politics of Knowledge, London: Routledge, pp 156-178.
• John Law (2009), ‘Assembling the World by Survey: Performativity and Politics’, Cultural Sociology, 3, 2, 239-256.
• John Law (2007), ‘Making a Mess with Method’, in William Outhwaite and Stephen P. Turner (eds), The Sage Handbook of Social Science Methodology, Sage: Beverly Hills and London, pp 595-606.
• John Law, (2007) ‘Pinboards and Books: Learning, Materiality and Juxtaposition’, in David Kritt and Lucien T. Winegar (eds.) Education and Technology: Critical Perspectives, Possible Futures, Lanham: Maryland, pp 125-150.
• John Law (2004), ‘And if the Global Were Small and Non-Coherent? Method, Complexity and the Baroque’, Society and Space, 22, 13-26.

People, technologies and animals:

With anthropologists Marianne Lien and Gro Ween (University of Oslo) I’m working ethnographically on salmon farming on a project called ‘Newcomers to the Farm’. How do animals and people interact? How are those interactions mediated by technologies? How are human beings and animals being remade? These are the core questions. Recent papers include the following.

• John Law and Marianne Lien (under review), ‘Slippery: Field Notes on Empirical Ontology’
• John Law and Ingunn Moser, ‘Contexts and Culling’ (forthcoming 2011), Science, Technology and Human Values.
• Law, John and Annemarie Mol (2011), ‘Veterinary Realities: What is Foot and Mouth Disease?’, Sociologia Ruralis, 51 (1), 1-19.
• Marianne Lien and John Law (2011), '‘Emergent Aliens‘: On Salmon, Nature and Their Enactment’, Ethnos, 76 (1), 65-87.
• John Law (2010), ‘Care and killing: tensions in veterinary practice’, in Annemarie Mol, Ingunn Moser and Jeannette Pols (eds), Care in Practice: On Tinkering in Clinics, Homes and Farms, Transcript, Bielefeld, pp 57-69.
• John Law & Vicky Singleton (2009), 'A Further Species of Trouble?’, Martin Doering & Brigitte Nerlich (eds), The Cultural Meaning of the 2001 Outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in the UK, Manchester, pp. 229-242.
• John Law and Annemarie Mol (2008), ‘The Actor-Enacted: Cumbrian Sheep in 2001’ Lambros Malafouris & Carl Knappett, Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach, Springer, pp. 55-77.
• 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.

Biosecurity, agriculture and disaster:

I continue to work on foot and mouth disease, and the UK response to the disease outbreak of 2001. What are the vulnerabilities of agricultural systems? And how can and such complex and (in the end) ramshackle systems be understood and controlled? These are my key questions. Recent publications include the following.

• John Law, ‘Reality Failures’ (forthcoming, 2011), in Jan-Hendrik Passoth, Birgit Peuker and Michael Schillmeier (eds), Agency without Actors: New Approaches to Collective Action, Bielefeld: Transcript.
• John Law and Annemarie Mol (2008), 'Globalisation in Practice: On the Politics of Boiling Pigswill', Geoforum, 39: (1), 133-143.
• John Law (2008), ‘Culling, Catastrophe and Collectivity’, Distinktion, 16, 61-76.
• John Law (2006), ‘Disaster in Agriculture, or Foot and Mouth Mobilities’, Environment and Planning A, 38, 227-239.
• Andrew Smith, Catherine Wild and John Law (2005), ‘The Barrow-in-Furness legionnaires' outbreak: qualitative study of the hospital response and the role of the major incident plan’, Emergency Medicine Journal, 22 (2005), 251-255.

Alternative knowledge spaces:

I'm becoming increasingly concerned with knowledge spaces, their enactments, what they entail, and how they might be altered. This is in part in a North-South context where with Wen-yuan Lin (Tsing-hua University, Taiwan) I am exploring the intersections of post-colonialism and STS to think about the alternatives to systems of hegemonic knowledge and to ask how we can detect the Othering that goes with hegemony.

• John Law (2011), What's Wrong with a One-World World.
• John Law (2011), ‘The Explanatory Burden: an Essay on Hugh Raffles’ Insectopedia’, Cultural Anthropology, 26, 3, 485-510
• John Law and Wen-yuan Lin ( 2011), 'Cultivating Disconcertment', in Michaela Benson and Rolland Munro (eds), Sociological Routes and Political Roots, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp 135-153.