How can social scientists reconstruct the concept of the 'social' when traditional sociological methods fail to account for the complexity of modern associations? Bruno Latour, a prominent sociologist and philosopher of science, argues that the social is not a fixed substance but a process of constant re-assembly. He proposes a methodology for Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) that shifts focus from explaining social phenomena through pre-existing structures to tracing the associations between human and non-human actors.

Experts recognize this text as a foundational, if challenging, articulation of Actor-Network-Theory that fundamentally altered the landscape of social science research. Readers frequently note the dense, polemical nature of the prose, which requires careful engagement with Latour's specific terminology and conceptual shifts.