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Reposted by Douglas Booker

Clinically Vulnerable Families 💙💜💗 @cvcev.bsky.social · 15d

"Something as simple as breathing in shared indoor spaces has become a barrier to accessibility and inclusion for millions of people, and it's time to change that!"

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Reposted by Douglas Booker

Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 10d

I may have found my defining quote.

Pair this with my pinned post and you will see what I mean!

From a poster called “just shower thoughts“ reading: when people talk about traveling to the past, they worry about radically, changing the present by doing something small, barely anyone in the present to really thinks that they can radically change the future by doing something small.

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · 17d

It’s also incredibly lovely for those that are left behind to have a playlist to listen to. I still regularly listen to my mum’s playlist “For Emily”

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

'The playlist giving me life as I face death'

Music can evoke powerful memories and offers a sense of normality for people dealing with illness or death.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Reposted by Douglas Booker

Fraser MacDonald @frasermacdonald.bsky.social · 18d

Solidarity to these colleagues.

Will professional bodies like AAG or RGS speak up, even if universities bend the knee?

Rosaleen Duffy @rosaleenduffy.bsky.social · 18d

Dreadful to see this - Farhana Sultana is a stellar academic, with a commitment to social justice. She repeatedly said she was being targeted on this platform & on others. I note her account is deleted. Shame on Syracuse for not standing up for colleagues ⬇️ solidarity to her & Jenn Jackson

Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they) @doctorvive.bsky.social · 19d

Hey, people who work on climate especially, you should know this is happening.

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Reposted by Douglas Booker

Ed Davey @eddavey.libdems.org.uk · 24d

I've written to Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, urging them to join me in condemning Elon Musk's dangerous remarks inciting violence yesterday.

As leaders, we must stand together and make clear Musk will face serious consequences for these actions.

Letter from Ed Davey to Keir Starmer condemning Elon Musk for inciting violence and urging unity to defend democracy.

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · 26d

Noni Madueke…

“I Owe You an Apology. I Wasn't Really Familiar With Your Game” meme

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · 27d

a man in a blue suit and tie is making a heart shape with his hands .

Alt: President Lula in a blue suit and tie is making a heart shape with his hands

media.tenor.com

Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · 27d

Brazil sending the world a lesson about how you should deal with those that seek to undermine democracy

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 27d

Brazil’s supreme court finds Bolsonaro guilty of plotting military coup

Former president faces decades-long jail sentence for seeking to forcibly cling to power after losing 2022 election * Anatomy of a coup plot: why Jair Bolsonaro is on trial A majority of Brazil’s supreme court judges have voted to convict the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro of plotting a military coup, leaving the far-right populist facing a decades-long sentence for leading the criminal conspiracy. Justice Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha ruled on Thursday that Bolsonaro – a former paratrooper who was elected president in 2018 – was guilty of seeking to forcibly cling to power after losing the 2022 election, meaning three of the five judges involved in the trial had found Brazil’s former leader guilty. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · 27d

No takers? To be fair I wasn't that wild on it either...

Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · 29d

I've been reading a lot of Brazilian literature and recently picked up Paulo Coelho's 'The Alchemist' in a charity shop for £1

It's part of World Book Night 2012, and the idea is to read it and pass it on, so... if you're based in the UK and want it, let me know and I will post it to you!

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · 27d

Are you from a Commonwealth country & interested in studying for a PhD on air quality & environmental justice?

If so please get in touch to discuss your project ideas: [email protected]

Info on my research: eps.leeds.ac.uk/civil-engine...

Scholarship info: cscuk.fcdo.gov.uk/scholarships...

A wheel displaying five different dimensions of environmental justice.

At the centre of the wheel in grey: Indoor air quality and environmental justice.

On the edges of the wheel are the types of environmental justice, with the inner part of the wheel providing some explanatory phrases. These are as follows:
Epistemic Justice: lay vs expert knowledge, lived experience
Distributive justice: who is exposed? who is emitting?
Procedural justice: How decisions are made, access to information
Recognition: Environmental racism, marginalisation
Capabilities: Agency vs structure, resources for mitigation

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · 29d

I've been reading a lot of Brazilian literature and recently picked up Paulo Coelho's 'The Alchemist' in a charity shop for £1

It's part of World Book Night 2012, and the idea is to read it and pass it on, so... if you're based in the UK and want it, let me know and I will post it to you!

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Reposted by Douglas Booker

Molly Knight @mollyknight.bsky.social · Sep 8

what a humiliating way for don jr. to find out his dad sends birthday cards.

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Reposted by Douglas Booker

Mike Berners-Lee @mikebernerslee.bsky.social · Sep 8

A world that can't stop this genocide doesn't stand a chance of dealing with any of the global challenges we face.

Join me in signing this letter - such a simple act.

What does it say about your business if it hasn't signed?

businessleadersforpeace.com

Business Leaders for Peace

We are UK business leaders, founders and professionals calling for urgent action to prevent genocide in Gaza. Sign the letter. Join us.

businessleadersforpeace.com

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · Sep 8

Had a lovely weekend back in the home city of Oxford frustrating my partner while I ask for pictures next to air quality monitors

Me standing next to a roadside air quality monitor

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · Sep 5

I used ANT to investigate the human & non-humans that influenced the questions that my research asked, and how they were investigated.

This included tracing the transformations I did from the air into the final scientific figures I presented.

eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/21...

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The 'circulating reference' for my air quality monitoring project, detailing the stages I went through to go from the air to the final representations of it presented in scientific figures. The numbers above each step illustrate their position in the sequence.

See From (Particulate) Matter to Form: Opening the black box of doing PhD air quality science (Paper 1), p.70 onwards

https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/213755/6/2023bookerphd.pdf

Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · Sep 5

I used ANT to show how the emergence of COVID-19 in school classrooms changed the relationship between the air indoors and outdoors. This included looking at the 'agency' of the air quality monitors that were used.

ephemerajournal.org/contribution...

🧵 11/12

Unstable air: How COVID-19 remade knowing air quality in school classrooms | Ephemeral Journal

ephemerajournal.org

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · Sep 5

One of the great things about doing a PhD was the opportunity to learn from a wide range of disciplines, and it was fun trying to distill ANT into an accessible format

Personally I find ANT very useful, and indeed I used it significantly in my PhD. Some examples on the next couple of posts

🧵 10/12

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · Sep 5

In ANT, all networks are made of actors, and all actors are themselves networks. So in principle, you could go on forever….

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* ANT scholar counters to these points in the Alt-text

My script: For the final criticism that ANT often receives

In ANT, all networks are made of actors, and all actors are themselves networks. So in principle, you could go on forever….

In reality this just means that when describing phenomena, scholars must use discretion in determining the level of complexity of their network, and how far down they wish to go. This decision is usually made by looking at moments when a network is made or it breaks down and focusing on the actors that make a difference, not just those that hang around in the background unnoticed not changing a state of affairs.

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · Sep 5

Through making everything the result of network-building, objects cannot be said to have any real scientific properties or technical properties to do anything until they are in a network!?

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* ANT scholar counters to these points in the Alt-text

My script: Concurrent to criticisms of ANT’s non-human agency, is its problem of realism.

ANT holds an ontology that sits in between the classical divide constructivism and realism. Realism which believes that things exist independent of us perceiving them, and constructivism which argues that it is only through perception that things become real.

Through making everything the result of network-building, objects cannot be said to have any real scientific properties or technical properties to do anything until they are in a network. It is not until they are in a network that they really exist.

Latour details this situation in Louis Pasteur’s discovery of the anthrax vaccine whereby he argues that we should not see anthrax as a thing ‘out-there’ to be discovered by the human ‘in-here’; rather, it is the co-construction of a socio-natural network that allowed anthrax and Louis Pasteur as a ‘great scientist’ to emerge (Latour, 1983). This represents a quasi-realist position, whereby Latour grants an active role to anthrax rather than it being merely the social construction of Pasteur. Latour also does not presuppose anthrax bacillus’s existence before the experiment: rather the social and the natural are co-constructed, or as Latour puts it ‘they mutually exchange and enhance their properties’ (Latour, 1999b, p. 125)

This approach whereby scientists and engineers help to create the properties of natural things, and technological ideas do not have force of their own accord, runs against the arguments of realism, whereby scientists discover the properties of natural things. At the same time, through taking non-human actors interests seriously, it presupposes that the natural world does exist independent of humans.

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · Sep 5

I then mentioned a few specific critiques:

Humans can reflect on their own position within a network: non-humans can't!

ANT is a 'privileged epistemology' that does not challenge racism, classism, sexism etc..

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* ANT scholar counters to these points in the Alt-text

A slide with the title "Who / what has agency", with the words below what about intention?, politically useful?, and a privileged epistemology? On the right is a picture of quark, with a quote below "...calling a quark a quark makes no difference to the quark (Bloor, 1999, p.105)

My script: Now for some criticisms.

ANT’s distribution of agency, particularly its treatment of non-human agency, is perhaps its most controversial feature.

Intentional agency is often a key stumbling block for many people as they state humans can reflect on their own position within a network, and can intentionally attempt to alter a network’s shape. Whereas non-humans cannot. However, ANT theorists would argue that they do not attribute intentionality and similar properties to nonhumans, that their conception of agency does not necessarily imply intentionality, and that the agency of actors in networks does not belong in the human actors or non-human actants in a network, but to the associations between humans and non-humans. Such a claim asserts that what matters is not the intentionality itself but how intentionality is shaped (allowed, encouraged, blocked, rendered possible) by an extension of causal relations between humans and nonhumans.

Another critique of non-human agency that has been raised relates ‘not to the meaning, but for the use’ of different sociological methodologies. They argue that ANT may merely provide a privileged epistemological position, rather than an effective position for social action. By dismissing such social factors such as race, class, gender, and postcolonialism it is argued that ANT is incapable of challenging the power of racism, sexism, etc.

However, it can be countered that these criticisms about political usefulness may not be necessary, as moral and political positions are possible, so long as one describes the network before taking up such positions.

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · Sep 5

Social relations are ‘flat’: this is an attempt reconcile where things happen: is it micro individual actions? or structural levels due to global forces?

"Macro no longer describes a [..] larger site in which the micro would be embedded like some Russian Matroyshka doll” (Latour, 2005)

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Now the final key principle that I will highlight today is something called a ‘flat ontology’ . What this means is that questions of scale between local and global, or micro and macro are not preordained. Instead, all social relations exist on a ‘flat’ plane. This is an attempt to solve the age old sociological dilemma of where things happen: Does it occur on the micro level by individual actions? or does it happen at structural levels due to global forces?

For ANT, The global, the national, the communal, the organizational, and the individual levels are not considered concentric domains contained in each other, but rather networks of elements that become larger or smaller depending on the range of their associations. Bruno Latour, one of ANT’s inventors and key proponents, uses the Russian Matroyshka doll to make this argument: “macro no longer describes a wider or a larger site in which the micro would be embedded like some Russian Matroyshka doll, but another equally local, equally micro place which is connected to many others…” (Latour 2005, p.176).

In practice this underpins that entities are always simultaneously actors and networks. For example, the Young Group can be seen as an actor in a Lancaster University network, but also as a network itself consisting of all of us, the computers we are using, the chairs we are sat on, etc etc

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · Sep 5

To try and make this a bit clearer, I then showed them this excellent explainer video which shows the 'agency' that a door stopper has.

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhdw...

ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY explained in two minutes

YouTube video by Ryan James

www.youtube.com

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · Sep 5

Scientific 'facts' shouldn't be privileged, instead they should be analysed the same as those of anyone else.

Anything that changes a state of affairs should be considered as an actor. This includes NON-HUMANS (animals, technologies, roads, door stoppers: you name it!)

🧵 4/12

A slide with a picture with the question 'who led the digital transformation of your company' A) the CEO, B) the CTO, C) COVID-19. The C) is circled. The slide has the title Key Principle 2 - Generalised Symmetry. With the words below "treat scientific / non-scientific propositions equally, non-human agency, actor = "anything that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference (Latour 2005: 71)

My script: The principle of symmetry has a long history in the social sciences. Perhaps most famously by scholars who sought to unpack how scientific knowledge was made (or dare I say constructed). The principle of symmetry calls for researchers to treat “scientific” and other types of statements in equal terms. Scientific propositions were not to be privileged because of claims to truth, instead the social analysis of the hard ‘facts’ of science should be the same as those of anyone else. This is not to say the scientific facts are untrue, but to show how they are made, and what claims they are contingent on.

ANT took this one step futher, and turned these tools on sociology itself. ANT argues that a full symmetry should not give the language and categories of the social sciences, such as class, power, society, or culture, a privileged position either. ANT scholars argue that in order to apply the principle of symmetry consistently, we need to redefine what we mean by the term “social”.

The main act of redefinition undertaken was the attribution of agency to objects, or non-humans as it calls it. This redefiniton implies that social relations and actions are not strictly determined by traditional social categories but are made through the associations between humans and non-humans. If we remember the first principle of a relational ontology, something is nothing other than the set of all its relations with other objects, and ANT theorists think that “any thing that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference” should be considered as an actor.

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · Sep 5

An object is nothing other than the set of all its relations with other objects

Objects are what they do, or how they act in a network

ANT argues that the special qualities we often associate with humans are the outcome of complex networks / nothing can be said to act alone!

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A slide with a picture of Archimedes in a bathtub having his 'Eureka' moment. The slide has the title "Key Principle 1 - Relational Ontology" with words below "what something is, is always in relation to other things, relations over objects, challenges 'lone geniuses'"

My script: The first key principle of using ANT is that it uses a relational ontology. Ontology is concerned with the nature of being. For ANT that nature of being is always in relation to other things. In this view, an object is nothing other than the set of all its relations with other objects. The most important thing is the relationships between objects, and objects are what they do, or how they act through their distributed networks.

This challenges the historical accounts of great achievements, in particular the idea of lone geniuses, who through sheer force of will discover or invent incredible things. Whether that be Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, or Marie Cure, ANT argues that the special qualities or abilities we often associate with human beings are actually the outcome of complex networks, and that nothing can be said to act alone.

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Douglas Booker @douglasbooker.bsky.social · Sep 5

Social forces don't exist in of themselves: ANT argues that they exist through an ever shifting set of relations between different actors

Sociology should not be a ‘science of the social’, but instead the ‘tracing of associations'

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A slide with a picture of a capitalist with many arms. On the slide is the title "In a nutshell" and the words below "ANT, social forces do not exist in of themselves, A sociology of associations'

My script: ANT is a theoretical and methodological approach that attempts to describe the processes by which things come into being or conversely fail to materialise. That could be a piece of technology, why societies form and why they change, or pretty much anything you can think of.

Social forces do not exist in of themselves: At the centre of this approach is the argument that social forces do not exist in themselves acting as an invisible, untraceable, ubiquitous, and total force. Therefore, they cannot simply be invoked to explain social phenomena. This challenges the way in which grand sociological theories attempt to explain large scale relationships and answer fundamental questions, such as power, patriarchy, capitalism, white privilege…among other things.

ANT proposes a ‘sociology of associations’: Instead, ANT argues that our social world exists through an ever shifting set of relations (or associations) between different actors. In doing so, ANT attempts to redefine sociology 'not as the ‘science of the social’, but as the ‘tracing of associations’ . ANT argues that sociologists should be accounting for how society is held together rather than using a notion of ‘the social’ (capitalism, patriarchy etc.) to explain phenomena. The job is therefore to trace the networks of actors.

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