Category: Books

Fragilities

Essays on the Politics, Ethics, and Aesthetics of Maintenance and Repair

Edited by Fernando Domínguez Rubio, Jérôme Denis and David Pontille.

An original essay collection that explores the generative dimensions of fragility, which can help reveal new life-affirming politics and ethics.

The MIT Press, Infrastructures Series

(Dé)faire l’industrie. Enquêter sur les formes contemporaines de l’industrialisation

by Marine Al Dahdah, Mathieu Baudrin, Laurène Le Cozanet, Clément Marquet, and Benjamin Raimbault

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the book analyses the changing forms of industry in the contemporary period, focusing on four key questions: How do industrial transformations lead us to rethink our methods of inquiry? How have information technologies changed the way industry is done? Which human and non-human actors are resisting processes of industrialisation? What territories are produced by these reconfigurations? […]

The Care of Things. Ethics and Politics of Maintenance

by Jérôme Denis and David Pontille

What does a coffee machine, a car, road signs, a smartphone, a cathedral, a work of art, a satellite, a bicycle, a washing machine, a bridge, a watch, a computer, the body of a prominent politician and a tractor have in common? Pretty much nothing – except for the fact that, no matter how small, large, important or insignificant something is, it rarely survives without being cared for. […]

Une journée avec Bruno Latour

Coordinated by David Pontille and Vololona Rabeharisoa.
Published by Presses des mines.

Bruno Latour (1947-2022) lègue un héritage intellectuel considérable dont il a posé de nombreux jalons durant ses vingt-cinq années au Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation (CSI), s’y faisant, tour à tour et à sa manière, anthropologue des sciences et des techniques, théologien politique, […]

Paranoid Finance

A book by Fabian Muniesa, pubished by Polity Press.

There is a link between finance and paranoia, and that link may well be inescapable. At the core of financial imagination lies a notion of value – of ‘value creation’ – that is loaded with trouble. This is the trouble of a fragile metaphor […]

Enquêter sur ce qui se passe

Mélanges offerts à Antoine Hennion

A Festschrift for Antoine Hennion edited by Loïc Riom, Sophie Tabouret, Anne-Sophie Haeringer, Jérôme Denis and Morgan Meyer.

Presses des Mines […]

ESTS, “Maintenance & Its Knowledges” thematic collection, guest edited by Jérôme Denis, Daniel Florentin and David Pontille

Guest edited by Jérôme Denis, Daniel Florentin and David Pontille, the thematic collection “Maintenance & Its Knowledges”, published in April 2024 in ESTS – Engaging Science, Technology & Society, highlights the epistemic virtues of maintenance by examining a still underestimated and unexplored dimension: the forms of knowledge associated with maintenance activities. […]

Sortir du monde fossile. Les mutations d’une multinationale de l’énergie

A book by Jean Daniélou pubished by Presses des Mines.

Having built a world based on the exploitation and consumption of fossil fuels in the 20th century, multinational energy companies are now facing the need to abandon this path. Both exceptional and paradoxical, this moment in capitalism is characterized by a profound transformation of these companies.

Discounting the Future. The Ascendancy of a Political Technology, by Liliana Doganova

A book by Liliana Doganova pubished by Zone Books

A pioneering exploration of the defining traits and contradictions of our relationship to the future through the lens of discounting.

Forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels beg a nagging question: have we lost our capacity to act on the future? Liliana Doganova’s book sheds new light on this anxious query. It argues that our relationship to the future has been trapped in the gears of a device called discounting. While its incidence remains little known, discounting has long been entrenched in market and policy practices, shaping the ways firms and governments look to the future and make decisions accordingly. Thus, a sociological account of discounting formulas has become urgent.