Michel Callon

Michel Callon, Professor of sociology at the Ecole des Mines de Paris, Director of the Centre for the Sociology of Innovation from 1982 to 1994, Chairman of the 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) from 1998-1999, and winner of the 2007 CNRS Silver Medal, is one of the “founders” – with Bruno Latour and John Law – of what is known as the Actor-Network Theory or the sociology of translation. His work covers a wide spectrum of issues relative to interrelations between science, technology and society: anthropology of science and technology; socio-economics of innovation; science, technology and democracy; scientometrics and quantitative methods; anthropology of markets; sociology of medicine and health.
The late vocation of a philosopher who thought himself an amateur
In 2008, Bruno Latour delivered an address in Frankfurt upon receiving an award from the Siegfried Unseld Foundation. In this address, which was later published as an article in Social Studies of Science, he announces his coming out as a philosopher. Does it mean that for many years he deliberately hid, at least from the general public, what he thought to be his true nature and that at the time of publication of Modes of Existence he would no longer have wanted to, or rather he would no longer have been able to pass himself off as a sociologist or hide behind the convenient mask of anthropology?
Speakers in Session 1: Science and Technology Studies with Bruno Latour