A Barry
Biographic Data
| ID | 14702 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Barry |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Barry |
| SIGNATURE | BARRY A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7632-9334 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1155 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Chemical Crisis
The proposition that there is a planetary chemical crisis that exists in conjunction with the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis has been increasingly discussed. Indeed, according to the United Nations Environment Programme there is a ‘triple planetary crisis’ (climate, biodiversity, chemical), while many others argue that there is a ‘polycrisis’, of which the environmental crises are but elements. Prompted by Gisela Welz’s account of how…
The state of the state
Recent economic, democratic and geopolitical events have raised the question of ‘the state' anew, as problems of territory, sovereignty, protectionism, borders, authoritarianism and surveillance have acquired fresh salience amongst both scholars and wider publics. Members of the Economy & Society Editorial Board convened a seminar at University College London in February 2025 to address these questions and problems, on the guiding assumption that…
Rethinking the science-policy interface for chemicals, waste, and pollution: Challenging core assumptions
Negotiations for a new science-policy interface aim to complement similar bodies for climate change and biodiversity. • Existing models of science-policy panels are ill-suited to address unique aspects of chemicals and waste issues. • Policy uptake is a key feature of the new panel’s design. • Participation by stakeholders is vital, but industry input requires safeguards. • Further research on chemicals and waste issues will be able to contribute…
Projects of transition
This paper develops an analysis of the politics and temporality of infrastructure through a focus on the idea of a project. A project (noun) is an assemblage of expertise, labour, materials and resources. The development of a project to build a port, pipeline, a mine, or a hydropower plant entails the mobilization of ideas, finance, political support and the law, the containment of material forces, as well as the organization of expertise, resour…
Critically reflecting on the PolGRG Book Prize
Nigel Dodd: An appreciation
Professor Nigel Dodd was a long-standing and much-loved member of the Editorial Board of Economy and Society. He sadly passed away in August 2022. In this short piece, we express our heartfelt gratitude for Nigel’s contributions to the journal and briefly introduce a virtual collection of 4 papers assembled to register our appreciation. The papers are free to access from the Collections section of our website throughout 2023, and include Nigel’s …
More-than-national and less-than-global: The biochemical infrastructure of vaccine manufacturing
The recent efforts to mount an R&D response to public health emergencies of international concern have led to the formation of what we term a biochemical infrastructure of vaccine development and production. In principle, this infrastructure is expected not only to curtail existing pandemics but also anticipate and contain yet-to-emerge future threats. Critically, by nature of its geographical distribution and technical modularity, that infrastru…
Democratic Situations
Sustainability) Research Group.She is a science and technology studies scholar and geographer interested in the relationships between science, democracy and the environment, and particularly
Collective empiricism and the material witness
This article develops two arguments. One follows from the idea that materials can be made into witnesses to environmental violence by drawing together the evidence generated from multiple sensors. In this way, the practice of Forensic Architecture entails a commitment to a distinctive form of collective empiricism that leads to the generation of ‘informed materials’. The second theme of the article follows from Forensic Architecture’s claim that …
What Is an Environmental Problem
This paper advances two arguments about environmental problems. First, it interrogates the strength and limitations of empiricist accounts of problems and issues offered by actor-network theory. Drawing on the work of C.S. Peirce, it considers how emerging environmental problems often lead to abductive inferences about the existence of hidden causes that may or may not have caused the problem to emerge. The analysis of environmental problems shou…
Afterword: ‘I will play my part!’, or parliamentary politics in action
Pipeline Geopolitics: Subaquatic Materials and the Tactical Point
This paper starts from the proposition that studies of geopolitics need to address the political significance of spaces above and below the apparently twodimensional or flat surface of the land and sea. However, we depart from the view that such spaces should be defined by their verticality or conceived as three-dimensional volumes. Instead, the argument stresses the importance of attending to the relations between physical and biological things,…
Music, Mediation Theories and Actor-Network Theory
The concept of mediation in relation to music has a rich history and varied meanings. Its most famous proponent, Theodor Adorno, drew his theory of mediation from ‘a Hegelian interpretation of Marx
Democratic pressure
Interventions in the political geographies of 'area
Minor political geographies
Variations In their short book on Kafka, subtitled 'towards a minor literature', Deleuze and Guattari define a minor literature in a straightforward way. First they inform us that 'a minor literature doesn't come from a minor language; it is rather that which a minority constructs within a major language' (1986: 16). Kafka is the ideal type of an author writing in a minor literature according to Deleuze and Guattari. He was a Jew writing in Germa…
Author’s response
Geography and other disciplines: Genealogy, anamnesis and the canon
Thermodynamics, matter, politics
While there is a burgeoning literature on matter in social theory, there has been a surprising lack of interest amongst social theorists in the importance of the concept of energy in natural scientific accounts of matter. In this context, I examine how the work of Isabelle Stengers challenges social theorists to take thermodynamic accounts of energy, in particular, seriously. The paper develops three arguments: firstly, while social theorists hav…
Unexpected Consequences and an Unanticipated Outcome
Material Politics: Disputes Along the Pipeline
© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. All rights reserved. In Material Politics, author Andrew Barry reveals that as we are beginning to attend to the importance of materials in political life, materials has become increasingly bound up with the production of information about their performance, origins, and impact. Presents an original theoretical approach to political geography by revealing the paradoxical relationship between materials and politics. …
The Translation Zone: Between Actor-Network Theory and International Relations
This article examines the problem of how to translate actor-network theory into the field of international relations, and develops three arguments. Firstly, the article draws on Emily Apter's notion of the 'translation zone' both to rethink the concept of translation in actor-network theory and to highlight the relation between translation and politics. Secondly, the article interrogates the relation between actor-network theory and empirical res…
Political situations: Knowledge Controversies in Transnational Governance
This article develops two arguments. The first revolves around the importance of studies of knowledge controversies, originally developed within the field of science and technology studies (STS), to accounts of innovation in transnational governance. Innovation in transnational governance, I contend, has catalyzed the emergence of transnational knowledge controversies, including controversies about the operation of transnational governance mechan…
Débordements: Mélanges offerts à Michel Callon
MICHEL CALLON a marqué les sciences humaines et sociales par sa production académique, par ses activités d’animateur de la communauté scientifique et par son rôle de médiateur entre la recherche et le monde de la politique, de l’administration et de l’entreprise. Il a multiplié les espaces d’entente et de confrontation, en se déplaçant aussi bien sur le terrain de la sociologie que sur celui des politiques de recherche et d’innovation, de l’anthr…
Art-Science: From Public Understanding to Public Experiment
In this paper we examine the emergent field of art-science, part of a heterogeneous space of overlapping interdisciplinary practices at the intersection of the arts, sciences and technologies. Art-science is often thought to exemplify Nowotny et al.'s (2001) ‘mode-2’ knowledge production; indeed the institutions supporting art-science invariably claim that art-science contributes to the ‘contextualization of science’ by rendering scientific and t…
The anti-political economy
This paper develops Michel Callon's analysis of the technological economy in two ways. First, the paper is concerned with the way that political activity is framed through the use of a variety of technical devices. Arguing against the view that politics can be located in all forms of social and economic activity, the paper suggests that politics should be regarded as a rather specialist activity that is often directed towards 'anti-political' end…
Technological Zones
This article provides an overview of the analysis of technological zones. A technological zone can be understood as a space within which differences between technical practices, procedures and forms have been reduced, or common standards have been established. Such technological zones take broadly one of three forms: (1) metrological zones associated with the development of common forms of measurement; (2) infrastructural zones associated with th…
Logics of interdisciplinarity
This paper interrogates influential contemporary accounts of interdisciplinarity, in which it is portrayed as offering new ways of rendering science accountable to society and/or of forging closer relations between scientific research and innovation. The basis of the paper is an eighteen-month empirical study of three interdisciplinary fields that cross the boundaries between the natural sciences or engineering, on the one hand, and the social sc…
The Translation Zone: Between Actor-Network Theory and International Relations
This article examines the problem of how to translate actor-network theory into the field of international relations, and develops three arguments. Firstly, the article draws on Emily Apter's notion of the 'translation zone' both to rethink the concept of translation in actor-network theory and to highlight the relation between translation and politics. Secondly, the article interrogates the relation between actor-network theory and empirical res…
Pharmaceutical Matters: The Invention of Informed Materials
Drawing on the work of Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers on the history of chemistry, this article develops the idea that drug molecules can be understood as 'informed materials'. This study argues that molecules should not be viewed as discrete objects, but as constituted in their relations to complex informational and material environments. Through a case study of commercial pharmaceutical R&D, the article examines the role of c…
Introduction: The Technological Economy
This article is an overview of Michel Callon's contribution to the reformulation of economic sociology and anthropology. It contextualizes Callon's concepts within science and technology studies, and indicates the main lines of influence on his thinking about economic processes. Callon's work also opens up a number of debates and challenges to current perspectives within economic sociology. Finally, the article considers the way in which Callon's…
Technology, politics and the market: An interview with Michel Callon
2002). Technology, politics and the market: an interview with Michel Callon. Economy and Society: Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 285-306
Political situations: Knowledge Controversies in Transnational Governance
This article develops two arguments. The first revolves around the importance of studies of knowledge controversies, originally developed within the field of science and technology studies (STS), to accounts of innovation in transnational governance. Innovation in transnational governance, I contend, has catalyzed the emergence of transnational knowledge controversies, including controversies about the operation of transnational governance mechan…
Gabriel Tarde: Imitation, Invention and Economy
This paper provides an introduction to the sociology of Gabriel Tarde and to the papers in this special issue. The first part of the paper examines how Tarde conceived of the relations between sociology and the natural sciences, including astronomy and physical geography. It also discusses Tarde's account of the significance and value of statistics and archaeology as sociological methods. The second part of the paper focuses on the importance of …
Demonstrations: Sites and Sights of Direct Action
The term demonstration refers both to political and to scientific and technical activity. On the one hand, A demonstration is a public political protest. On the other hand, the condcut of a demonstration is, in a scientific or tecnical context, a matter of witnessing a natural phenomenon or atecnological possibility. the subject of this paper is the conduct of direct action against the construction of the Newbury bypass and the development of the…
The European Community and European government: Harmonization, Mobility and Space
Although the European Community does not possess many of the usual attributes of a nation state, it is none the less expected to provide a framework within which Europe's economic and social problems might be governed. This paper examines the methods with which the Community has sought to establish the possibility of European government. The focus of the paper is on the single market programme and the associated project of 'harmonization'. It is …
Is Anthropology Art or Science? [and Comments and Reply]
What Is an Environmental Problem
This paper advances two arguments about environmental problems. First, it interrogates the strength and limitations of empiricist accounts of problems and issues offered by actor-network theory. Drawing on the work of C.S. Peirce, it considers how emerging environmental problems often lead to abductive inferences about the existence of hidden causes that may or may not have caused the problem to emerge. The analysis of environmental problems shou…
Liberalism, neo-liberalism and governmentality: Introduction
Liberalism, neo-liberalism and governmentality: introduction." Economy and Society, 22(3), pp. 265–266
Pipeline Geopolitics: Subaquatic Materials and the Tactical Point
This paper starts from the proposition that studies of geopolitics need to address the political significance of spaces above and below the apparently twodimensional or flat surface of the land and sea. However, we depart from the view that such spaces should be defined by their verticality or conceived as three-dimensional volumes. Instead, the argument stresses the importance of attending to the relations between physical and biological things,…
Thermodynamics, matter, politics
While there is a burgeoning literature on matter in social theory, there has been a surprising lack of interest amongst social theorists in the importance of the concept of energy in natural scientific accounts of matter. In this context, I examine how the work of Isabelle Stengers challenges social theorists to take thermodynamic accounts of energy, in particular, seriously. The paper develops three arguments: firstly, while social theorists hav…
The history of measurement and the engineers of space
For the social theorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, measurement, quantification and calculation were of particular social and political significance. Karl Marx, in Capital , based his critique of classical political economy on an analysis of the quantification of labour as a commodity. Max Weber, in Economy and Society , emphasized the importance of rational calculation in the conduct of modern bureaucratic organization…
Art-Science: From Public Understanding to Public Experiment
In this paper we examine the emergent field of art-science, part of a heterogeneous space of overlapping interdisciplinary practices at the intersection of the arts, sciences and technologies. Art-science is often thought to exemplify Nowotny et al.'s (2001) ‘mode-2’ knowledge production; indeed the institutions supporting art-science invariably claim that art-science contributes to the ‘contextualization of science’ by rendering scientific and t…
Music, Mediation Theories and Actor-Network Theory
The concept of mediation in relation to music has a rich history and varied meanings. Its most famous proponent, Theodor Adorno, drew his theory of mediation from ‘a Hegelian interpretation of Marx
From Euratom to “Complex Systems”: Technology and European Government
In a recent series of papers written for the European Commission's Cellule de Prospective (CdP), Notis Lebessis and others have begun to think about the European Union - its political future, its accomplishments, and the challenges facing it - in terms of a social condition they define as complexity. In brief, the CdP suggests that the EU represents a peculiarly inventive and functional response to the increasingly complex environment within whic…
More-than-national and less-than-global: The biochemical infrastructure of vaccine manufacturing
The recent efforts to mount an R&D response to public health emergencies of international concern have led to the formation of what we term a biochemical infrastructure of vaccine development and production. In principle, this infrastructure is expected not only to curtail existing pandemics but also anticipate and contain yet-to-emerge future threats. Critically, by nature of its geographical distribution and technical modularity, that infrastru…
Interventions in the political geographies of 'area
Minor political geographies
Variations In their short book on Kafka, subtitled 'towards a minor literature', Deleuze and Guattari define a minor literature in a straightforward way. First they inform us that 'a minor literature doesn't come from a minor language; it is rather that which a minority constructs within a major language' (1986: 16). Kafka is the ideal type of an author writing in a minor literature according to Deleuze and Guattari. He was a Jew writing in Germa…
Geography and other disciplines: Genealogy, anamnesis and the canon
Projects of transition
This paper develops an analysis of the politics and temporality of infrastructure through a focus on the idea of a project. A project (noun) is an assemblage of expertise, labour, materials and resources. The development of a project to build a port, pipeline, a mine, or a hydropower plant entails the mobilization of ideas, finance, political support and the law, the containment of material forces, as well as the organization of expertise, resour…
Is Anthropology Art or Science? [and Comments and Reply]
Technologies without Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a Global Age by Ithiel de Sola Pool
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 399 presents a valuable summary of major economic developments that shaped the postwar West. Gunther Barth Dr. Barth teaches cultural history, with emphasis on the westward migration and emerging urban societies, at the University of California, Berkeley. His latest book, Fleeting Moments: Nature and Culture in American History, was published by Oxford University Press. Technologies without Boundaries: On Telec…
Technologies without Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a Global Age
Viewing the Earth: The Social Construction of the Landsat Satellite System by Pamela E. Mack
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 647 In what ways, for instance, have planetary scientists participated in the complex process of defining, funding, and operating the nation’s many missions to the planets? And how did they use the new opportunities provided by the space program to transform both scientific and public understanding of the solar system? Anyone attempting to answer these questions will be confronted by mountains of information to…
Viewing the Earth: The Social Construction of the Landsat Satellite System
Television, truth and democracy
The European Community and European government: Harmonization, Mobility and Space
Although the European Community does not possess many of the usual attributes of a nation state, it is none the less expected to provide a framework within which Europe's economic and social problems might be governed. This paper examines the methods with which the Community has sought to establish the possibility of European government. The focus of the paper is on the single market programme and the associated project of 'harmonization'. It is …
The history of measurement and the engineers of space
For the social theorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, measurement, quantification and calculation were of particular social and political significance. Karl Marx, in Capital , based his critique of classical political economy on an analysis of the quantification of labour as a commodity. Max Weber, in Economy and Society , emphasized the importance of rational calculation in the conduct of modern bureaucratic organization…
Liberalism, neo-liberalism and governmentality: Introduction
Liberalism, neo-liberalism and governmentality: introduction." Economy and Society, 22(3), pp. 265–266
The city of science
Launching Europe: An Ethnography of European Cooperation in Space Science
Modest Witnesses: Donna Haraway, Science, and International Relations
https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298980270041301
Demonstrations: Sites and Sights of Direct Action
The term demonstration refers both to political and to scientific and technical activity. On the one hand, A demonstration is a public political protest. On the other hand, the condcut of a demonstration is, in a scientific or tecnical context, a matter of witnessing a natural phenomenon or atecnological possibility. the subject of this paper is the conduct of direct action against the construction of the Newbury bypass and the development of the…
Coordinating Technology: Studies in the International Standardization of Telecommunications (review)
Reviewed by: Coordinating Technology: Studies in the International Standardization of Telecommunications * Andrew Barry (bio) Coordinating Technology: Studies in the International Standardization of Telecommunications. By Susanne K. Schmidt and Raymund Werle. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998. Pp. viii+365; illustrations, tables, notes/references, index. $35. Until relatively recently the dynamics of technical standardization were of only margina…
Technology, politics and the market: An interview with Michel Callon
2002). Technology, politics and the market: an interview with Michel Callon. Economy and Society: Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 285-306
The anti-political economy
This paper develops Michel Callon's analysis of the technological economy in two ways. First, the paper is concerned with the way that political activity is framed through the use of a variety of technical devices. Arguing against the view that politics can be located in all forms of social and economic activity, the paper suggests that politics should be regarded as a rather specialist activity that is often directed towards 'anti-political' end…
Introduction: The Technological Economy
This article is an overview of Michel Callon's contribution to the reformulation of economic sociology and anthropology. It contextualizes Callon's concepts within science and technology studies, and indicates the main lines of influence on his thinking about economic processes. Callon's work also opens up a number of debates and challenges to current perspectives within economic sociology. Finally, the article considers the way in which Callon's…
From Euratom to “Complex Systems”: Technology and European Government
In a recent series of papers written for the European Commission's Cellule de Prospective (CdP), Notis Lebessis and others have begun to think about the European Union - its political future, its accomplishments, and the challenges facing it - in terms of a social condition they define as complexity. In brief, the CdP suggests that the EU represents a peculiarly inventive and functional response to the increasingly complex environment within whic…
Pharmaceutical Matters: The Invention of Informed Materials
Drawing on the work of Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers on the history of chemistry, this article develops the idea that drug molecules can be understood as 'informed materials'. This study argues that molecules should not be viewed as discrete objects, but as constituted in their relations to complex informational and material environments. Through a case study of commercial pharmaceutical R&D, the article examines the role of c…
Technological Zones
This article provides an overview of the analysis of technological zones. A technological zone can be understood as a space within which differences between technical practices, procedures and forms have been reduced, or common standards have been established. Such technological zones take broadly one of three forms: (1) metrological zones associated with the development of common forms of measurement; (2) infrastructural zones associated with th…
Gabriel Tarde: Imitation, Invention and Economy
This paper provides an introduction to the sociology of Gabriel Tarde and to the papers in this special issue. The first part of the paper examines how Tarde conceived of the relations between sociology and the natural sciences, including astronomy and physical geography. It also discusses Tarde's account of the significance and value of statistics and archaeology as sociological methods. The second part of the paper focuses on the importance of …
Logics of interdisciplinarity
This paper interrogates influential contemporary accounts of interdisciplinarity, in which it is portrayed as offering new ways of rendering science accountable to society and/or of forging closer relations between scientific research and innovation. The basis of the paper is an eighteen-month empirical study of three interdisciplinary fields that cross the boundaries between the natural sciences or engineering, on the one hand, and the social sc…
Débordements: Mélanges offerts à Michel Callon
MICHEL CALLON a marqué les sciences humaines et sociales par sa production académique, par ses activités d’animateur de la communauté scientifique et par son rôle de médiateur entre la recherche et le monde de la politique, de l’administration et de l’entreprise. Il a multiplié les espaces d’entente et de confrontation, en se déplaçant aussi bien sur le terrain de la sociologie que sur celui des politiques de recherche et d’innovation, de l’anthr…
Art-Science: From Public Understanding to Public Experiment
In this paper we examine the emergent field of art-science, part of a heterogeneous space of overlapping interdisciplinary practices at the intersection of the arts, sciences and technologies. Art-science is often thought to exemplify Nowotny et al.'s (2001) ‘mode-2’ knowledge production; indeed the institutions supporting art-science invariably claim that art-science contributes to the ‘contextualization of science’ by rendering scientific and t…
Political situations: Knowledge Controversies in Transnational Governance
This article develops two arguments. The first revolves around the importance of studies of knowledge controversies, originally developed within the field of science and technology studies (STS), to accounts of innovation in transnational governance. Innovation in transnational governance, I contend, has catalyzed the emergence of transnational knowledge controversies, including controversies about the operation of transnational governance mechan…
Political science (25 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Politics (21 works) · Law (16 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Engineering (9 works)