%0 Journal Article
%T Primatology of Science: On the Birth of Actor
%A Nicolas Langlitz
%J Theory, Culture & Society
%@ 1460-3616
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0263276417740409
%X This article situates actor-network theory in the history of evolutionary anthropology. In the 1980s, this attempt at explaining the social through the mediation of nonhumans received important impulses from Bruno Latour¡¯s conversations with primatologist Shirley Strum. In a re-articulation of social evolutionism, they proposed that the utilization of objects distinguished humans from baboons and that the use of a growing number of objects set industrialized human populations apart from hunter-gatherers, enabling the formation of larger collectives. While Strum¡¯s and Latour¡¯s early work presented baboons as almost human and suggested that we moderns had never been modern, the Anthropocene has reawakened curiosity about the original question of anthropology: how do modern humans, including modern scientists, differ from premoderns and animals? This 18th-century question is gaining new significance and urgency as we recognize our transmutation into a super-dominant species. But the answer might not lie solely in the use of more objects
%K actor-network theory
%K Anthropocene
%K cooperation
%K objects
%K primatology
%K science studies
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0263276417740409