La vida en el laboratorio

First published over forty years ago in collaboration with Steve Woolgar, "Life in the Laboratory" is Bruno Latour's first work and the initial sketch of what would later shape the Actor-Network Theory. The fruit of two years of ethnographic research in Nobel Laureate Roger Guillemin's neuroendocrinology laboratory at the Salk Institute, this foundational book laid the foundations for new trends in science studies. From an anthropological point of view, Latour and Woolgar challenge the traditional conceptions of scientific research to subject the "scientific fact" to their judgment and define it, from a constructivist approach, as the "product" of the complex relationships that they establish between yes the set of practices, instruments and institutions that make up the scientific field. Now, when science is becoming more and more intertwined with our daily lives through the omnipresent threat of climate collapse and the various denier and anti-scientific tendencies, but also ecofascism, it seems more necessary than ever to return to Latour's postulates to understand the need for a common world that is capable of maintaining the power of the facts while denouncing its interests and its risks.