After having been fairly impressed by Laboratory Life, another book by Bruno Latour, co-authored with Steve Woolgar, I picked up Latour's Pandora's Hope without much hesitation when I saw it in a used bookstore. This was at a time, I think during my undergrad at Concordia, when I was particularly interested in questions around the reality of scientific phenomena and constructivist versus realist epistemologies (a distinction that, after reading Pandora's Hope, it is clear Latour would dislike).

While it was enjoyable, thought-provoking, admirable in its intentions and refreshing in its style, I felt it ultimately fell short of its goal, which was, as Latour puts it throughout and again in the conclusion, to walk away from the realist/constructivist debate and to show how actual scientists (and most actual people) do not operate within its fact/fetish binary.

Read more here: http://www.lukerodgers.ca/2008/07/pandoras-hope-by-bruno-latour/ ( )