ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the limitations of this picture of urban design, and investigates what Latour's use of this metaphor reveals about the ways in which his recent work struggles to deal with very complex activities such as planning that are inherently mixed in nature. It suggests that the Inquiry's account of fact or truth production is significantly different to that offered in Latour's earlier Actor Network Theory (ANT) texts. The chapter recognizes the different contributions of key figures such as Michel Callon and John Law to ANT. For Latour, this nature/society binary creates a series of false philosophical problems. It does so in three main ways: by constructing a radical separation between subject and object then insisting that the gap between them must be explained; by focusing attention solely on the semiotic system of reference to the neglect of the material; and by isolating ontology as a special realm.
