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kdlou12's review against another edition
1.75
Ignoring cultures outside of his own, Latour presents ideas that have been around for millenia as new, and he the great mind behind them all. In writing this book he becomes the very thing he attempts to critique - that is a Eurocentric humanity obsessed with itself, in constant movement towards the ‘modern’.
A look to Aboriginal Peoples for example, would have alerted him that for 60,000+years humans have had alternative systems and knowledges of nature and our entanglement with it.
Less self importance is needed if we are to address the climate crisis, not more, and Latour would be wiser if he could acknowledge this.
A look to Aboriginal Peoples for example, would have alerted him that for 60,000+years humans have had alternative systems and knowledges of nature and our entanglement with it.
Less self importance is needed if we are to address the climate crisis, not more, and Latour would be wiser if he could acknowledge this.
icrylikeagirl's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This was a theoretically challenging read. I'm not sure what I missed, but I definitely missed some things.
carrots's review against another edition
4.0
Good and lots of food for thought. Don’t completely disagree with his thoughts about Europe’s role in the future , but the size of his boner about the continent was def unappealing. Europe has not yet been humbled enough to be allowed to invoke its own humility.
thegreatestpossibleresonance's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
2.75
kothesakis's review against another edition
2.0
Oftentimes incoherent. Was assigned this book at Sciences Po for a fantastic political ecology course.
Latour clearly has an idea for this new global political realignment based on the demands of climate change, but he never clearly enunciates that idea. He beats around the bush a lot, uses esoteric symbols and relational graphs to further complicate his argument, and by the end of the book I was no more certain of what Latour was prescribing than when I started.
He also writes with this Western European-centric worldview that's alienating even to a coastal American; he seems to believe the panacea to global ecological collapse is EU-style bureaucracy and honest politics. That may be his earnest belief, but after spending the time to wade through his esoteric nonsense ideology I expected a more coherent and actionable political schema. His opinions regarding Trump's rise to power also sound patently false. Latour envisions an American electorate that makes these subconscious political calculations regarding America's place in the world and its industrial capacity and how that relates to the threat environmental regulation poses to that, and so they vote for Trump who promises to ignore that data. However I don't think that's an actual machination in any person's head but Latour's; Americans think far less often about political ecology than Latour would like to believe.
Would actively recommend against reading this book unless you're a die-hard fan of Latour.
Latour clearly has an idea for this new global political realignment based on the demands of climate change, but he never clearly enunciates that idea. He beats around the bush a lot, uses esoteric symbols and relational graphs to further complicate his argument, and by the end of the book I was no more certain of what Latour was prescribing than when I started.
He also writes with this Western European-centric worldview that's alienating even to a coastal American; he seems to believe the panacea to global ecological collapse is EU-style bureaucracy and honest politics. That may be his earnest belief, but after spending the time to wade through his esoteric nonsense ideology I expected a more coherent and actionable political schema. His opinions regarding Trump's rise to power also sound patently false. Latour envisions an American electorate that makes these subconscious political calculations regarding America's place in the world and its industrial capacity and how that relates to the threat environmental regulation poses to that, and so they vote for Trump who promises to ignore that data. However I don't think that's an actual machination in any person's head but Latour's; Americans think far less often about political ecology than Latour would like to believe.
Would actively recommend against reading this book unless you're a die-hard fan of Latour.
devind9bde's review
5.0
"...how do we occupy a land if it is this land itself that is occupying us?"
Down to Earth by Bruno Latour is a slim volume packed with tense and interwoven ideas. It's difficult to pull out a single quote or a single idea that could represent the book, so I will only attempt to pull out a few threads here.
Latour begins with the idea that the ruling class has abdicated their traditional role as leaders. He puts it this way: "...it is as though a significant segment of the ruling classes (known today rather too loosely as 'the elites') had concluded that the earth no longer had room enough for them and for everyone else."
This selfish withdrawal from political life has already taken place and has led to a panic. Those left behind are turning to right-wing demagogues for comfort and are attempting to harden borders in the same maneuver as the elite. For example, while the elite guard their gated communities, the common person is attempting to make the entire United States into a gated community.
For Latour: "Migrations, explosions of inequality, and New Climatic Regime: these are one and the same threat. Most of our fellow citizens underestimate or deny what is happening to the earth, but they understand perfectly well that the question of migrants puts their dreams of a secure identity in danger."
Putting this another way, the changing climate we find ourselves in has prompted the elite to withdraw from society, releasing runaway inequality, which in turn has created migrants fleeing from climate catastrophes and deadly poverty, and in turn has led the regular citizens of wealthy nations to attempt to close their borders.
This is as good an analysis of the climate problem as I have come across. The ground is giving way beneath us and the task, Latour suggests, is to come down to earth. What does he mean by this? First, lets examine a diagram from the book.
Historically, modernization was the process of moving from the local to the global. The main political fight was between those who wanted to protect the local from the global, and those who wanted the global to infiltrate every community everywhere. Latour gets into a lot of hair splitting about these terms 'global' and 'local' that I won't attempt to explain here. What I want to talk about is the appearance of another attractor, the mysterious third attractor.
Latour defines it first by defining it's opposite. He sees the presidency of Donald Trump as exemplifying this fourth attractor. Trump is concerned with neither the global or the local, he represents unreality - the denial of reality completely. Hence 'alternative facts', anti-intellectualism, climate denial, 'fake news', etc. Trump moves neither toward the global or the local, he is instead reacting against the power of the new, third attractor. This is what makes his nonsense so popular, it provides respite for those unable to deal with the third attractor - which Latour calls the Terrestrial. The terrestrial world is not the idea of the global or the local, but reality, or what resists. The terrestrial is the real world. Trump's fourth attractor is Out of This World, unreal, extra-terrestrial.
The appeal of the unreal is obvious. Latour states: "...it is true that the third attractor doesn't look very attractive. It requires too much care, too much attention, too much time, too much diplomacy. Even today it is the Global that shines, that liberates, that arouses enthusiasm, that makes it possible to remain so unaware, that emancipates, that gives the impression of eternal youth. Only it does not exist. It is the Local that reassures, that calms, that offers an identity. But it does not exist either."
However, "Fighting to join one or another utopia, the Global or the Local, does not have the same clarifying effects as fighting to land on Earth!" And clearly, the enemy of the real world is the unreal.
Where does this leave us? We are living in the structures of the global and the local, which assumed an inanimate planet, and thus no longer have any meaning. We must redefine space. "...the universal condition today entails living in the ruins of modernization, groping for a dwelling place."
Instead of actors on an inanimate stage, we find ourselves entangled in a web of living agencies. Latour proposes re-organizing space around the concept of a dwelling place: "...we must agree to define a dwelling place as that on which a terrestrial depends for its survival, while asking what other terrestrials also depend on it?"
This puts us in the position of defining space relative to each actor: "Each of the beings that participate in the composition of a dwelling place has its own way of identifying what is local and what is global, and of defining its entanglements with the others."
Stated another way, Latour charges us with two tasks:
1. "attaching oneself to a particular patch of soil"
2. "having access to the global world"
He closes with the imperative: "...it's your turn to present yourself, tell us a little about where you would like to land and with whom you agree to share a dwelling space."
Latour tells us there is no quick fix, and that we must define our new spatial arrangements first, before we can identity our friends and enemies, and before any 'program' can be adopted for tackling the 'climate problem'. There are no easy answers, but a lot to think about here.
Down to Earth by Bruno Latour is a slim volume packed with tense and interwoven ideas. It's difficult to pull out a single quote or a single idea that could represent the book, so I will only attempt to pull out a few threads here.
Latour begins with the idea that the ruling class has abdicated their traditional role as leaders. He puts it this way: "...it is as though a significant segment of the ruling classes (known today rather too loosely as 'the elites') had concluded that the earth no longer had room enough for them and for everyone else."
This selfish withdrawal from political life has already taken place and has led to a panic. Those left behind are turning to right-wing demagogues for comfort and are attempting to harden borders in the same maneuver as the elite. For example, while the elite guard their gated communities, the common person is attempting to make the entire United States into a gated community.
For Latour: "Migrations, explosions of inequality, and New Climatic Regime: these are one and the same threat. Most of our fellow citizens underestimate or deny what is happening to the earth, but they understand perfectly well that the question of migrants puts their dreams of a secure identity in danger."
Putting this another way, the changing climate we find ourselves in has prompted the elite to withdraw from society, releasing runaway inequality, which in turn has created migrants fleeing from climate catastrophes and deadly poverty, and in turn has led the regular citizens of wealthy nations to attempt to close their borders.
This is as good an analysis of the climate problem as I have come across. The ground is giving way beneath us and the task, Latour suggests, is to come down to earth. What does he mean by this? First, lets examine a diagram from the book.
Historically, modernization was the process of moving from the local to the global. The main political fight was between those who wanted to protect the local from the global, and those who wanted the global to infiltrate every community everywhere. Latour gets into a lot of hair splitting about these terms 'global' and 'local' that I won't attempt to explain here. What I want to talk about is the appearance of another attractor, the mysterious third attractor.
Latour defines it first by defining it's opposite. He sees the presidency of Donald Trump as exemplifying this fourth attractor. Trump is concerned with neither the global or the local, he represents unreality - the denial of reality completely. Hence 'alternative facts', anti-intellectualism, climate denial, 'fake news', etc. Trump moves neither toward the global or the local, he is instead reacting against the power of the new, third attractor. This is what makes his nonsense so popular, it provides respite for those unable to deal with the third attractor - which Latour calls the Terrestrial. The terrestrial world is not the idea of the global or the local, but reality, or what resists. The terrestrial is the real world. Trump's fourth attractor is Out of This World, unreal, extra-terrestrial.
The appeal of the unreal is obvious. Latour states: "...it is true that the third attractor doesn't look very attractive. It requires too much care, too much attention, too much time, too much diplomacy. Even today it is the Global that shines, that liberates, that arouses enthusiasm, that makes it possible to remain so unaware, that emancipates, that gives the impression of eternal youth. Only it does not exist. It is the Local that reassures, that calms, that offers an identity. But it does not exist either."
However, "Fighting to join one or another utopia, the Global or the Local, does not have the same clarifying effects as fighting to land on Earth!" And clearly, the enemy of the real world is the unreal.
Where does this leave us? We are living in the structures of the global and the local, which assumed an inanimate planet, and thus no longer have any meaning. We must redefine space. "...the universal condition today entails living in the ruins of modernization, groping for a dwelling place."
Instead of actors on an inanimate stage, we find ourselves entangled in a web of living agencies. Latour proposes re-organizing space around the concept of a dwelling place: "...we must agree to define a dwelling place as that on which a terrestrial depends for its survival, while asking what other terrestrials also depend on it?"
This puts us in the position of defining space relative to each actor: "Each of the beings that participate in the composition of a dwelling place has its own way of identifying what is local and what is global, and of defining its entanglements with the others."
Stated another way, Latour charges us with two tasks:
1. "attaching oneself to a particular patch of soil"
2. "having access to the global world"
He closes with the imperative: "...it's your turn to present yourself, tell us a little about where you would like to land and with whom you agree to share a dwelling space."
Latour tells us there is no quick fix, and that we must define our new spatial arrangements first, before we can identity our friends and enemies, and before any 'program' can be adopted for tackling the 'climate problem'. There are no easy answers, but a lot to think about here.
theomnivorescientist's review
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
While looking into geopolitics and the effect of the pandemic on the world I came across Bruno Latour's interview in the Guardian. Eventually, I picked up Down To Earth. The whole message of this book is how we have arrived at today's world because of the mounting technological progress, immigration pressure, and populist uprisings all accelerating climate change at an unprecedented rate. The Earth seems no longer shared as a home to all citizens but fought upon by drawing more boundaries than ever. Latour inspires that it is finally time to give up on the fight of right vs left and come to alternative strategies and think about our place back to the Terrestrial, the earth, shared. A balance between rational and moderation. Centrists will adore this book but eventually, Latour doesn't provide 'solutions'.
Some background on Latour: The sensational French philosopher was all in the news in the 1970s when he argued that scientific facts are not solely objective realities but a product of the scientific community. Opposed by many scientists and purists who think scientific facts are impervious to social constructs, Latour did an extensive study with actual lab technicians, students, and researchers and laid out the process by which any fact is produced and published. He argued that the gap between the sciences and the public is that the laboratory life is invisible from the public eye. Now after decades with anti-maskers on road, Latour's work has found meaning as to why a vast section of society is sceptical of proven scientific facts.
Some background on Latour: The sensational French philosopher was all in the news in the 1970s when he argued that scientific facts are not solely objective realities but a product of the scientific community. Opposed by many scientists and purists who think scientific facts are impervious to social constructs, Latour did an extensive study with actual lab technicians, students, and researchers and laid out the process by which any fact is produced and published. He argued that the gap between the sciences and the public is that the laboratory life is invisible from the public eye. Now after decades with anti-maskers on road, Latour's work has found meaning as to why a vast section of society is sceptical of proven scientific facts.