To attain symmetry is to be attune to the mixture/entanglement of ideas and things and not as it were hold them as separate or to focus on the world for human consciousness or, indeed, to deal with the world-in-itself. In We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour argued that for anthropology to become symmetrical it "needs a complete overhaul and intellectual retooling so that it can get around both Divides at once by believing neither in the radical distinction between humans and nonhumans at home, nor in the total overlap of knowledge and society elsewhere" (1993, 101).

In addressing the accusations of "treason" by Harry Collins and Steve Yearley for having granted "to nature and to artefacts the same ontological status that realists and technical determinists are used to granting them" and thus taking the side of the scientists that they are meant to study from a "social realist" perspective Callon and Latour sketch out their position on symmetry most lucidly in their 1992 article "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath school!". Both Callon and Latour are not interested in any social explanations of what scientists do, rather in suspending the classic separations between human beings and materials, cultures and natures, they detail a notion of symmetry which has to with the analytical leveling of people and things.

This analytical leveling of human beings and things is a key aspect in addressing how archaeological knowledge construction unfolds in our dealings with the material world.

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Posted at Feb 04/2005 12:16 PM:
Peter Jones: Hi, I work in health & social care and yet symmetry has much in common with Hodges model:

http://www.p-jones.demon.co.uk/

where I have added a link to you - Sociological domain under Anthropology - seems more approp. than history?

Hope you approve.

Best wishes

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