Dynamic Configuration.

Professor Bourbaki, Early Diagram, 2014.

The first notion mobilized by the author is that of diagram. This concept, borrowed from the work of Gilles Deleuze, extends the notion of “agencement socio-technique”. The socio-technical agencement is one of the central concepts of the anthropology of the sciences and technologies and, more particularly, of actor-network theory (ANT): describing a combination of human beings and technical devices that are caught in a dynamic configuration (the agencement acts), it emphasizes the composite and distributed character of all action and the impossibility of definitely separating humans from technologies. It is agencements that are primary and which give their meaning to categories such as States, markets, families or, more fundamentally, determine the relevance and significance of major divisions, such as those between humans and non-humans or between nature and culture. The notion of agencement is richer than that of dispositif (as defined by Michel Foucault), since it implies the idea of (distributed) action, whereas dispositif is more static. The concept of diagram makes it possible to stress the variety of different configurations to which agencements can give rise.

M. Callon, “Europe wrestling with technology,” Econ. Soc., vol. 33, no. 1, 2004, p. 121.