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The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies, by Myra J. Hird. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 202pp. $90.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780230202139.
Myra J. Hird's book apprises its readers of the sociological significance of organisms that are not "big like us" (p. 21), specifically, bacteria. Hird does an artful job of explaining how "meeting with" bacteria and other microbes compels entirely new ways of thinking about topics familiar to sociologists, including communication, communities, social intelligence, the intersection of nature /culture /society, science and epistemic cultures, the self (both economic and biological), exchange, sex and gender, environments, and ecologies. Throughout her book, Hird repeatedly disconcerts the reader with a series of cognitive jolts from which often emerge refreshingly new ways of thinking about the world.
In Chapter One ("After War"), Hird situates her analysis in the context of recent discussions and debates about the nature of science and epistemology and introduces her project as a study of "microntologies," a strategy for framing sociological attention on the microbial world. She describes her affinity for the work of thinkers like Bruno Latour, who conceive of reality as populated by various "actants" (both organic and inorganic, simple and complex) among which exist complex systems of relations. It is the profound mutual entanglement of everything microbial with everything else that constitutes the primary focus of Hird's book.
Chapter Two ("Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria") provides a crash course in bacteriology which Hird uses to document...