After the individual in society: Lessons on collectivity from science, technology and society

The social sciences have devised a series of strategies in order to overcome the division between individual and collective action. However, science, technology and society (STS) has shown that this distinction is only one possible configuration far action and its distribution. In order to investigate other possible configurations, STS proposes four principles: that the social is heterogeneous in character; that all entities are networks of heterogeneous elements; that these networks are both variable in geometry and in principle unpredictable; and that every stable social arrangement is simultaneously a point (an individual) and a network (a collective). If sociological analysis is to overcome the individualism/holism division it should attend to the range of hybrid configurations.