Book review essay: After methods, after subjects, after drugs

The differentiation of subjects and objects, of the human and the nonhuman, is perhaps the most significant and enduring of all ontological and epistemological commitments in the social sciences. To imagine social inquiry without reifying the subject in all its diverse guises-without distinguishing subjects from the variety of "things" that comprise the world of interaction and experience-offends both the primary methodological conventions governing social science and, ostensibly, its broader moral and ethical purpose. Yet the writings reviewed below conjure a social science after, beyond, or in the absence of the subject and its objects. Each in their own way reflects Bruno Latour's (2003) seminal contention that "a strong distinction between humans and non-humans is no longer required for research purposes" (p. 78) in the social sciences