Transcript

NARRATOR

This interplay between people and objects is the third and final perspective to consider in looking at the airport. Social worlds, including the airport, are made up of complex mixtures of the social and the material that are so interwoven that they're difficult to separate. Therefore it's important to take account of the way that humans interact with material objects and not consider only the extremes of the purely human or the purely material.

Latour argues that culture or social worlds are actually made up of chains or assemblages of human and non-human that are so tightly folded that it makes more sense to speak of hybrids rather than either humans or artefacts. Indeed, the human and the material are often so fully interwoven that, in practice, it can be difficult to find where one ends and the other begins. The airport is a zoo of hybrids-- the passenger and the passport, the security guard and the scanner, the check-in staff and computer, even just the passenger and his wheeled suitcase finally heading for the plane.

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