reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network theory (Bruno Latour)

P64-65

For ANT... "the social".. doesn't designate a domain of reality or some particular item, but rather is the name of a movement, a displacement, a transformation, a translation, an enrollment.... Thus, social, for ANT, is the name of a type of momentary association which is characterized by the way it gathers together into new shapes.

P66 The main advantage of dissolving the notion of social force and replacing it either by short-lived interactions or by new associations is that it's now possible to distinguish in the composite notion of society what pertains to its durability and what pertains to its substance.... It's now possible to bring into the foreground the practical means to keep ties in place, the ingenuity constantly invested in enrolling other sources of ties, and the cost to be paid for the extension of any interaction.

P78  so we have to take non-humans into account only as long as they are rendered commensurable with social ties and also to accept, an instant later, their fundamental incommensurability. 

P39  mediators vs intermediaries

An intermediary, in my vocabulary, is what transports meaning or force without transformation: defining its inputs is enough to define its outputs. For all practical purposes, an intermediary can be take not only as a black box, but also as a black box counting for one ,even if it is internally made of many parts. Mediators, on the other hand, cannot be counted as just one; they might count for one, for nothing, for several, or for infinity. Their input is never a good predictor of their output; their specificity has to be taken into account every time. Mediators transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry.