Modes of Existence are a concept taken by Bruno Latour from the works of Souriau and of Simondon, which he expands to define as being ontological features of the world, brought into view – not constructed – by empirical inquiry, derived from experience, and capable of being added to. They are labelled through a series of three-letter notations such as [POL] for politics or [TEC] for technology. The fifteen modes that Latour has identified thus far are presented in a Pivot Table. In a spreadsheet, a pivot table allows the user to switch between different tables and columns, in order to filter the data. Likewise, through filtering our inquiries through different crossings between two modes (for example, we might consider the confluence of political debate with religious sentiment through [POL-REL]) we can, as ethnographers, move through different ontological frames brought to bear on any situation through being crossed together, sometimes in order to resolve questions, and at other times in order to highlight new ones. Actor-network theory (ANT) is relabelled as [NET] within AIME and works alongside the other modes. AIME has begun to be critically employed within explorations of legal theory, medieval studies, politics and postpolitics, and education (Decuypere and Simons, 2019; Tummons, 2020, 2021).

If we take seriously Latour’s claim that actor-network theory is just one amongst many different but equal modes of existence alongside politics, technology, or religion, as well as others, then what does this imply for how we employ ANT – now [NET] – to think about education? Are the fifteen modes that Latour has identified sufficient, or might we also take seriously his invitation to expand on his modes, as others have done, and include beings of the educational mode within his comparative ontology?

In this paper I argue for the necessity of considering actor-network theory alongside the other modes of existence when thinking about education. In embracing the theoretical and empirical affordances of the Modes of Existence, I argue that Latour’s ‘philosophical-ontological toolkit’ provides ways of thinking about the beings of education in many ways, from textbooks to policies and from university researchers to kindergarten teachers, all enrolled in networks within their own ontology, their own mode of existence.

I propose that education [EDU] is a mode of existence, just as law [LAW] or religion [REL] are modes of existence. This is not the first extension of Latour’s cosmology: alongside the gradual uptake of AIME as a framework for inquiry, several additional modes have been suggested: of academic practice; of form [FOR], a concept that is found within AIME , but which, it has been argued, should be considered a mode in its own right; of signs [SIG], derived from the semiotic theories of Saussure and of recognition derived from the theories of Axel Honneth. Within AIME, a mode of existence is identified through four elements: firstly, the continuities and discontinuities of the beings of the mode in question; secondly, the felicity and infelicity conditions that pertain to the beings of the mode; thirdly, the type of beings that the mode leaves behind; and fourthly, the condition of alteration of the beings of the mode. It is important to remember that these four conditions are of equal importance; nor does their presentation assume a hierarchy or an operating sequence – they all pertain simultaneously to any mode. 

I need to draw on existing empirical research that is aligned to the ontological and epistemological ancestry of AIME, that speaks to the ethnographic methodologies that underpin Latour’s work, and that foregrounds the effort involved in establishing bodies of knowledge that are simultaneously objectivized and yet also mediated, and capable of being altered, as opposed to the ‘pure’ or ‘untransformed’ positivist knowledge that Latour metaphorically labels as “double click” [DC]. I propose meta-ethnography as a suitable approach. However, I am not conducting a meta-ethnography in order to establish [EDU]; rather, I am drawing on extant meta-ethnographies, in terms of both methodological standpoint and empirical contributions, in order to be able to say something about education. Meta-ethnography offers a number of methodological and theoretical affordances that are aligned with AIME. Both share a commitment to building bodies of objectivized knowledge that possess the possibility of being revised or even refuted. Both reject the synthesis of knowledge without also preserving an understanding of how that knowledge has been established. Both acknowledge the oxymoronic ambition of generating interpretive social explanations whilst preserving the uniqueness of individual standpoints (one of the distinguishing characteristics of extant ethnographic research). Meta-ethnography is not the only type of research through which objectivized knowledge [REF] relating to education can be painstakingly assembled, but it is one way to be able relatively quickly to say things about education that meet the empirical strictures of, and is epistemologically and ontologically aligned to, the AIME project.

For the ethnographer/anthropologist of education, I propose that the educational mode of existence, [EDU], provides an explanatory framework that allows the researcher to maintain the uniqueness, the specificity of educational practices alongside the ubiquity and familiarity of so much of what goes on inside schools or colleges, framed within empirical fieldwork. There are two elements to this. The first is the affordance for interpretation and analysis offered by the establishment of [EDU] that is analogous to the affordance offered by the employment of any other mode of existence. With this additional tool, conceptual frameworks for making sense of how people talk and write, how non-humans and humans work together, or the ways in which objectivized knowledge is established within the social semiotic space of the mode in question, become available: the four conditions that pertain to any mode reveal what might be described as “the social institution of education”. The second is the concomitant capacity to generate new crossings between [EDU] and other modes, to identify the category mistakes that burden the Moderns and that Latour is concerned to resolve. If the object of the AIME inquiry is to “follow the indefinite multiplicity of networks while determining their distinctive ways of expanding” (Latour, 2013: 48) then the distinctiveness of [EDU] needs to be considered on its own terms but also in contrast to the other modes – contrasts that allow us to define what is specific about each one.

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