Ratto + Latour + ism = Ratourism (also equals awesome)

The three stages outlined in Ratto's critical making process:

 Stage 1-   "review of relevant literature and compilation of useful concepts and theories" (Ratto 253);

Stage 2:    designing and building technology prototypes that don't necessarily have to be fully functioning, but whose purpose is to "extend knowledge and skills in relevant technical areas as well as provide the means for conceptual exploration" (253);

Stage 3:  and then, employing "an iterative process of reconfiguration  and conversation" (253) which leads to reflection, exploration and "wrestling with the technical prototypes, exploring the various configurations and alternative possibilities, and using them to express, critique and extend relevant concepts, theories, and models" (253);

takes up Latour's challenge of "second empiricism" that Latour offers as the "next task for the critically minded"  (Latour 232).  In "Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern" Latour argues that a "powerful descriptive tool" (252) is required that deals with matters of concern, and instead of disproving and debunking previous ideologies and critical methodologies, would "protect and care, " construct instead of deconstruct, and  would not "subtract reality" (232).  Ratto's critical making is the answer; meaning is generated in the process rather than in the outcome.  The critical making process focuses on "the constructive process as the site of analysis and its explicit connections to specific scholarly literature.  Critical making emphasizes the shared acts of making rather than the evocative object" (Ratto 253).

Ratto takes Latour's challenge a step farther because he chooses to focus on the "act of shared construction, joint conversation and reflection" (253).  Meaning is  also generated in the critical making process because there is a call for conversation and for wrestling and physically engaging with the material, both of which make the critical making process a dialogic, a dialectic and a discursive process.