The concept of interobjectivity was most famously proposed and developed by the French sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour in his seminal 1996 paper, "On Interobjectivity". [1]
While traditional social sciences rely heavily on intersubjectivity (the shared psychological or social understanding between human subjects), Latour introduced interobjectivity to argue that social order is not just built on human-to-human interactions, but is actively stabilized and shaped by relationships between human and non-human objects (such as technology, tools, and architecture). This idea serves as a foundational pillar of Actor-Network Theory (ANT). [1, 2, 3]
Depending on the academic discipline, the term has also been independently advanced by other notable thinkers:
1. Fathali M. Moghaddam (Cultural Psychology)
In 2003, psychologist Fathali M. Moghaddam adapted the term for cultural psychology. He argued that human intersubjectivity is actually regulated by interobjectivity—meaning that how individuals understand each other is dictated by the preexisting, collective cultural objects and artifacts of the social world they are born into.[1, 2, 3, 4]
2. Timothy Morton (Eco-Philosophy)
In ecological philosophy, Timothy Morton utilized interobjectivity to describe the way "hyperobjects"(massive, distributed entities like climate change) exist. For Morton, interobjectivity represents the mesh or matrix of interconnectedness between different objects as they affect and transmit information to one another. [1]
If you are exploring this concept for a specific project, let me know:
- Are you studying this from a sociological (Latour/ANT) or psychological (Moghaddam) perspective?
- Would you like an explanation of how interobjectivity differs practically from intersubjectivity?
