This work draws heavily on poststructuralist social theory in an examination of moderntiy & its forms of ordering in formal organizations, with attention given to the development of the notion of "mode of order," which conceptualizes the way in which agents & materials constitute themselves & social organization. Drawing on fieldwork in a research laboratory, the concept of organizational ordering is elaborated, & the ordering character of ethnography examined. The analysis attempts to develop a synthesis between symbolic interactionism, poststructuralist discourse analysis, & actor-network analysis that avoids the synchronic version of structuralism while stressing the contributions of recursivity & reflexivity to social ordering. Other issues treated include the material character of representation, the mode of ordering specific to the political economy of enterprise, & the debate over humanist & nonhumanist versions of pessimistic liberalism. Of particular interest to organizational sociologists, social theorists, & those concerned with modernity & its technologies of social control, the book is presented in 9 Chpts. (1) Introduction. (2) Networks and Places. (3) Histories, Agents and Structures. (4) Irony, Contingency and the Mode of Ordering. (5) Contingency, Materialism and Discourse. (6) Rankings. (7) Dualisms and Gradients: Notes on the Material Forms of Ordering. (8) Enterprise, Trust and Distrust. (9) Postscript. 188 References. W. Howard