ACTOR NETWORK THEORY

1 7/14/2004 2:48 PM Page 1. A. is conceived as a heterogeneous amalgamation of textual, ACTOR NETWORK THEORY conceptual, social, and technical actors . The volitional ACTOR for ANT, termed actant, is any agent, collective or ACTOR NETWORK THEORY (ANT), also known as enrolment individual, that can associate or disassociate with other THEORY or the sociology of translation, emerged during the agents. Actants enter into networked associations, which in mid-1980s, primarily with the work of Bruno Latour, turn define them, name them, and provide them with sub- Michel Callon, and John Law.

2 ANT is a conceptual frame stance, action, intention, and subjectivity. In other words, for exploring collective sociotechnical processes, whose actants are considered foundationally indeterminate, with spokespersons have paid particular attention to science and no a priori substance or essence, and it is via the networks technologic activity. Stemming from a Science and in which they associate that actants derive their nature. Technologies Studies (STS) interest in the elevated status of Furthermore, actants themselves develop as networks. scientific knowledge and counter to heroic accounts or inno- actors are combinations of symbolically invested things.

3 Vation models, ANT suggests that the work of science is not identities, relations, and inscriptions, networks capable of fundamentally different from other social activities. ANT nesting within other diverse networks. privileges neither natural (realism) nor cultural (social con- structivism) accounts of scientific production, asserting THE NETWORK IN ANT. instead that science is a process of heterogeneous engineering in which the social, technical, conceptual, and textual are puz- The terms ACTOR and NETWORK are linked in an effort to zled together (or juxtaposed) and transformed (or translated).

4 Bypass the distinction between agency and structure, a core As one of many anti-essentialist movements, ANT does preoccupation within sociology (as well as other disciplines). not differentiate between science (knowledge) and technol- This distinction is neither useful nor necessary for ANT the- ogy (artifact). Similarly, proponents do not subscribe to the orists, as macrolevel phenomena are conceived as networks division between society and nature, truth and falsehood, that become more extensive and stabilized. Networks are agency and structure, context and content, human and non- processual, built activities, performed by the actants out of human, microlevel phenomenon and macrolevel phenom- which they are composed.

5 Each node and link is semiotically enon, or knowledge and power. Nature and society, derived, making networks local, variable, and contingent. subjectivity and structure, and fact and fiction are all effects Analytically, ANT is interested in the ways in which of collective activity. ANT advances a relational material- networks overcome resistance and strengthen internally, gain- ity, the material extension of semiotics, which presupposes ing coherence and consistence (stabilize); how they organize that all entities achieve significance in relation to others.

6 (juxtapose elements) and convert (translate) NETWORK Science, then, is a NETWORK of heterogeneous elements real- elements; how they prevent actors from following their own ized within a set of diverse practices. proclivity (become durable); how they enlist others to invest in or follow the program (enroll); how they bestow qualities and motivations to actors (establish roles as THE ACTOR IN ANT. scripts); how they become increasingly transportable and Taking seriously the agency of nonhumans (machines, useful (simplify); and how they become functionally animals, texts, and hybrids, among others), the ANT NETWORK indispensable (as obligatory points of passage).

7 1. 7/14/2004 2:48 PM Page 2. 2 ACTOR NETWORK THEORY THE THEORY IN ANT as the relations that bind them, are translated as networks change. Thus, translation is the process of establishing ANT is considered as much a method as a THEORY ;. identities and the conditions of interaction, and of charac- anti-essentialism informs both the conceptual frame used for terizing representations. interpretation and guides the processes through which net- However, translation is always at the same time a works are examined. ANT advances three methodological process of both social and physical displacement.

8 NETWORK principles. The first is agnosticism, which advocates aban- elements deviate from previous inclinations are converted doning any a priori assumptions of the nature of networks, to inscriptions or immutable mobiles (combinable textual, causal conditions, or the accuracy of actant's accounts. ANT. cartographic, or visual representations that remain stable imposes impartiality and requires that all interpretations be through space and time), are defined and ascribed roles, and unprivileged. The second principle is generalized symmetry, are mobilized and/or circulated through translation.

9 The employing a single explanatory frame when interpreting realization of a set of networked possibilities entails that actants, human and nonhuman. Investigators should never others are always unrealized. As effect, translation orders, shift registers to examine individuals and organizations, bugs and produces society and agency, nature and machine. and collectors, or computers and their programmers. The Translation is the process of converting entities, of making third is free association, which advocates abandoning any similar (such that one entity may be substituted for another).

10 Distinction between natural and social phenomenon. These or simplifying (black-boxing or translating NETWORK ele- distinctions are the effects of networked activity, are not ments into a single block) while retaining difference (trans- causal, and cannot provide explanation. lation is not simply transfer). In this sense, translation is In line with its ethnomethodological roots, ANT theo- also betrayal, of origins and of solidity. In short, translation rists describe networks by following the ACTOR into trans- is both a practice (making equivalent) and an outcome (both lations.)