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Actor-Network Theory (ANT)

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Background

• Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation de l’ÉcoleNationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris

[Centre for the Sociology of Innovation [located at the]Paris National Graduate School of Mining]

• Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, Madeleine Akrich, JohnLaw, Michael Lynch, Stephen Woolgar, Donna Haraway

• Began as model for the dynamics of science, then for:

– information systems analysis, medical science,cartography, disability, economics and market studies,organization and work, communication, gender, politics,

the Arts, management studies, etc.

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What is ANT, and what does it do?

• Explores how sociotechnical elements are assembled,and how large-scale social structures work through

networks of stabilized materials – Material resources are part of what make large-scale

society possible and feasible

– No social relations but sociotechnical relations instead

– What is society? How is social order possible? – Contribution of ANT to social theory: shows howtechnology and artifacts contribute to the patterning, theordering of the social

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The blackout of 2003…

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• Work, industry, water supply, transportation,

communication, leisure, and security

– traffic lights, airports, railroads, gas stations

– cellular communication – in TO: subway, streetcars, Stock Exchange, CBC’s studios

– in Ottawa: evacuation of Parliament Hill

– in Ontario: state of emergency…

– major events canceled

– tour boats in Niagara could not dock safely

– Petro-Can refinery, and plant: shutdown and blown out

– emergency services, looting, fatalities

– security systems: border crossings, port landings,

terrorism…

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An excerpt from The End of Suburbia: Oil

Depletion and the Collapse of the American

Dream

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug

(15:40 – 18:10)



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Actor, Actant

• Anything endowed with the ability to act: people,

but also technical devices, material objects andnatural phenomena. Humans and non-humans alike

– Hammer

– Coin (within our money-based economy)

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Humans, non-humans… The same?

• Historically, the dividing line between people and

machines, and between people and animals, is subjectto negotiation and changes

• People are who they are because they are themselves

a patterned network of diverse interacting materials

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Network

• Ties together two systems of associations:

– people: everyone involved in the design, construction,distribution, and use of an artifact. Sociogram (SCOT and

RSGs)

– things: the materials brought into place in order to

connect the people. Technogram

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The Manhattan Project

• Technogram…

– e.g nuclear missile: integrated system of component parts(warhead, guidance control, propulsion), and part of a

system of launch equipment and command and control

• Sociogram…

– employed more than 130,000 people…

– creation of multiple production and research sites and of

several government agencies…

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Actor-network

• Consists of and links together both human and non-

human actors• Each actor is connected with, depending on, influencing,

shaping, and strengthening the position of every other

• Action is a property of associated actors

– “Man flies”, “Woman goes into space”… Not! – F-16s do not fly, the Canadian Air Force flies...

• Actor [hyphen] network: an actor is also a network of

heterogeneous elements

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The problem of selection

• Up to the analyst to decide what actors to follow,

and when or where to stop

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Black Boxes and Resources

• Any setting - no matter how complex, and how contested itshistory - so stable that it can be treated as an artifact where

only the input and output counts

• A black box contains a sealed network of people and things

• Doesn’t only apply to technology

– the human body

– the law

• Stability depends on the costs of reopening it: social groups,procedures, and materials sealed into it

– Hardware…

– Software

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• Interstate 880 in Oakland (October 17, 1989)

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Translation

• Network ordering: process and struggle

• Displacement, drift, invention, mediation, alteration,

creation of a new goal or link

• Translating is what actor-networks do…

• ANT tells empirical stories about processes of translation

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A classic case study:

• Callon, M. (1986), "The Sociology of an Actor-Network:

The Case of the Electric Vehicle," in M. Callon, J. Lawand A. Rip (eds.). Mapping the Dynamics of Science

and Technology: Sociology of Science in the Real

World, Basingstoke: MacMillan, pp. 19-34.

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