Actor-network theory (ANT) an introduction
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This document provides an overview of actor-network theory. It summarizes that ANT assumes everything can be viewed as a network and that both people and things are treated as actors within these networks. It also notes that ANT allows for unpacking complex systems that are often viewed as "blackboxes" to understand how they function and how they may need to change.
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Actor-network theory (ANT) an introduction
- 1. ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY Ailsa Haxell 2018
- 3. Assumes everything is a network. Assumes everything that has impact is an actor. Treats people and things similarly. An actor is also a network, hence the hyphen.
- 5. Being/s made in association
- 6. Often, things get âblackboxedâ. We treat things as if they were always done a particular way. Or as with a car, we donât always need to know whatâs under the hood⌠until something goes wrong. ANT allows for unpacking the âblackboxâ. Itâs particularly useful for considering âwhatâs going onâ and potentially to consider what needs to change. Social Public representation Media Policy Legislation written artefacts Technical Natural Sunshin e Rain Seeds Birds Bees Political Irrigation Hoses Plumbing Instruments The gardener, her Mum, her Granny The importer of the plantsâŚâŚ
- 7. A theory of myriad socio-technical-political association/s. But it also points to how nothing is only social or technical or political. And therefore all actors are treated with analytical impartiality (the same).
- 9. http://www.tlc.com/tlcme/how-much-bacteria-are-really-on-your-kids-hands/ âYou are more bacteria than you are youâ Wenner, 2007 To be human, is to be outnumbered by our microbial âmatesâ at a rate of 10 to 1 Ray, 2012
- 10. Amplify human function Accentuate human function Replace some human function Amputate or delete some human function 25/02/2019 AILSA HAXELL 10 rguably, we can never be ostmodern, posthuman or post anything. We have never been just human. As much as we think we create our technologies, they are also creating us: Glasses, hearing aids, medications, cars, mobile phones⌠I have already outsourced part of my brain to my mobile phone- addresses and numbers of people I love⌠Technologically dependent; I am already socio-technologically manifest, I am already cyborgâŚ
- 11. ANT; a methodology for seeing how things change, move from one space to another (or not) and /or stay the same,
- 12. EXAMPLE Haxell, A. (2013). Enactments of change: Becoming textually active at Youthline NZ (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation). Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. Retrieved from http://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30061580 This study looked at how come New Zealand young people took to texting so strongly and how this in turn impacted on the crisis helpline, Youthline. Learning how to move counselling into a medium where no one talks and when, in those times, a text message was only 160 characters long, was challenging but has situated Youthline NZ as world leaders in the field.
- 13. Callon, M. (1986). Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief: a new sociology of knowledge? (pp. 196-223). London, England: Routledge. Latour, B. (1996). Aramis: Or the love of technology (C. Porter, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Law, J. (2004). After method. Mess in social science research. Abingdon, England: Routledge. Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. London, England: Duke University Press. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Editor's Notes
- It sits alongside ethnographic methodologies Aligns well with writers such as Foucault as it looks at how things are talked of as well as their operations. The use of the term network also aligns with that of Deleuze and Guatteri when they speak of rhizomes and a thousand plateaus. Actor-network theory considers everything to be a network. Nothing exists external to networks of making and unmaking
- ANT emphasizes that you cant help but be be in a network when studying it; your choice of question puts you in the thick of it. Nothing exists external to networks of making and unmaking the actors involved as well as the theory Of note is that Itâs principle writer Bruno Latour, points to the name actor-network theory as problematic. He identified four difficulties inherent in the title; the words Actor, network, and theory and the hyphen. We have assumptions about each of these words that need unpacking. Some clarifications are needed: âactorâ need not be a person, its anything that has the ability to impact, this is very different from most understandings of what makes things happen or change in the world.. This causes problems for people who see themselves as having a separate existence to everything else â not being part of the natural world for example. or that having purposeful intentions and cognitive capacity in some way means people have a monopoloy on shaping behavior. â Networkâ because it gets confused with other networks such a s the internet or chains of command, rather than the ânetâ working of everything. Plus it tends to treat networks as something we are associated with rather than imbedded in through and through ⌠The hyphen because the two words need to be one word And theory because it predicts nothingâŚ.the network is fundamentally mobile and so there is never sure knowledge a particular thing will occur and reoccur. Plus the extent of any network as we observed it is always more extensive than we ever know. There are always things contributing that we donât have conscious knowledge of.
- What is made, is always made in association What do you need to make this happen? Rain, nutrients, sunshine⌠A gardener, a spade to plant itâŚmetal, wood, importers, exporters, miners, forestry workers, insects⌠I wouldnât have this in my garden if I didnât put it there, but it also needed all those other things⌠It also needed me to develop a love of gardening which I doubt I would have done were it not for my granny and mother⌠It would not be there if NZ say had a law against exotic species, or if it were deemed a weed by some local council⌠Also worth noting is that this particular network of events that had this flower just so, is a non repeatable event. Tomorrow, tonight, this afternoon its never quite the same⌠And that when I portray this image from 2013, I also am portraying the technologies involved, the camera phone, the media display unit, the email that sent it from ailsa to anneâŚpixelators, plastic makersâŚ.
- What is made, is always made in association And Latour also cites an African proverb, âyou cant swim in the same river twiceâ indicating that things are always in a process of change.
- Blackboxing We tend to see just whatâs in front of us and usually we donât question all the things going on or how we experience it , We tend to not have conscious awareness of the myriad things that made it or the myriad things that led us to perceive it a particular way. We also then tend to assume it can reoccur in other places just as easily such as when we make policies and set them in place in multiple places, or when we assume we can take someone as a âcharismatic change agentâ and they will do just as well in their next business⌠Or vote in a politician because âheâ made millions for himself and we assume he will then make millions for a country⌠But things simply do not translate so easily from one space to another. This is then also called a theory of translation A theory of movements
- The network of associations are sometimes really strong and held in place by other associations. Sometimes they are more fragile. If my granny had encountered tuberculosis younger, died younger, would I ever have developed a love for gardening? If some nasty little mealy mite had invaded my plant when it was young and tender, would it ever have gotten to this state. If my local council banned exotic plants⌠If a drought occurred etc etc Always there is more going on than we can ever know. At best we uncover enough to illuminate whats going on , but this too is always limited, when we illuminate some things we also cast shadow on others.
- How we/I think about things is also made in association. Here is the Whanganui river. A river granted personhood status. Part of arguing for this was a proverb/whakatau: I am the river and the river is me. There was a readiness to consider things differently (by Pakeha and land courts) In the image, where does the water stop or start? Round the corner, upstream downstream, in the sky, the plants⌠Seperation is arbitrary. ANT therefore also explains epistemologies- how knowledge gets made. I see it this way, as I have learned to see it this way⌠And so a theory that explains how realities differ and how such understandings are distributed differently amongst different people.
- Being âhumanâ is more distributed than we might commonly conceive. âWe have never been modernâ is the title of ome of Latours book. Similarly we have never been (just) human We are, and always have been, made in association
- Some associations get repeated so often they seem set in stone, treated as if there could only ever be one way of doing things, or of seeing something. Some are loose, they fragment as relationships alter, becoming less strong or detached or broken.
- Some of the more readerly texts on ANT