GMU:(In)Visible Networks/ANT networks

Historical references

• Bruno Latour (1987). Science in Action.
• Niklas Luhmann (1975), "Systemtheorie, Evolutionstheorie und Kommunikationstheorie", in: Soziologische Gids 22 3. pp.154–168
• Luhmann, Niklas (1984). Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie. Suhrkamp.
• Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1980). Mille plateaux. Translation A Thousand Plateaus (1987)
• The double-helix model of DNA structure was first published in the journal Nature by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953

Actor network theory

The Actor network theory (ANT) was developed by Bruno Latour back in 80s. The idea comes from a sociologic point of view, where Bruno Latour distinguishes the traditional meaning of social (=human, community focussed) adding to it other non-human "actors" like objects or activities like law, science, technology, etc.

• Latour proposes two positions which distinguishes traditional sociology from the ANT perspective. The first one could be compared with Niklas Luhmann social systems (affairs) and the other with Deleuzian rhizomatic systems (associations).
• Latour proposes three test cases to define ANT approach to social: 1) should include non-humans, 2) shouldn't explain the state of affairs, and 3) reassemblance of social instead of deconstruction

“Especially since the publication of Latour’s Science in Action (1987), ANT has dominated theoretical discussions in STS [science and technology studies], and has served as a framework for an enormous number of studies. Its successes, as a theory of science, technology, and everything else, have been mostly bound up in its relational materialism. As a materialist theory it explains intuitively the successes and failures of facts and artifacts: they are the effects of the successful translation of actions, forces, and interests. As a relationalist theory it suggests novel results and promotes ecological analyses: humans and non-humans are bound up with each other, and features on neither side of that apparent divide can be understood without reference to features on the other. Whether actor-network theorists can answer all the questions people have of it remains to be seen, but it stands as the best known of STS’s theoretical achievements so far.”(Sismondo 2010)

“In the course of the book we will learn to distinguish the standard sociology of the social from a more radical subfamily which I will call critical sociology.7 This last branch will be defined by the following three traits: it doesn’t only limit itself to the social but replaces the object to be studied by another matter made of social relations; it claims that this substitution is unbearable for the social actors who need to live under the illusion that there is something ‘other’ than social there; and it considers that the actors’ objections to their social explanations offer the best proof that those explanations are right. To clarify, I will call the first approach ‘sociology of the social’ and the second ‘sociology of associations’ (I wish I could use ‘associology’). .. I may be forgiven for this roughness because there exist many excellent introductions for the sociology of the social but none, to my knowledge, for this small subfield of social theory8 that has been called—by the way, what is it to be called? Alas, the historical name is ‘actor-network-theory’, a name that is so awkward, so confusing, so meaningless that it deserves to be kept.”(Bruno Latour 2005:8-9)

References

• Michel Callon (1986). "The sociology of an actor-network: The case of the electric vehicle". In Callon, M.; Law, J.; Rip, A. Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science in the Real World. Sheridan House Inc. pp. 29–30. ISBN 0333372239.
• Bruno Latour (1987). Science in Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press
• Bruno Latour (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York: Oxford University Press Inc. See Introduction: File:latour-introduction-to-ant-theory.pdf
• Sergio Sismondo (2010). "Actor-Network Theory" in An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies.