Actor Network Theory

Law 2009

Why does it matter?

• Who is using it:

• It is trendy and you will, probably encounter it• Bruno Latour was the Keynote at CHI ‘13• Our job: to ask, What work does it do for us?

HistoriansInformation scientistsBusiness Schools!Anthropologists

Law 2009: A series of examples

Monet 1885

Renoir 1876

Monet 1872

Pissarro 1901

How do we describe:- The world? - Our research? - “What happens” and “why?”

The ideas we are about to look at are about rejecting various ways of explaining things.

Result: new methods, new metaphors and deliberately avoiding modes of thought that are taken for granted.

Basic timeline

70s and 80s: Sociology of

Scientific Knowledge

(SSK)

90s: Actor Network

Theory: (ANT)

Post-1990: Criticism of ANT

Diaspora

- Science socially constructed- Rejects conventional explanations

- Things are socially and materially co-created- Rejects social-centric SSK

- Things are multiple, contested- Rejects functionalist ANT

A toolkit

• Semiotic: How? > Why?• ↓ strong agents• ↑ multiple material and co-incidental causes• Levels many kinds of divisions– Scale: macro v. micro– Type:

• Human v. non-human as agents• Rejects sociological frameworks of all kinds• Social v. technical: actually both co-constituted

Criticisms of ‘ANT 1990’

• Overly-focused on how things function• Disregarded ideas that could not be fit into it

For other feminist critiques c.f. Haraway, Star

New ‘material semiotics’• Multiple contested realities– Different logics for different people or times

• Performativity, ‘enactment’ of constructed ideas that are taken as natural in other disciplines– How do collections of people and stuff produce this?– Unstable! – “Construction” no longer useful, because nothing is the

stable agent defining the rest– Things produced by collections of stuff: realities,

knowledges, “goods”

Bottom line

• Latour says that he rejects ‘ANT’ as a name, except for the fact that one proceeds slowly from the ground-most view

Grounded Theory

Uruqhart 2010

Why does it matter?

Q. Has a PI ever told you, as a research assistant, what to look for in the data?

Q. Did that have any impact on what you saw?

Q. Are there any risks to that approach?

Q. Before we move on, why might that be a good way to do research anyway?

How does it work?

• Empirical– What is empiricism?

• Tools– Qualitative coding

“the discovery of theory from data – systematically obtained and analyzed in social research’ (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, p. 1)”

Gather data

Compare concepts

Code concepts

“Donetogetheras much as possible”

Criticisms• Grounded theory = positivist?

– What is positivism?– How is ‘positivist’ be a criticism to some?

• Grounded theory = subjective? Uruqhart: disagreement grounded theory is agnostic

Strauss and Corbin 1990 = Rules!!Glaser disagreed with this revision: “If you torture the data long enough, it will give up! . . . Forcing by preconception constantly derails it from relevance” (1992, p. 123).

Bottom line

• Grounded theory is a way to build theories

• It is adapted by researchers, often not adhering to the formal procedures set out in 1967

Discussion Question #1

Do grounded theory and actor-network theory seem to have anything in common?

Discussion Question #2

Compare/contrast pieces of these approaches with the methods that Jevin presented:

(1) Multiple working theories- ….what are these?

(2) Strong Inference - …what is it?

Discussion Question #3

Would you say Katie Davis used grounded theory in her work? Why or why not?

Discussion Question #4

What part of either theory could you see using in your own work?