Actor Network Theory (ANT)

by Angel Brown

PowerPower

LawLaw

InstitutionsInstitutions

Thinking abouttechnology and

people

Organisational theoryOrganisational theory

Political economyPolitical economy

TechnoeconomicTechnoeconomicparadigmparadigm RegulationRegulation

Social ConstructionSocial Constructionof Technology (SCOT)of Technology (SCOT)

Science and TechnologyScience and TechnologyStudies (STS)Studies (STS)

StructurationStructuration

TechnologicalTechnologicaldeterminismdeterminism

ANTANT

How to model social complexity?

How ANT began

•Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation (CSI) of the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris in the early 1980s

•Michel Callon, Bruno Latour (staff) also John Law (British)

•Came out of Science and Technology Studies (STS) Laboratory Life, Science in Action (in opposition to heroic accounts)

Conceptual origins

•French semiotics

•Power relationships and innovation

•Ethnomethodology

•Paradigm shift (Kuhn 1962)

•Concern with how to talk about things within a constructivist paradigm - does matter matter?

Methodology and framework•Sociology of Translation (of

needs/goals)

•Problematisation (obligatory passage point)

•Interessement

•Enrollment

•Mobilisation

Trace networks of associations

Vocabulary•Material-semiotic method

•Irreversibility

•Symmetry of humans and non-humans

•Black boxing

•Inscriptions

•Agency and intentionality - performing

•Mediators, intermediaries

Popular but controversial

How is it used?

•Most commonly to analyse large scale technological developments in an even-handed manner to include political, organisational, legal, technical and scientific factors.

•SAP implementation at government agency Norsk Hydro

How’s it used?

Critiques

•Can things really have agency/intentionality?

•How useful is identifying a network of some aspects of some associations?

•Doesn’t really tackle weighting in terms of power

•It is amoral - no regard to social consequences of technological choice

Implications for UX?

•When using an ethnomethodological approach to understand an innovation within a community (WoW, intranet)

•Drive strategic thinking to understand success and/or failure (effectiveness)

•Can inform process within an organisation

Latour on the acronym ANT

•“perfectly fit for a blind, myopic, workaholic, trail-sniffing, and collective traveller"