Post on 22-Apr-2015
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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"