Actant-Network Theory has its origins in studies of the networks of interdependent social practices that constitute work in science and technology. Bruno Latour recognized that semiotically both human actors and nonhuman participants (whether artifacts or naturalized constructs like bacteria) were equally actants in the sense of Greimas' narrative semiotics: they were defined by how they acted and were acted on in the networks of practices. The important fact here is not that humans and nonhumans are treated symmetrically (a given in social semiotics and ecosocial dynamics) but that they are defined relationally as arguments or functors in the network, and not otherwise. This leads to a relational epistemology which rejects the naive positivist view of objects or actors as existing in themselves prior to any participation in ecosocial and semiotic networks of interactions (including the interactions by which they are observed, named, etc.). Actantial-relational epistemology is not nominalism, but far more sophisticated. ANT has much in common with Ecosocial Dynamics, but adds one crucial observation: that the usual view of dynamical systems assumes that they have a local topology, and so events nearby in space and time are more relevant than those at a distance, leading to neat separation of scales of processes. ANT notes that the topology of networks is in general non-local, and further that semiotic artifacts are often the 'boundary objects' that mediate non-local, scale-breaking interconnections. This leads to a powerful generalization of ecosocial systems theory to include network topologies (and the rarer laminar topologies) and makes possible a general inquiry into scale-respecting vs. scale-breaking dynamics. See discussion in Lemke, Aarhus paper. In addition to Latour, key figures in ANT include: M. Callon, J. Law, M. Lynch, S. Woolgar, and S.L. Star.

Actor-network theory (ANT) evolved from the work of Michel Callon (1991) and Bruno Latour (1992) at the Ecole des Mines in Paris. Their analysis of a set of negotiations describes the progressive constitution of a network in which both human and non-human actors assume identities according to prevailing strategies of interaction. Actors' identities and qualities are defined during negotiations between representatives of human and non-human actants. In this perspective, "representation" is understood in its political dimension, as a process of delegation. The most important of these negotiations is "translation," a multifaceted interaction in which actors (1) construct common definitions and meanings, (2) define representativities, and (3) co-opt each other in the pursuit of individual and collective objectives. In the actor-network theory , both actors and actants share the scene in the reconstruction of the network of interactions leading to the stabilization of the system. But the crucial difference between them is that only actors are able to put actants in circulation in the system.

According to Latour, the modern constitution or world view uses one dimensional language operating in the framework of opposite poles of nature and culture. Knowledge and artifacts are explained either by society (social constructionims) or by nature (realism). In order to transcend this dualism a second dimension is needed. It is the process of nature/society construction that results in the stabilization of a strong network. By selecting this process as a unit of analysis, it is possible to understand the simultaneous construction of culture, society and nature (Latour 1992a, 281): "Instead of being opposite causes of our knowledge, the two poles are a single consequence of a common practice that is now the single focus of our analysis. Society (or Subject, or Mind or Brain ...) cannot be used to explain the practice of science, since both are results of the science and technology making." The fact or artifact is transformed into a black box, once the network of many actors has been stabilized. "The reason why we went to study the laboratories, active controversies, skills, instrument making, and emerging entities was to encounter unstable states of nature/society and to document what happens in those extreme and novel situations (Latour 1991, 287)." The concept of "science and technology making" is - in my opinion - parallel to the concept of object-oriented, environment transforming human activity developed by materialistic dialectics and the Activity theory. The ANT raises the challenge of studying reality as transitional in its becoming, and as trajectories of creation. This idea of becoming and change is one of the central methodological ideals of dialectics as well.

Latour, Callon and others within the actor-network approach have developed an array of concepts in order to describe the development and operation of technoscience. Their valuable concepts include: regimes of delegation; the centrality of mediation; and the position that nature and society are not causes but consequences of human scientific and technical work. The position that a fact may be seen as a consequence, and not as an antecedent, is axiomatic to the American pragmatist approach.

ANT is based on no stable theory of the actor; in other words, it assumes the radical indeterminacy of the actor. For example, neither the actor's size nor its psychological make-up nor the motivations behind its actions are predetermined. In this respect ANT is a break from the more orthodox currents of social science. This hypothesis (which Brown and Lee equate to political ultra-liberalism) has, as we well know, opened the social sciences to non-humans.

ANT's rich methodology embraces scientific realism, social constructivism, and discourse analysis in its central concept of hybrids, or "quasi-objects", that are simultaneously real, social, and discursive. Developed as an analysis of scientific and technological artifacts, ANT's theoretical richness derives from its refusal to reduce explanations to either natural, social, or discursive categories while recognizing the significance of each (see, e.g. Latour 1993, 91). Following the work of Hughes, ANT insists that "the stability and form of artifacts should be seen as a function of the interaction of heterogeneous elements as these are shaped and assimilated into a network" (Law 1990, 113).

This framework (network) is comprised of components (actors) not all of which are usually (if ever) considered by the academically oriented sociologists. The network consists not only of people and social groups, but also artifacts, devices, and entities. Engineers who elaborate a new technology as well as all those who participate at one time or anotherin it's design, development, and diffusion constantly construct hypotheses and forms of argument that pull these participants into the field of sociological analysis. Whether they want to or not, they are transformed into sociologists, or what Callon calls engineer-sociologists.

March 13, 2007