ANT originates in the work of Michel Callon, Bruno Latour and John Law in the field of science and technology studies (STS), which explores the impact of society, politics and culture on scientific and technological development and vice versa. [25] Others have used the ANT to speak of the structures and placements of religious buildings, especially in cross-cultural contexts, which can see architecture as agents making God's presence tangible.[26]. [2] Likewise, it is not a cohesive theory in itself. Some authors talk of "after-ANT" to refer to "successor projects" blending together different problem-focuses with those of ANT.[5]. A car is an example of a complex system. [1] Although it is best known for its controversial insistence on the capacity of nonhumans to act or participate in systems or networks or both, ANT is also associated with forceful critiques of conventional and critical sociology. When an actor network breaks down, the punctualisation effect tends to cease as well. Bruno Latour (Beaune, Borgoña; 22 de junio de 1947) es un filósofo, sociólogo y antropólogo de la ciencia francés. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. Wiebe Bijker has responded to this criticism by stating that the amorality of ANT is not a necessity. Recently, there has been a movement to introduce actor network theory as an analytical tool to a range of applied disciplines outside of sociology, including nursing, public health, business (Klein and Czarniawska, 2005), urban studies (Farias and Bender, 2010), and community, urban, and regional planning (Beauregard, 2012;[13] Beauregard and Lieto, 2015; Rydin, 2012;[14] Rydin and Tate, 2016, Tate, 2013).[15]. Social Studies of Science 42(2), 313–321; Shamir, Ronen (2013) Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine. They argue that ANT's ontological realism makes it "less well equipped for pursuing a critical account of organizations—that is, one which recognises the unfolding nature of reality, considers the limits of knowledge and seeks to challenge structures of domination. Central to ANT is the concept of translation which is sometimes referred to as sociology of translation, in which innovators attempt to create a forum, a central network in which all the actors agree that the network is worth building and defending. Rather, ANT functions as a strategy that assists people in being sensitive to terms and the often unexplored assumptions underlying them. This is called the principle of generalized symmetry. The ANT is used to problematize the role of God, as a non-human actor, and speak of how He affects religious practice. 2009. Collins, H. M., & Yearley, S. (1992). Sociologo, antropologo, filosofo, egli è oggi in prima linea nei dibattiti di ecologia politica: la portata teoretica ed euristica della sua opera va ricercata – questa l’ipotesi che ci ha guidati nel condurre l’intervista che segue – proprio nella sua indisciplinatezza. Broadly speaking, ANT is a constructivist approach in that it avoids essentialist explanations of events or innovations (i.e. Pinch (eds. La Teoría del Actor-Red, conocida como ANT, es un enfoque sociológico característico de teoría social y de investigación originado en el campo de los estudios sociales de la ciencia en los años 1980. Son entramados relacionales de entidades que adquieren su significado individual en las totalidades con sentido que conforman. Although ANT is mostly associated with studies of science and technology and with the sociology of science, it has been making steady progress in other fields of sociology as well. In the automobile example above, a non-working engine would cause the driver to become aware of the car as a collection of parts rather than just a vehicle capable of transporting him or her from place to place. All the factors involved in a social situation are on the same level, and thus there are no external social forces beyond what and how the network participants interact at present. Initially created in an attempt to understand processes of innovation and knowledge-creation in science and technology, the approach drew on existing work in STS, on studies of large technological systems, and on a range of French intellectual resources including the semiotics of Algirdas Julien Greimas, the writing of philosopher Michel Serres, and the Annales School of history. [3] It is distinguished from many other STS and sociological network theories for its distinct material-semiotic approach. Bruno Latour (1947) è autore impossibile da assegnare stabilmente a un’appartenenza disciplinare. En cualquier caso, podemos llamar a estas formulaciones reduccionistas. La Teoría del Actor-Red sigue la trayectoria iniciada por el construccionismo social. Stanford: Stanford University Press. This use of the term "network" is very similar to Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomes; Latour[6] even remarks tongue in cheek that he would have no objection to renaming ANT "actant-rhizome ontology" if it only had sounded better, which hints at Latour's uneasiness with the word "theory". "Re-imagining Civil Society in Contemporary Urban China: Actor-Network-Theory and Chinese Independent Film Consumption. Destinée au départ à l’étude de l’innovation dans les réseaux scientifiques (voir Callon et Ferrary, 2006), la Sociologie de la traduction In W.E. ANT assumes that all entities in a network can and should be described in the same terms. The rationale for this is that differences between them are generated in the network of relations, and should not be presupposed. As soon as an actor engages with an actor-network it too is caught up in the web of relations, and becomes part of the entelechy. En el lado opuesto, el determinismo social considera la tecnología como una construcción en el sentido amplio pero sin ningún tipo de agencia ni autonomía, siendo la sociedad la única causa de los cambios sociales. When closed, the box is perceived simply as a box, although when it is opened all elements inside it become visible. (1990). On Tanya Lurhmann's When God Talks Back and Bruno Latour", "Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding It Empty : Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology Science, Technology, & Human Values", Service Science – an Actor Network Theory Approach, Actor-Network Theory: A Bureaucratic View of Public Service Innovation, "On Actor Network Theory: A Few Clarifications", "Dolwick, JS. Propone una visión simétrica y monista del mundo. Please note that the copyright of this paper remains with the author. Its grounding in (predominantly English) science and technology studies was reflected in an intense commitment to the development of theory through qualitative empirical case-studies. As the term implies, the actor-network is the central concept in ANT. ANThology. Theoretically, scholars within IR have employed ANT in order to disrupt traditional world political binaries (civilised/barbarian, democratic/autocratic, etc. También han colaborado en su elaboración investigadores anglosajones como John Law, Arie Rip, Susan Leigh Star y Geoffrey Bowker. Although it is called a "theory", ANT does not usually explain "why" a network takes the form that it does. ANT holds that social forces do not exist in themselves, and therefore cannot be used to explain social phenomena. Es decir, la conceptualización de red y de que los actantes no pueden excluirse de las explicaciones puede llevarnos a perder el foco original. Latour claims that ANT is a ‘powerful way of rephrasing basic issues of social theory, epistemology, and philosophy’. As the token is increasingly transmitted or passed through the network, it becomes increasingly punctualized and also increasingly reified. "[29] This implies that ANT does not account for pre-existing structures, such as power, but rather sees these structures as emerging from the actions of actors within the network and their ability to align in pursuit of their interests. Many of the characteristic ANT tools (including the notions of translation, generalized symmetry and the "heterogeneous network"), together with a scientometric tool for mapping innovations in science and technology ("co-word analysis") were initially developed during the 1980s, predominantly in and around the CSI. ", Seio Nakajima. Latour, en su libro “Reensamblar lo social”, redacta un párrafo que recoge de forma muy explicativa las características principales de su teoría de ensamblaje: «Lo social se detecta además a través de los sorprendentes movimientos de una asociación a la siguiente; esos movimientos pueden ser suspendidos o reiniciados; cuando son suspendidos prematuramente, lo social, tal como se lo concibe normalmente, aparece compuesto por participantes ya aceptados llamados "actores sociales", que son miembros de una "sociedad"; cuando el movimiento hacia la recolección se reinicia, rastrea lo social en tanto asociaciones a través de muchas entidades no sociales que podrían convertirse en participantes más adelante; si se lo realiza sistemáticamente, este rastreo puede culminar en una definición compartida de un mundo común, lo que he llamado un colectivo; pero si no existen procedimientos para lograr que ese mundo sea común, puede ocurrir que no sea ensamblado y, por último, la mejor definición de la sociología es que se trata de la disciplina en la que los participantes explícitamente se ocupan de reensamblar lo colectivo».[2].