Network Actor

Gallon, M. 1986. The sociology of an actor-network the case of the electric vehicle. In M. Gallon, J. Law A. Rip (eds.). Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology. London Macmillan. 

Law, J. 1992. Notes on the theory of the actor-network ordering, strategy and heterogeneity. Systems Practice, 5 379-393. 

Lawn people are, therefore, also perfectly enrolled participants in actor-networks. The turfgrasses to which they are linked (many of which are already evolutionary beneficiaries of grazing ecologies of previous imperial ecologies [see Chapter 2]), benefit from lawn chemicals and demand the labor of lawn people. Lawns, in this sense, are not simply plots of grass, but instead are a fixed cluster of grasses, chemicals, and people a form of socioenvironmental monoculture. 

This approach to the lawn holds epistemological implications for a far wider problem in explanation. How do objects matter in a world where culture mediates our experience of objects How can the lawn matter independently of its own construction To date, soft answers have been given to this problem. Objects are part of actor-networks, it has previously been suggested. 

Murdoch, Jonathan. (1997). Inhuman/nonhuman/human actor-network theory and the prospects for a non-dualistic and symmetrical perspective on nature and society. Environment and Planning D Society and Space 15 137. 

Latour, Bruno. (2005). Reassembling the Social An Introduction to Actor-Network-theory. Oxford Oxford University Press. 

Communication and co-operation in actors networks supports innovations (especially in vertical communication along the supply chain). Where these factors are missing the result may be (undesired) innovation blockades because a lack of concurrence, differences in interests of the actors involved or the lack of desire to co-operate of individual important players cannot be overcome (negative network effects). 

The analogy with sides of coins suggests a symmetry between the social and the technical, and that they should each be treated in the same way. This is the method of actor-network theory , in which non-human artefacts and humans are regarded alike as actants in the same sociotechnical realm.5... 

At the same time as attributing human capacities to non-human objects, the accounts of actor-network theory strip human actors of important aspects of their agency. What counts as an actant is an effect generated by a network of heterogeneous, interacting materials (Law, 1992, p383, emphasis in original) and... 

For various perspectives on actor-network theory see Law and Hassard (1999). 

Law, J. and Hassard, J. (1999) Actor Network Theory andAfler, Blackwell, Oxford Levinson, P. (1988) Mind at large Knowing in the technological age , Research in Philosophy and Technology, supplement 2... 

Williams-Jones B, Graham JE. Actor-network theory a tool to support ethical analysis of commercial genetic testing. New Genetics and Society 2003 22 271-296. 

My interpretation here runs counter to Latour s general theory of interest translation (Latour 1987 108-121 1988 65-67), In this case, interested groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Association of Analytical Chemists were purposefully not translated. Here we see how the absence of an association in this particular context became the mechanism that funneled power into the EMS actor-network. ... 

While Discourse Analysts and Reflexivity Theorists reinforced the tendency of Laboratory Studies to identify science with its rhetorical and discursive practices, other constructivists stretched the arena of construction beyond the narrow confines of the laboratory. They responded to the problem of construction with ideas of the extension or circulation of local forms of life . Shaped by Foucauldian notions of disciplinarity and Latour s Actor-Network Model,... 

In order to learn more about the network in which Laurentia Dombrowski enjoyed a central position, I would like to turn to the actor network theory by Latour. In the relationship between Sister Laurentia and Miss Riese, the letters were very central non-human actants, and even more the atmosphere conveyed by the words, as Laurentia herself mentioned whenever such a wonderful letter from you arrives, I would love to sit dovm right away and answer it with a warm echo . From the first more formal letters, the language of the two correspondents increasingly took up a figurative style and special combination of practical and emotional affairs, objective and subjective aspects, which might have been instrumental in stimulating the women to continue in the exchange of their ideas. 

Latour, B. (1996) On Actor Network Theory - a few clarifications. Soziale Welt 47 (4), 369-381. 

Noe, E. and Alroe, H.F. (2006) Combining Luhmann and Actor-Network Theory to see farm enterprises as self-organizing systems. Cvbernetic and Human Knowing 13, 34-48. 

One of the most prevalent theories in the collection comes from Actor Network Theory. ANT is not a framework that can be applied to the field of study rather it is a method for analysing data that allows the actors to express themselves. The network is not simply a series of connections but of flows making ANT a particularly useful theory for situations when changes are occurring rapidly or where boundaries are fuzzy. Analysis favours thick description rather than explanation, the network is not the object of the description it is the description as the story unfolds, actors themselves make everything, their own frames, their own theories, their own contexts, their own meta physics, even their own ontology (Latour, 2005). 

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