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Actor–network theory (ANT) is a theoretical and methodological approach to social theory where everything in the social and natural worlds exists in constantly shifting networks of relationships. It posits that nothing exists outside those relationships. 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. Thus, objects, ideas, processes, and any other relevant factors are seen as just as important in creating social situations as humans.

ANT holds that social forces do not exist in themselves, and therefore cannot be used to explain social phenomena. Instead, strictly empirical analysis should be undertaken to "describe" rather than "explain" social activity. Only after this can one introduce the concept of social forces, and only as an abstract theoretical concept, not something which genuinely exists in the world.[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. Developed by science and technology studies (STS) scholars Michel Callon, Madeleine Akrich and Bruno Latour, the sociologist John Law, and others, it can more technically be described as a "material-semiotic" method. This means that it maps relations that are simultaneously material (between things) and semiotic (between concepts). It assumes that many relations are both material and semiotic. [2]

The theory demonstrates that everything in the social and natural worlds, human and nonhuman, interacts in shifting networks of relationships without any other elements out of the networks. ANT challenges many traditional approaches by defining nonhumans as actors equal to humans. This claim provides a new perspective when applying the theory in practice.

Broadly speaking, ANT is a constructivist approach in that it avoids essentialist explanations of events or innovations (i.e. ANT explains a successful theory by understanding the combinations and interactions of elements that make it successful, rather than saying it is true and the others are false).[3] Likewise, it is not a cohesive theory in itself. Rather, ANT functions as a strategy that assists people in being sensitive to terms and the often unexplored assumptions underlying them.[4] It is distinguished from many other STS and sociological network theories for its distinct material-semiotic approach.

Background and context

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ANT was first developed at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation (CSI) of the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris in the early 1980s by staff (Michel Callon, Madeleine Akrich, Bruno Latour) and visitors (including John Law).[3] The 1984 book co-authored by John Law and fellow-sociologist Peter Lodge (Science for Social Scientists; London: Macmillan Press Ltd.) is a good example of early explorations of how the growth and structure of knowledge could be analyzed and interpreted through the interactions of actors and networks. 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.

ANT appears to reflect many of the preoccupations of French post-structuralism, and in particular a concern with non-foundational and multiple material-semiotic relations.[3] At the same time, it was much more firmly embedded in English-language academic traditions than most post-structuralist-influenced approaches. 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. Its links with largely US-originated work on large technical systems were reflected in its willingness to analyse large scale technological developments in an even-handed manner to include political, organizational, legal, technical and scientific factors.

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. The "state of the art" of ANT in the late 1980s is well-described in Latour's 1987 text, Science in Action.[5]

From about 1990 onwards, ANT started to become popular as a tool for analysis in a range of fields beyond STS. It was picked up and developed by authors in parts of organizational analysis, informatics, health studies, geography, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, feminist studies, technical communication, and economics.

As of 2008, ANT is a widespread, if controversial, range of material-semiotic approaches for the analysis of heterogeneous relations. In part because of its popularity, it is interpreted and used in a wide range of alternative and sometimes incompatible ways. There is no orthodoxy in current ANT, and different authors use the approach in substantially different ways. Some authors talk of "after-ANT" to refer to "successor projects" blending together different problem-focuses with those of ANT.[6]

Key concepts

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Actor/Actant

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An actor (actant) is something that acts or to which activity is granted by others. It implies no motivation of human individual actors nor of humans in general. An actant can literally be anything provided it is granted to be the source of action.[7] In another word, an actor, in this circumstance, is considered as any entity that does things. For example, in the "Pasteur Network", microorganisms are not inert, they cause unsterilized materials to ferment while leaving behind sterilized materials not affected. If they took other actions, that is, if they did not cooperate with Pasteur – if they did not take action (at least according to Pasteur's intentions) – then Pasteur's story may be a bit different. It is in this sense that Latour can refer to microorganisms as actors.[7]

Under the framework of ANT, the principle of generalized symmetry[8] requires all entities must be described in the same terms before a network is considered. Any differences between entities are generated in the network of relations, and do not exist before any network is applied.

Human actors

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Human normally refers to human beings and their human behaviors.

Nonhuman actors

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Traditionally, nonhuman entities are creatures including plants, animals, geology, and natural forces, as well as a collective human making of arts, languages.[9] In ANT, nonhuman covers multiple entities including things, objects, animals, natural phenomena, material structures, transportation devices, texts, and economic goods. But nonhuman actors do not cover entities such as humans, supernatural beings, and other symbolic objects in nature.[10]

Actor-Network

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As the term implies, the actor-network is the central concept in ANT. The term "network" is somewhat problematic in that it, as Latour[1][11][12] notes, has a number of unwanted connotations. Firstly, it implies that what is described takes the shape of a network, which is not necessarily the case. Secondly, it implies "transportation without deformation," which, in ANT, is not possible since any actor-network involves a vast number of translations. Latour,[12] however, still contends that network is a fitting term to use, because "it has no a priori order relation; it is not tied to the axiological myth of a top and of a bottom of society; it makes absolutely no assumption whether a specific locus is macro- or micro- and does not modify the tools to study the element 'a' or the element 'b'." This use of the term "network" is very similar to Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomes; Latour[11] 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".

Actor–network theory tries to explain how material–semiotic networks come together to act as a whole; the clusters of actors involved in creating meaning are both material and semiotic. As a part of this it may look at explicit strategies for relating different elements together into a network so that they form an apparently coherent whole. These networks are potentially transient, existing in a constant making and re-making.[1] This means that relations need to be repeatedly "performed" or the network will dissolve. They also assume that networks of relations are not intrinsically coherent, and may indeed contain conflicts. Social relations, in other words, are only ever in process, and must be performed continuously.

The Pasteur story that was mentioned above introduced the patterned network of diverse materials, which is called the idea of 'heterogenous networks'.[7] The basic idea of patterned network is that human is not the only factor or contributor in the society, or in any social activities and networks. Thus, the network composes machines, animals, things, and any other objects.[13] For those nonhuman actors, it might be hard for people to imagine their roles in the network. For example, say two people, Jacob and Mike, are speaking through texts. Within the current technology, they are able to communicate with each other without seeing each other in person. Therefore, when typing or writing, the communication is basically not mediated by either of them, but instead by a network of objects, like their computers or cell phones.[13]

If taken to its logical conclusion, then, nearly any actor can be considered merely a sum of other, smaller actors. A car is an example of a complicated system. It contains many electronic and mechanical components, all of which are essentially hidden from view to the driver, who simply deals with the car as a single object. This effect is known as punctualisation,[13] and is similar to the idea of encapsulation in object-oriented programming.

When an actor network breaks down, the punctualisation effect tends to cease as well.[13] 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. This can also occur when elements of a network act contrarily to the network as a whole. In his book Pandora's Hope,[14] Latour likens depunctualization to the opening of a black box. When closed, the box is perceived simply as a box, although when it is opened all elements inside it become visible.

Translation

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Main article: Translation (sociology)

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. In his widely debated 1986 study of how marine biologists tried to restock the St Brieuc Bay in order to produce more scallops, Michel Callon defined 4 moments of translation:[8]

  1. Problematisation: The researchers attempted to make themselves important to the other players in the drama by identifying their nature and issues, then claiming that they could be remedied if the actors negotiated the 'obligatory passage point' of the researchers' study program.
  2. Interessement: A series of procedures used by the researchers to bind the other actors to the parts that had been assigned to them in that program.
  3. Enrollment: A collection of tactics used by the researchers to define and connect the numerous roles they had assigned to others.
  4. Mobilisation: The researchers utilized a series of approaches to ensure that ostensible spokespeople for various key collectivities were appropriately able to represent those collectivities and were not deceived by the latter.

Also important to the notion is the role of network objects in helping to smooth out the translation process by creating equivalencies between what would otherwise be very challenging people, organizations or conditions to mesh together. Bruno Latour spoke about this particular task of objects in his work Reassembling the Social.[1]

Quasi-object

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For the rethinking of social relations as networks, Latour mobilizes a concept from Michel Serres[15] and expands on it in order “to locate the position of these strange new hybrids”.[16] Quasi-objects are simultaneously quasi-subjects – the prefix quasi denotes that neither ontological status as subject or object is pure or permanent, but that these are dynamic entities whose status shifts, depending on their respective momentous activity and their according position in a collective or network.[17] What is decisive is circulation and participation, from which networks emerge, examples for quasi-objects are language, money, bread, love, or the ball in a soccer game: all of these human or non-human, material or immaterial actants have no agency (and thus, subject-status) in themselves, however, they can be seen as the connective tissue underlying – or even activating – the interactions in which they are enmeshed.[18] In Reassembling the Social, Latour refers to these in-between actants as “the mediators whose proliferation generates, among many other entities, what could be called quasi-objects and quasi-subjects.”[1]

Actor–network theory refers to these creations as tokens or quasi-objects which are passed between actors within the network. As the token is increasingly transmitted or passed through the network, it becomes increasingly punctualized and also increasingly reified. When the token is decreasingly transmitted, or when an actor fails to transmit the token (e.g., the oil pump breaks), punctualization and reification are decreased as well.

Other central concepts

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A material semiotic method

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Although it is called a "theory", ANT does not usually explain "why" a network takes the form that it does.[1] Rather, ANT is a way of thoroughly exploring the relational ties within a network (which can be a multitude of different things). As Latour notes,[11] "explanation does not follow from description; it is description taken that much further." It is not, in other words, a theory "of" anything, but rather a method, or a "how-to book" as Latour[1] puts it.

The approach is related to other versions of material-semiotics (notably the work of philosophers Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and feminist scholar Donna Haraway). It can also be seen as a way of being faithful to the insights of ethnomethodology and its detailed descriptions of how common activities, habits and procedures sustain themselves. Similarities between ANT and symbolic interactionist approaches such as the newer forms of grounded theory like situational analysis, exist,[19] although Latour[20] objects to such a comparison.

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. ANT is adamantly empirical, and as such yields useful insights and tools for sociological inquiry in general. ANT has been deployed in studies of identity and subjectivity, urban transportation systems, and passion and addiction.[21] It also makes steady progress in political and historical sociology.[22]

Intermediaries and mediators

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The distinction between intermediaries and mediators is key to ANT sociology. Intermediaries are entities which make no difference (to some interesting state of affairs which we are studying) and so can be ignored. They transport the force of some other entity more or less without transformation and so are fairly uninteresting. Mediators are entities which multiply difference and so should be the object of study. Their outputs cannot be predicted by their inputs. From an ANT point of view sociology has tended to treat too much of the world as intermediaries.

For instance, a sociologist might take silk and nylon as intermediaries, holding that the former "means", "reflects", or "symbolises" the upper classes and the latter the lower classes. In such a view the real world silk–nylon difference is irrelevant– presumably many other material differences could also, and do also, transport this class distinction. But taken as mediators these fabrics would have to be engaged with by the analyst in their specificity: the internal real-world complexities of silk and nylon suddenly appear relevant, and are seen as actively constructing the ideological class distinction which they once merely reflected.

For the committed ANT analyst, social things—like class distinctions in taste in the silk and nylon example, but also groups and power—must constantly be constructed or performed anew through complex engagements with complex mediators. There is no stand-alone social repertoire lying in the background to be reflected off, expressed through, or substantiated in, interactions (as in an intermediary conception).[1]

Reflexivity

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Bruno Latour's articulation of reflexivity in Actor-Network Theory (ANT) reframes it as an opportunity rather than a problem.[12] His argument addresses the limitations of reflexivity as traditionally conceived in relativist epistemologies and replaces it with a pragmatic, relational approach tied to ANT's broader principles. Latour argues that the observer is merely one actor among many within the network, eliminating the problem of reflexivity as a paradox of status. Reflexivity instead emerges through the tangible work of navigating and translating between networks, requiring the observer to engage actively, like any other actor, in the labour of connection and translation. This grounded form of reflexivity enhances the observer's role as a "world builder" and reinforces ANT's emphasis on the relational and dynamic nature of knowledge creation.

Hybridity

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The belief that neither a human nor a nonhuman is pure, in the sense that neither is human or nonhuman in an absolute sense, but rather beings created via interactions between the two. Humans are thus regarded as quasi-subjects, while nonhumans are regarded as quasi-objects.[7]

Actor–network theory and specific disciplines

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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, urban studies (Farias and Bender, 2010), and community, urban, and regional planning (Beauregard, 2012;[23] Beauregard and Lieto, 2015; Rydin, 2012;[24] Rydin and Tate, 2016, Tate, 2013).[25]

International relations

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Actor–network theory has become increasingly prominent within the discipline of international relations and political science.

Theoretically, scholars within IR have employed ANT in order to disrupt traditional world political binaries (civilised/barbarian, democratic/autocratic, etc.),[26] consider the implications of a posthuman understanding of IR,[27] explore the infrastructures of world politics,[28] and consider the effects of technological agency.[29]

Empirically, IR scholars have drawn on insights from ANT in order to study phenomena including political violences like the use of torture and drones,[26] piracy and maritime governance,[30] and garbage.[31]

Design

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The actor–network theory can also be applied to design, using a perspective that is not simply limited to an analysis of an object's structure. From the ANT viewpoint, design is seen as a series of features that account for a social, psychological, and economical world. ANT argues that objects are designed to shape human action and mold or influence decisions. In this way, the objects' design serves to mediate human relationships and can even impact our morality, ethics, and politics.[32]

Literary criticism

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The literary critic Rita Felski has argued that ANT offers the fields of literary criticism and cultural studies vital new modes of interpreting and engaging with literary texts. She claims that Latour's model has the capacity to allow "us to wiggle out of the straitjacket of suspicion," and to offer meaningful solutions to the problems associated with critique.[33] The theory has been crucial to her formulation of postcritique. Felski suggests that the purpose of applying ANT to literary studies "is no longer to diminish or subtract from the reality of the texts we study but to amplify their reality, as energetic coactors and vital partners."[34]

Anthropology of religion

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In the study of Christianity by anthropologists, the ANT has been employed in a variety of ways of understanding how humans interact with nonhuman actors. Some have been critical of the field of Anthropology of Religion in its tendency to presume that God is not a social actor. The ANT is used to problematize the role of God, as a nonhuman actor, and speak of how They affect religious practice.[35] 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.[36]

ANT in practice

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ANT has been considered more than just a theory, but also a methodology. In fact, ANT is a useful method that can be applied in different studies. Moreover, with the development of the digital communication, ANT now is popular in being applied in science field like IS research. In addition, it widen the horizon of researchers from arts field as well.

ANT in arts

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ANT is a big influencer in the development of design. In the past, researchers or scholars from design field mainly view the world as a human interactive situation. No matter what design we [who?] applied, it is for human's action. However, the idea of ANT now applies into design principle, where design starts to be viewed as a connector. As the view of design itself has changed, the design starts to be considered more important in daily lives. Scholars [who?] analyze how design shapes, connects, reflects, interacts our daily activities.[37]

ANT has also been widely applied in museums. ANT proposes that it is difficult to discern the 'hard' from the 'soft' components of the apparatus in curatorial practice; that the object 'in progress' of being curated is slick and difficult to separate from the setting of the experiment or the experimenter's identity.[38]

ANT in science

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In recent years, actor-network theory has gained a lot of traction, and a growing number of IS academics are using it explicitly in their research. Despite the fact that these applications vary greatly, all of the scholars cited below agree that the theory provides new notions and ideas for understanding the socio-technical character of information systems.[39] Bloomfield present an intriguing case study of the development of a specific set of resource management information systems in the UK National Health Service, and they evaluate their findings using concepts from actor-network theory. The actor-network approach does not prioritize social or technological aspects, which mirrors the situation in the case study, where arguments about social structures and technology are intertwined within actors' discourse as they try to persuade others to align with their own goals. The research emphasizes the interpretative flexibility of information technology and systems, in the sense that seemingly similar systems produce drastically different outcomes in different locales as a result of the specific translation and network-building processes that occurred. They show how the boundary between the technological and the social, as well as the link between them, is the topic of constant battles and trials of strength in the creation of facts, rather than taking technology for granted.[39]

Impact of ANT

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Contributions of nonhuman actors

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There are at least four contributions of nonhumans as actors in their ANT positions.[10]

  1. Nonhuman actors can be considered as a condition in human social activities. Through the human's formation of nonhuman actors such as durable materials, they provide a stable foundation for interactions in society.[40] Reciprocally, nonhumans' actions and capacities serve as a condition for the possibility of the formation of society.[41][10][42]
    • In Latour's We Have Never Been Modern[42], his conceptual "parliament of things" consists of social, natural, and discourse together as hybrids. Although the interlocks between human actors and nonhumans effects the modernized society, this parliamentary setting based on nonhuman actors would eliminate such fake modernization, and changes the dichotomy between modern society and premodern society.[16]
  2. Nonhuman actors can be considered as mediators. On the one hand, nonhumans could constantly modify relations between actors.[14][43] On the other hand, nonhumans share the same features with other actors not solely as means for human actors.[44] In this circumstance, nonhuman actors impact human interactions. It either creates an atmosphere for humans to agree with each other, or lead to conflict as the mediators.
    • It is noticeable that the status of mediation is more affiliated with intermediaries or means as a stable presence in the corpus of ANT,[45][46] while mediators function more powers to influence actors and networks.[10] Technical mediation exerts itself on four dimensions: interference, composition, the folding of time and space, and crossing the boundary between signs and things.[14]
  3. Nonhuman actors can be considered as members of moral and political associations. For example, noise is a nonhuman actor if the topic is applied to actor-network theory.[10] Noise is the criteria for humans to regulate themselves to morality, and subject to the limitations inherent in some legal rules for its political effects. After nonhumans are visible actors through their associations with morality and politics, these collectives become inherently regulative principles in social networks.[47]
  4. Nonhuman actors can be considered as gatherings. Alike nonhumans' impacts on morality and politics, they could gather actors from other times and spaces.[45] Interacted with variable ontologies, times, spaces, and durability, nonhumans exert subtle influences within a network.[41]

Criticism

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Some critics[48] have argued that research based on ANT perspectives remains entirely descriptive and fails to provide explanations for social processes. ANT—like comparable social scientific methods—requires judgement calls from the researcher as to which actors are important within a network and which are not. Critics[who?] argue that the importance of particular actors cannot be determined in the absence of "out-of-network" criteria, such as is a logically proven fact about deceptively coherent systems given Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Similarly, others[who?] argue that actor-networks risk degenerating into endless chains of association (six degrees of separation—we are all networked to one another). Other research perspectives such as social constructionism, social shaping of technology, social network theory, normalization process theory, and diffusion of innovations theory are held to be important alternatives to ANT approaches.

From STS itself and organizational studies

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Key early criticism came from other members of the STS community, in particular the "Epistemological Chicken" debate between Collins and Yearley with responses from Latour and Callon as well as Woolgar. In an article in Science as Practice and Culture, sociologist Harry Collins and his co-writer Steven Yearley argue that the ANT approach is a step backwards towards the positivist and realist positions held by early theory of science.[49] Collins and Yearley accused ANTs approach of collapsing into an endless relativist regress.[50]

Whittle and organization studies professor André Spicer note that "ANT has also sought to move beyond deterministic models that trace organizational phenomena back to powerful individuals, social structures, hegemonic discourses or technological effects. Rather, ANT prefers to seek out complex patterns of causality rooted in connections between actors." 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."[51] 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. Accordingly, ANT can be seen as an attempt to re-introduce Whig history into science and technology studies; like the myth of the heroic inventor, ANT can be seen as an attempt to explain successful innovators by saying only that they were successful. Likewise, for organization studies, Whittle and Spicer assert that ANT is, "ill-suited to the task of developing political alternatives to the imaginaries of market managerialism."

Human agency

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Actor–network theory insists on the capacity of nonhumans to be actors or participants in networks and systems. Critics including figures such as Langdon Winner maintain that such properties as intentionality fundamentally distinguish humans from animals or from "things" (see Activity Theory). ANT scholars  [who?] respond with the following arguments:

  • They do not attribute intentionality and similar properties to nonhumans.
  • Their conception of agency does not presuppose intentionality.
  • They locate agency neither in human "subjects" nor in nonhuman "objects", but in heterogeneous associations of humans and nonhumans.

ANT has been criticized as amoral. Wiebe Bijker has responded to this criticism by stating that the amorality of ANT is not a necessity. Moral and political positions are possible, but one must first describe the network before taking up such positions. This position has been further explored by Stuart Shapiro who contrasts ANT with the history of ecology, and argues that research decisions are moral rather than methodological, but this moral dimension has been sidelined.[52]

Misnaming

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In a workshop called "On Recalling ANT", Latour himself stated that there are four things wrong with actor-network theory: "actor", "network", "theory" and the hyphen.[53] In a later book, however, Latour reversed himself, accepting the wide use of the term, "including the hyphen."[1]: 9  He further remarked how he had been helpfully reminded that the ANT acronym "was perfectly fit for a blind, myopic, workaholic, trail-sniffing, and collective traveler"—qualitative hallmarks of actor-network epistemology.[1]

See also

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References

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Further reading

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Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Actor–network theory

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Actor–network theory () is a theoretical and methodological framework in , originating in science and studies during the , that analyzes social phenomena as outcomes of associations among heterogeneous actants— and non-human entities such as people, , documents, and natural objects—treated with analytical symmetry to trace how stable networks form through processes like and enrollment. Developed principally by , Michel Callon, and John Law, ANT rejects traditional social theory's divide between society and nature or subjects and objects, instead emphasizing relational materiality where agency emerges from network stabilization rather than inherent properties of isolated elements. Central to ANT are concepts such as , whereby actants align interests to build alliances, and black-boxing, the process by which complex networks congeal into seemingly seamless entities that obscure their assembled origins, enabling empirical case studies in domains like laboratory science, , and organizational change. Proponents argue this approach reveals the distributed character of action, challenging anthropocentric explanations by demonstrating how non-humans mediate and co-constitute outcomes, as seen in analyses of scientific facts or technological adoption where instruments and protocols exert influence akin to human decisions. However, ANT's influence extends beyond STS into fields like organizational studies and , though its descriptive focus has yielded tools for dissecting hybrid socio-technical systems without presupposing macro-social structures. Despite its analytical innovations, ANT has drawn substantial criticism for ontological flattening that equates intentional human actors with inert objects, potentially undermining distinctions rooted in empirical differences like consciousness and causality, and for sidelining power asymmetries or normative evaluation in favor of amoral network tracing. Critics contend it struggles to explain network durability without external criteria, risks descriptive relativism by denying stable essences, and offers limited explanatory power for concrete historical or structural dynamics, as evidenced in Marxist and realist rebuttals highlighting its evasion of mediation by class or intentionality. These debates underscore ANT's provocative reorientation of causality toward relational assembly, yet reveal tensions with traditions prioritizing human agency and verifiable mechanisms over symmetric heterogeneity.

Origins and Historical Development

Foundational Contributions in the 1980s

Michel Callon's 1986 article "Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay" introduced core concepts of actor–network theory through an empirical case study of marine biology researchers in Brittany, France, who sought to restock scallop populations by attaching larval collectors to fishermen's boat hulls. Callon outlined four moments of translation—problematization (defining the problem and obligatory passage points), interessement (convincing actors to accept roles), enrollment (establishing roles), and mobilization (ensuring representatives act for absent actors)—applied symmetrically to humans (fishermen, researchers) and nonhumans (scallops, collectors, starfish predators). This analysis demonstrated how networks form through relational processes rather than inherent properties, with failure occurring when nonhumans like scallops did not attach to collectors or when fishermen defected. Bruno 's ethnographic investigations of scientific practice in the 1980s built on this by emphasizing nonhuman agency in knowledge production. In The Pasteurization of France (originally published in French in 1984), traced how Louis Pasteur's microbes gained influence not through isolated genius but via alliances with farms, veterinarians, and laboratory instruments that mobilized microbial action against and other diseases. argued that scientific facts stabilize as networks where nonhumans, such as pathogens, exert causal effects equivalent to strategies, rejecting positivist hierarchies that privilege intention over material mediators. John Law, collaborating with Callon, advanced ideas of network stabilization in the 1986 edited volume Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, where chapters explored heterogeneous associations drawing on semiotic influences akin to Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of multiplicity and rhizomatic connections. Law's contributions highlighted how durable networks emerge from ongoing translations among human and nonhuman elements, such as in studies of projects, countering essentialist views by focusing on empirical contingencies. These works arose amid 1980s STS critiques of , which treated science as value-neutral discovery, by advocating a relational that traces associations without presupposing social or natural domains. ANT's early formulations prioritized descriptive fidelity to observed interactions over explanatory frameworks rooted in human-centric causation.

Key Texts and Expansion in the 1990s

In the early 1990s, Bruno Latour's (1991) advanced actor-network theory by critiquing the modernist dichotomy between nature and society, introducing the concept of hybrids as networks that defy purification into discrete realms. Latour argued that modernity's purported separation of objective facts from subjective values masks ongoing translations in heterogeneous associations, thereby formalizing ANT's emphasis on tracing these processes rather than assuming pre-given categories. This text extended the influence of Latour's earlier Science in Action (1987), whose methodological focus on practices gained broader traction in the decade through applications to scaling network analyses. Michel Callon and Latour's collaborative explorations of quasi-objects during this period shifted ANT toward viewing entities as circulating mediators that generate agency through relational dynamics, prioritizing processual assembly over static representation. In works like their contributions to edited volumes on , they illustrated how quasi-objects—neither purely subjects nor objects—facilitate network stabilization by enrolling diverse actants, as seen in analyses of trajectories. John Law's "Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy, and Heterogeneity" (1992) provided a pivotal clarification, emphasizing that ANT networks are not totalizing structures but contingent, materially heterogeneous configurations sustained by strategic ordering amid instability. Law highlighted the theory's resistance to , arguing that emerges from ongoing translations rather than inherent properties, thus addressing early critiques of ANT's apparent neglect of power asymmetries. By mid-decade, saw expanded adoption in , particularly through empirical studies of processes, such as network analyses of development that demonstrated how technical artifacts co-evolve with organizational strategies. This period marked conceptual maturation, yet revealed tensions in extending ANT from micro-level case tracings—effective for localized controversies—to macro-structures, where stabilizing vast networks risked overlooking durable inequalities without supplementary analytical tools.

Refinements and Institutionalization Post-2000

In 2005, published Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, which reframed ANT as a "sociology of associations" to emphasize tracing concrete mediators and connectors rather than presupposing a pre-existing social domain, thereby addressing critiques of ANT's limited scalability to macro-level phenomena. This shift aimed to make ANT more pragmatic by focusing on how associations assemble and circulate, allowing analysis of larger collectives through identifiable "oligoptica" devices like documents and instruments that link distant elements without requiring exhaustive . Post-2000, ANT gained institutional traction within (STS) programs, notably at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation (CSI) in , where foundational work continued under affiliates like Michel Callon, and at Lancaster University's Centre for Science Studies, which hosted key resources and scholars such as John Law, fostering empirical applications in heterogeneous networks. Responses to ANT's criticisms of descriptive flat ontology included Annemarie Mol's 2002 ethnography The Body Multiple, which introduced praxiography to examine how medical practices enact multiple, overlapping realities of disease (e.g., as coordinated through diagnostic tools and treatments), prioritizing infrastructural layering and interference over purely symmetric translations. This refinement highlighted how are performed in situated enactments, countering charges of ontological indifference by integrating multiplicity into network stabilization. ANT found empirical purchase in by dissecting failed technology implementations, such as the UK's National Programme for IT in , where analyses revealed breakdowns in actor alignments—e.g., incompatible software standards and resistance—preventing network stabilization despite heavy exceeding £10 billion by 2011. Similar applications in healthcare traced how electronic records systems faltered due to unaddressed heterogeneities among human users, protocols, and devices, informing redesigns that better account for translation processes.

Core Theoretical Principles

Actants and the Principle of Symmetry

In actor–network theory (), actants are defined as any entities—whether human, nonhuman, material, or conceptual—that modify a state of affairs or cause effects within relational networks. This semiotic understanding, articulated by , treats actants not as isolated substances but as sources of action granted through associations, encompassing scientists, laboratory equipment, microbial agents, or even abstract processes like legal protocols. For instance, in traffic regulation, a functions as an actant by altering driver velocities and enforcing compliance without human oversight, demonstrating how nonhuman elements exert causal influence comparable to intentional human directives. The principle of generalized underpins this framework by mandating equal analytical treatment of and nonhuman actants, rejecting anthropocentric distinctions that privilege intentionality over material affordances in tracing causal chains. Developed by and collaborators like Michel Callon in the , it requires describing phenomena using the same terms for all elements involved, such as equating a researcher's with the detecting capabilities of a spectrometer in knowledge production. This methodological avoids imputing a priori agency hierarchies, enabling empirical mapping of how actants—e.g., viruses propagating outbreaks or algorithms shaping flows—co-constitute events without reducing outcomes to volition alone. Empirical grounding for these concepts derives from ethnographic studies of scientific laboratories, where instruments emerge as active actants co-producing factual outcomes rather than passive tools subservient to human operators. In and Woolgar's 1979 analysis of a lab, phenomena like inscriptions from chromatographic devices were shown to mediate and transform raw materials into credible data, influencing interpretations as potently as researchers' decisions. Such observations reveal causal potency distributed across heterogeneous elements, as in cases where microbial cultures in Pasteur's experiments acted as actants resisting or aligning with human interventions to stabilize networks. Symmetry operates as a heuristic for causal realism, not a metaphysical claim of equivalence between actants' intrinsic properties; it facilitates unbiased reconstruction of associations by suspending judgments on essences until associations are traced. Critics, including those from realist traditions, argue it risks underplaying human intentionality's unique role in directed causation, yet proponents maintain its value lies in revealing overlooked nonhuman contributions, as evidenced in laboratory settings where equipment failures or affordances dictate experimental trajectories independently of operator intent. This approach thus prioritizes relational efficacy over essentialist categories for dissecting complex causalities.

Networks of Association and Translation Processes

In actor-network theory, networks arise as outcomes of ongoing associations among heterogeneous actants, rather than as stable, pre-given entities. These associations are forged through translation processes, which involve reinterpreting and aligning the identities, interests, and actions of diverse elements—human and nonhuman—into coherent alliances. Translation does not presume fixed social structures but treats network formation as a precarious achievement, contingent on the successful linkage of actants whose agency is distributed across the ensemble. Michel Callon formalized as a sequence of four interconnected moments in his analysis. occurs when focal actants define a problem in terms that render themselves indispensable, identifying obligatory passage points through which others must pass to resolve it. Interessement follows, involving tactics or devices to secure the of potential allies by locking their interests into the proposed frame, preventing deviation. Enrollment then transpires as allies accept the roles assigned to them, effectively incorporating their actions into the network's trajectory. Finally, solidifies the network when representatives or spokespersons act on behalf of the enrolled entities, ensuring collective representation without betrayal. These moments underscore the fragility of networks, which exist only as effects of sustained translations and can unravel if associations weaken. For instance, in Callon's empirical study of researchers attempting to domesticate scallops in St. Brieuc Bay, , during the early 1980s, problematization positioned collector ropes as solutions to , but interessement failed as scallops detached from the structures and fishermen rejected the imposed roles, leading to network collapse. This case demonstrates how nonhuman actants exert agency by non-cooperation, disrupting human-led translations and revealing networks' dependence on aligned causal interactions rather than inherent stability. The emphasis on translation counters individualistic models of agency by distributing causal efficacy across actants, where outcomes emerge from relational effects rather than isolated wills. Yet, this distributed view maintains causal realism: successful enrollment stabilizes alliances through verifiable mechanisms of alignment, avoiding dissolution into boundless by tracing how specific associations generate durable effects amid potential fragility.

Mediators, Intermediaries, and Stabilization Mechanisms

In actor–network theory, intermediaries are entities that transmit effects or meanings across a network without altering them, functioning as straightforward conduits that preserve the input's trajectory and output. For instance, a printed or a may relay information unchanged, allowing the network to extend without transformation. In contrast, mediators actively modify, translate, or distort the effects they carry, introducing variability and requiring ongoing negotiation within the network; an processing , for example, reshapes inputs into novel outputs that can redirect associations. This distinction, articulated by , underscores that networks rarely consist solely of intermediaries, as most elements exhibit mediatory potential, challenging assumptions of passive transmission in social-technical arrangements. Black boxing serves as a primary empirical mechanism for network stabilization, wherein a heterogeneous assembly of mediators achieves sufficient alignment to be treated as a unitary , concealing its internal complexities and controversies from external . This process enables : once "black-boxed," the entity—such as a or standardized fact—operates opaquely, with its reliability presupposed rather than perpetually contested. Inscription devices, like graphs or measurement tools, facilitate this by producing durable traces that enroll actants and mask the labor of , as seen in Latour's of scientific facts gaining robustness through immutable mobiles that unchanged across contexts. Stabilization thus relies on empirical in aligning trajectories, where breakdowns or dissent are sidelined to maintain the box's integrity, allowing networks to endure perturbations. Networks incorporate reflexive loops, where elements monitor and adjust their own associations, yet sustained durability demands selective ignorance of such reflexivity to preserve the black box's facade of coherence. For example, organizational protocols may self-correct via feedback but stabilize by routinizing deviations out of visibility. This mechanism, while empirically observable in case studies of adoption, has limits in truth-seeking analyses: an undue focus on perpetual risks underemphasizing invariant causal structures—such as physical laws or biological constraints—that persist independently of network negotiations, potentially flattening in favor of relational flux without sufficient evidential warrant for causal invariance.

Methodological Approaches

Material Semiotics as Analytical Lens

Material semiotics, as employed in actor–network theory (ANT), extends traditional semiotic analysis beyond linguistic or ideal signs to encompass material entities, treating signs as materialized and durable actants that co-constitute networks alongside physical objects, technologies, and discourses. In this framework, actants—defined semiotic entities capable of acting or being attributed action—are not confined to human agents but include nonhuman elements such as texts, instruments, or artifacts, which perform roles in relational associations without presupposing a priori distinctions between representation and reality. This approach analyzes how heterogeneous relations enact realities, where meaning emerges from the interplay of discursive and material traces rather than from abstract codes. ANT's material semiotics rejects linguistic idealism, which privileges disembodied meaning over material effects, by emphasizing empirical tracing of inscriptions—such as graphs, protocols, and diagrams—that render phenomena durable and mobile across networks. These inscriptions, observed in scientific laboratories, transform fluid observations into stabilized forms that "perform" facts by circulating through trials and associations, grounding analysis in observable relational dynamics rather than posited mental structures. This method prioritizes the enactment of reality through tangible mediators over interpretive idealism, ensuring that semiotic processes are verifiable via the material traces they leave. In contrast to structuralism's reliance on universal codes or deep structures, material semiotics in ANT focuses on contingent, local performances where networks stabilize through provisional alignments rather than timeless logics. No overarching semiotic system governs associations; instead, enactments occur site-specifically, as in maritime explorations where fragile webs of ships, maps, and calculations hold temporarily before potential dissolution. This localism underscores ANT's commitment to tracing how standards, such as bureaucratic protocols or certification systems, semioticize practices by inscribing relational orders that render diverse elements legible and aligned within specific contexts.

Tracing Heterogenous Associations

Tracing heterogeneous associations forms the empirical backbone of actor-network theory, directing researchers to map relational ties among actants by following their practical enactments rather than imposing explanatory schemas. posits that networks emerge from the "recorded movement of a thing," traced through the actors' own connections and transformations . This method commences at loci of or contingency, where stabilized linkages fracture, rendering associations explicit and allowing inquiry into how actants define and sustain their interdependencies without a priori distinctions of scale or domain. Heterogeneity mandates the inclusion of disparate elements—human agents alongside nonhuman artifacts, inscriptions, and material forms—treated symmetrically, as ANT codes associations "obsessively... through translations" that reveal how entities pliably interconnect without reduction to overarching social or natural categories. Central to the approach is an emphasis on empirically discernible modifications and translations, whereby actants reshape one another in observable processes, eschewing posits of hidden structures or universal forces in favor of the contingencies actors themselves negotiate. While potent for unveiling causal dynamics in flux, tracing risks interminable extension, as each linkage potentially spawns further ones; counters this with actor-defined pragmatic halts, noting that networks bear "no shadow" obliging exhaustive infill of interstitial spaces.

Handling Quasi-Objects and Hybridity

Quasi-objects in actor-network theory denote circulating entities that mediate social relations while defying strict subject-object distinctions, serving as integrators that constitute collectives by tracing alliances and oppositions. Drawing from ' philosophy, these quasi-objects function as both material artifacts and relational foci, exemplified by a soccer ball during play, which unifies players into a team through its trajectory—fostering among allies and antagonism toward rivals—while delineating the network's boundaries. adapts this to emphasize how such objects reveal the "missing mass" of the social, not as passive props but as active tracers that stabilize or destabilize associations without inherent ontological purity. Hybridity extends this by framing reality as inherently mixed assemblages of human and non-human elements, countering modernist purification processes that artificially segregate from . In ANT, purification constitutes a constitutional of , masking the ongoing production of hybrids—such as technological systems or biological-material interfaces—that entwine heterogeneous actants in perpetual translation. Latour's analysis posits these hybrids as the actual substrate of action, where quasi-objects circulate to negotiate contingencies, rendering dualisms illusory and highlighting distributed agency across networks. Empirically, ANT handles hybridity by tracing associations like blood transfusion protocols, where blood emerges as a quasi-object linking donors, storage devices, testing apparatuses, patients, and protocols into a stabilized network, distributing causal without reducing it to isolated intent or inert . This approach underscores causation as emergent from relational alignments rather than pre-given essences, though it privileges flat ontologies over layered causal strata.

Disciplinary Applications and Case Studies

In Science and Technology Studies

Actor–network theory () originated and found its primary empirical grounding in science and technology studies (STS), where it was applied to ethnographic analyses of practices and technological development processes during the 1980s and 1990s. These studies treated scientific knowledge and technological artifacts not as inherent properties of nature or human ingenuity alone, but as achievements stabilized through heterogeneous networks of human actors, instruments, inscriptions, and alliances. By tracing associations symmetrically between social and material elements, ANT revealed how facts gain durability through processes of translation, where provisional claims are enrolled into broader coalitions capable of circulating as "black-boxed" truths. A foundational case is and Steve Woolgar's (1979), an of research at the Salk Institute, which documented the construction of scientific facts through cycles of literary inscription—paper trails from experiments—and the investment of credibility in devices like spectrometers and reagents. Here, facts emerged as mobilized effects of networks, where researchers persuaded instruments to "speak" reliably and aligned findings with external validators, rather than through detached observation. Karin Knorr-Cetina's contemporaneous laboratory ethnographies, such as her studies of and labs in the early 1980s, complemented this by emphasizing how epistemic machinery—detectors, data streams, and protocols—co-produces knowledge objects, underscoring ANT's principle that materials actively shape scientific outcomes. In technological innovation, ANT illuminated failures as breakdowns in network assembly, as seen in Latour's examination of the Aramis project—a French automated personal rapid transit system prototyped from 1971 to 1983, which collapsed by 1993 due to unresolved translations among engineers, policymakers, and infrastructural elements. In Aramis, or the Love of Technology (1996), Latour dissects how the system's innovative docking mechanisms and decentralized controls failed to enroll stable allies, with shifting political priorities and technical incompatibilities preventing the network from achieving closure, thus exemplifying innovation as precarious alignment rather than linear progress. These STS applications propelled a shift in the field from constructivist —focused on social interests determining —to relationalism, where scientific truth arises from the causal efficacy of extended incorporating nonhuman mediators, thereby grounding critiques of in empirical tracings of associations without reducing outcomes to human subjectivity alone. This relational turn, evident in 1990s STS ethnographies, reinforced ANT's influence on understanding as a , materially distributed accomplishment.

In Organizational and Environmental Contexts

In organizational contexts, actor-network theory (ANT) employed to trace the heterogeneous networks through which management ideas and practices circulate and stabilize. Barbara Czarniawska and Bernhard Joerges (1996) analyzed city processes in as exemplars of "travels of ideas," where abstract concepts such as urban development models are translated into tangible objects—like documents or —via alliances among (planners, politicians) and non-human actants (texts, models), enabling ideas to acquire material form and exert influence across sites. This approach highlights translation as a key mechanism, where ideas are not passively diffused but actively negotiated and reshaped through network associations, as seen in empirical studies of strategy formulation where documents and technologies mediate power dynamics among executives and stakeholders. Such applications extend to environmental management, where ANT maps the alliances required for transitions, emphasizing the role of non-human elements in stabilizing low-carbon practices. In studies of shifts, researchers have used ANT to examine entanglements between historical fires—treated as actants shaping domestic routines—and contemporary low-carbon alternatives like heat pumps, revealing how past technological lock-ins resist translation into new networks involving policy incentives, user habits, and device affordances. For instance, oral histories from households demonstrate that fireside routines, as durable associations of warmth, comfort, and , create path dependencies that complicate the enrollment of technologies in 2020s decarbonization efforts. ANT's utility in green technology adoption is evident in analyses of actor roles across supply chains and policy arenas, as per systematic reviews identifying over 50 studies since 2010 that trace how innovations like gain traction through heterogeneous networks. In sustainability transitions, human (e.g., firms, regulators) align with technical actants (e.g., solar panels, certification standards) via processes of interessement and mobilization, fostering adoption in sectors like and ; a 2024 review notes that successful cases often involve black-boxing to reduce controversy, yet highlights uneven outcomes in developing contexts due to resource disparities. However, applications in these domains frequently underemphasize inherent power asymmetries, as ANT's principle of generalized symmetry flattens distinctions between strong and weak , potentially obscuring how dominant entities (e.g., corporations) coerce network formations over equitable translations. This limitation has prompted calls for hybrid extensions incorporating critical perspectives on structural inequalities in organizational and ecological networks.

In Healthcare, Media, and Emerging Fields

In healthcare, actor-network theory has been applied to dissect the interplay of human and nonhuman actors in service delivery, as evidenced by a 2024 systematic identifying 28 studies that trace how elements like (EHR) systems mediate clinical processes and . These analyses highlight EHRs as active mediators that reshape workflows, often stabilizing or disrupting networks through data flows and interoperability protocols, rather than passive tools. Similarly, a 2024 review of medicine uptake employed ANT to map barriers and enablers, revealing how regulatory documents, pharmaceutical supply chains, and training form alliances that either facilitate or resist adoption, with nonhuman actors like pricing algorithms exerting causal influence on rates exceeding 50% in some European contexts. In , ANT frames the circulation of as dynamic heterogeneous networks where content emerges from associations among journalists, algorithms, distribution platforms, and devices, rather than isolated reporting. This perspective underscores how digital intermediaries, such as feeds, translate and stabilize narratives, with empirical cases showing algorithmic prioritization altering story trajectories by up to 30% in virality metrics during events like the 2016 U.S. election coverage. Applications in emerging fields extend ANT to AI integrations and sustainability challenges. A 2023 analysis of generative AI like via ANT identified nine —including training datasets and inference engines—that co-produce ethical outcomes, emphasizing nonhuman elements' role in propagating biases through network translations without inherent human oversight. In organizational AI adoption, 2024 research using ANT traced how models enroll human decision-makers, forming distributed agencies that enhance predictive accuracy in supply chains by 15-20% but introduce lock-ins via opaque data dependencies. For , a 2024 of 48 ANT-based studies revealed growing emphasis on multi-level networks linking artifacts, natural resources, and technologies, with nonhuman like carbon capture devices mediating transitions in 70% of examined cases. Empirical investigations, such as oral histories of low-carbon heating shifts, demonstrate nonhuman lock-ins—e.g., existing boiler infrastructures resisting replacement despite incentives—affecting 60-80% of household adoption rates in trials.

Philosophical and Empirical Criticisms

Challenges to Ontological Flatness and Causal Realism

Actor–network theory's commitment to ontological flatness, wherein entities exist only through contingent relational assemblages devoid of inherent stability or hierarchical depth, has drawn criticism for neglecting emergent properties inherent in stratified realities. Realist theorists argue that this perspective erroneously disassembles social structures into ephemeral networks, failing to acknowledge their causal efficacy as wholes irreducible to interacting parts. For instance, Dave Elder-Vass maintains that denies the existence of recurrently instantiated kinds of things possessing consistent causal powers, thereby overlooking natural stabilities and types that underpin social phenomena. This flat ontology also undermines causal realism by conflating diverse modalities of causation through generalized symmetry, which equates human intentional agency with the effects of non-human actants. Critics from critical realism contend that such symmetry obscures stratified mechanisms—operating across empirical, actual, and real domains—with independent powers anterior to observed associations, reducing causation to flat empirical traces. Elder-Vass elucidates that ANT's approach commits an epistemic fallacy, privileging traceable relations over underlying generative structures and human intentionality's distinct role in efficient causation, thus limiting its capacity to explain enduring social dynamics. Empirically, ANT's relational emphasis falters in macro-explanations involving path dependency, where historical sequences impose structural constraints with causal persistence beyond momentary alliances, as flat dismisses such enduring hierarchies. Moreover, by framing facts and truths as stabilized networks of references and referents without independent ontological grounding, ANT invites that provisionalizes knowledge, eroding realist truth claims tethered to depth rather than alliance durability. Elder-Vass notes this weakens ANT's purported realism, as it denies persistent entities capable of sustaining objective referents across relational shifts.

Undermining Human Agency and Emergent Properties

Critics of actor–network theory (ANT) argue that its principle of generalized symmetry, which equates the causal efficacy of humans and nonhumans, erodes the distinctiveness of human agency by disregarding capacities such as reflexive deliberation and intentionality unique to conscious actors. In ANT, agency emerges from associations within networks rather than inhering in human subjects, leading to formulations where objects like technologies exert influence on par with human decisions, a symmetry that flattens ontological distinctions and obscures the stratified nature of causation where human intentionality operates through layered mechanisms. This approach contrasts sharply with critical realism, which posits human agency as embedded in but irreducible to social structures, enabling critique of power through recognition of intentional human action amid constraints. ANT's rejection of emergent properties further compounds this issue, as networks are depicted as provisional sums of heterogeneous elements without causal powers arising from the whole, a view that denies the reality of higher-order structures with effects not reducible to their components. Roy Bhaskar's critical realism, by contrast, emphasizes in stratified ontologies, where social wholes possess powers (e.g., institutional norms constraining or enabling action) that transcend individual or artefactual contributions, allowing for causal explanations that ANT's flat assemblages cannot accommodate. Empirical applications, such as organizational analyses, reveal ANT's limitations here: by tracing associations without invoking emergent dynamics, it fails to explain how collective entities like firms generate novel capacities, such as coordinated resistance or innovation, beyond mere relational ties. In organizational contexts, Whittle and Spicer (2008) highlight how ANT's toward power asymmetries—treating dominators and dominated as equivalent actants—undermines critical , rendering the descriptively neutral but analytically conservative, as it eschews of systemic inequalities in favor of micro-level translations. This manifests in cases like technology implementation, where ANT's network stabilization overlooks human accountability for design flaws with implications, such as algorithmic biases in decision systems, effectively diffusing responsibility across human-nonhuman hybrids without attributing culpability to deliberate choices. Such critiques underscore ANT's empirical shortfall in verifiable scenarios, like corporate scandals involving tech failures (e.g., the attributed to algorithms), where human oversight and ethical lapses demand precedence over symmetric network effects.

Relativism and Failure to Deliver Critique

Critics contend that actor–network theory's (ANT) principle of generalized symmetry, which equates the accounts of human and nonhuman actors without privileging empirical veracity, engenders epistemological by rendering all narratives provisionally equal until stabilized through enrollment. This approach lacks an independent normative criterion for adjudicating truth claims, as network success defines validity rather than correspondence to underlying realities, thereby masking a positivist veneer over constructivist indeterminacy. Such hampers ANT's capacity for substantive , reducing it to descriptive that traces associations without challenging entrenched power dynamics or ideological distortions. In organizational studies, for instance, ANT has been faulted for sidestepping ideology in favor of neutral depictions of network formation, as evidenced in examinations published in 2008 that question its alignment with emancipatory theories. This non-judgmental tracing, while detailed, fails to interrogate why certain networks dominate, enabling analyses that describe but do not dismantle asymmetries. By prioritizing network description over falsification or causal dissection, ANT accommodates relativistic constructivism untethered from generative mechanisms, undermining truth-seeking endeavors that demand explanatory depth. Post-2022 assessments have reinforced this view, deeming ANT's framework as theoretically debunked for its inability to sustain critical intervention beyond empirical mapping. Alternatives like critical realism address this shortfall by invoking stratified ontologies and retroduction to uncover real mechanisms, facilitating through identification of structural contradictions and absences rather than mere relational flux.

Influence, Legacy, and Recent Extensions

Broader Intellectual Impact and Limitations

Actor–network theory () has exerted a profound influence on by reframing scientific practice as the stabilization of heterogeneous networks involving human and actants, thereby challenging anthropocentric accounts of knowledge production. This distributed model of causation has inspired extensions into , where it illuminates how technologies and content co-constitute communicative assemblages, as seen in analyses of and digital infrastructures. In information systems research, ANT maintains traction over 35 years since its foundational texts in the mid-1980s, with 2024 reviews underscoring its utility for tracing socio-technical alignments in organizational contexts. These applications highlight ANT's empirical strength in uncovering overlooked contributions to causation, such as the role of infrastructural artifacts in shaping institutional outcomes. Despite this spread, ANT's core commitments to ontological flatness and symmetric tracing—codified primarily in works from the and —exhibit limited evolution, fostering a of foundational stagnation even as peripheral adaptations proliferate. John Law, a key proponent, has acknowledged limitations, noting that ANT's micro-level "fractional" methods excel at localized enactments but falter in capturing macro-scale phenomena without reductive or loss of heterogeneity. Critics further contend that this approach risks amoral by equating actants without normative differentiation, potentially undermining ethical agency in analyses of power-laden networks, though defenders like Wiebe Bijker argue such outcomes are interpretive choices rather than inherent flaws. Empirical validations of ANT's predictions remain case-bound, with broader causal claims often unverifiable beyond traced associations, tempering its paradigmatic overreach.

Post-Latour Trajectories and Hybrid Integrations

Following Bruno Latour's death on October 9, 2022, scholars have increasingly reflected on the future of actor-network theory (ANT), emphasizing trajectories that extend its relational ontology while addressing longstanding limitations in quantification and causal explanation. A 2024 reflection piece outlines three potential scenarios for ANT's evolution: dissolution into broader sociomaterial approaches, rigidification as a method, or inventive through hybridization with complementary frameworks, with the authors advocating for the latter to sustain ANT's amid empirical demands for rigor. These discussions highlight a shift toward integrating ANT's emphasis on heterogeneous networks with quantitative tools, such as (SNA), to enable measurable tracing of actor relations; for instance, a 2025 methodological proposal combines ANT's qualitative mapping of human-nonhuman interactions with SNA's graph-based metrics to analyze complex dynamics, revealing stabilized network patterns that ANT alone might overlook. Hybrid integrations have gained traction to infuse ANT with structural depth, particularly through pairings with critical realism, which posits underlying causal mechanisms absent in ANT's flat . A 2017 comparative analysis argues that while ANT excels in describing emergent associations, critical realism provides necessary strata for discerning path-dependent structures and real generative powers, suggesting a synthesis where ANT's empirical tracing informs realist accounts of enduring social forms. This approach counters ANT's by prioritizing causal realism, as evidenced in 2025 critiques that urge realists to adopt ANT's sensitivity to nonhuman agency while rejecting its denial of depth . In research, a 2024 systematic of 197 Scopus-indexed studies from 1999 to 2024 identifies ANT's growing application in , such as tracing actor alignments in eco-innovations, but recommends hybridizing with realist frameworks to model intransitive causal layers like resource dependencies, thereby enhancing predictive utility over purely descriptive networks. Recent extensions apply these hybrids to digital and healthcare domains, adapting ANT for contemporary empirical challenges. A forthcoming 2025 handbook chapter details methodological guides for "doing ANT" via digital tools, including automated network visualization and to follow digital actants like algorithms in real-time assemblages, thus quantifying translation processes that traditional struggles to scale. In healthcare, a 2024 systematic review synthesizes ANT's role in unpacking delivery systems, revealing how nonhuman actors (e.g., protocols, devices) stabilize or disrupt care networks, with calls for SNA hybrids to quantify interplay densities and critical realist overlays to identify emergent inequities rooted in stratified mechanisms rather than mere associations. Despite these advances, ANT's core commitment to ontological and eschewal of explanatory hierarchies persists, limiting full causal realism even in integrated forms, as hybrids often retain relativist tendencies in prioritizing observed relations over intransitive realities.

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