Tenets of Actor Network Theory

By Mentor Cana on February 3, 2004 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From FNF: ACTOR NETWORK THEORY 2001-05-07:

"For what it's worth, here is my own brief outline summary of some of the main ideas of ANT:

1. There is an emphasis on networks and links, as opposed to heroic individual "genuises"

2. The nodes in these networks, called actants, include not just humans, but also non-humans, such as physical objects; they all do some kind of work to maintain the integrity of the network.

3. Individual actants, and groups of actants, in general have different value systems, so that translation among these systems is necessary for a network to succeed; this work is done along the links in the network. Socio-technical compromise is the work done to bring the various technical and social nodes into alignment.

4. The structure of a project can only be seen clearly when these translations (and hence the project) have been successful; hence the values, and even the parts and structure, of a failed project are not in general well defined.

5. The human actors in a project are in a sense sociologists, because they must do acts of interpretation, which in effect are theories of the project; this work should be taken very seriously by sociologists, who should not assume that their own views are necessarily superior to those of the actual participants."