Romeo

Actor Network Theory

To give the term ‘network’ a common technical meaning in the sense of sewage, or train, or subway, or telephone ‘network’ is a mistake; recent technologies have often the character of a network, that is, of exclusively related yet very distant element with the circulation between nodes being made compulsory through a set of rigorous paths giving to a few nodes a strategic character; nothing is more intensely connected, more distant, more compulsory and more strategically organised than a computer network; such is not however the basic metaphor of an actor-network

Actor network theory makes use of some of the simplest properties of nets and then add it to an actor that does some work; the addition of such an ontological ingredient deeply modifies it

The first advantage of thinking in terms of networks is that we get rid of the ‘tyranny of distance’ or proximity; elements which are close when disconnected may be infinitely remote if their connections are analysed; conversely, elements which would appear as infinitely distant may be close when their connections are brought back into the picture

The notion of network also allows us to dissolve the micro- macro- distinction that has plagued social theory from its inception; the whole metaphor of scales going from the individual, to the nation state, through family, extended kind, groups institutions etc. is replaced by a metaphor of connections; for a network is never bigger than another one, it is simply longer or more intensely connected

An ‘actor’ in the Actor Network Theory is a semiotic definition (an actant); that is, something that acts or to which activity is granted by others; it implies no special 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 an action

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