Actor Network Theory

“..there are four things that do not work with Actor Network Theory; the word actor, the word network, the word theory and the hyphen! Four nails in the coffin…” Bruno Latour (1999), On Recalling ANT, p.15

So apparently the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has nothing to do with its title. Nothing to do with George Clooney, nothing to do with networks i.e train lines, pipe lines and telephones and nothing to do with the word theory!

So apparently an ‘Actor-Network’ may lack all the characteristics of a technical network (i.e train lines) -it may be local and it may have no compulsory paths as there are no strategically positioned nodes. Understandably the phrase Actor Network Theory confuses practically all newbies who are unaware of what it actually means.

ANT is an approach to social theory and research, originating in the field of scientific studies, which treats objects as part of social networks. ANT is also associated with forceful critiques of conventional and critical sociology. So, more precisely The Actor-Network Theory is a change of topology. Instead of thinking in terms of surfaces – two dimension- or spheres -three dimension- one is asked to think in terms of nodes that have as many dimensions as they have connections.

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.