#actor-network-theory
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repec-nep-pay.bsky.social
The Role of Online Platforms in Doxing: An Actor-Network Theory Perspective: Stäcker, Daniel; Saha, Ria
NEP/RePEc link
to paper
d.repec.org
November 5, 2025 at 4:45 AM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
I'll leave it at this tentative answer: Latour doesn't like theory any more than the reification of the structure/agent dualism, but between 1986 and 1992 he hesitantly becomes an actor-network theorist—first in the eyes of others (Shrum, Shapin, Collins, Yearley), then in his own texts.
November 4, 2025 at 12:13 AM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
No mentioning in Bijker's and Law's afterword either. A meager six entries for actor-network 'model/approach' rather than 'theory' in a book of 300+ pages. It almost feels like ANT is on its way out by 1992 ...
The index of Bijker & Law (1992) Shaping Technology/Building Society (p. 351), showing only six instances of 'actor-network' for the whole book, compared to about ten times as many for actor/actants
November 3, 2025 at 7:22 PM
schamp120.bsky.social
realizing that I would like to approach "AI" in a style both after Jung's Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, as well as (for the enterprise side, in academia and in other* institutions) actor-network theory as developed by Bruno Latour www.fulcrum.org/concern/mono...
Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory
www.fulcrum.org
November 1, 2025 at 6:08 PM
vbagav.bsky.social
When machines and algorithms interact with a learner, the learner becomes a participating agent in a dynamic network with connected technologies as actors, hence the actor-network theory can be considered in the analysis of such learning environments. #edu800fall25 #Leander
October 30, 2025 at 11:14 PM
tarquinhh.bsky.social
Interesting thread on the history of actor network theory.
toteraltermann.bsky.social Veit Braun @toteraltermann.bsky.social · 26d
Where did the notion of "actor-network theory" come from? If one is to believe Callon (1999: 194), the T for "theory" was never really part of ANT:
Callon, M. (1999). Actor-Network Theory—The Market Test. The Sociological Review, 47(S1), 184. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1999.tb03488.x At the start of this paper I was ready not only to recall Actor-Network Theory, but possibly to change the model and to launch a new range. In concluding it I am more optimistic. In short, it has passed one of the most demanding tests: that of the market. And if it has passed it is because ANT is not a theory. It is this that gives it both its strength and its adaptability. Moreover, we never claimed to create a theory. In ANT the T is too much ("de trop"). It is a gift from our colleagues. We have to be wary of this type of consecration especially when it is the work of our best friends. *Timeo danaos et dona ferentes:* I fear our colleagues and their fascination for theory.
October 27, 2025 at 1:26 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Law and Callon (in the Bijker/Law volume) do not explicitly refer to ANT, though implicit references are there in the terms and the problem description. Note the reference to the structure/action split in social theory—Latour disavows of its reproduction through the very terms 'actor-network'!
Law, J., & Callon, M. (1992). The Life and Death of an Aircraft: A network Analysis of Technological Change. In W. E. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping Technology/building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (pp. 25-26). MIT Press. We are emphasizing this process of mutual shaping because it is important to understand that actors are not simply shaped by the networks in which they are located (although this is certainly true), but they also influence the actors with which they interact. In one way this is obvious, for the latter class of actors are themselves located in and shaped by a global network. However, the point is worth making explicitly because it breaks down an abstract distinction common in social analysis between (determined) actor and (determining) structure, or between content and context. Neighbors do indeed shape new actors as they enter into transactions with them, but they are in turn reshaped by their new circumstances. Latour, B. (1999). On recalling ANT. The Sociological Review, 47(S1), 15–25. The second nail that I'd like to hammer into the coffin is the word 'actor' in its hyphenated connection with the notion of 'network'. From day one, I objected to the hyphen because inevitably it would remind sociologists of the agency/structure cliche, or, as we say in French, of the 'pont aux ones' of social theory. Most of the misunderstandings about ANT have come from this coupling of terms, one that is much too similar to the traditional divides of social theory.
October 26, 2025 at 10:08 PM
theoryculturesociety.org
ICYMI: Nicolas Langlitz, 'Primatology of Science: On the Birth of Actor-Network Theory from Baboon Field Observations' - situates actor-network theory in the history of evolutionary anthropology. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Primatology of Science: On the Birth of Actor-Network Theory from Baboon Field Observations - Nicolas Langlitz, 2019
This article situates actor-network theory in the history of evolutionary anthropology. In the 1980s, this attempt at explaining the social through the mediatio...
journals.sagepub.com
October 25, 2025 at 12:45 PM
favourboroks.bsky.social
I really like object-oriented ontology and it has even more critiques of Actor Network Theory than I was previously familiar with
October 23, 2025 at 8:26 AM
brooklynsoc.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy
In my data analysis class we're reading Massimo Airoldi's Machine Habitus: Toward a Sociology of Algorithms.

Tonight, I get to talk about one of my favorite sociological things: Actor-Network Theory.

#sociology #dataanalysis #highered #actornetworktheory
October 22, 2025 at 8:37 PM
geocritbot.uk
Sometimes we question the worth of pretending to have read books on actor-network theory, or understand financial geographies, then our code generates another mildly humorous post
October 20, 2025 at 1:10 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Which raises the question: if Law and Callon came up with actor-networks and *theory* in the same breath and Latour was almost immediately described as an actor-network theoretician by others, when did he himself endorse not just the A and the N but also the more contentious T?
October 18, 2025 at 3:19 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Probably the first author outside of this immediate context to "apply" actor-network theory is Philip J. Vergragt in an SSS paper from 1988 on industrial innovation, crediting it to Callon alone.
Vergragt, P. J. (1988). The Social Shaping of Industrial Innovations. Social Studies of Science, 18(3), 483-513. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631288018003004
October 18, 2025 at 3:16 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
The first person to take up "actor-network theory" was, it seems, Wesley Shrum in his 1988 review of Latour's (1987) Science in Action (devoid of "actor-network"), Callon's, Law's and Rip's edited volume and Bijker's, Hughes's and Pinch's (1987) "The Social Construction of Technical Systems":
American Journal of Sociology makers than students of science. Why? First, dependent as it is on keywords, there will always be some unknown "indexer effect" on the maps generated. But that kind of measurement error pervades sociology and does not seem life threatening. More important, the actor-network theory avowedly incorporates human actors, but they are not considered in co-word analysis. Finally, while information in a body of texts is aggregated, the theory is fundamentally ego centered, based on the idea of the fact builder as *entrepreneur*. (p. 402)
October 17, 2025 at 11:20 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
By 1992, however, Actor-Network *Theory* is already a thing. And the T has certainly been added not by any theory-addicted anonymous colleagues but by the likes of Vicky Singleton and John Law:
[CITATION] Science, Women and Ambivalence–An Actor Network Theory Analysis of the Cervical Smear Test V Singleton - 1992 - PhD dissertation, Lancaster … Save Cite Cited by 3 Related articles Showing the best result for this search. See all results Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy, and Heterogeneity John Law Received April 10, 1992 This paper describes the theory of the actor-network, a body of theoretical and empirical writing which treats social relations, including power and organization, as network effects. The theory is distinctive because it insists that networks are materially heterogeneous and argues that society and organization would not exist if they were simply social. Agents, texts, devices, architectures are all generated in, form part of, and are essential to, the networks of the social. And in the first instance, all should be analyzed in the same terms. Accordingly, in this view, the task of sociology is to characterize the ways in which materials join together to generate themselves and reproduce institutional and organizational patterns in the networks of the social. KEY WORDS: actor network; translation; heterogeneity; agency; technology; strategy; ordering; punctualization; power; materialism. Law, J. (1992). Notes on the theory of the actor-network: Ordering, strategy, and heterogeneity. Systems Practice, 5(4), 379–393. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01059830
October 17, 2025 at 10:03 PM
toteraltermann.bsky.social
Where did the notion of "actor-network theory" come from? If one is to believe Callon (1999: 194), the T for "theory" was never really part of ANT:
Callon, M. (1999). Actor-Network Theory—The Market Test. The Sociological Review, 47(S1), 184. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1999.tb03488.x At the start of this paper I was ready not only to recall Actor-Network Theory, but possibly to change the model and to launch a new range. In concluding it I am more optimistic. In short, it has passed one of the most demanding tests: that of the market. And if it has passed it is because ANT is not a theory. It is this that gives it both its strength and its adaptability. Moreover, we never claimed to create a theory. In ANT the T is too much ("de trop"). It is a gift from our colleagues. We have to be wary of this type of consecration especially when it is the work of our best friends. *Timeo danaos et dona ferentes:* I fear our colleagues and their fascination for theory.
October 17, 2025 at 9:26 PM
allergyphd.bsky.social
The other scholarly thing I'm hung up on today is John Law's version of actor-network theory, specifically his concern for how the circulation of technologies helps to create the new CONTEXTS in which those artifacts go on to operate
October 13, 2025 at 2:58 PM
gavinmueller.bsky.social
Actor-network theory with Chinese (food) characteristics
October 13, 2025 at 7:44 AM
geocritbot.uk
Excited to share our exciting newly published paper: 'For actor-network theory on theorising the power of ecoregions'
October 12, 2025 at 1:10 PM
octopodeeznuts.bsky.social
I wish i had better understood the graph theory part of the one probability class i took

The network clusterfuck of bot accounts has me thinking about the information density of follow relationships between accounts all controlled by one actor

Is it (N-1)^N possible states for N nodes?
October 7, 2025 at 9:44 PM
hptsociety.bsky.social
This perspective was deeply influential for later thinkers such as Bruno Latour, who built on Dagognet’s insights in developing actor-network theory and his analysis of laboratories as sites where inscriptions circulate, gain authority, and transform the world.
5/Final
October 3, 2025 at 4:36 PM
emilbakke.bsky.social
8/ We hope our quali-quant based framework, using computational methods combined with actor-network theory, can inspire future research on how momentary symbol construction processes occur in digital collectives.
September 30, 2025 at 1:39 PM
allergyphd.bsky.social
Daydreaming of a true, 1983 Latour-style actor-network theory analysis of the recomposition of political forces via mRNA vaccine labs at Pfizer and Moderna-BioNTech in 2020

(lmk if this exists!!!)
September 23, 2025 at 1:07 PM
aesguerra.bsky.social
➡️ Theory: I work with the concept of translation as developed in Actor-Network Theory and introduce it to the theory of International Relations. Translation sensitizes to the ways in which new actor) networks are formed, pointing to the changes in things and people taking part in the process.
September 21, 2025 at 1:04 PM
allergyphd.bsky.social
Going straight from "...so check out Merleau-Ponty on being-in-the-world" to "time to load the dishwasher and make soup for 15 minutes! ow, I burned myself on the hot-hot water!!" to "is actor-network theory a method or an epistemology?" is a bit of whiplash
September 17, 2025 at 5:21 PM