Actor-Network Theory

Actor-network theory (ANT), also known as sociology of translation, is a theory initially developed by science and technology studies scholars—notably Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John Law—to account for the hybrid and plural nature of scientific work. Instead of starting from culture and society or, conversely, from nature and technology to explain the production of scientific knowledge, ANT scholars proposed from the 1980s to develop what they call a performative view of the production of science, a view that takes into account not only what scientists accomplish in their laboratory or fieldwork but also what nonhumans do, whether they be machines, texts, or even objects of study.

Accounting for the logic of scientific work is impossible, ANT scholars contend, if we do not acknowledge the difference that sensors, graphs, or samples make, for instance in the development of scientific practices. Symmetrically, they contend that political agendas and strategic alliances also make a difference in the unfolding of such practices. As scholars, we therefore do not have to choose between two starting points—nature or technology versus society or culture—to explain given practices; we have, on the contrary, to start from these practices themselves to explain the production of nature, technology, culture, and society.

Although this perspective could have remained limited to science and technology studies, it quickly became quite influential in many different disciplines, such as geography, philosophy, anthropology, organizational studies, and communication, to name just a few. In communication studies, this approach was especially introduced through the work of representatives of the Montréal School of Organizational Communication, constituted around the work of James R. Taylor. According to this perspective, an organization, as any collective, should never be considered the starting point of our studies and reflection but should rather be understood as the product of communication activities. This bottom-up approach thus proposes to study the organizing properties of communication by analyzing various interactional and textual activities that literally constitute what we call an organization. An organization, according to this [Page 17]approach, should be considered as literally filled with agencies in interaction, whether these agencies are procedures, managers, computers, architectural elements, workers, or machines.

Several key concepts have been developed over the years to account for the constitution of the hybrid and plural world we live in. One of the most important is spokesperson, or macroactor, in that it shows how a given (human or nonhuman) actor can become a network (and vice versa); hence the expression actor-network. Acting and/or speaking in the name of, on behalf of, and/or in the stead of something or someone else, that is, macroacting, is indeed the main way by which collectives or networks are constituted. Once an agent is recognized and acknowledged as acting or speaking in the name of others, whether they are a collection of individuals (a we) or a collective (an it), these others can be said not only to have an identity—they start to exist as a we or as an entity, an it—but also to act from a distance, that is, to tele-act or telecommunicate.

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