Actor Network Theory

The Actor in ANT

Taking seriously the agency of nonhumans (machines, animals, texts, and hybrids, among others), the ANT network is conceived as a heterogeneous amalgamation of textual, conceptual, social, and technical actors. The “volitional actor” for ANT, termed actant, is any agent, collective or individual, that can associate or disassociate with other agents. Actants enter into networked associations, which in turn define them, name them, and provide them with substance, action, intention, and subjectivity. In other words, actants are considered foundationally indeterminate, with no a priori substance or essence, and it is via the networks in which they associate that actants derive their nature. Furthermore, actants themselves develop as networks. Actors are combinations of symbolically invested “things,” “identities,” relations, and inscriptions, networks capable of nesting within other diverse networks.

The Network in ANT

The terms actor and network are linked in an effort to bypass the distinction between agency and structure, a core preoccupation within sociology (as well as other disciplines). This distinction is neither useful nor necessary for ANT theorists, as macrolevel phenomena are conceived as networks that become more extensive and stabilized. Networks are processual, built activities, performed by the actants out of which they are composed. Each node and link is semiotically derived, making networks local, variable, and contingent.

Analytically, ANT is interested in the ways in which networks overcome resistance and strengthen internally, gaining coherence and consistence (stabilize); how they organize (juxtapose elements) and convert (translate) network elements; how they prevent actors from following their own proclivity (become durable); how they enlist others to invest in or follow the program (enroll); how they bestow qualities and motivations to actors (establish roles as scripts); how they become increasingly transportable and “useful” (simplify); and how they become functionally indispensable (as obligatory points of passage).

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