Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the network) both on the base of integrating waste materials into the market and
rendering waste into resources through a technical process. Thus, EMT conceives
Julian's recycling network as useful to society and its environmental effects as
meaningful to Julian himself.
22.3.2 A Fresh and Flat Perspective through Actor-network Theory
Latour, Callon and Law study science and technology as
actor-networks
. Their
approach is usually called Actor-network theory (ANT)
19
. Fasten your seat belts!
ANT uses lots of concepts which need to be introduced. Crucial to this approach is
that they break, like Haraway (1991), with the culture/nature dualism. In ANT an
actor can be anything that acts, i.e., human beings, institutions, and hybrid objects,
i.e., those which are shaped by society through technology or discourse (consider
e.g. a genetically modified animal). This claim is necessary for Actor-network
theorists in order to avoid false assumptions about which actor has how much
power. Thus, their approach is based on an ontology
20
which does not discriminate
between humans and non-humans. For ANT, all those who act or are subject or
object of relations of representation are called
actants
; and they are mapped prin-
cipally in symmetry. The actor-network is not assumed to be asymmetrical from
the outset. Rather, who has power is a matter of empirical study. Power derives
from networks which actants control. What does this mean?
Key authors of ANT, Callon and Latour, agree with many sociologists that the
fundamental problem of society is agent's interest in more power (1981, p. 293).
In order to win, i.e., to increase power, an actant, say Julian, aims to arrange other
actants such that they provide power to him. This activity is called
enlistment
.
How does this work? Julian would put elements into a black box, such that they
are not considered anymore by other actants. An element can be anything. ANT
proposes, he “makes other elements dependent upon [himself] and translates their
will into a language of [his] own” (ibid., p. 286). Actants are constantly engaged
in controversies and struggle. The use of ANT is to investigate how controversies
are black-boxed and by that the actants who sits “on top of the box” (ibid., p. 297)
gains power
21
.
The process of
translation
is of prime importance to ANT. ANT, as studying
translation (Law 1992), identifies “the simultaneous production of knowledge and
construction of a network of relationships in which social and natural entities mu-
19
In this account I am focussing on Callon and Latour (1981), Woolgar (1991), Law
(1992), Callon (1995), Strathern (1996), Callon (1999) and am informed by Fairhead and
Leach (2003), Michael (2000) as well as Bijker (1995). Law and Hassard (1999) became
aware of many short-comings of ANT meanwhile and sophisticated it significantly.
Within the scope of this paper I focus on original formulations of ANT.
20
Ontology
refers to what is. Different ontologies make different assumptions about that.
Cf. Mutch (2002, p. 485).
21
Strathern (1996, p. 523) points us to the fractal logic within the box: networks can be
traced into depth without limits.
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