actor network

30 Oct 2021 02:15 - 17 Jun 2023 08:29
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    • Aka ANT
    • See Bruno Latour and Actor–network theory - Wikipedia. Of interest since it's a well-established alternative framework for thinking about agency – in that the actors it identifies are not necessarily human, but could be (eg) machines, institutions, animals, or even non-animate natural objects like
    • Bears some relationship to the influential Actor model of computation developed by Carl Hewitt, although not sure exactly what that relationship was.
    • Although it is best known for its controversial insistence on the capacity of nonhumans to act or participate in systems or networks or both, ANT is also associated with forceful critiques of conventional and critical sociology. Developed by science and technology studies (STS) scholars Michel Callon, Madeleine Akrich and Bruno Latour, the sociologist John Law, and others, it can more technically be described as a "material-semiotic" method. This means that it maps relations that are simultaneously material (between things) and semiotic (between concepts). It assumes that many relations are both material and semiotic.
      • – Wikipedia