Actor-Network Theory Research

by Richie Nimmo (Editor)

Overview

Actor-Network Theory has grown into one of the most innovative and influential approaches for social science research. Originating in the field of science and technology studies with scholars Michel Callon, Bruno Latour and John Law, it is now used widely across the social sciences and beyond. In this four-volume collection, Richie Nimmo brings together defining research articles on Actor-Network Theory to chart its emergence, development and transformation over time, as well as its application in multiple fields.

This comprehensive major work is organised thematically and features sections on:

Part One - Emergence, Development and Transformation:

The Sociology of Translation
Techno-Politics and Sociotechnical Relations
Reflexivity, Heterogeneity and Symmetry
Topology and Post-Social Ontologies
Materiality and Ontological Politics
Method Assemblages and Inscriptions
Critiques and Clarifications

Part Two - Translations, Parallels and Mobilisations:

Performing Markets, Finance and Economics
Arts, Taste and Cultures
Bodies, Medicine and Disabilities
Hybrid Geographies and Spaces
Ecologies, Natures and Environments
Animal Actants and Multi-Species Assemblages

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781473902169
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	08/16/2016
Series:	SAGE Benchmarks in Social Research Methods
Edition description:	Four-Volume Set
Pages:	1536
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Richie Nimmo is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Manchester, where he teaches and researches human–animal relations, posthumanism, and environmental sociology. He edited the SAGE collection Actor-Network Theory Research and is author of Milk, Modernity and the Making of the Human as well as journal articles and book chapters in human–animal studies.

Table of Contents

VOLUME ONE: EMERGENCE, DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATION – PART ONE
Part One: Introduction
‘From Generalised Symmetry to Ontological Politics and After: Tracing Actor-Network Theory’. - Richie Nimmo
Part Two:The Sociology of Translation
An Anthropologist Visits the Laboratory - Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar
Struggles and Negotiations to Define What Is Problematic and What Is Not: The Socio-logic of Translation - Michel Callon
On Interests and Their Transformation: Enrolment and Counter-Enrolment - Michel Callon and John Law
Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World - Bruno Latour
Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay - Michel Callon
Part Three: Techno-Politics and Sociotechnical Relations
On Power and Its Tactics: A View from the Sociology of Science - John Law
Society in the Making: The Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis - Michel Callon
Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer - Jim Johnson
The De-Scription of Technical Objects - Madeleine Akrich
The Politics of Formalism - John Bowers
Part Four: Reflexivity, Heterogeneity and Symmetry
The Politics of Explanation: An Alternative - Bruno Latour
Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy, Heterogeneity - John Law
Behaviour Modification of a Catflap: A Contribution to the Sociology of Things - Malcolm Ashmore
Constructing Actor-Network Theory - Mike Michael
Part Five: Topology and Post-Social Ontologies
Regions, Networks and Fluids: Anaemia and Social Topology - Annemarie Mol and John Law
After the Individual in Society: Lessons in Collectivity from Science, Technology and Society - Michel Callon and John Law
Materialities, Globalities, Spatialities - Kevin Hetherington and John Law
Objects and Spaces - John Law
The Social as Association - Bruno Latour
VOLUME TWO: EMERGENCE, DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATION – PART TWO
Part One: Materiality and Ontological Politics
Notes on Materiality and Sociality - John Law and Annemarie Mol
Ontological Politics: A Word and Some Questions - Annemarie Mol
In the Middle of the Network - Andrew Barry
On Politics and the Little Tools of Democracy: A Down-to-Earth Approach - Kristin Asdal
Actor-Network Theory, Organizations and Critique: Towards a Politics of Organizing - Rafael Alcadipani and John Hassard
ANT and Politics: Working In and On the World - John Law and Vicky Singleton
Part Two: Method Assemblages and Inscriptions
On Making Data Social: Heterogeneity in Sociological Practice - Mike Michael
Enacting the Social - John Law and John Urry
Actor-Network Theory: Sensitive Terms and Enduring Tensions - Annemarie Mol
Actor-Network Theory and Methodology: Just What Does It Mean to Say that Nonhumans Have Agency? - Edwin Sayes
Actor-Network Theory and the Ethnographic Imagination: An Exercise in Translation - Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Diana Graizbord and Michael Rodriguez-Muñiz
Reassembling Social Science Methods: The Challenge of Digital Devices - Evelyn Ruppert, John Law and Mike Savage
Part Three: Critiques and Clarifications
Epistemological Chicken - Harry Collins and Steven Yearley
Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bath School! A Reply to Collins and Yearley - Michel Callon and Bruno Latour
Agency and the Hybrid Collectif - Michel Callon and John Law
On Actor Network Theory: A Few Clarifications - Bruno Latour
Living Dangerously with Bruno Latour in a Hybrid World - Mark Elam
Reconstructing Humants: A Humanist Critique of Actant-Network Theory - Frédéric Vandenberghe
VOLUME THREE: TRANSLATIONS, PARALLELS AND MOBILISATIONS – PART ONE
Part One: Performing Markets, Finance and Economics
Peripheral Vision: Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices - Fabian Muniesa and Michel Callon
An Essay on the Growing Contribution of Economic Markets to the Proliferation of the Social - Michel Callon
Assembling an Economic Actor: The Agencement of a Hedge Fund - Iain Hardie and Donald Mac Kenzie
What Does It Mean to Say that Economics Is Performative? - Michel Callon
Part Two: Arts, Taste and Cultures
Chalk Steps on the Museum Floor: The ‘Pulses’ of Objects in an Art Installation - Alberta Yaneva
The Work of Culture - Tony Bennett
Those Things that Hold Us Together: Taste and Sociology - Antoine Hennion
Performing Calculation in the Art Market - Marta Herrero
The Creative Assemblage: Theorizing Contemporary Forms of Arts-based Collaboration - Kay Anderson and Philip Mar
Objects, Words and Bodies in Space: Bringing Materiality into Cultural Analysis - Wendy Griswold, Gemma Mangione and Terence Mc Donnell
Part Three: Bodies, Medicine and Disabilities
Different Atheroscleroses - Annemarie Mol
Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies: The Example of Hypoglycaemia - Annemarie Mol and John Law
Sociotechnical Practices and Difference: On the Interferences between Disability, Gender and Class - Ingunn Moser
Technoscientific Bodies: Making the Corporeal in Everyday Life - Mike Michael
Actor-Networks of Dementia. - Michael Schillmeier
When Alcohol Acts: An Actor-Network Approach to Teenagers, Alcohol and Parties - Jakob Demant
VOLUME FOUR: TRANSLATIONS, PARALLELS AND MOBILISATIONS – PART TWO
Part One: Hybrid Geographies and Spaces
Towards a Geography of Heterogeneous Associations‘ - Jonathan Murdoch
Dissolving Dualisms: Actor-Networks and the Reimagination of Nature - Noel Castree and Tom Macmillan
Introducing Hybrid Geographies - Sarah Whatmore
Urban Wild Things: A Cosmopolitical Experiment - Steve Hinchliffe, Matthew Kearnes, Monica Degen and Sarah Whatmore
Globalizations Big and Small: Notes on Urban Studies, Actor-Network Theory and Geographical Scale - Alan Latham and Derek Mc Cormack
Earthly Powers and Affective Environments: An Ontological Politics of Flood Risk - Sarah Whatmore
Part Two: Ecologies, Natures and Environments
Society, Nature, Knowledge: Co-constructing the Social and the Natural - Alan Irwin
The Problematic Nature of Nature: The Post-Constructivist Challenge to Environmental History - Kristin Asdal
A Plea for Earthly Sciences: Keynote Lecture for the Annual Meeting of the British Sociological Association, East London, April 2007 - Bruno Latour
The Making of Climate Publics: Eco-Homes as Material Devices of Publicity - Noortje Marres
Topologies of Climate Change: Actor-Network Theory, Relational-Scalar Analytics, and Carbon Market Overflows - Anders Blok
Part Three: Animal Actants and Multi-Species Assemblages
Elephants on the Move: Spatial Formations of Wildlife Exchange - Sarah Whatmore and Lorraine Thorne
Roadkill: Between Humans, Nonhuman Animals, and Technologies. - Mike Michael
Bees, Butterflies, and Bacteria: Biotechnology and the Politics of Nonhuman Friendship - Nick Bingham
The Actor-Enacted: Cumbrian Sheep in 2001 - John Law and Annemarie Mol
Bovine Mobilities and Vital Movements: Flows of Milk, Mediation and Animal Agency - Richie Nimmo

Editorial Reviews

How can I begin to praise a collection for being timely, rich and what have you, if it holds texts that I happened to (co-)author? This is a conundrum for the present book: those who might most readily write blurbs to flag up its wonders, are contained within it. Readers will therefore have to assess the value of this book for themselves. Good luck with that - and enjoy it in every way you can.

Annemarie Mol

By giving access to original works instead of proposing a too sketchy or subjective presentation, this book will provide a very helpful introduction to what has been called actor-network theory or the sociology of translation. A recommended reading for anyone, student, teacher, researcher or curious people, who wants to know more about this now pervasive approach in social sciences.

Michel Callon

Actor-Network Theory has been hugely influential across the social sciences and far beyond, and this volume serves as an ideal overview of both its core themes and its many developments and uses. Richie Nimmo has done an admirable job in compiling an excellent mix of classic statements, extended elaborations, critical commentaries, and empirical application.

For anyone interested in exploring the promise of Actor-Network Theory ­ whether that be theoretical, methodological or political - Actor-Network Theory Research is an essential resource.

Mike Michael

Interest in the ideas and practices of Actor Network Theory has exploded across the social sciences in the last few years, often so rapidly that it has been difficult for non-specialists to keep up with all of the new applications of ANT thinking. This collection solves in one stroke such problems of keeping up to date with the diversification of ANT. Mapping out a very diverse terrain with admirable clarity and skill, the collection brings together in one place both major writings by ANT's founders and also applications of ANT ideas to a dazzling range of empirical areas.

David Inglis