Reassembling the Social

[actornetworktheory-blog]

“Local interactions in humans the basic social skills although still present, offer an ever present but nonetheless restricted repertoire” - pg. 65 

[actornetworktheory-blog]

“Local interactions in non-human societies it is possible to generate a social world understood as an entanglement of interactions”- pg. 65.

[actornetworktheory-blog]

Examples of actors (Human and non human):

[actornetworktheory-blog]

“Intermediaries- is what transports meaning or force without transformation defining its inputs is enough to define its outputs. For all practical purposes, an intermediary can be taken as a black box, but also as a black box counting for one, even if it's internally made of many parts. 

Mediator- they might count for one, for nothing, for several, or for infinity. Their input is never a good predictor of their output; their specificity has to be taken into account every time. Mediators transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry.”- pg. 39.

Intermediaries account for predictable outcomes, mediators, unlike intermediaries are unpredictable.

[actornetworktheory-blog]

Blackboxing as a verb.

“The social process of blackboxing is based on the abstract notion of a black box. Backboxing is the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become.” -Wikipedia

[actornetworktheory-blog]

Taken from text:

Baboons doing ANT 

“Baboons possessed social strategies; that finesse triumph over force; that social skill and reciprocity to precedence over aggression.

Sexual politics, where male and female exchange favors in return for other favors. 

Unlike humans, no member of ‘Pumphouse’ possessed the ability to control essential recourses: each baboon got its own food, water, and place in the shade and took care of its own basic survival needs”- pg. 69

[lustik]