#actor-network-theory

[irwonder]

Traveling with ANT [actor-network-theory], I am afraid to say, will turn out to be agonizingly slow. Movements will be constantly interrupted, interfered with, disrupted, and dislocated by the five types of uncertainties. In the world ANT is trying to travel through, no displacement seems possible without costly and painful translations. Sociologists of the social [i.e., orthodox sociologists] seem to glide like angels, transporting power and connections almost immaterially, while the ANT-scholar has to trudge like an ant, carrying the heavy gear in order to generate even the tiniest connection.

Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

[irwonder]

Positivism—in its natural or social form, in its reactionary or progressive form—is not wrong because it forgets ‘human consciousness’ and decides to stick with ‘cold data’. It is wrong politically. It has reduced matters of concern into matters of fact too fast, without due process.

Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

[irwonder]

One’s own actions ‘make a difference’ only in a world made of differences.

Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

[irwonder]

This, for me, has always been a great surprise: How is it that, in spite of this massive and ubiquitous phenomenon, sociology remains ‘without object’? It is even more startling when you realize that this discipline emerged a full century after the Industrial Revolution and has been evolving in parallel with the largest and most intensive technical developments since the Neolithic. Not only that, but how to explain that so many social scientists pride themselves in considering ‘social meaning’ instead of ‘mere’ material relations, ‘symbolic dimension’ instead of ‘brute causality’? Much like sex during the Victorian period, objects are nowhere to be said and everywhere to be felt. They exist, naturally, but they are never given a thought, a social thought. Like humble servants, they live on the margins of the social doing most of the work but never allowed to be represented as such. There seems to be no way, no conduit, no entry point for them to be knitted together with the same wool as the rest of the social ties. The more radical thinkers want to attract attention to humans in the margins and at the periphery, the less they speak of objects. As if a damning curse had been cast unto things, they remain asleep like the servants of some enchanted castle. Yet, as soon as they are freed from the spell, they start shuddering, stretching, and muttering. They begin to swarm in all directions, shaking the other human actors, waking them out of their dogmatic sleep. Would it be too childish to say that ANT [actor-network-theory] played the role of the Charming Prince’s kiss tenderly touching Sleeping Beauty’s lips? At any rate, it is because it was an object-oriented sociology for object-oriented humans that this school of thought was noticed in the first place—and that it makes sense to write an introduction to it.

Bruno Latour,  Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

[hannahbrasier]

Diving in Magma, Venturini reading notes

Cristiano Storni is currently a visiting scholar at RMIT where we are doing a bit of a reading group with him on actor-network-theory tomorrow. He gave us a list of readings to choose from. Mine is Venturini’s Diving in Magma. Here are some notes that I’m going to talk to tomorrow.

Summary:

in this article Venturini discusses Latour’s “cartography of controversies” which is a particular component of actor-network-theory

the “cartography of controversies” according to Venturini, is the “exercise of crafting devices to observe and describe social debate especially, but not exclusively, around technoscientific issues”

for this article he focuses on observing controversies, where there is a follow up article that talks about how we then describe controversies.

this article focuses on the task of “deploying the complexity of controversies” through observation

a controversy is “every bit of science and technology which is not yet stabilized, closed or ‘black boxed,’ “as a general term to describe shared uncertainty” and in actor-network terms “controversies are situations where actor’s disagree"

a “cartography of controversies” can be translated as mapping complexity

3 key points:

observation-led-practice - "observation always precedes theory and methodology” motivated by “surprise and curiosity"

engages with the messy/complexity of the world - “social cartographers are asked to face the highest complexity (controversies) without the slightest simplification (just)” and “the cartography of controversies is complex, …because collective life itself is complex”

accounting in detail of the process to make sense of the thing - “Knowing the ingredients would be certainly useful as well as tasting tasting the cake once it is ready. Still neither the ingredients nor the final cake are enough to unveil its preparation”

How I can use those 3 points in my own research:

with my own documentary making I let what I observe, or what I call noticing drive the making which then informs the rest of the project.

the cartography of controversies as a method to map complexity in response to the complexity of collective life is what I’ve been thinking about a lot within my own practice. In arts practice Gibson talks about how artists need to negotiate the “messiness in-between their own practice and the world—embracing the messiness of artistic practice within the messiness of the world” (7). So, I think finding a way to map complexities within the context of my own specific research will help me engage with this idea that the world is messy.

in documentary knowing the film crew and the details of the shoot in conjunction with the finished film do not tell us the process or complexities of how the documentary was made. Most importantly, we do not know how much footage was excluded, or what that footage showed, any problems encountered along the way, or the reasons behind why such footage was not excluded. We do not precisely know the ideologic values of the filmmaker either, yet these values we presume are built into what they as a filmmaker want the film to be about. Venturini views ideologies as being “orderly and harmonious” while collective life is “chaotic and erratic.” In other words ideologies in some respect simplify the chaotic quality of the world as mess. To return to documentary, where the idea emerges from, tell us little about what the film actually is. As Venturini contends “to understand how social phenomena are built it is not enough to observe the actors alone nor is it enough to observe social networks once they are stabilized” (264). Therefore, to engage with complexity in documentary we need to observe and describe the process in-between the intention and the product and perhaps fold that observing and describing into the documentary product itself. As Venturini notes, “what should be observed…is…the fleeting configurations where actors are renogiating the ties of old networks and the emergence of new networks is redefining the identity of actors” (264). This leads me to think about multilinearity as a way to “multiply the points of observation” -multiplying what can be observed in my clips beyond what I originally saw within them.

Venturini, Tommaso. “Diving in Magma: How to Explore Controversies with Actor-Network-Theory.” Public Understanding of Science 19.3 (2010): 258–273. Print.  

[hannahbrasier]

These days, money is transfered all over the globe all but instantaneously, while viruses move so fast that it gets scary. But even the cosmopolitan bodies that travel business class between Berlin, New York, and Singapore, suffer jetlag; while the person from the next village over may never have visited the capital

 Annemarie, Mol. “Actor-Network Theory: Sensitive Terms and Enduring Tensions.” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 50.1 (2010): 253–269. Print.  

[thinkerthoughtinfo]

[il-y-aaaahhhh]

First Uncertainty: Can we have lots of fun? Second Uncertainty: How much can we do? Third Uncertainty: Is it just you and me? Fourth Uncertainty: Can I give you more? Fifth Uncertainty: Don't you know that the time has arrived?

The five uncertainties outlined in Bruno Latour's "Reassembling the New Kids: An Introduction to Boy-Band-Theory."