Disassembling Actor-network Theory

Elder-Vass, Dave

doi:10.1177/0048393114525858

Cited by 95 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…In contrast, STSand most prominently Latour's ANT-have granted artifacts the status of fully agential actors within a network. Social phenomena, in this sense, are understood as a convergence of multiple interacting influences, which can include human and non-human elements (Elder-Vass, 2014). To conceptualize human and non-human actors within a field as part of our material praxeology, we therefore want to lay out some basic assumptions of STS approaches in their definition of an actor within a network.…”

Section: The Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing Age in a Digitized World—A Material Praxeology of Aging With Technology

Wanka

Gallistl

2018

Front. Sociol.

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Digital technologies have gained vast relevance in postmodern societies and digital infrastructures are substantially integrated into the everyday lives of older people. This digitization is reframing the norms and practices of later life as well as the social construct of age itself. Despite the increasing amount of studies in the field of aging and technologies, it still lacks theorizing. This paper addresses this deficit, suggesting that the study of aging and technologies could profit from a comprehensive integration of theories from the sociology of aging, critical gerontology, and science-and-technology studies. We aim to make a theoretical contribution to this issue, asking: how is age being done in a digitized world? Applying a praxeological approach to aging and technologies, we firstly examine how theoretical and empirical work has constructed aging with technologies so far and identify its shortcomings. Some of this work so far lacks a proper consideration of social inequalities within these processes, whereas other studies lack a thorough consideration of materialities. Secondly, in an attempt to equally "praxeologize" and "materialize" the study of aging and technologies we develop a theoretical model that aims to overcome these shortcomings. In what we frame as a material praxeology of aging with technology, we are concerned with how age is being done through discursive formations, set into practice through social and material practices and involved in the (re)production of social inequalities. Enriching a Bordieuan terminology of social fields with notions of non-human agency, this praxeology is founded on three assumptions: (1) Social fields constitute the contexts in which age as a social phenomenon is being done with and through technologies (2) Human and non-human agents are equally involved in this process (3) The actions of the involved agents emerge from an agency distributed among them, and are structured through the power relations between them. Thirdly, we exemplify the application of this model by reference to a research project in the field of Active and Assistive Living.

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Section: The Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing Age in a Digitized World—A Material Praxeology of Aging With Technology

Wanka

Gallistl

2018

Front. Sociol.

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“…Events, for Latour and his colleagues, are produced by fleeting influences from temporary nodes (or assemblages) of unique, unstable actor-networks operating in a constantly changing maelstrom of forces (Law 2004, p. 42). Both human beings and other kinds of object are merely examples of such nodes, whose influence on any given occasion depends on the wider network momentarily acting through them (Latour 2005, p. 217;Elder-Vass 2015).…”

Section: Anthropocentrism and Materials Intrusionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Material Parts in Social Structures

Elder-Vass

2017

Journal of Social Ontology

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There has been much debate on whether and how groups of human agents can constitute social structures with causal significance. Both sides in this debate, however, implicitly privilege human individuals over non-human material objects and tend to ignore the possibility that such objects might also play a significant role in social structures. This paper argues that social entities are often composed of both human agents and non-human material objects, and that both may make essential contributions to their causal influence. In such cases the causal influence of social structures should be attributed to the emergent causal powers of what I call socio-technical entities.

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“…In order to make realist claims about climate change – in order to say it is some‐Thing – requires a tacit acceptance of relational realism, or something very close to it. Climate change involves, for instance, biophysical phenomena that would still exist were humanity suddenly wiped from the face of the Earth – a detail not all self‐proclaimed realists are willing to admit (Professor Latour) without some degree of metaphysical indigestion (Elder‐Vass ) . It also involves potentials (in the Bergsonian sense) that need to not be continuously active or enacting in order to be real.…”

Section: Setting the Stage: What Is Climate Change?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Climate change is premised neither entirely of internal (essences) nor external (actor network [Elder‐Vass ]) relations. It is not, in other words, a matter of just being or just becoming.…”

Section: Setting the Stage: What Is Climate Change?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Get Real: Climate Change and All That ‘It’ Entails

Carolan

Stuart

2014

Sociologia Ruralis

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This article builds on Carolan's three natures scheme, where he distinguishes between the strata of ‘nature’, nature and Nature, by overlaying his previous framework with further analytic distinctions. Doing this, the authors argue, adds an important layer of analytical and conceptual robustness that his earlier scheme lacks. After building on this framework, attention turns to the phenomena of climate change. A selection of agrifood studies on this subject is used to help illustrate the utility of the revised model. The literatures reviewed involve the following: those looking at attitudes among farmers toward climate change; the bark beetle outbreaks in British Columbia; and food regimes. With this move the authors seek to illustrate the explanatory and descriptive utility of the revised model, specifically in its ability to provide a sustained defence of a type of realism that relational social theorists implicitly ascribe to. They also show how their conceptual labours – and the ecologically embedded relational realism it brings to the fore – can help further inform the aforementioned literatures by highlighting some of their conceptual and analytic blind spots.

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Disassembling Actor-network Theory

Cited by 95 publications

References 25 publications

Doing Age in a Digitized World—A Material Praxeology of Aging With Technology

Doing Age in a Digitized World—A Material Praxeology of Aging With Technology

Material Parts in Social Structures

Get Real: Climate Change and All That ‘It’ Entails

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