Actor Network Resource:
Alphabetical List
Version 2.2
(April 2000)
You’ll find the ANT Resource Thematic list of articles at http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/sciencestudies/the-actor-network-resource-thematic-list/
Akrich, M. (1992). The De-Scription of Technical Objects. In W. Bijker and J. Law (Eds.) Shaping Technology, Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press: 205-224.
A study of the ways in which competences and attributes are attributed to agencies and artefacts in a study of third world electrification, and which, as a result, stabilise a sociotechnical network.
Akrich, M. (1993). Inscription et Coordination Socio-Techniques: Anthropologie de Quelques Dispositifs Énergétiques. Thèse pour le doctorat Socio-Economie. . Paris, École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris.
An extended study of the development of electricity-related networks in both Third and First-world contexts.
Akrich, M. and B. Latour (1992). A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies. In W. Bijker and J. Law (Eds.) Shaping Technology, Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press: 259-264.
A concise description of a possible semiotic vocabulary for undertaking symmetrical studies of the relations between entities, and thus the ways in which these are constituted.
Akrich, M. and B. Pasveer (1996). Comment la Naissance Vient aux Femmes: le Technique de l’accouchement en France et aux Pays Bas. Le Plessis-Robinson, Synthélabo.
After actor network! A comparative study of pregnancy and childbirth in the Netherlands and France, which uses a symmetrical approach to explore the relations which constitute subjectivity, corporeality and technology in the two countries.
Akrich, M. and B. Pasveer (1998). Narrating Childbirth. Theorizing Bodies: WTMC-CSI, Ecole des Mines de Paris, Paris.
Explores different narratives of childbirth and their distribution of agency and mediation. ‘After’ ANT.
Albertsen, N. and B. Diken (2000). What is ‘the Social?’, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University.
A sympathetic exploration of strategies and approaches in contemporary social theory in terms of a double distinction between purity and hybridity on the one hand, and order and chaos on the other. Actor-network is one of the approaches so considered.
Amsterdamska, O. (1990). “Surely, You Must be Joking, Monsieur Latour!” Science, Technology and Human Values 15: 495-504.
Critical commentary on the non-humanism of actor-network theory.
Anderson, R. J. (1994). “Representations and requirements: The value of ethnography in system design.” Human-Computer Interaction 9: 151-182.
A critical analysis of computer scientists` misunderstandings of ethnography. Uses ANT and ethnomethodology to show the importance of materiality in ethnographic accounts.
Ashmore, M. (1993). “Behaviour Modification of a Catflap: a contribution to the Sociology of Things.” Kennis en Methode 17: 214-229.
An analysis, in equal measure rigorous and humorous, which explores the extent to which is possible to sustain generalised symmetry between a cat, a person and a catflap.
Barry, A. (2001). In the middle of the network. In J. Law and A. Mol (Eds.) Complexities in Science, Technology and Medicine. Durham, N. Ca., Duke University Press.
Explores the uses of network metaphors and practices in the creation of the European community.
Berg, A.-J. (1996). Digital Feminism. PhD. Senter for Teknologi og Samfunn. Trondheim, Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet.
A study of the relationships between gendering and technologies, especially information technologies, which draws in part on actor-network theory, though more extensively on feminist writing, and on the social construction of technology.
Berg, M. (1997). Rationalizing Medical Work: Decision Support Techniques and Medical Practices. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.
A study of the relationship between medical decision support techniques and the local practices of physicians and others. Draws on actor-network theory.
Bijker, W. and J. Law (Eds.). (1992). Shaping Technology, Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press.
This collection includes a variety of theoretical approaches to the social shaping of technology, some of which adopt an actor-network approach.
Bloomfield, B. P. (1991). “The role of information systems in the UK National Health Service: Action at a distance and the fetish of calculation.” Social Studies of Science 21(4): 701-734.
Case study that used ANT ideas to describe the politics of information technology to change the NHS.
Bloomfield, B. P. and T. Vurdubakis (1994). “Boundary disputes: Negotiating the boundary between the technical and the social in the development of IT systems.” Information Technology & People 7(1): 9-24.
Uses ideas of actor network theory to explain the continuous renegotiation between thesocial and the technical when information technology systems are designed.
Bowers, J. (1992). The politics of formalism. In M. Lea (Ed.) Contexts of Computer-Mediated Communication. Hemel Hampstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf: 232-261.
Draws on ANT to describe the inherently political nature of artefacts, especially information technologies. Also a useful introduction to ANT concepts such as immutable mobiles, obligatory passage ponts, etc.
Bowker, G. (1988). Pictures from the Subsoil, 1939. In G. Fyfe and J. Law (Eds.) Picturing Power: Visual Depiction and Social Relations. London and Boston, Routledge. 36: 221-254.
An empirical and theoretical study of the juggling of representational ambiguity for strategic reasons. Is quite strongly informed by actor-network assumptions, though not reducible to these.
Brenna, B., J. Law, et al. (Eds.). (1998). Machines, Agency and Desire,. TMV Report Series. Oslo, University of Oslo.
A collection of essays on materialities, desires and technologies, influenced by a variety of (mostly post-structuralist) theoretical approaches, including actor-network theory. It concludes contributions by Anni Dugdale, Celia Lury, Mike Michael, Ingunn Moser and John Law, and Bernike Pasveer and Madeleine Akrich.
Brown, C. (1992). Organization studies and scientific authority. In M. Reed and M. Hughes (Eds.) Rethinking Organization: New Directions in Organization Theory and Analysis. London, Sage: 67-84.
A review of ANT in organisation studies from a methodological perspective.
Brown, J. S. and P. Duguid (1994). “Borderline issues: Social and material aspects of design.” Human-Computer Interaction 9(1): 3-36.
Key paper of special issue on Context in Design. Uses ANT only marginally but gives an critical review of similar theoretical approaches to the social, material and political aspects of information technologies.
Brown, N. G. F. (1998). Ordering Hope: Representations of Xenotransplantation – and Actor/Actant Network Theory Account. PhD. Independent Studies. Lancaster, Lancaster University.
An account of xenotransplantation, posed both in narrative and in actor-network terms.
Button, G. (1993). The curious case of vanishing technology. In G. Button (Ed.) Technology in Working Order: Studies of Work, Interaction and Technology. London, Routledge: 10-28.
Critical comment on ANT from an ethnomethodolical position in the context of work and technology. Questions the arbitrary nature of ANT accounts and the ANT preference for processes rather than actions.
Calás, M. and L. Smircich (1999). “Past Postmodernism? Reflections and Tentative Directions.” Academy of Management Review 24(4): 649-671.
A clear and concise account of the implications of ‘postmodernism’ for the theorising of organisations, which offers, as posssible post-postmodernisms, feminist theory, narrative analysis, actor-network theory, and post-colonial theorising.
Callon, M. (1980). Struggles and Negotiations to define what is Problematic and what is not: the Sociology of Translation. In K. D. Knorr, R. Krohn and R. D. Whitley (Eds.) The Social Process of Scientific Investigation: Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook. Dordrecht and Boston, Mass., Reidel. 4: 197-219.
An early, perhaps the first empirical, example of the ‘sociology of translation’, using the case of the véhicule électrique. Derives the term ‘translation’ from Michel Serres (1974).
Callon, M. (1986). The Sociology of an Actor-Network: the Case of the Electric Vehicle. In M. Callon, J. Law and A. Rip (Eds.) Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science in the Real World. London, Macmillan: 19-34.
A further, more developed, analysis of the véhicule électrique.
Callon, M. (1986). Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of Saint Brieuc Bay. In J. Law (Ed.) Power, Action and Belief: a new Sociology of Knowledge? Sociological Review Monograph. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. 32: 196-233.
One of the most discussed papers in actor-network theory. This presses ‘symmetry’ between different entities including fishermen, various technologies, and scallops. Much commented on, much criticised. (See Collins and Yearley (1992))
Callon, M. (1987). Society in the Making: the Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis. In W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes and T. J. Pinch (Eds.) The Social Construction of Technical Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridgge, Mass. and London, MIT Press: 83-103.
A further, more developed, analysis of the case of the véhicule électrique. In this the notion of the ‘engineer sociologist’ is developed: the notion that engineers are engaged in analysing and ordering social relations.
Callon, M. (1991). Techno-economic Networks and Irreversibility. In J. Law (Ed.) A Sociology of Monsters? Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, Sociological Review Monograph. London, Routledge. 38: 132-161.
An exploration of the formation and dynamics of heterogeneous networks which attends, in particular, to they strategies which secure the relative irreversibility of those networks.
Callon, M. (1993). Variety and irreversibility in networks of technique conception and adoption. In D. Foray and C. Freeman (Eds.) Technology and the Wealth of Nations: The Dynamics of Constructed Advantage. London, Pinter Publishers: 232-268.
Reviews different network approaches to the study of variety and irreversibility in technique conceptio and adoption.
Callon, M. (1998). An Essay on Framing and Overflowing: Economic Externalities Revisited by Sociology. In M. Callon (Ed.)
The Laws of the Markets. Oxford and Keele, Blackwell and the Sociological Review: 244-269.
Introduces useful new terminology for exploring the simplifications that are implicit in the formation of economic (and any other) actors.
Callon, M. (Ed.). (1998). The Laws of the Markets. Oxford, Blackwell and the Sociological Review.
An edited volume on the creation of markets, bringing together authors from a variety of theoretical traditions. Most are concerned with the material construction of markets – and market-related subjectivities. ‘After ANT’.
Callon, M. (1999). Actor-Network Theory: the Market Test. In J. Law and J. Hassard (Eds.) Actor Network and After. Oxford and Keele, Blackwell and the Sociological Review: 181-195.
How might the actor-network approach be applied to such seemingly simple forms of agency as that of economic actor in the market?
Callon, M. (1999). Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of Saint Brieuc Bay. In M. Biagioli (Ed.) The Science Studies Reader. New York and London, Routledge: 67-83.
A reprint of the article previously published in 1986.
Callon, M. (2001). Writing and (Re)writing Devices as Tools for Managing Complexity. In J. Law and A. Mol (Eds.) Complexities in Science, Technology and Medicine. Durham, N. Ca., Duke University Press.
Explores the ways in which textual technologies iteratively constitute supply and demand (consumers) for two classes of enterprises.
Callon, M. and B. Latour (1981). Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: how actors macrostructure reality and how sociologists help them to do so. In K. D. Knorr-Cetina and A. V. Cicourel (Eds.) Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies. Boston, Mass, Routledge and Kegan Paul: 277-303.
An important pre-cursor paper in which it is argued that large scale ‘macro’ phenomena are not different in kind from small scale ‘micro’ phenomena, and should be analysed in the same terms. Hence an attack on the ‘macro’-‘micro’ distinction in social theory.
Callon, M. and B. Latour (1992). Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bath School! A Reply to Collins and Yearley. In A. Pickering (Ed.) Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago, Chicago University Press: 343-368.
A reply to Collins and Yearley (1992).
Callon, M. and J. Law (1982). “On Interests and their Transformation: Enrolment and Counter-Enrolment.”
Social Studies of Science 12: 615-625.
Argues the social interests are constructed in networks of heterogeneous relations.
Callon, M. and J. Law (1995). “Agency and the Hybrid Collectif.” South Atlantic Quarterly 94: 481-507.
An attempt to review and come to terms with some of the criticisms of actor-network theory by commentators such as feminists for its tendencies towards centering and monological form.
Callon, M. and J. Law (1997). “After the Individual in Society: Lessons in Collectivity from Science, Technology and Society.”
Canadian Journal of Sociology 22(2): 165-82.
An attempt to review and summarise some of the major preoccupations of actor-network theory, and relate them critically to sociological theory.
Callon, M. and J. Law (1997). L’Irruption des Non-Humains dans les Sciences Humaines: quelques leçons tirées de la sociologie des sciences et des techniques. In J.-P. Dupuy, P. Livet and B. n. d. Reynaud (Eds.) Les Limites de la Rationalité: Tome 2, Les Figures du Collectif. Paris, La Découverte: 99-118.
An attempt to review and summarise some of the major preoccupations of actor-network theory, and relate them critically to sociological theory.
Callon, M., J. Law, et al. (Eds.). (1986). Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science in the Real World. London, Macmillan.
A collection of papers which offers theoretical grounding for the co-word method of mapping the relationship between concepts and actors in science and technology, locating this in actor-network theory.
Callon, M. and V. Rabeharisoa (1998). Articulating Bodies: the Case of Muscular Dystrophies. In M. Akrich and M. Berg (Eds.) Bodies on Trial: Performance and Politics in Medicine and Biology. Durham, N.Ca., Duke University Press.
Explores muscular dystrophy by considering how the ‘collective patient’ is created and reshaped in the course of tests and trials which extend from the flesh through technologies to other persons and organisations. The body, it is argued, can only be understood by examining such trials.
Callon, M. and V. Rabeharisoa (1998). Reconfiguring Trajectories: Agencies, Bodies and Political Articulations: the Case of Muscular Dystrophies. Theorizing Bodies: WTMC-CSI, Ecole des Mines de Paris, Paris.
Explores the configurations of bodies, materials and collectivities involved in the disabilities of certain muscular dystrophies. An example of ‘after ANT’ at work which combines ANT concerns with some of the insights of phenomenology
Callon, M. and V. Rabeharisoa (1999). Gino’s Lesson on Humanity. Producing Taste, Configuring Use, Performing Citizenship, Maastricht, the Netherlands.
An exploration of the implications of interviewing a person with muscular dystrophy for the character of politics and appropriate political participation. Suggests that the interview tends to produce a particular form of violent political participation.
Callon, M. and V. Rabeharisoa (1999). “La Leçon d’Humanité de Gino.” Réseaux 95: 199-233.
An exploration of the implications of interviewing a person with muscular dystrophy for the character of politics and appropriate political participation. Suggests that the interview tends to produce a particular form of violent political participation.
Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford, Blackwell.
Included not because it refers to actor-network theory, but as an example of the popularisation of the notion of ‘network’ as applied in the context of globalisation. The differences between this style of theorising and that of ANT (and after) are noteworthy.
Clegg, S. (1989). Frameworks of Power. London, Beverly Hills and New Delhi, Sage.
An analysis of the sociological literature on power which develops a general theory which draws in certain respects strongly on actor-network theory.
Collins, H. M. and S. Yearley (1992). Epistemological Chicken. In A. Pickering (Ed.) Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago, Chicago University Press: 301-326.
Argues against the generalised symmetry of actor-network, preferring in the interpretive sociology tradition to treat humans as ontologically distinct language carriers (See Callon, 1986b; Callon and Latour, 1992)
Constant, E. W. I. (1999). “Reliable Knowledge and Unreliable Stuff.” Technology and Culture 40: 324-357.
An exploration of the character and limits of constructivist analysis of engineering and technological knowledge. Argues that these approaches focus too much on the micro, are unable to theorise the increase of such knowledge, and proposes a Bayesian model for understanding the increase in reliable knowledge. See the response by Law and Singleton (2000).
Cooper, R. (1992). Formal Organization as Representation: Remote Control, Displacement and Abbreviation. In M. Reed and M. Hughes (Eds.) Rethinking Organization. London, Sage: 254-272.
An analysis of organisation, or modes of organising, which draws on actor-network theory, and in particular the analysis of centres of calculation developed by Bruno Latour. See Latour (1990)
Cooper, R. (1995). ‘Assemblage’ Notes. http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/stt/staff/rc/pubs-RC1.htm, Centre for Social Theory and Technology, Keele University.
Draws on ANT as one way (among others) of thinking about movement and fractionality. One of our online documents on these pages.
Cooper, R. and J. Law (1995). Organization: Distal and Proximal Views. In S. B. Bacharach, P. Gagliardi and B. Mundell (Eds.)
Research in the Sociology of Organizations: Studies of Organizations in the European Tradition. Greenwich, Conn., JAI Press. 13: 275-301.
Organisations may be seen both as discrete and bounded entities (the ‘distal’) and as continuous and fuzzy processes (the ‘proximal’). The latter are related to the network processes of actor-network theory.
Cussins, C. (1998). Ontological Choreography Agency for Women Patients in an Infertility Clinic. In M. Berg and A. Mol (Eds.)
Differences in Medicine: Unravelling Practices, Techniques and Bodies. Durham, N Ca., Duke University Press: 166-201.
Draws on actor-network theory and a range of other theoretical resources to explore the way in which agency, corporeality and technologies are ordered in an infertility clinic. Argues that medical technologies are not necessarily dehumanising.
de Andrade, A. M. R. and A. d. M. Gonçalves (1995). “Os Acelerados Lineares do General Argus e a sua Rede Technocientífíca.” Revista da Socieda Brasileira de História da Ciência 14: 3-15.
An account of the development of linear accelerator projects in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s, exploring decisionmaking, heterogeneity, and their eventual destablisation.
de Laet, M. and A. Mol (2000). “The Zimbabwe Bush Pump: Mechanics of a Fluid Technology.” Social Studies of Science: 30: (2), 225-263.
Considers a ‘fluid technology’, and treats its strength as a function of that fluidity rather than a structured and stable network.
Dugdale, A. (1999). Materiality: Juggling Sameness and Difference. In J. Law and J. Hassard (Eds.) Actor Network and After. Oxford., Blackwell and the Sociological Review: 113-135.
How is ‘closure’ achieved, for instance in policy? Examining the case of the IUD in Australia, this paper suggests that it does not imply coming to rest,but rather an oscillation, performed in material circumstances, between singularity and multiplicity.
Elam, M. (1997). “Living Dangerously with Bruno Latour in a Hybrid World.” Theory, Culture and Society forthcoming.
Notes similarities between Bruno Latour’s (1993b) use of the notion of hybridity and the use of the term in US State Department discourse. Argues that the notion of hybridity is a way of securing the purity of basic terms, categories.
Engestrom, Y. and V. Escalante (1994). Postal buddy: Mundane tool or object of affection? The rise and fall of the postal buddy. University of California, San Diego, Mimeo.
Activity theory study of a failed automation attempt at US post offices. Employs and critically reviews ANT concepts.
Escobar, A. (1994). “Welcome to cyberia: Notes on the anthropology of cyberculture.” Current Anthropology 35(3): 211-231.
Uses ANT concepts (and a range of other theoretical traditions) to develop an anthropology of cyberculture.
Gadelha, P. and M. Nazaré Freitas Pereira (Eds.). (1997). A Caixa Preta de Pandora. Rio de Janeiro, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz.
This Portuguese volume collects together a number of important articles in actor-network theory, concentrating in particular on pieces by Bruno Latour and Michel Callon.
Garrety, K. (1997). “Social Worlds, Actor-Networks and Controversy: The Case of Cholesterol, Dietary Fat and Heart Disease.” Social Studies of Science 27: 727-773.
Compares ANT and symbolic interactionism as theories for explaining protracted controversies. Argues that the latter is better able to accommodate actants such as cholesterol, that remain elusive and ambiguous despite many attempts at enrolment.
Gherardi, S. and D. Nicolini (2000). “To Transfer is to Transform: the Circulation of Safety Knowledge.” Organization 7: in the press. An empirical and theoretical account of organisational decisionmaking, which uses, in part, actor-network theory. See the commentary by Law (2000).
Gomart, E. and A. Hennion (1999). A Sociology of Attachment: Music Amateurs and Drug Addicts. In J. Law and J. Hassard (Eds.) Actor Network and After. Oxford., Blackwell and the Sociological Review: 220-247.
An ‘after ANT’ exploration of subjectivity, which explores, for the case of musical amateurs and drug-users, how subjectivities emerge in generative ‘dispositifs’ or heterogeneous attachments that are collective and have to do with objects, techniques and constraints.
Haraway, D. (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In D. Haraway (Ed.) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: the Reinvention of Nature. London, Free Association Books: 149-181.
This is not within the actor-network tradition, and neither does it comment on it. We include it to point to the similarities and differences between actor-network and important feminist writing on sociotechnical relations. The heterogeneity of such relations is assumed in both approaches, but Haraway is much more explicit (a) about her political commitments, and (b) about the irreducibility of cyborgs to networks that might be ‘captured’ and described overall.
Haraway, D. (1994). “A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies.” Configurations 1: 59-71.
Perhaps the metaphor of network is too restricted? There are untidy relations that might be understood using other metaphors: for instance, that of the ‘cat’s cradle’.
Haraway, D. J. (1997). Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.Female_Man©_Meets_Oncomouse™: Feminism and Technoscience,. New York and London, Routledge.
Included not because it belongs to actor network theory, but because it is the best-known example of the different and partially related radical feminist technoscience alternative to actor-network theory. The ‘after-ANT’ studies in this resource in many cases owe as much or more to Haraway as to ANT itself.
Hennion, A. (1989). “An Intermediary between Production and Consumption: the Producer of Popular Music.” Science, Technology and Human Values 14: 400-424.
Chains of translations produce, or demand, intermediaries. This is explored for the case of popular music.
Hennion, A. (1996). Les Jambes d’Hercule: Des Oeuvres et du Gout. In C. c. Méadel and V. Rabeharisoa (Eds.) Représenter, Hybrider, Coordoner. Paris, École des Mines de Paris: 309-321.
Tastes change, notions of authenticity change: the result is that the notion of what counts as an authentic work of art is also displaced. The cellars of museums are now full of Roman sculptures that have lost favour with the curators. ‘After-actor network’.
Hetherington, K. and J. Law (Eds.). (2000). After Networks: Special Issue of Society and Space.
A collection of articles in an ‘after network’ mode, with special reference to spatiality and movement.
Hughes, T. P. (1986). “The Seamless Web: Technology, Science Etcetera.” Social Studies of Science 16: 281-292.
Does not belong to actor-network theory, but is included to show some of the similarities between the work on large technical systems and ANT – and in particular, the important of the ‘seamless sociotechnical network’ to both.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA; London, MIT Press.
Detailed study of the organisational and material aspects of navigation on a navy vessel. Not ANT – this study is located within a cognitive anthropology/distributed cognition framework – but similar in many ways in its crossing of allegedly obvious boundaries between the human and the non-human.
Hutchins, E. (1995). “How a cockpit remembers its speed.” Cognitive Science 19: 265-288.
Another case study in the distributed cognition tradition which argues – not unlike ANT – for a rethinking of the ‘unit of analysis’ we use for analysing socio-technical systems; in this case the organisation of work on the flightdeck of a modern aircraft.
Kaghan, W. and N. Phillips (1998). “Building the Tower of Babel: Communities of Practice and Paradigmatic Pluralism in Organization Studies.” Organization(5): 191-216.
The paper compares reductionist and irreductionist interpretations of the work of Thomas Kuhn. The paper argues that the organization studies community would benefit from paying greater attention to the irreductionist interpretations found in ANT and other schools in science and technology studies.
Latour, B. (1983). Give Me a Laboratory and I will Raise the World. In K. D. Knorr-Cetina and M. J. Mulkay (Eds.) Science Observed. Beverly Hills, Sage.
An important pre-cursor paper in which it is argued that large scale ‘macro’ phenomena are not different in kind from small scale ‘micro’ phenomena, and should be analysed in the same terms. Hence an attack on the ‘macro’-‘micro’ distinction in social theory.
Latour, B. (1986). The Powers of Association. In J. Law (Ed.) Power, Action and Belief: a New Sociology of Knowledge?. London, Boston and Henley, Routledge and Kegan Paul. 32: 264-280.
Develops a translation model of power, in which it is argued that power is an performative effect, a product of associating entities together, rather than something which is possessed by actors.
Latour, B. (1987). Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Milton Keynes, Open University Press.
The only ANT textbook? – though the extent to which Latour uses the notion of ‘actor-network’ is limited. Nevertheless, an important account of the method, in particular in its application to science and technology.
Latour, B. (1988). The Prince for Machine as well as Machinations. In B. Elliott (Ed.) Technology and Social Process. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press: 20-43.
Where are the missing masses? The argument is that machines are missing from political and social theory.
Latour, B. (1988). Irréductions, published with The Pasteurisation of France. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
A tightly written philosophical-theoretical statement which rigorously develops the implications of the irreducibility of different entities, and the worlds that are formed when these link together into chains or networks. A crucial theoretical resource
Latour, B. (1988). “Mixing humans and nonhumans together: The sociology of a door-closer.” Social Problems 35(3): 298-310.
Latour, writing as Jim Johnson, performs a rather humorous introduction to key concerns of ANT.
Latour, B. (1988). The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
A large-scale semiotic analysis of ‘Pasteur’ who is understood as a set of strategies, arrangements and mobilisations of different entities into a more or less coherent and more or less fragile network, of which Pasteur the person is a spokesperson. Accordingly, Pasteur is an effect, rather than a prime mover, an individual genius.
Latour, B. (1988). The Politics of Explanation: an Alternative. In S. Woolgar (Ed.) Knowledge and Reflexivity: New Frontiers in the Sociology of Knowledge. London, Sage: 155-176.
Exploration of reflexivity. Rejects the idea that this is self-contradictory, but also rejects the approach of most reflexivists, arguing for a modest ‘infra-reflexivity’’.
Latour, B. (1990). Drawing Things Together. In M. Lynch and S. Woolgar (Eds.) Representation in Scientific Practice. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press: 19-68.
Set up as a discussion of the division between ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’, this article rejects the idea that there was a decisive event or moment which led to the division, but instead locates this in a series of small technologies which generated simplified and manipulable representations or ‘immutable mobiles’ which thereby generated centres of control. These include printing, cartography and visual depiction. The argument is somewhat reminiscent of Michel Foucault’s understanding of surveillance in the disciplinary or modern episteme.
Latour, B. (1991). Technology is Society Made Durable. In J. Law (Ed.) A Sociology of Monsters? Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, Sociological Review Monograph. London, Routledge. 38: 103-131.
How is society sustained if networks are precarious? The answer lies in the different durability of different materials. Technologies embody social relations: they may be understood as translations of those relations into different material forms.
Latour, B. (1992). Aramis, ou l’Amour des Techniques. Paris, Éditions de la Découverte.
A multi-vocal account of a transport technology, in which a range of actors, including the technology itself, find a voice and debate the translations and negotiations which led to the final demise of the project.
Latour, B. (1992). Where are the Missing Masses? Sociology of a Few Mundane Artefacts. In W. Bijker and J. Law (Eds.) Shaping Technology, Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press: 225-258.
There are no purely ‘social’ relations. Instead, there are ‘socio-technical’ relations, embedded in and performed by a whole range of different materials, human, technical, ‘natural’, textual.
Latour, B. (1993). Ethnography of a ‘high-tech’ case: About Aramis. In P. Lemonnier (Ed.) Technological Choices: Transformation in Material Cultures Since the Neolithic. London, Routledge: 372-398.
A summary of the main theoretical arguments of the ARAMIS case study – in some ways more focused than the book, especially on the construction of the concepts of truth, efficieny and productivity in modern science and technology.
Latour, B. (1993). La Clef de Berlin, et autres Leçons d’un Amateur de Sciences. Paris, La Découverte.
A collection of essays on the semiotic approach to association, translation, and the importance of the technical and machine in what are more commonly thought of as ‘social’ relations.
Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. Brighton, Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Modernity claims to be clear and pure, to distinguish with clarity between the human and the non-human, while in reality it is full of hybrids, quasi-human, quasi-non-human. This is the secret of its remarkable dynamism: that in practice it generates hybrids in profusion, while insisting that there is really a fundamental distinction between human and non-human.
Latour, B. (1996). Aramis, or the Love of Technology. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press.
A translation of Latour (1992a). A multi-vocal account of a transport technology, in which a range of actors, including the technology itself, find a voice and debate the translations and negotiations which led to the final demise of the project.
Latour, B. (1996). Petite Réflexion sur le Culte Moderne des Dieux Faitiches. Paris, Les Empêcheurs de Penser en Rond.
A study of ‘factishes’ which combine the property of being real, and being created. A further exploration, then, of the ‘hybrids’ considered in Latour (1993c)
Latour, B. (1996). Social theory and the study of computerized work sites. In W. J. Orlikowski, G. Walsham, M. R. Jones and J. DeGros (Eds.) Information Technology and Changes in Organizational Work. London, Chapman & Hall: 295-307.
Reviews developments in social theory and information technology. Uses actor network ideas and studies but also refers to other important theoretical influences in the context of new information technologies.
Latour, B. (1999). Give Me a Laboratory and I will Raise the World. In M. Biagioli (Ed.) The Sciencer Studies Reader. New York and London, Routledge: 258-275.
Reprint of the paper which originally appeared in 1983
Latour, B. (1999). On Recalling ANT. In J. Law and J. Hassard (Eds.) Actor Network and After. Oxford., Blackwell and the Sociological Review: 15-25.
Like a faulty car, ANT needs to be recalled since all of its main terms (actor, network and theory) are flawed, or at least are too easily misunderstood. It is best seen as a theory of space or circulation in a non-modern situation.
Latour, B. (1999). Politiques de la Nature: Comment faire entrer les sciences en démocratie. Paris, la Découverte.
A successor to ‘We Have Never Been Modern’, which explores the possible character of a non-modern constitution which would dissolve the distinction between facts and values (science and politics) with a more flexible and revisable process in which what is and what is good (and can live together) are negotiated. This book will appear in translation in English in 2000 or 2001.
Latour, B., P. Mauguin, et al. (1992). “A Note on Socio-Technical Graphs.” Social Studies of Science 22: 33-57.
Extends the sociology of translation, and in particular the arguments of Latour (1987) to the field of scientometrics.
Latour, B. and S. Woolgar (1979). Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts. Beverly Hills and London, Sage.
The first major study of the building of facts in a laboratory in any theoretical tradition, and a landmark book in the sociology of science. Written before the term ‘actor-network’ was invented, and drawing on a range of resources including semiotics and ethnomethodology, it nonetheless catches important ANT moves, for instance in its account of the ways in which facts move through modalities as they gather allies to become more and more solid – and less and less attached to the contingencies which generated them in the first place.
Law, J. (1986). “On Power and Its Tactics: a View from the Sociology of Science.” The Sociological Review 34: 1-38.
An empirical and theoretical account of the ways in which allies are assembled into networks in a scientific laboratory in order to produce texts which may then be transported to other sites. Explores the tactics or the strategies of power and domination.
Law, J. (1986). On the Methods of Long Distance Control: Vessels, Navigation and the Portuguese Route to India. In J. Law (Ed.) Power, Action and Belief: a new Sociology of Knowledge? Sociological Review Monograph. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. 32: 234-263.
An account of the precarious networks of global domination as these were elaborated by the Portuguese in the 15th and 16th centuries. Draws on and exemplifies Bruno Latour’s notion of ‘immutable mobile’, by examining maritime and navigational technologies.
Law, J. (1988). The Anatomy of a Sociotechnical Struggle: the Design of the TSR2. In B. Elliott (Ed.) Technology and Social Process. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press: 44-69.
A study of the heterogeneous sociotechnical networks in which a military aircraft was implicated.
Law, J. (1991). Introduction: Monsters, Machines and Sociotechnical Relations. In J. Law (Ed.) A Sociology of Monsters? Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London, Routledge. 38: 1-23.
An attempt to link the distributions of concern to sociology (such as class and gender), with those (such as the human/non-human divide) that have been explored in STS including actor-network theory.
Law, J. (1991). Power, Discretion and Strategy. In J. Law (Ed.) A Sociology of Monsters? Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London, Routledge. 38: 165-191.
Links the sociology of power (including ‘power to’ and ‘power over’) with the textures of power, as explored by Michel Foucault and by actor-network theory.
Law, J. (Ed.). (1991). A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. Sociological Review Monograph. London, Routledge (Note that this book is available by direct order from the Sociological Review, Keele University, Keele, Staffs ST5 5BG, and not from the publisher; email address: srb01@keele.ac.uk).
This collection includes a variety of theoretical approaches to the social shaping of technology, but many adopt an actor-network approach.
Law, J. (1992). “Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy and Heterogeneity.” Systems Practice 5: 379-393.
A good place to start for interested readers who have not previously encountered the approach.
Law, J. (1992). “The Olympus 320 Engine: a Case Study in Design, Development, and Organisational Control.” Technology and Culture 33: 409-440.
A further study of heterogeneous sociotechnical networks, attending to the spatiality and scale effects of such networks, as well as to their disruption.
Law, J. (1994). Organizing Modernity. Oxford, Blackwell.
An organisational ethnography of the management of a large scientific laboratory which is also a theoretical exploration of the links between actor-network theory and other theoretical traditions including Foucauldianism and symbolic interaction. It is also critical of the tendency towards managerialism and ‘centering’ of some parts of actor-network theory.
Law, J. (1997). Traduction/Trahison: Notes on ANT. http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/stslaw2.html, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University.
Appears on these web pages. Explores the development of actor-network theory through examples, from 1985-1995, arguing that it has changed, that it is not singular but multiple in character, and that defences of (or attacks on) a fixed position called ‘actor-network theory’ miss the point, since what is interesting is the displacements, and the issues that arise in debate.
Law, J. (1999). After ANT: Topology, Naming and Complexity. In J. Law and J. Hassard (Eds.) Actor Network Theory and After. Oxford and Keele, Blackwell and the Sociological Review: 1-14.
‘Actor-network’ is an oxymoron, the two parts of the term being in tension. But that tension has often been lost in simplifications. It is recommended that the tensions of complexities be retained.
Law, J. (2000). “Comment on Suchman, and Gherardi and Nicolini: Knowing as Displacing.” Organization 7(2): 349-354.
In a comment on Suchman (2000) and Gherardi and Nicolini (2000), explores the character of organisational knowing from a monadological point of view, distinguishing between ‘knowing as distinction’, and ‘knowing as obsurity’.
Law, J. (2000). Networks, Relations, Cyborgs: on the Social Study of Technology, Science Studies Centre and Department of Sociology, Lancaster University. .
In an ‘after actor-network’ mode, argues that networks should not be understood as centred and functional in character. It is relations that are crucial, and these may be understood in partial and incompletely centred modes.
Law, J. (2000). Objects, Spaces, Others.
Considers the spatial implications of networks, regions and fluids, and argues that objects may be understood as interferences between different spatial systems.
Law, J. (2000). “On the Subject of the Object: Narrative, Technology and Interpellation.” Configurations 8: 1-29.
Explores the relations between subjectivity and objectivity in an after ANT mode, in part by using Althusser’s notion of interpellation.
Law, J. (2001). Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in Technoscience,. Durham, N. Ca., Duke University Press.
‘After’ actor-network, or partially outside it; this builds on a number of its assumptions to explore ‘the problem of difference’. The argument is semiotic: subjects and objects make themselves together. If this is so, then as Annemarie Mol has pointed out, there is not an objective world, but rather multiple object positions. How are they co-ordinated? Do we have the languages we need to make sense of decentred object which are more than one and less than many?
Law, J. and R. Benschop (1997). Resisting Pictures: Representation, Distribution and Ontological Politics. In K. Hetherington and R. Munro (Eds.) Ideas of Difference: Social Spaces and the Labour of Division (Sociological Review Monograph). London, Sage.
Considers the ways in which subjects and objects are constituted in representations, arguing that such relations are not given in the order of things. ‘After actor-network’.
Law, J. and M. Callon (1988). “Engineering and Sociology in a Military Aircraft Project: A Network Analysis of Technical Change.” Social Problems 35: 284-297.
Technologies are shaped in and help to perform networks of materially heterogeneous relations. It is possible to trace these as they evolve, which is done for a military aircraft in this paper.
Law, J. and M. Callon (1989). “On the Construction of Sociotechnical Networks: Content and Context Revisited.” Knowledge and Society 9: 57-83.
Similar to Law and Callon (1989), except that it is more detailed, and develops the idea that the technology in question (here an aircraft) has a ‘variable geometry’ as the networks in which it is located change their configurations.
Law, J. and J. Hassard (Eds.). (1999). Actor Network Theory and After. Oxford and Keele, Blackwell and the Sociological Review.
A book which attempts, in the same mode as this resource, to argue that actor-network has moved on, and that the interesting issues which arise have to do with questions arising (which are often shared with other traditions) rather than defending (or attacking) ANT. Includes papers by Steve Brown and Rose Capdevila, Michel Callon, Anni Dugdale, Kevin Hetherington, Emilie Gomart and Antoine Hennion, Bruno Latour, John Law, Nick Lee and Paul Stenner, Annemarie Mol, Ingunn Moser and John Law, Marilyn Strathern and Helen Verran.
Law, J. and A. Mol (1995). “Notes on Materiality and Sociality.” The Sociological Review 43: 274-294.
Explores a semiotic understanding of materiality: that it is a product of relations between entities which thereby achieve their material form. Traces this through actor-network theory to the less coherent materialities which are implied in the postructuralist fragmentation that follows the ‘loss’ of grand narrative.
Law, J. and A. Mol (1998). On Metrics and Fluids: Notes on Otherness. In R. Chia (Ed.) Into the Realm of Organisation: Essays for Robert Cooper. London, Routledge: 20-38.
An empirical study of the topological differences between counting and specificity on the one hand, and uncountable continuities on the other. A study, therefore, of ‘Otherness’ where matters cannot be drawn together and summarised.
Law, J. and I. Moser (1999). “Managing, Subjectivities and Desires.” Concepts and Transformation 4(3): 249-279.
Explores the male-gendering of managers in a formalorganisation, arguing that there are multiple forms of male performance.
Law, J. and V. Singleton (2000). “Performing Technology’s Stories.” Technology and Culture: 41, 765-775.
A commentary on Constant’s analysis of the failings of constructivism. Suggests that ANT and feminist technoscience analyses owe less to construction than a turn to performance.
Law, J. and V. Singleton (2000). This is Not an Object, Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University.
Explores an object (alcoholic liver disease) which turns out to be enacted in different locations in different ways overlapping and partially connected performances. It is argued that this means that it is not an object
Lee, N. and S. Brown (1994). “Otherness and the Actor Network: the Undiscovered Continent.” American Behavioural Scientist 36: 772-790.
A sympathetic but critical commentary of the tendency of actor-network theory to colonise or homogenise the ‘Other’, and therefore deny to this its otherness. This also implies that actor-network studies often enough take a ‘God-eye’ view.
Meadel, C. and V. Rabeharisoa (Eds.). (1996).
Représenter, Hybrider, Coordoner. Paris, École des Mines de Paris.
A series of empirical and theoretical papers by members and those associated with the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation at the École des Mines de Paris.
Michael, M. (1998). Co(a)gency and the car: Attributing Agency in the Case of the ‘Road Rage’. In B. Brenna, J. Law and I. Moser (Eds.) Machines, Agency and Desire. Oslo, TMV, University of Oslo: 125-141.
Where is agency located? How is it attributed? Michael looks at the hybrid actor of the driver and the motor car for the case of road rage.
Mol, A. (1997). Wat is Kiezen? Een Empirisch-Filosophische Verkenning. Enschede, Universiteit Twente.
Inaugural lecture on ‘what is choosing?’ which explores the implications of distributed ‘decisions’ in a world of multiplicity for the case of medicine.
Mol, A. (1998). Missing Links, Making Links: the Performance of Some Artheroscleroses. In A. Mol and M. Berg (Eds.) Differences in Medicine: Unravelling Practices, Techniques and Bodies. Durham, N Ca., Duke University Press: 141-163.
‘After actor-network’, rather than ANT. Explores the material specificities of different atheroscleroses, to make the point that these are multiple – that the object is decentred – and that these different object-positions are more or less well linked in the arrangements of the hospital.
Mol, A. (1999). Ontological Politics: a Word and Some Questions. In J. Law and J. Hassard (Eds.) Actor Network and After. Oxford and Keele, Blackwell and the Sociological Review: 74-89.
How are worlds, realities, performed into being? This is an ANT question. Here an ‘ontological politics’ is imagined.
Mol, A. (2001). The Body Multiple: Artherosclerosis in Practice. Durham, N.Ca. and London, Duke University Press.
‘After actor-network’, rather than ANT. On the multiplicity of objects, the distribution of difference performances over different sites, the forms of co-ordination between them and their different dependencies.
Mol, A. (2001). Cutting surgeons, walking patients: Some complexities involved in comparing. In J. Law and A. Mol (Eds.) Complexities in Science, Technology and Medicine. Durham, N. Ca., Duke University Press.
Comparison as an effect of specific and loal practices which perform sets of assumptions, but which are nevertheless partially connected.
Mol, A. and M. Berg (1994). “Principles and Practices of Medicine: the Coexistence of Various Anaemias.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 18: 247-265.
‘After actor-network’, rather than ANT. Explores the specificities and the relations between different anaemias.
Mol, A. and B. Elsman (1996). “Detecting Disease and Designing Treatment. Duplex and the Diagnosis of Diseased Leg Vessels.” Sociology of Health and Illness 18(5): 609-631.
Explores the differences between two methods for performing atherosclerosis, and the ways in which these are related in practice in a hospital.
Mol, A. and J. Law (1994). “Regions, Networks and Fluids: Anaemia and Social Topology.” Social Studies of Science 24: 641-671.
A topological analysis of the spatial forms performed in the disease ‘anaemia’, distinguishing between regions, (actor-)networks, and proposing a further topographical form, that of the fluid. Argues that practices are multi-spatial.
Mol, A. and J. Law (2001). Situated Bodies and Distributed Selves: on Doing Hypoglycaemia. In M. Akrich and M. Berg (Eds.) Bodies on Trial: Performances and Politics in Medicine and Biology. Durham, N.Ca, Dule University Press: forthcoming.
Explores the performances of hypoglycaemia in diabetes, arguing that these are multiple, and correspondingly generate multiple bodily (and other material) specificities, and multiple ‘selves’.
Mol, A. and J. Mesman (1996). “Neonatal Food and the Politics of Theory: Some Questions of Method.” Social Studies of Science 26: 419-444.
A methodological, theoretical and political comparison of symbolic interaction (which follows people) and semiotics (or actor-network theory) which may also follow inanimate objects – such as food.
Moser, I. and J. Law (1998). “‘Making Voices’: Disability, Technology and Articulation.” paper presented to Politics of Technology, 1998 NECSTS Workshop, Maastricht, Netherlands, 13-16th May, 1998.
On the implications of material heterogeneity for subjectivities in disability, and the notion of ‘voices’ or representations. After ANT
Moser, I. and J. Law (1998). “Notes on Desire, Complexity, Inclusion.” Concepts and Transformation: International Journal of Action Research and Organizational Renewal: forthcoming.
Using Deleuze and Guattari’s distinction between rhizome and arborescence, argues that desire as lack and desire as intensity are mutually dependent.
Moser, I. and J. Law (1999). Good Passages, Bad Passages. In 196-219 in John Law and John Hassard (eds), Actor Network and After, Oxford, Blackwell and the Sociological Review: 196-219.
An analysis of the materiality of dis/ability, which explores the multiplicity of such dis/ablings, the ways in which these link together, and the manner in which they perform subjectivities.
Nowotny, H. (1990). “Actor-networks vs. science as self-organizing system: A comparative view of two constructivist approaches.” Sociology of the Sciences 14: 223-239.
Critically reviews two constructivist traditions that attempt to explain science: ANT and Complexity Theory.
Pasveer, B. (1992). Shadows of Knowledge: making a representing practice in medicine: x-ray pictures and pulmonary tuberculosis, 1895-1930. The Hague, CIP-Gegevens Koninklijke Bibiotheek.
Uses a variety of theoretical resources, including actor-network theory, to trace the processes by which new entities were constitute in and through radiography.
Pasveer, B. and M. Akrich (1996). How Children are Born: Technologies of Giving Birth in France and the Netherlands. Maastricht and Paris.
A summary in English of the study reported in Akrich and Pasveer (1996).
Pickering, A. (1995). The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press.
Not an actor-network study – but is included because it shows another, in some ways comparable, approach at work, in which objects, persons and technologies are all treated as malleable.
Prout, A. (1996). “ANT, technology and medial sociology: An illustrative analysis of the metered dose inhaler.” Sociology of Health.
A study that introduces ANT to a medical sociology audience by analysing a medical artefact used to treat asthma.
Serres, M. (1974). La Traduction, Hermes III. Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit.
The notion of ‘translation’, the action of making equivalent which is also a betrayal, was drawn by Michel Callon (1980) from the writing of Michel Serres
Singleton, V. (1993). Science, Women and Ambivalence: an Actor-Network Analysis of the Cervical Screening Campaign. PhD. . Lancaster, University of Lancaster.
Combines resources from actor-network theory and feminism to explore the ambivalences that are built into, and help to constitute, the British Cervical Screening Programme.
Singleton, V. (1996). “Feminism, Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and Postmodernism: Politics, Theory and Me.” Social Studies of Science 26: 445-468.
How to think about ‘decisions’ in a world where there is endless undecidability and ambivalence.
Singleton, V. (2000). Made on Location: public health and subjectivities, Science Studies Centre, Lancaster University..
Explores the partially connected performances which both alter and at the same time reaffirm public health advice for the case of sudden infant death syndrome.
Singleton, V. and M. Michael (1993). “Actor-networks and Ambivalence: General Practitioners in the UK Cervical Screening Programme.” Social Studies of Science 23: 227-264.
Argues against the centering tendencies of 1980s actor-network theory, to suggest that decentering and indeed inconsistency or ambivalence are do not necessarily detract from the overall cohesion of a network
Star, S. L. (1991). Power, Technologies and the Phenomenology of Conventions: on being Allergic to Onions. In J. Law (Ed.) A Sociology of Monsters? Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, Sociological Review Monograph. London, Routledge. 38: 26-56.
If we are all heterogeneous engineers, then some find that this is much more difficult to accomplish than others. This engages with the tendency of 1980s actor-network studies to explore the strategies of the powerful, rather than attending to the difficulties of women, people of colour, or others who do not conform to the standard conventions.
Star, S. L. (1992). “The Trojan door: Organizations, work, and the ‘open Black Box’.” Systems Practice 5: 395-410.
One of the earliest ‘After Actor Network’ papers: Draws on a variety of theoretical traditions which form a promising assemblage of ideas for studying organisation, technology and work.
Stollmeijer, A., H. Harbers, et al. (1999). Food Matters: Arguments for an ethnography of daily care. http://www.philos.rug.nl/~hans/food.html.
An account of food and death by starvation in patients suffering from senile dementia which explores the legal and medical discourses before considering the material complexities of regimes of care and the possibility that particular objects and practices have ‘merits’ or ‘virtues’ which might be used in a non-normative ethics.
Strathern, M. (1996). “Cutting the Network.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2: 517-535.
Not primarily about actor-network, this raises important questions about the character of relatedness, and the neutrality of the notion of ‘network’ as a descriptor.
Suchman, L. (2000). Human/Machine Reconsidered, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University. .
Links the ethnomethodological concern with situated knowledges to a reconsideration of non-human agency in work practices.
Suchman, L. (2000). “Organizing Alignment: a Case of Bridge Building.” Organization 7: in the press.
Explores the human and non-human engineering work and practices involved in the design of a bridge.
Teil, G. v. and B. Latour (1995). The Hume Machine: Can Association Networks Do More Than Formal Rules?, Stanford Humanities Review 4(2): Constructions of the Mind. http://shr.stanford.edu/shreview/4-2/text/teil-latour.htm.
Another attempt of a scientometric approach to describing associations – draws on ANT to a crtain extent but is rather ‘After Actor Network’.
Thrift, N. (1996). Spatial Formations. London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi, Sage.
Uses actor-network theory, together with a wide range of other resources, to explore the character of geographical spatiality, often in relation to power and distribution.
Turnbull, D. (1993). Maps are Territories, Science is an Atlas. Chicago, Chicago University Press.
Related to some concerns of actor-network theory, and drawing on it in part, this is a study of the conventional character of cartographic representation.
Urry, J. (1998). “The Concept of Society and the Future of Sociology.” Dansk Sociologi 9: 29-41.
Uses the notion of ‘fluids’, themselves developed as an alternative to the (actor) network metaphor, to retheorise the nature of society
Willems, D. (1998). Inhaling Drugs and Making Worlds: a Proliferation of Lungs and Asthmas. In M. Berg and A. Mol (Eds.) Differences in Medicine. Unravelling Practices, Techniques and Bodies. Durham, N.Ca. and London, Duke University Press: 105-118.
Drugs produce similarities and differences, defining diseases and reorganising the body. A study in performance and multiplicity.
Winance, M. (1999). Trying out the Wheelchair: the Mutual Shaping of People and Devices Through Adustment. Producing Taste, Configuring Use, Performing Citizenship, Maastricht.
Carefully explores the way in which a person with muscular dystrophy and a wheelchair are mutually adgusted to produce an assemblage which departs from both in their initial conditions.