Actor-Network Theory (ANT)

Definition

Actor-Network Theory, associated with Bruno Latour, is a methodological approach that treats human and nonhuman actants symmetrically, following the traces they leave as they assemble into networks. In architecture and design studies, ANT has gained popularity over the past two decades by offering a way to study design as it actually happens — not as the execution of a plan by a creative genius, but as a messy, distributed process in which materials, regulations, technologies, and humans are equally active participants. Architecture from an ANT perspective "facilitates the production of social relations and helps shape societies" (Yaneva).

Key Thinkers

• Bruno Latour — the principle of symmetry; "we have never been modern"; science in the making.
• Albena Yaneva — translated Latour for architectural audiences; emphasized architecture as a socio-technical practice.
• Harold Garfinkel — ethnomethodology as a precursor to ANT's emphasis on practical action.

Related Concepts

• Hybrids — ANT reveals the proliferation of nature-culture hybrids that modernity has always denied.
• Nonhumans — objects, animals, technologies, and regulations can be active participants in social life.
• Cosmopolitics — ANT leads to a politics that includes nonhumans in the "parliament of things."
• Modernity — ANT's critique: we have never been modern because the work of "purification" (separating nature from culture) has never succeeded.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Latour for Architects — ANT's application to architecture and design pedagogy.
• Productions: spatial practices, processes, and effects (Odom 2018) — the metaphysical statement of the principle of symmetry, via Harman's exposition of Latour: "For Latour there are no cryptic essences lying behind… There are only actants of all possible and actants are fully expressed in each moment … it is true that new features of objects appear through the unfolding of successive events" (The Prince of Networks, p. 47, quoted). The quote enters as the ontological ground of production-oriented practices — design systems of "material technical components and the organization of these components," with no essence behind the actants ("the installation, the generated effects, the emergent conditions, and the human experiences combined into one"). Where Yaneva's ANT is methodological (follow the design process), Odom's is ontological: the network's flatness is why effects can be produced at all. See nonhumans, productions, thing-ontology.