Editing Actor–network theory (section)

=== Translation ===
{{main|Translation (sociology)}}Central to ANT is the concept of translation which is sometimes referred to as '''sociology of translation''', in which innovators attempt to create a ''forum'', a central network in which all the actors agree that the network is worth building and defending. In his widely debated 1986 study of how marine biologists tried to restock the [[Saint-Brieuc|St Brieuc]] Bay in order to produce more scallops, [[Michel Callon]] defined 4 moments of translation:<ref name="Scallops"/>

# '''Problematisation''': The researchers attempted to make themselves important to the other players in the drama by identifying their nature and issues, then claiming that they could be remedied if the actors negotiated the '[[obligatory passage point]]' of the researchers' study program.
# '''Interessement''': A series of procedures used by the researchers to bind the other actors to the parts that had been assigned to them in that program.
# '''Enrollment''': A collection of tactics used by the researchers to define and connect the numerous roles they had assigned to others.
# '''Mobilisation''': The researchers utilized a series of approaches to ensure that ostensible spokespeople for various key collectivities were appropriately able to represent those collectivities and were not deceived by the latter.

Also important to the notion is the role of network objects in helping to smooth out the translation process by creating equivalencies between what would otherwise be very challenging people, organizations or conditions to mesh together.  Bruno Latour spoke about this particular task of objects in his work ''[[Bruno Latour#Reassembling the Social|Reassembling the Social]]''.<ref name="RtS"/>