Editing Actor–network theory (section)

==Other central concepts==

=== A material semiotic method ===
Although it is called a "[[Philosophical theory|theory]]", ANT does not usually explain "why" a network takes the form that it does.<ref name="RtS" /> Rather, ANT is a way of thoroughly exploring the relational ties within a network (which can be a multitude of different things). As Latour notes,<ref name="technology" /> "explanation does not follow from description; it is description taken that much further." It is not, in other words, a theory "of" anything, but rather a method, or a "how-to book" as Latour<ref name="RtS" /> puts it.

The approach is related to other versions of material-semiotics (notably the work of philosophers [[Gilles Deleuze]], [[Michel Foucault]], and feminist scholar [[Donna Haraway]]). It can also be seen as a way of being faithful to the insights of [[ethnomethodology]] and its detailed descriptions of how common activities, habits and procedures sustain themselves.  Similarities between ANT and [[symbolic interactionist]] approaches such as the newer forms of [[grounded theory]] like situational analysis, exist,<ref>Fernback, J., 2007. "Beyond the Diluted Community Concept: A Symbolic Interactionist Perspective on Online Social Relations." ''New Media & Society'', 9(1), pp.49-69. [[doi:10.1177/1461444807072417]]</ref> although Latour<ref>Blok, A, & Elgaard Jensen, T. (2011). ''[http://www.excursions-journal.org.uk/index.php/excursions/article/download/100/134 Bruno Latour: Hybrid thoughts in a hybrid world] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150524023006/http://www.excursions-journal.org.uk/index.php/excursions/article/download/100/134|date=May 24, 2015}}''. Suffolk: Routledge.</ref> objects to such a comparison.

Although ANT is mostly associated with studies of science and technology and with the sociology of science, it has been making steady progress in other fields of sociology as well.  ANT is adamantly empirical, and as such yields useful insights and tools for sociological inquiry in general. ANT has been deployed in studies of identity and subjectivity, urban transportation systems, and passion and addiction.<ref>See e.g. Gomart, Emilie, and Hennion, Antoin (1999) "[https://www.academia.edu/866668/A_Sociology_of_Attachment_Music_Amateurs_Drug_Addicts A Sociology of Attachment: Music Amateurs, Drug Users]". In: J. Law and J. Hassard (eds.) Actor Network Theory and After.
Oxford: Blackwell, 220–247; Valderrama Pineda, Andres, and Jorgensen, Ulrik (2008) "Urban Transport Systems in Bogota and Copenhagen: An Approach from STS." Built Environment 34(2),200–217.</ref> It also makes steady progress in political and historical sociology.<ref>See e.g. Carroll, Patrick (2012) "Water and Technoscientific State Formation in California."
Social Studies of Science 42(2), 313–321; Shamir, Ronen (2013) Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine. Stanford: Stanford University Press</ref>

=== Intermediaries and mediators ===
The distinction between intermediaries and mediators is key to ANT sociology. Intermediaries are entities which make no difference (to some interesting state of affairs which we are studying) and so can be ignored. They transport the force of some other entity more or less without transformation and so are fairly uninteresting. Mediators are entities which multiply difference and so should be the object of study. Their outputs cannot be predicted by their inputs. From an ANT point of view sociology has tended to treat too much of the world as intermediaries.

For instance, a sociologist might take silk and nylon as intermediaries, holding that the former "means", "reflects", or "symbolises" the upper classes and the latter the lower classes. In such a view the real world silk–nylon difference is irrelevant– presumably many other material differences could also, and do also, transport this class distinction. But taken as mediators these fabrics would have to be engaged with by the analyst in their specificity: the internal real-world complexities of silk and nylon suddenly appear relevant, and are seen as actively constructing the ideological class distinction which they once merely reflected.

For the committed ANT analyst, social things—like class distinctions in taste in the silk and nylon example, but also groups and power—must constantly be constructed or performed anew through complex engagements with complex mediators. There is no stand-alone social repertoire lying in the background to be reflected off, expressed through, or substantiated in, interactions (as in an intermediary conception).<ref name="RtS" />

=== Reflexivity ===
Bruno Latour's articulation of reflexivity in Actor-Network Theory (ANT) reframes it as an opportunity rather than a problem.<ref name="on"/> His argument addresses the limitations of reflexivity as traditionally conceived in relativist epistemologies and replaces it with a pragmatic, relational approach tied to ANT's broader principles. Latour argues that the observer is merely one actor among many within the network, eliminating the problem of reflexivity as a paradox of status. Reflexivity instead emerges through the tangible work of navigating and translating between networks, requiring the observer to engage actively, like any other actor, in the labour of connection and translation. This grounded form of reflexivity enhances the observer's role as a "world builder" and reinforces ANT's emphasis on the relational and dynamic nature of knowledge creation.

=== Hybridity ===
The belief that neither a human nor a nonhuman is pure, in the sense that neither is human or nonhuman in an absolute sense, but rather beings created via interactions between the two. Humans are thus regarded as quasi-subjects, while nonhumans are regarded as quasi-objects.<ref name=":1" />