Actor-Network-Theory
I'm working now with Collin's charge: how can I go about beginning to define network theory? So I'm familiarizing myself with those existing ideas, theories, or systems that will help me or inform any theory I construct.
The first is:
Actor-Network-Theory. My exposure to ANT is limited; I've got Jeff Rice's post on ANT clipped--as well as stuff from John Law, and some of Anne Galloway's discussions of actor networks. I have yet to look to Latour's stuff, though I will since everyone references him.
John Law argues "that social agents are never located in bodies and bodies alone, but rather that an actor is a patterned network of heterogeneous relations, or an effect produced by such a network. The argument is that thinking, acting, writing, loving, earning -- all the attributes that we normally ascribe to human beings, are generated in networks that pass through and ramify both within and beyond the body. Hence the term, actor-network -- an actor is also, always, a network."
Also, it's important to note that while actors ARE networks themselves, it is not only human agents that create and participate in networks. ANT ascribes agency to the tools and machines (ugh, where did I just read a thing about the difference between tools and machines?? must find must find ah--Turkle talks about Marx's distinction between tool and machine. look it up). This reminds me of Selber's postcritical stance, which allows him to locate change agents not in the technology itself but instead "in a nexus of social forces" (8). Later, Selber posits that "[as] a human extension, the computer is not self-determining in design or operation. ... [It] depends upon a user, who if skilled enough can use and manipulate its (non-neutral) affordances to help reshape the world" (40). Essentially, Selber argues against the theory of autonomous technology (41) and says that the tools themselves hold no responsibility for cultural and social shifts.
I know that I'm creating an easy binary out of something far more complex, but I think there might be usefulness in my oversimplification. I understand that ANT is a slippery non-theory for some (like Rice), and for others is a full-blown ethnographic methodology where "follow the actor" is the refrain. But the other compelling approach that ANT offers is one in which inscriptions are studied. And it is in this application of ANT that strikes me: "Artifacts of all kinds, including documents, images, and other information artifacts, both carry and shape the work"(Van House).
These inscriptions, if we can take them up not only as texts like blog entries but also the social software (the tools, here) itself, become actants.
Selber doesn't say that technology is invisible. Clearly. But in order to define and describe a theory of network behavior that focuses on the social nature of writing and the performance of identity, it seems as though we will need to attribute at least a portion of network behavior to the tools themselves. (?)