Resource Reading List
Resource Reading List
Resource Reading List
Centre for Science Studies People Research Study Events and Blog
Alphabetical List
Version 2.2
(April 2000)
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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.
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.
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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.
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
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critical review of similar theoretical approaches to the social, material and political aspects of
information technologies.
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.
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. (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.
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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. (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. (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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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. and J. Law (1995). Organization: Distal and Proximal Views. In S. B. Bacharach, P.
Gagliardi and B. Mundell (Eds.)
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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.
Gadelha, P. and M. Nazaré Freitas Pereira (Eds.). (1997). A Caixa Preta de Pandora. Rio de
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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.
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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.
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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). “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. (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.
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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). 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. (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.
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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.
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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. (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
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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). “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 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
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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.
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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. (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
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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
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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.
Links
PG STS Conference
ANT Resource
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