Concepts - Actor Network Theory

What is Actor-Network Theory?

From Nancy Van House:

Actor-network theory (ANT) is concerned with the processes by which scientific disputes become closed, ideas accepted, tools and methods adopted - that is, with how decisions are made about what is known. These decisions are often - usually - temporary, but closing the black box, in Latour's terms, of disputes allows people to take the work of others as a resource and move on, rather than continually reproducing and questioning it. According to their model, the work of science consists of the enrollment and juxtaposition of heterogeneous elements - rats, test tubes, colleagues, journal articles, funders, grants, papers at scientific conferences, and so on - which need continual management. They conclude that scientists' work is "the simultaneous reconstruction of social contexts of which they form a part - labs simultaneously rebuild and link the social and natural contexts upon which they act."

More definitions are available.