1. Comp6037: Foundations in Web Science
Social Networks and Actors
Please use the dd month yyyy format for the date for example 11 January The main title can be one or two lines long.
Susan Halford
November 2009

2. Technology and Society Social shaping of technology
In the processes of scientific development - internal - external
In what people actually DO with technologies
As a critique of technological determinism:
against an inevitable trajectory of progress and discovery
against x=y=z
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3. Impasse?
Between scientists – science as independent from society – right technology = right society
And social scientists – Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) whereby all technology is socially determined
Web Science has to move beyond this
Scientists must take social science seriously
Social Scientists must take technology seriously as an actor

4. ‘… neither technological determinism nor social constructionism’ (Madeleine Ackrich 1992; 206)
But something that can grasp both the social and the technical
For example:
Michel Callon’s study of the development of the electric car in France during the 1970s.

5. ‘The ingredients of the VEL are the electrons that jump effortlessly between the electrodes; the consumers who reject the symbol of the motor car and are ready to invest in public transport; the ministry of the quality of life which imposes regulations about the level of acceptable noise pollution; Renault which accepts it will be turned into a manufacturer of car bodies; lead accumulators whose performance has been improved and post industrial society which is on its way. None of these ingredients can be placed in a hierarchy or distinguished according to its nature. The activist in favour of public transport is just as important as the lead accumulator. This case shows that the engineers left no stone unturned. They went from electrochemistry to political science without transition’. (Callon 1992; 86)

6. What actors make the web as you know it?

7. Scientist Engineers
‘This case shows that the engineers left no stone unturned They went from electrochemistry to political science without transition’ (Callon)
Sociology’s missing masses?
Machines and other products of science and technology are Sociology’s missing masses because they go largely un-noticed by sociologists even while they bond the social world together’ (Yearley 2005; vii)

8. Actor Network Theory
Michel Callon Bruno Latour John Law

9. ANT – response to Social Construction of Technology theories = social  technology
SCOT neglects technology  social
Point is technology <--> social
Aim (1) Main principles of ANT
(2) Criticisms
(3) Where do we go from here?

10. Main Principles of ANT
(1) A materialist perspective
‘We are never faced with objects or social relations. We are faced with chains which are associations of humans … and non-humans …’ (Latour 1991; 110)
The processes that concern us are ‘necessarily both technical and social’ (Ackrich 1992; 206)
A heterogeneous socio-materiality (Suchman 2007)

11. (2) A relational perspective
No entity has existence independent of it’s relations with other entities
‘the primary epistemological unit is not independent objects [or entities] with inherent boundaries and properties, but rather phenomena’ (Barad 2003; 815)
‘Phenomena’ refers to inseparable interacting components
The phenomena or network produces the actors – social and technical

12. (3) Tracing the Heterogeneous Networks
Point is to trace the networks – what networks come into being, with what actors, and how?
‘People, technologies, documents, non-human life forms, knowledges, social facts, collectivities and phenomena – all of these are relational effects, materials, being done in interaction’ (Haraway 1997)
For Web Science?
‘The computer is a trope, a part-for-whole figure, for a world of actors and actants, not a Thing Acting Alone. ‘Computers’ cause nothing but the human and non-human hybrids troped by the figure of the information machine remake worlds’ (Haraway 1997;126)

13. (4) A Performative Perspective
Networks only exist so long as they continue to be enacted
There is nothing essential that pre-exists the networks
‘Technologies, knowledges and work may be understood as the effects of materially, socially and conceptually hybrid performances. In these performances, different elements assemble together and act in certain ways to produce specific outcomes.’ (Law and Singleton 2000; 774)
The social and the technical as ‘temporarily stabilised effects of particular networks

14. Which means
Gender, race, class etc. might be an outcome of networks but do not exist independently of those networks
‘The choice is clear: either we follow social theorists and begin our travel by setting up at the start which kind of group and level of analysis we will focus on, or we follow the actors’ own ways and begin our travels [with?] the traces left behind by their activity of forming and dismantling groups’ (Latour 2005; 29)

15. Brief Evaluation
A radical alternative to the problems of technological and social determinism
Principle of co-constitution widely accepted that there is
‘… a complex and mutually evolving relationship between technology and broader social structures’ (Lawson-Mack 2001; 202: our emphasis).

16. Criticisms
Principle of symmetry between actors – obscures the particular characteristics of actors?
Insistence on the micro focus – undermines possibilities of talking about social groups, inequalities, or making political interventions
From within ANT – Latour (1999)

17. Where does that leave us?
The web is a complex socio-technical phenomenon – concepts, electricity, military, academia, business, PC ownership, browsers, emergent uses – multiple power relations and contingencies;
We need to take social science seriously
And we need to take artefacts seriously
It is yet to be finished: technology in praxis
Use ANT’s insights flexibly – perhaps with other perspectives to explore

18. ‘The myriad daily negotiations among humans and non- humans that make up the consensus called technology’ (Haraway 1997; 127)

19. References
Ackrich, M. (1992) ‘The de-scription of technical objects’ in Bijker, W. and Law, J. (Eds) Shaping Technology/Building Society MIT Press
Barad, K. (2003) ‘Posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter’ Signs 28(3)
Callon, M. (1989) ‘Society in the making: the study of technology as a tool for sociological analysis’ in Bijker, W., Hughes, T. and Pinch, T The Social Construction of Technological Systems: MIT press, pp
Haraway, D. (1997) London, Routledge.
Latour, B. (1991) ‘Technology is society made durable’ in Law, J. (ed) A Sociology of Monsters: essays on power, technology and domination London, Routledge.
Latour, B. (1999) ‘On recalling ANT’ in Law, J. and Hassard, J. (eds) (1999). Actor Network Theory and After (Oxford and Keele: Blackwell and the Sociological Review).
Latour, B. (2005) Re-assembling the Social: an introduction to Actor Network Theory Oxford, OUP.
Law, J. and Singleton, V. (2000) ‘Performing technology’s stories’ Technology and Culture Vol 41 pp
Lawson-Mack, R. (2001) The Digital Divide: standing at the intersection of race and technology Durham, NC, Carolina Academic Press.
Suchman, L. (2007) Human and Machine Reconfigurations: plans and situated actions Cambridge, CUP.
Yearley, S. (2005) Making Sense of Science: Understanding the Social Study of Science London, Sage.