Commentaries, Criticisms, Assessments

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 stuies from a methodological perspective
Theory
Introductory
Law (1992), `Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy and
Heterogeneity'
A good place to start for interested readers who have not previously
encountered the approach.
Law (1997), `Traduction/Trahison: Notes on ANT'
Appears on these web pages. Explores the development of actor-network
theory through examples, from 1985-1995, arguing that it has changed, that it
is not singular but multiple in character, and that defences of (or attacks on) a
fixed position called 'actor-network theory' miss the point, since what is
interesting is the displacements, and the issues that arise in debate.
Cals and Smircich (1999), `Past Postmodernism? Reflections and Tentative
Directions'
A clear and concise account of the implications of 'postmodernism' for the
theorising of organisations, which offers, as posssible post-postmodernisms,
feminist theory, narrative analysis, actor-network theory, and post-colonial
theorising.
Precursors
Latour and Woolgar (1979), `Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of
Scientific Facts'
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.
Latour (1983), `Give Me a Laboratory and I will Raise the World'
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.

Serres (1974), `La Traduction, Hermes III'

The notion of 'translation', the action of making equivalent which is also a
betrayal, was drawn by Michel Callon (1980) from the writing of Michel Serres
`Early Theory'
Callon (1980), `Struggles and Negotiations to define what is Problematic and
what is not: the Sociology of Translation'
An early, perhaps the first empirical, example of the 'sociology of translation',
using the case of the vhicule lectrique. Derives the term 'translation' from
Michel Serres (1974).
Callon and Latour (1981), `Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: how actors
macrostructure reality and how sociologists help them to do so'
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.
Callon and Law (1982), `On Interests and their Transformation: Enrolment and
Counter-Enrolment'
Argues the social interests are constructed in networks of heterogeneous
relations.
Substantial Theoretical Contributions
Callon (1986), `Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of
the Scallops and the Fishermen of Saint Brieuc Bay'
One of the most discussed papers in actor-network theory. This presses
'symmetry' between different entities including fishermen, various
technologies, and scallops. Much commented on, much criticised. (See Collins
and Yearley (1992))
Callon (1998), `An Essay on Framing and Overflowing: Economic Externalities
Revisited by Sociology'
Introduces useful new terminology for exploring the simplifications that are
implicit in the formation of economic (and any other) actors.
Callon and Rabeharisoa (1999), `Gino's Lesson on Humanity'
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.
Latour (1988), `Irrductions, published with The Pasteurisation of France'
A tightly written philosophical-theoretical statement which rigorously develops
the implications of the irreducibility of different entities, and the worlds that
are formed when these link together into chains or networks. A crucial
theoretical resource

Latour (1988), `The Pasteurization of France'

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 (1990), `Drawing Things Together'
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.
Latour (1999), `Politiques de la Nature: Comment faire entrer les sciences en
dmocratie'
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.
Callon (1991), `Techno-economic Networks and Irreversibility'
An exploration of the formation and dynamics of heterogeneous networks
which attends, in particular, to they strategies which secure the relative
irreversibility of those networks.

After, ANT

Law (1997), `Traduction/Trahison: Notes on ANT'

Appears on these web pages. Explores the development of actor-network theory through
examples, from 1985-1995, arguing that it has changed, that it is not singular but multiple
in character, and that defences of (or attacks on) a fixed position called 'actor-network
theory' miss the point, since what is interesting is the displacements, and the issues that
arise in debate.
Law and Hassard (1999), `Actor Network Theory and After'
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.