ANT was first developed at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation (CSI) of the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris in the early 1980s by staff (Michel Callon and Bruno Latour) and visitors (including John Law). Initially created in an attempt to understand processes of innovation and knowledge-creation in science and technology, the approach drew on existing work in STS, on studies of large technological systems (see Large Technical System), and on a range of French intellectual resources including the semiotics of Algirdas Julien Greimas, the writing of philosopher Michel Serres, and the Annales School of history.
ANT appears to reflect many of the preoccupations of French Post-structuralism, and in particular a concern with non-foundational and multiple material-semiotic relations. At the same time, it was much more firmly embedded in English-language academic traditions than most post-structuralist-influenced approaches. Its grounding in (predominantly English) STS was reflected in an intense commitment to the development of theory through qualitative empirical case-studies. Its links with (largely US) work on large technical systems were reflected in its willingness to analyse large scale technological developments in an even-handed manner to include political, organizational, legal, technical and scientific factors.
Many of the characteristic ANT tools (including the notions of translation, generalized symmetry and the 'heterogeneous network'), together with a scientometric tool for mapping innovations in science and technology ('co-word analysis') were initially developed during the 1980s, predominantly in and around the CSI. The 'state of the art' of ANT in the late 1980s is well-described in Latour's 1987 text, Science in Action.[2]
From about 1990 onwards, ANT started to become popular as a tool for analysis in a range of fields beyond STS. It was picked up and developed by authors in parts of organizational analysis, informatics, health studies, geography, sociology, anthropology, feminist studies and economics.
As of 2008, ANT is a widespread if controversial range of material-semiotic approaches for the analysis of heterogeneous relations. In part because of its popularity, it is interpreted and used in a wide range of alternative and sometimes incompatible ways. There is no orthodoxy in current ANT, and different authors use the approach in substantially different ways. Some authors talk of 'after-ANT' to refer to 'successor projects' blending together different problematics with those of ANT
0 comments:
Post a Comment