From Systems to Actor-Networks

From Systems to Actor-Networks PDF Author: Andréa Belliger
Publisher: Ethics International Press
ISBN: 1804413372
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
This book documents a paradigm shift, not only in the sciences but also in society. Everywhere in society systems are becoming networks. This implies not only a new understanding of social science but also of society and ourselves. The book describes the systems model based on Luhmann’s theory of social systems and compares this to Latour’s actor-network theory. It argues that present day society cannot be successfully modeled as a system and illustrates the transformation to a global network society by citing many examples from business, education, and healthcare. The authors argue that actor-network theory provides a more comprehensive account of these changes than systems theory. Based on actor-network theory, they propose a theory of the “digital transformation” that is ushering in the global network society. Although people in all areas talk about systems, adaptive behavior, evolution, complexity, and networks, few know where these concepts come from, and what they mean in the theories they belong to. This book is for all who are concerned with clarifying the often taken-for-granted assumptions and concepts that are implicitly or explicitly derived from systems theory and network theory. It offers an introduction to the work of Luhmann and Latour and a critical and constructive development of these important theories for the 21st century.

From Systems to Actor-Networks

From Systems to Actor-Networks PDF Author: Andréa Belliger
Publisher: Ethics International Press
ISBN: 1804413372
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
This book documents a paradigm shift, not only in the sciences but also in society. Everywhere in society systems are becoming networks. This implies not only a new understanding of social science but also of society and ourselves. The book describes the systems model based on Luhmann’s theory of social systems and compares this to Latour’s actor-network theory. It argues that present day society cannot be successfully modeled as a system and illustrates the transformation to a global network society by citing many examples from business, education, and healthcare. The authors argue that actor-network theory provides a more comprehensive account of these changes than systems theory. Based on actor-network theory, they propose a theory of the “digital transformation” that is ushering in the global network society. Although people in all areas talk about systems, adaptive behavior, evolution, complexity, and networks, few know where these concepts come from, and what they mean in the theories they belong to. This book is for all who are concerned with clarifying the often taken-for-granted assumptions and concepts that are implicitly or explicitly derived from systems theory and network theory. It offers an introduction to the work of Luhmann and Latour and a critical and constructive development of these important theories for the 21st century.

Contemporary Applications of Actor Network Theory

Contemporary Applications of Actor Network Theory PDF Author: Idongesit Williams
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811570663
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This book provides empirically driven discussions and investigations in the relevance of Actor Network Theory (ANT) and its theoretical concepts. As our civilization evolves from a human to a technologically driven society, new socio-technical network of actors – in society, industry and government are emerging by the day. These networks of actors collaborate to produce contemporary goods and services; handle production processes; manage risks; develop social and commercial networks; develop policies; manage complexities; and create a new way of life. This book provides unique conceptual tools needed to analyze such processes, highlighting the effectiveness of ANT in fostering collaborations between governments, organizations and society.

Information Systems and Qualitative Research

Information Systems and Qualitative Research PDF Author: Allen Lee
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780412823602
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 588

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Book Description
This book contains the papers presented and discussed at the conference that was held in May/June 1997, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and that was sponsored by Working Group 8.2 of the International Federation for Information Processing. IFIP established 8.2 as a group concerned with the interaction of information systems and the organization. Information Systems and Qualitative Research is essential reading for professionals and students working in information systems in a business environment, such as systems analysts, developers and designers, data administrators, and senior executives in all business areas that use information technology, as well as consultants in the fields of information systems, management, and quality management.

Applying the Actor-Network Theory in Media Studies

Applying the Actor-Network Theory in Media Studies PDF Author: Spöhrer, Markus
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1522506179
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Actor-Network Theory (ANT), originally a social theory, seeks to organize objects and non-human entities into social networks. Its most innovative claim approaches these networks outside the anthropocentric view, including both humans and non-human objects as active participants in a social context; because of this, the theory has applications in a myriad of domains, not merely in the social sciences. Applying the Actor-Network Theory in Media Studies applies this novel approach to media studies. This publication responds to the current trends in international media studies by presenting ANT as the new theoretical paradigm through which meaningful discussion and analysis of the media, its production, and its social and cultural effects. Featuring both case studies and theoretical and methodical meditations, this timely publication thoroughly considers the possibilities of these disparate, yet divergent fields. This book is intended for use by researchers, students, sociologists, and media analysts concerned with contemporary media studies.

Actor Networks of Planning

Actor Networks of Planning PDF Author: Yvonne Rydin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317502345
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Planning is centrally focused on places which are significant to people, including both the built and natural environments. In making changes to these places, planning outcomes inevitably benefit some and disadvantage others. It is perhaps surprising that Actor Network Theory (ANT) has only recently been considered as an appropriate lens through which to understand planning practice. This book brings together an international range of contributors to explore such potential of ANT in more detail. While it can be thought of as a subset of complexity theory, given its appreciation for non-linear processes and responses, ANT has its roots in the sociology of scientific and technology studies. ANT now comprises a rich set of concepts that can be applied in research, theoretical and empirical. It is a relational approach that posits a radical symmetry between social and material actors (or actants). It suggests the importance of dynamic processes by which networks of relationships become formed, shift and have effect. And while not inherently normative, ANT has the potential to strengthen other more normative domains of planning theory through its unique analytical lens. However, this requires theoretical and empirical work and the papers in this volume undertake such work. This is the first volume to provide a full consideration of how ANT can contribute to planning studies, and suggests a research agenda for conceptual development and empirical application of the theory.

Evolutionary Governance Theory

Evolutionary Governance Theory PDF Author: Kristof van Assche
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3319009842
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 95

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Book Description
​This short books offers the reader a remarkable new perspective on the way markets, laws and societies evolve together. It can be of use to anyone interested in development, market and public sector reform, public administration, politics & law. Based on a wide variety of case studies on three continents and a variety of conceptual sources, the authors develop a theory that clarifies the nature and functioning of dependencies that mark governance evolutions. This in turn delineates in an entirely new manner the spaces open for policy experiment. As such, it offers a new mapping of the middle ground between libertarianism and social engineering. Theoretically, the approach draws on a wide array of sources: institutional & development economics, systems theories, post-structuralism, actor- network theories, planning theory and legal studies.

Technological Advancements and the Impact of Actor-Network Theory

Technological Advancements and the Impact of Actor-Network Theory PDF Author: Tatnall, Arthur
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1466661275
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has existed as a topic of interest among social theorists for decades. Due to the prevalence of technology in modern society, discussions over the influence of actor-network theory on the changing scope of technology can assist in facilitating further research and scientific thought. Technological Advancements and the Impact of Actor-Network Theory focuses on cross-disciplinary research as well as examples of the use of actor-network theory in a variety of fields, including medicine, education, business, engineering, environmental science, computer science, and social science. This timely publication is well-suited for reference use by academicians, researchers, upper-level students, and theorists.

Actor-Network Theory in Education

Actor-Network Theory in Education PDF Author: Tara Fenwick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113695287X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has enjoyed wide uptake in the social sciences in the past three decades, particularly in science and technology studies, and is increasingly attracting the attention of educational researchers. ANT studies bring to the fore the material – objects of all kinds – and de-centre the human and the social in educational issues. ANT sensibilities are interested in the ways human and non-human elements become interwoven. Since its first introduction, actor-network theory has undergone significant shifts and evolutions and as a result, it is not considered to be a single or coherent theoretical domain, but as developing diversely in response to various challenges. This book offers an introduction to Actor-Network Theory for educators to consider in three ways. One mode is the introduction of concepts, approaches and debates around Actor-Network Theory as a research approach in education. A second mode showcases educational studies that have employed ANT approaches in classrooms, workplaces and community settings, drawn from the UK, USA, Canada, Europe and Australia. These demonstrate how ANT can operate in highly diverse ways whether it focuses on policy critique, curriculum inquiry, engagements with digital media, change and innovation, issues of accountability, or exploring how knowledge unfolds and becomes materialized in various settings. A third mode looks at recent 'after-ANT' inquiries which open an array of important new approaches. Across these diverse environments and uptakes, the authors trace how learning and practice emerge, show what scales are at play, and demonstrate what this means for educational possibilities.

Urban Assemblages

Urban Assemblages PDF Author: Ignacio Farías
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135202737
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
This book takes it as a given that the city is made of multiple partially localized assemblages built of heterogeneous networks, spaces, and practices. The past century of urban studies has focused on various aspects—space, culture, politics, economy—but these too often address each domain and the city itself as a bounded and cohesive entity. The multiple and overlapping enactments that constitute urban life require a commensurate method of analysis that encompasses the human and non-human aspects of cities—from nature to socio-technical networks, to hybrid collectivities, physical artefacts and historical legacies, and the virtual or imagined city. This book proposes—and its various chapters offer demonstrations—importing into urban studies a body of theories, concepts, and perspectives developed in the field of science and technology studies (STS) and, more specifically, Actor-Network Theory (ANT). The essays examine artefacts, technical systems, architectures, place and eventful spaces, the persistence of history, imaginary and virtual elements of city life, and the politics and ethical challenges of a mode of analysis that incorporates multiple actors as hybrid chains of causation. The chapters are attentive to the multiple scales of both the object of analysis and the analysis itself. The aim is more ambitious than the mere transfer of a fashionable template. The authors embrace ANT critically, as much as a metaphor as a method of analysis, deploying it to think with, to ask new questions, to find the language to achieve more compelling descriptions of city life and of urban transformations. By greatly extending the chain or network of causation, proliferating heterogeneous agents, non-human as well as human, without limit as to their enrolment in urban assemblages, Actor-Network Theory offers a way of addressing the particular complexity and openness characteristic of cities. By enabling an escape from the reification of the city so common in social theory, ANT’s notion of hybrid assemblages offers richer framing of the reality of the city—of urban experience—that is responsive to contingency and complexity. Therefore Urban Assemblages is a pertinent book for students, practitioners and scholars as it aims to shift the parameters of urban studies and contribute a meaningful argument for the urban arena which will dominate the coming decades in government policies.

Reassembling the Social

Reassembling the Social PDF Author: Bruno Latour
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191622893
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 813

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Book Description
Reassembling the Social is a fundamental challenge from one of the world's leading social theorists to how we understand society and the 'social'. Bruno Latour's contention is that the word 'social', as used by Social Scientists, has become laden with assumptions to the point where it has become misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon, it is used to indicate a stablilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon. But Latour also finds the word used as if it described a type of material, in a comparable way to an adjective such as 'wooden' or 'steely'. Rather than simply indicating what is already assembled together, it is now used in a way that makes assumptions about the nature of what is assembled. It has become a word that designates two distinct things: a process of assembling; and a type of material, distinct from others. Latour shows why 'the social' cannot be thought of as a kind of material or domain, and disputes attempts to provide a 'social explanations' of other states of affairs. While these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the past, the very success of the social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the original meaning of 'the social' to redefine the notion, and allow it to trace connections again. It will then be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences, but using more refined tools. Drawing on his extensive work examining the 'assemblages' of nature, Latour finds it necessary to scrutinize thoroughly the exact content of what is assembled under the umbrella of Society. This approach, a 'sociology of associations', has become known as Actor-Network-Theory, and this book is an essential introduction both for those seeking to understand Actor-Network Theory, or the ideas of one of its most influential proponents.