Actor-Network Theory Bibliography
Here are some ANT-references, se also the Actor-Network
Theory Resource at the Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster
University.
I have collected the references on this page as part
of my Ph.D. work. Some of the references are strictly speaking not
ANT references but are still included here for lack of will to exclude
them. Page updated
November 1, 2008
Download EndNote library
STRAUSS, A. L. (1978): "A Social World Perspective," Studies
in Symbolic Interaction, 1, 119-128.
CALLON, M. (1980): "Struggles and Negotiations to Define What
Is Problematic and What Is Not: The Sociology of Translation," in
The Social Process of Scientific Investigation: Sociology of the Sciences
Yearbook, ed. by K. D. Knorr, R. Krohn, and R. D. Whitley, 197-219.
CALLON, M., and B. LATOUR (1981): "Unscrewing the Big Leviathan:
How Actors Macrostructure Reality and How Sociologists Help Them to
Do So," in Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an
Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies, ed. by K. D. Knorr-Cetina,
and A. V. Cicourel, 277-303.
KNORR-CETINA, K. D. (1981): "Introduction: The Micro-Sociological
Challenge of Macro-Sociology: Towards a Reconstruction of Social Theory
and Methodology," in Advances in Social Theory and Methodology:
Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies, ed. by K. D.
Knorr-Cetina, and A. V. Cicourel, 1-47.
KNORR-CETINA, K. D., and A. V. CICOUREL (1981): "Advances in
Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro- and
Macro-Sociologies," Boston, Mass: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
CALLON, M., and J. LAW (1982): "On Interests and Their Transformation:
Enrolment and Counter-Enrolment," Social Studies of Science 12,
615-625.
<Go to ISI>://A1982PU59500006
LAW, J., and R. J. WILLIAMS (1982): "Putting Facts Together:
A Study of Scientific Persuasion," Social Studies of Science,
12, 535-558. An analysis of the way in which a group of scientists
sought to maximize the attractiveness of one of their papers, recording
negotiations about the title, introduction, & second paragraph
(in which a polymer was characterized). The analysis suggests that
scientists array or "network" particulars in a way they hope
will allocate appropriate relative value to elements of that array.
In doing so, three factors - the citation of colleagues, the display
of facts, & problems of syntax - have to be simultaneously juggled.
2 Figures. HA.
GIERYN, T. F. (1983): "Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of
Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies
of Scientists," American Sociological Review, 48, 781-795. The
demarcation of science from other intellectual activities-long an analytic
problem for philosophers and sociologists-is here examined as a practical
problem for scientists. Construction of a boundary between science
and varieties of non-science is useful for scientists' pursuit of professional
goals: acquisition of intellectual authority and career opportunities;
denial of these resources to "pseudoscientists"; and protection
of the autonomy of scientific research from political interference. "Boundary-work" describes
an ideological style found in scientists' attempts to create a public
image for science by contrasting it favorably to non-scientific intellectual
or technical activities. Alternative sets of characteristics available
for ideological attribution to science reflect ambivalences or strains
within the institution: science can be made to look empirical or theoretical,
pure or applied. However, selection of one or another description depends
on which characteristics best achieve the demarcation in a way that
justifies scientists' claims to authority or resources. Thus, "science" is
no single thing: its boundaries are drawn and redrawn inflexible, historically
changing and sometimes ambiguous ways. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1224%28198312%2948%3A6%3C781%3ABATDOS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B
HUGHES, T. P. (1983): Networks of Power : Electrification in Western
Society, 1880-1930. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
STAR, S. L. (1983): "Simplification in Scientific Work: An Example
from Neuroscience Research," Social Studies of Science, 13, 205-228.
The conclusions of scientific tasks necessarily omit much of the complexity & details
involved in the research. The stages involved in this simplification
process are examined in the particular context of neuroscientific experimentation,
from a perspective of symbolic interaction. A major concern in scientific
practice is the adequacy of resources, ie, of time, funds, & capability.
Participant observation of neuroscientific study disclosed these constraints:
(1) intersection, involving the streamlining of terminology for communicating
with professionals ouside the field; (2) clinical, ie, external pressure
to simplify explanations; (3) technical; (4) conclusion pressures;
(5) formating; (6) editing; & (7) specialization. Modified HA.
THEVENOT, L. (1984): "Rules and Implements: Investments in Forms," Social
Science Information/Information sur les Sciences Sociales, 23, 1-45.
The creation of code forms is discussed, & code forms are compared
to various instruments suggested by F. W. Taylor in The Principles
of Scientific Management (New York: Norton & Co, 1967) as necessary
to the scientific management of labor. These instruments range from
written instructions, to the slide-rule, to the employee's "task," as
defined by Taylor. "Investment" is then redefined as covering
a range of form-giving activities in addition to its meaning with regard
to capital, thus providing a better economic analysis of the respective
use of capital & labor. It is suggested that the main practical
application of this theoretical framework is to examine investment
in forms used to manage labor, which are most readily observed when
management methods change. 83 References. S. Karganovic.
STAR, S. L. (1985): "Scientific Work and Uncertainty," Social
Studies of Science, 15, 391-427. This paper examines the transformation
of local uncertainties encountered by working scientists into global
certainty, or `scientific facts'. It discusses six mechanisms by which
scientists transform local uncertainty: attributing certainty to the
results of other fields; substituting processual for production evaluations
in the face of technical failures; ideal type substitutions; shifting
clinical and basic evaluation criteria; ad hoc generalizing of case
studies; and the subsuming of epistemological questions in internal
debates. The data are drawn from a study of late nineteenth-century
British neurophysiologists (surgeons, neurologists, pathologists, physiologists).
The approach is drawn from the sociology of work.
CALLON, M. (1986): "Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation
- Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St-Brieuc Bay," Sociological
Review Monograph, 196-233. <Go to ISI>://A1986AYA3200010
— (1986): "The Sociology of an Actor-Network: The Case
of the Electric Vehicle," in Mapping the Dynamics of Science and
Technology: Sociology of Science in the Real World, ed. by M. Callon,
J. Law, and A. Rip. London: Macmillan, 19-34.
CALLON, M., J. LAW, and A. RIP (1986): "Mapping the Dynamics
of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science in the Real World," London:
Macmillan.
— (1986): "How to Study the Force of Science," in
Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science
in the Real World, ed. by M. Callon, J. Law, and A. Rip. London: Macmillan,
3-15.
— (1986): "Putting Texts in Their Place," in Mapping
the Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science in the
Real World, ed. by M. Callon, J. Law, and A. Rip. London: Macmillan,
221-230.
LATOUR, B. (1986): "The Powers of Association," in Power,
Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, ed. by J. Law, 264-280.
LATOUR, B., and S. WOOLGAR (1986): Laboratory Life. Princeton.
LAW, J. (1986): "Power, Action and Belief. A New Sociology of
Knowledge?," London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
— (1986): "Laboratories and Texts," in Mapping the
Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science in the Real
World, ed. by M. Callon, J. Law, and A. Rip. London: Macmillan, 35-50.
— (1986): "The Heterogeneity of Texts," in Mapping
the Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science in the
Real World, ed. by M. Callon, J. Law, and A. Rip. London: Macmillan,
67-83.
— (1986): "On Power and Its Tactics: A View from the Sociology
of Science," The Sociological Review, 34, 1-38.
— (1986): "On the Methods of Long Distance Control: Vessels,
Navigation and the Portuguese Route to India," in Power, Action
and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, ed. by J. Law, 234-263.
RIP, A. (1986): "Mobilising Resources through Texts," in
Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science
in the Real World, ed. by M. Callon, J. Law, and A. Rip. London: Macmillan,
84-99.
BIJKER, W. E. (1987): "The Social Construction of Bakelite:
Toward a Theory of Invention," in The Social Construction of Technical
Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology,
ed. by W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes, and T. J. Pinch. Cambridgge, Mass.
and London: MIT Press, 159-187.
BIJKER, W. E., T. P. HUGHES, and T. J. PINCH (1987): "The Social
Construction of Technological Systems," Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press.
— (1987): "The Social Construction of Technical Systems:
New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology," Cambridgge,
Mass. and London: MIT Press.
CALLON, M. (1987): "Society in the Making: The Study of Technology
as a Tool for Sociological Analysis," in The Social Construction
of Technical Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of
Technology, ed. by W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes, and T. J. Pinch. Cambridgge,
Mass. and London: MIT Press, 83-103.
HUGHES, T. P. (1987): "The Evolution of Large Technological
Systems," in The Social Construction of Technical Systems: New
Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, ed. by W. E.
Bijker, T. P. Hughes, and T. J. Pinch. Cambridgge, Mass. and London:
MIT Press, 51-82.
LATOUR, B. (1987): Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and
Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
LAW, J. (1987): "On the Social Explanation of Technical Change:
The. Case of Portugese Maritime Expansion," Technology and Culture,
28, 227-252.
— (1987): "Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The
Case of Portugese Expansion " in The Social Construction of Technical
Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology,
ed. by W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes, and T. J. Pinch. Cambridgge, Mass.
and London: MIT Press, 111-134.
PINCH, T. J., and W. E. BIJKER (1987): "The Social Construction
of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology
of Technology Might Benefit Each Other," in The Social Construction
of Technical Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of
Technology, ed. by W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes, and T. J. Pinch. Cambridgge,
Mass. and London: MIT Press, 17-50.
STAR, S. L., and E. M. GERSON (1987): "The Management and Dynamics
of Anomalies in Scientific Work," The Sociological Quarterly,
28, 147-169. The dynamics of anomalies as part of scientific work are
examined, & several types of anomaly are identified: mistakes,
artifacts, fraud, & discovery. Typical trajectories for artifacts
are described: the establishment of suspected artifacts, changes from
unacceptable to acceptable, changes in significance, visibility, & means
of control. The conditions under which an anomaly changes status are
examined. A detailed example of an anomaly trajectory is presented
- analyzing an anomaly in neuroscience research & tracing its career
from 1870 to the present. 126 References. HA.
STRUM, S. S., and B. LATOUR (1987): "Redefining the Social Link:
From Baboons to Humans," Social Science Information, 26, 783-802.
LATOUR, B. (1988): The Pasteurization of France.
LAW, J., and M. CALLON (1988): "Engineering and Sociology in
a Military Aircraft Project: A Network Analysis of Technological Change," Social
Problems, 35, 284-297. A network analysis of a British military aircraft
project illustrates the fundamentally interconnected character of the
social & the technical. How this aircraft, the TSR 2, was conceived
is traced, & its design & development are followed, revealing
difficulties that eventually led to its cancellation. The social aspects
of the technical engineering are considered with particular attention
to the interconnections established by the technologists as they seek
needed resources. 27 References. Modified HA.
CALLON, M., and J. LAW (1989): "On the Construction of Sociotechnical
Networks: Content and Context Revisited," Knowledge and Society,
8, 57-83.
CLEGG, S. (1989): Frameworks of Power. Sage.
STAR, S. L. (1989): "The Structure of Ill-Structured Solutions:
Boundary Objects and Heterogeneous Distributed Problem Solving," in
Distributed Artificial Intelligence: Vol. 2, ed. by M. Huhns, and L.
Gasser. Menlo Park, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., 37-54.
STAR, S. L., and J. R. GRIESEMER (1989): "Institutional Ecology,
'Translations,' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in
Berkely's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907 - 39," Social Studies
of Science, 19, 387-420.
— (1989): "Institutional Ecology, "Translations" And
Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of
Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39," Social Studies of Science, 19, 387-420.
Scientific work is heterogeneous & also requires cooperation, creating
tension between divergent viewpoints & actors & the need for
generalizable findings. A model is presented of how one group of actors
managed this tension, drawing on the work of amateurs, professionals,
administrators, & others connected to the Museum of Vertebrate
Zoology at the U of Calif, Berkeley, during its early years. Extending
the interessement model of Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, & John
Law (eg, see Callon, Michel, "Some Elements of a Sociology of
Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fisherman of St.
Brieuc Bay" in Law, John [Ed], Power, Action and Belief, Sociological
Monograph No. 32, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985, 196-230)
two major activities are identified as central for translating between
viewpoints, standarization of methods, & the development of "boundary
objects," which are both adaptable to different viewpoints & robust
enough to maintain identity across them. Four types of boundary objects
are distinguished: repositories, ideal types, coincident boundaries, & standardized
forms. 1 Figure. Modified HA.
GRIESEMER, J. R. (1990): "Modeling in the Museum - on the Role
of Remnant Models in the Work of Grinnell,Joseph," Biology & Philosophy,
5, 3-36. <Go to ISI>://A1990CT76000001
KING, J. L., and S. L. STAR (1990): "Conceptual Foundations
for the Development of Organizational Decision Support Systems," 143-151
vol.3.
It is noted that the effort to construct organizational decision
support systems (ODSS) is new to the field of information systems but
draws heavily on previous experience with decision support systems
(DSS) and group decision support systems (GDSS). The conceptual foundations
of this new venture are not well established, but the most logical
approach to designing ODSS would be to simply scale-up GDSS technologies
to deal with larger groups at the organizational level. However, a
careful examination of the character of decision processes at the individual,
group, and organizational level suggests that organizational decision
processes differ significantly from group decision processes, and features
of GDSS that are useful at the group level might well be dysfunctional
at the organizational level. Simple scale-up is therefore not a recommended
approach. Instead, a broader view of organizational decision processes
as an open-system problem is presented, in which ODSS technologies
might be constructed to facilitate two important, existing features
of group decision making: the maintenance of articulated due process
and the establishment of boundary objects
MILLER, P. (1990): "On the Interrelations between Accounting
and the State," Accounting Organizations and Society, 15, 315-338. <Go
to ISI>://A1990DR83300003
MILLER, P., and N. ROSE (1990): "Governing Economic Life," Economy
and Society, 19, 1-31. <Go to ISI>://A1990CP19200001
BLOOMFIELD, B. P. (1991): "The Role of Information Systems in
the Uk National Health Service: Action at a Distance and the Fetish
of Calculation," Social Studies of Science, 21, 701-734. Fundamental
issues pertaining to distinctive characteristics & use of information
technology in relation to the development of information systems within
the UK National Health Service (NHS) are examined. Attention is given
to the current Resource Management Initiative in the NHS, which involves
the fabrication of information systems to connect medical activity
to resource usage, & thus to costs. After examining the features
of some of the rival inscriptions undergoing development to make this
connection visible, the properties of information technology in enhancing
their mobilization are discussed. Also addressed is the immutability & combinability
of these inscriptions, & some of the implications that may follow
from their use. Adapted from the source document.
CALLON, M. (1991): "Techno-Economic Networks and Irreversibility," in
A Sociology of Monsters? Essays on Power, Technology and Domination,
ed. by J. Law. London: Routledge, 132-161.
CLARKE, A. E. (1991): "Social Worlds/Arenas Theory as Organizational
Theory," in Social Organization and Social Processes: Essays in
Honor of Anselm Strauss, ed. by D. R. Maines. New York: Aldine De Gruyter,
119-158.
LATOUR, B. (1991): "Technology Is Society Made Durable," in
A Sociology of Monsters? Essays on Power, Technology and Domination,
ed. by J. Law. London: Routledge, 103-131.
LAW, J. (1991): "Introduction: Monsters, Machines and Sociotechnical
Relations," in A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology
and Domination, ed. by J. Law. London: Routledge, 1-23.
STAR, S. L. (1991): "Power, Technologies and the Phenomenology
of Conventions: On Being Allergic to Onions," in A Sociology of
Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, ed. by J. Law.
London: Routledge, 26-56.
An examination of power in relation to technology & the phenomenology
of conventions. A model of heterogeneity put forth in the actor network
models of Bruno Latour (see SA 36:5/88UO362) & Michel Callon ("Techno-Economic
Networks and Irreversibility"; see abstract in this section of
SA 40:3) is drawn on to develop a managerial or entrepreneurial model
of actor networks. Also investigated are alternative models of heterogeneity & multivocality
borrowed from feminist theory & symbolic interactionism, including
splitting selves in the face of violence, & multiple membership/marginality.
A theory of multiple membership is developed that encompasses the interaction
between standardizing technologies & human beings qua members of
multiple social worlds, as well as qua cyborgs. 1 Figure, 51 References.
Adapted from the source document.
AKRICH, M. (1992): "The De-Scription of Technical Objects," in
Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change,
ed. by W. E. Bijker, and J. Law. Cambridge Ma: The MIT Press, 205-224.
AKRICH, M., and B. LATOUR (1992): "A Summary of a Convenient
Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies," in
Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change,
ed. by W. E. Bijker, and J. Law. Cambridge Ma: The MIT Press, 259-264.
BIJKER, W. E. (1992): "The Social Construction of Fluorescent
Lighting, or How an Artifact Was Invented in Its Diffusion Stage," in
Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change,
ed. by W. E. Bijker, and J. Law. Cambridge Ma: The MIT Press, 75-102.
BIJKER, W. E., and J. LAW (1992): "Shaping Technology/Building
Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change," Cambridge Ma: The
MIT Press.
BLOOMFIELD, B. P., and A. BEST (1992): "Management-Consultants
- Systems-Development, Power and the Translation of Problems," Sociological
Review, 40, 533-560. This paper aims to shed light on the exercise
of power during the development and implementation of organisational
information systems. Considering the use of Information Technology
(IT) to help solve organisational problems, we employ the concept of
the 'sociology of translation' to theorise the process by which the
organisational problem is constituted and for which the appropriate
IT solution is proposed. Discussing the nature of the power relationship
between external management consultants in IT and client or user organisations,
the paper considers the role of symbolic resources such as managerial
discourse, and the differential access to IT knowledge and skills,
as important aspects of power in that relationship. <Go to ISI>://A1992JF28700004
BLOOMFIELD, B. P., R. COOMBS, D. J. COOPER, and D. REA (1992): "Machines
and Manoeuvres: Responsibility Accounting and the Construction of Hospital
Information Systems," Accounting, Management and Information Technologies,
2, 197-219. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VFY-45JSY53-F/2/1081a1fa38a3f65ca48072bcf2cb6f0d
BOWERS, J. (1992): "The Politics of Formalism," in Contexts
of Computer-Mediated Communication, ed. by M. Lea, 232-261.
BROWN, C. (1992): "Organization Studies and Scientific Authority," in
Rethinking Organization: New Directions in Organization Theory and
Analysis, ed. by M. Reed, and M. Hughes. London: Sage, 67-84.
A review of ANT in organisation stuies from a methodological perspective.
CALLON, M., and B. LATOUR (1992): "Don't Throw the Baby out
with the Bath School! A Reply to Collins and Yearley," in Science
as Practice and Culture, ed. by A. Pickering. Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 343-368.
COLLINS, H. M., and S. YEARLEY (1992): "Journey into Space," in
Science as Practice and Culture, ed. by A. Pickering. Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 369-389.
— (1992): "Epistemological Chicken," in Science as
Practice and Culture, ed. by A. Pickering. Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 301-326.
COOPER, R. (1992): "Formal Organization as Representation: Remote
Control, Displacement and Abbreviation," in Rethinking Organization:
New Directions in Organization Theory and Analysis, ed. by M. Reed,
and M. Hughes. London: Sage, 254-272.
FUJIMURA, J. H. (1992): "Crafting Science: Standardized Packages,
Boundary Objects, And "Translation"," in Science as
Practice and Culture, ed. by A. Pickering. Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 168-211.
LATOUR, B. (1992): "Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology
of a Few Mundane Artifacts," in Shaping Technology/Building Society:
Studies in Sociotechnical Change, ed. by W. E. Bijker, and J. Law.
Cambridge Ma: The MIT Press, 225-258.
LAW, J. (1992): "Notes on the Theory of the Actor Network -
Ordering, Strategy, and Heterogeneity," Systems Practice, 5, 379-393.
This paper describes the theory of the actor-network, a body of theoretical
and empirical writing which treats social relations, including power
and organization, as network effects. The theory is distinctive because
it insists that networks are materially heterogeneous and argues that
society and organization would not exist if they were simply social.
Agents, texts, devices, architectures are all generated in, form part
of, and are essential to, the networks of the social. And in the first
instance, all should be analyzed in the same terms. Accordingly, in
this view, the task of sociology is to characterize the ways in which
materials join together to generate themselves and reproduce institutional
and organizational patterns in the networks of the social. <Go to
ISI>://A1992JL46900003
— (1992): "Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering,
Strategy, and Heterogenity," Systems Practice, 5, 379-393. http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/papers/Law-Notes-on-ANT.pdf
LAW, J., and W. E. BIJKER (1992): "Postscript: Technology, Stability,
and Social Theory," in Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies
in Sociotechnical Change, ed. by W. E. Bijker, and J. Law. Cambridge
Ma: The MIT Press, 290-308.
LAW, J., and M. CALLON (1992): "The Life and Death of an Aircraft:
A Network Analysis of Technical Change," in Shaping Technology/Building
Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, ed. by W. E. Bijker, and
J. Law. Cambridge Ma: The MIT Press, 21-52.
MISA, J. M. (1992): "Controversy and Closure in Technological
Change: Constructing "Steel"," in Shaping Technology/Building
Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, ed. by W. E. Bijker, and
J. Law. Cambridge Ma: The MIT Press, 109-139.
PICKERING, A. (1992): "From Science as Knowledge to Science
as Practice," in Science as Practice and Culture, ed. by A. Pickering.
Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1-26.
PORTER, T. M. (1992): "Quantification and the Accounting Ideal
in Science," Social Studies of Science, 22, 633-651. Objectivity
in science has normally been defined by scholars as almost synonymous
with realism. It may be advantageous to think of it instead in terms
of impersonality, an ideal that would replace arbitrariness, idiosyncracy
and judgment by explicit rules. Accounting is an exemplar of this aspect
of objectivity. More important than the true representation of deep
underlying financial identities is the maintenance of a system of rules
that blocks self-interested distortion. Otherwise, tax codes and corporate
reports would lose their credibility. From this standpoint, quantification
appears as a strategy for overcoming distance and distrust. This pertains
also to the natural sciences, where measurement and statistics have
been crucial in transforming local experimental skills into public
knowledge. We need to understand quantification as a response to a
set of political problems, part of the moral economy of science. Its
use in science is analogous in important ways to the explicitly political
and administrative purposes served by accounting.
REED, M. (1992): "Introduction," in Rethinking Organization:
New Directions in Organization Theory and Analysis, ed. by M. Reed,
and M. Hughes. London: Sage, 1-16.
REED, M., and M. D. HUGHES (1992): "Rethinking Organization
: New Directions in Organization Theory and Analysis," SAGE Publications.
ROBSON, K. (1992): "Accounting Numbers as Inscription - Action
at a Distance and the Development of Accounting," Accounting Organizations
and Society, 17, 685-708. The numerical form of accounting has been
interpreted as a use of metaphor (Morgan, Accounting, Organizations
and Society, pp. 477-486, 1988). The dominance of quantification in
accounting has also, more conventionally, been legitimated by claims
to the representational accuracy of numbers and a model of scientific
theory and practice (Mattessich, Accounting and Analytical Methods,
Irwin, 1962; Chambers, Accounting Evaluation and Economic Behaviour,
Prentice-Hall, 1966; Accounting Organizations and Society, pp. 167-180,
1980). In this paper the preference for quantification in accounting
is explained alternatively in terms of the development of inscriptions
that enable action at a distance (Latour, Science in Action, Open University
Press, 1987). The development of accounting is considered in terms
of a continuing refinement of mobile, stable and combinable inscriptions
that expedite long distance control. The paper concludes that studies
of accounting metaphor are incomplete if they cannot address the processes
that adjudicate the choices and production of metaphor. <Go to ISI>://A1992JT63900004
STAR, S. L. (1992): "The Trojan Door - Organizations, Work,
and the Open Black-Box," Systems Practice, 5, 395-410. This paper
summarizes recent work on organizations, artificial intelligence systems,
human-computer interaction, etc., which emphasizes the situated, distributed,
and fluid nature of social systems. This contrasts with the traditional
way of writing and thinking about social systems which sees them as
disembodied, ideal. formal notions of thought. The implications of
this new view of systems for social actors, information, knowledge,
and technology are discussed. The literature reviewed offers a new
way of talking about systems and their practices. <Go to ISI>://A1992JL46900004
BARRY, A. (1993): "The History of Measurement and the Engineers
of Space," British Journal for the History of Science, 26, 459-468. <Go
to ISI>://A1993MT29100005
COLIGNON, R. A., and M. COVALESKI (1993): "Accounting Practices
and Organizational Decision-Making," Sociological Quarterly, 34,
299-317. In this paper we argue for the importance of a sociologically
informed study of organizational accounting practices. By making the
nexus between accounting and decision making problematic, instead of
given, we move issues of interpretation and hierarchical control to
the center stage of understanding the social construction of accounting
practices. We suggest that inductive case studies of the organizational
setting is a promising methodological strategy for identifying how
accounting operates as an organizational control system. We focus on
debates and proceedings of the board of directors as an overlooked
source of data on decision making and organizational practices. We
show how accounting practices are part of the strategic control system
that functions to interpret the environment and direct the adaptation
of the organization in a manner particular to the substantive rationality
of corporate decision makers. illustrate these contentions with a case
study of accounting practice changes over a six year period. <Go
to ISI>://A1993LD79000006
LATOUR, B. (1993): "Ethnography of a `High-Tech' Case," in
Technological Choices : Arbitraries in Technology from the Neolithic
to Modern High Technology, ed. by P. Lemonnier: Routledge, 372-398.
SINGLETON, V., and M. MICHAEL (1993): "Actor-Networks and Ambivalence:
General Practitioners in the Uk Cervical Screening Programme," Social
Studies of Science, 23, 227-264. An elaboration of Michel Callon's & Bruno
Latour's actor-network theory (1981). Drawing on fieldwork on the UK
Cervical Screening Programme (CSP), it is shown how general practitioners
(GPs) problematize their own roles & the black-boxed status of
the cervical smear test within the CSP network. A brief history of
the CSP is given, the role of GPs within the CSP discussed, & the
actor-network theory defined. An attempt is made to incorporate "ambivalence" into
the process of CSP enrollment & black-boxing, & it is argued
that ambivalence toward one's own & others' attributed roles in
the network functions to reinforce the network rather than weaken it.
It is concluded that ambivalence, ambiguity, problematization, marginality, & multiple
identities play significant roles in the reproduction of the CSP network.
Adapted from the source document.
BLOOMFIELD, B. P., and T. VURDUBAKIS (1994): "Re-Presenting
Technology - It Consultancy Reports as Textual Reality Constructions," Sociology-the
Journal of the British Sociological Association, 28, 455-477. This
paper examines the reports produced by management consultants as exercises
in textual reality construction. Concentrating on a particular variant
of this genre - namely, the information technology (IT) strategy report
- its focus is on the ways in which 'reality' and the forms of knowledge
appropriate to it are constituted in the course of certain communicative
practices. More specifically, we look at the practices that aim to
control technology for organisational purposes; and we illustrate our
case with a discussion on the textual practices through which the boundary
between the 'technical' and the 'social' is constructed and sustained.
In this connection it ig worth noting that consultancy reports on IT
reflect a concern central to social scientific inquiry - namely, the
analytical relationship between the 'social' and 'technical' domains.
Our starting point is to situate such reports within the broader category
of textual and graphical constructs - inscriptions - which in various
fields of enquiry and application, discipline and practice, are used
to represent reality in order to act on it, control or dominate it,
as well as to secure the compliance of others in that domination. <Go
to ISI>://A1994NP49900005
— (1994): "Boundary Disputes: : Negotiating the Boundary
between the Technical and the Social in the Development of It Systems," Information
Technology & People, 7, 9-24. Discusses the problematic nature
of the boundary between the "technical" and the "social" and
its consequences in respect of understanding the relationship between
technological and organizational change. Illustrates the argument using
material drawn from research on the implementation of a hospital information
system and an R&D project to develop a knowledge-based system to
assist the implementation of strategic change. DOI: 10.1108/09593849410074007
LATOUR, B. (1994): "Pragmatogonies - a Mythical Account of How
Humans and Nonhumans Swap Properties," American Behavioral Scientist,
37, 791-808. <Go to ISI>://A1994NH29700005
LAW, J. (1994): Organizing Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
LEE, N., and S. BROWN (1994): "Otherness and the Actor Network
- the Undiscovered Continent," American Behavioral Scientist,
37, 772-790. 10.1177_0002764294037006005
<Go to ISI>://A1994NH29700004
MILLER, P., and T. OLEARY (1994): "The Factory as Laboratory," Science
in Context, 7, 469-496. This paper argues that science and technology
studies need to adopt a much wider view of what counts as a laboratory.
The factory, it is suggested, is as much a site of invention and intervention
as the laboratory. As a site for the government of economic life, the
factory is a laboratory par excellence. One particular factory is studied
- the Decatur, Illinois, plant of Caterpillar Inc. - as it is rethought
and remade in accordance with ideals of cellular manufacturing, Just-In-Time
systems, customer-driven manufacturing, and competitor benchmarking.
But it is not just the changes at the factory itself that are studied.
The paper analyzes the linkages and relays between the redesign of
a particular manufacturing plant and the plethora of calls for a revitalization
of North American manufacturing industry and a new form of economic
citizenship. The paper examines the remaking of a factory as an assemblage,
a historically specific and temporarily stabilized complex of relations
among ways of problematizing the factory in a multiplicity of locales.
There are four steps to the changes analyzed here: a problematizing
of the factory at the level of North American manufacturing as a whole
in the 1980s; a problematizing of the notion of competitiveness at
Caterpillar Inc, through the calculative practices of competitor benchmarking
and related expertises; a diagraming of the ideal factory in systems
terms; and the embedding of notions of the product, of competitiveness,
and of a new economic citizenship in the ''Assembly Highway'' at the
Decatur plant. Rethinking the factory took place within this assemblage
of relations, rather than at any one site. <Go to ISI>://A1994QH18500005
PARTHA, D., and P. A. DAVID (1994): "Toward a New Economics
of Science," Research Policy, 23, 487-521. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V77-46384W1-3/2/82748ddb3848fea0f6af7dd05773a843
ROBSON, K. (1994): "Inflation Accounting and Action at a Distance
- the Sandilands Episode," Accounting Organizations and Society,
19, 45-82. Why was inflation accounting a problem in the 1970s? This
paper attempts to answer this question by presenting the case of the
Sandilands Report in the U.K. (Report of the Committee of Inquiry on
Inflation Accounting, Cmnd. 6225, 1975a). The problematization of inflation
accounting is conceptualized in terms of how government can act at
a distance upon management, economic organizations and other institutions.
The concept of action at a distance is developed by examining four
arenas (Burchell et al, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1985,
pp. 381-414) in the Sandilands episode constituted by relationships
between inflation accounting techniques, policy discourses and rationales,
and institutionalized calculations. <Go to ISI>://A1994MV80700003
BLOOMFIELD, B. P., and A. DANIELI (1995): "The Role of Management-Consultants
in the Development of Information Technology - the Indissoluble Nature
of Sociopolitical and Technical Skills," Journal of Management
Studies, 32, 23-46. This paper explores the role of management consultants
in the development of information technology (IT) in organizations.
Contending that the process of IT systems development is characterized
by the exercise of power, the central theme of the argument concerns
the indissoluble nature of the technical and socio-political skills
inherent in IT consultancy practice. IT consultancy practice is not
just socio-political when winning a contract - the sales pitch - and
technical when developing an IT system. Rather, socio-political skills
centered on the mobilization of discursive and symbolic resources are
an inherent part of the construction of such systems. <Go to ISI>://A1995QD70100002
CALLON, M. (1995): "Four Models for the Dynamics of Science," in
Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, ed. by S. Jasanoff, G.
E. Markle, J. C. Petersen, and T. J. Pinch, 29-63.
CHUA, W. F. (1995): "Experts, Networks and Inscriptions in the
Fabrication of Accounting Images - a Story of the Representation of
3 Public Hospitals," Accounting Organizations and Society, 20,
111-145. This ethnography of three Australian hospitals seeks to understand
how and why new accounting systems are ''experimented'' with in organizations.
Latour's sociology of translation is adapted to argue that accounting
change emerged not because there was certain knowledge of positive
economic outcomes but because an uncertain faith, fostered by expert-generated
inscriptions and rhetorical strategies, was able to tie together shifting
interests in an actor network The paper also highlights how accounting
may ironically be both real and a simulation. <Go to ISI>://A1995QQ37800002
COOPER, R., and J. LAW (1995): "Organization: Distal and Proximal
Views," in Research in the Sociology of Organizations: Studies
of Organizations in the European Tradition, ed. by S. B. Bacharach,
P. Gagliardi, and B. Mundell. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 237-274.
Organisations may be seen both as discrete and bounded entities (the
'distal') and as continuous and fuzzy processes (the 'proximal'). The
latter are related to the network processes of actor-network theory.
FUJIMURA, J. H. (1995): "Ecologies of Action: Recombining Genes,
Molecularizing Cancer, and Transforming Biology," in Ecologies
of Knowledge: Work and Politics in Science and Technology, ed. by S.
L. Star: State University of New York Press, 302-346.
LATOUR, B. (1995): "Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The
Sociology of a Door-Closer," in Ecologies of Knowledge: Work and
Politics in Science and Technology, ed. by S. L. Star: State University
of New York Press, 257-277.
LAW, J., and M. CALLON (1995): "Engineering and Sociology in
a Military Aircrafft Project: A Network Analysis of Technological Change," in
Ecologies of Knowledge: Work and Politics in Science and Technology,
ed. by S. L. Star: State University of New York Press, 281-301.
LEA, M., T. OSHEA, and P. FUNG (1995): "Constructing the Networked
Organization - Content and Context in the Development of Electronic
Communications," Organization Science, 6, 462-478. This paper
presents a case study of the development of electronic communications
in a changing organization with the aim of studying the complex relationship
between content and context in the design and implementation of technological
change in communications. The development of a computer-mediated communication
system was followed over a period, of four years during which time
the participating organization expanded by acquisition and then reformed
in conjunction with its neighbours in other countries into an integrated,
''networked'' organization in preparation for the creation of the Single
European Market. The Actor-Network approach, which uses a network metaphor
as a framework for understanding the relationship between content and
context in technology design, is used to explore the co-construction
of the new organizational form and the new communications system. We
contrast this approach with traditional and other recently proposed
approaches and conclude that the study of actor networks affords an
opportunity to transcend the dualities between the technical and the
social and between content and context that currently frame studies
of electronic communications in organizations. <Go to ISI>://A1995RN13500007
LYNCH, M. (1995): "Laboratory Space and the Technological Complex:
An Investigation of Topical Contextures " in Ecologies of Knowledge:
Work and Politics in Science and Technology, ed. by S. L. Star: State
University of New York Press, 226-255.
MANGEMATIN, V., and M. CALLON (1995): "Technological Competition,
Strategies of the Firms and the Choice of the 1st Users - the Case
of Road Guidance Technologies," Research Policy, 24, 441-458.
Based on an in-depth study of two different road guidance technologies,
both under increasing returns to adoption, this paper is an attempt
to elucidate the strategic game played by the producers and the first
users before the introduction of the technologies onto the market.
It shows that it is possible to endogenize the decisions made by the
first users (who are chosen by the supplier) as much as those of the
suppliers when they choose the first users. When identifying first
users, firms evaluate their capacity to influence other potential adopters,
a capacity which depends on their position in the social networks to
which they belong. In order to enrol the first users, the producers
of a technology develop various strategies, including standardization
in voluntary standardization committees, pre-announcement, scientific
legitimizing and even technological transformation of the product itself.
Indeed, the first users who seem strategically vital by the sponsor
of the first system are not necessarily the same as those targeted
by the sponsors of the second technology. Thus, the degree of substitutability
itself appears as an endogenous variable. This analysis provides a
new basis for understanding technological competition and completes
economic modelling of the competition. <Go to ISI>://A1995QZ16800007
MURDOCH, J. (1995): "Actor-Networks and the Evolution of Economic
Forms - Combining Description and Explanation in Theories of Regulation,
Flexible Specialization, and Networks," Environment and Planning
A, 27, 731-757. Declarations of societal shift, economic transition,
and the dawning of a new era have now become commonplace in social
science, particularly in the analysis of economic forms. In this paper,
three influential accounts of economic change are examined and are
found to be overwhelmingly concerned with identifying new orders, paradigms,
or modes of accumulation. First, regulation theory is described. Although
this perspective is valuable in its focus upon institutional ensembles
and interrelations, it lapses all too easily into structuralism; that
is, these institutional ensembles can be explained by their structural
'coupling' to the mode of production and the mode of regulation. Second,
flexible specialization is considered. Here again the explanation of
new industrial forms is distinguished from their description by the
use of 'ideal types'. These types define the contours of the new era.
Last, networks are also identified as the dominant organizational form
of the post-Fordist era. The argument proposed here is that networks
are not new and are insufficiently distinct from other forms of organization,
yet they do help to focus attention on network analysis. Drawing upon
the work of actor-network theorists, such as Gallon, Latour, and Law,
I argue that networks must be analyzed from within; that is, we should
seek to follow network builders as they weave together heterogeneous
materials. Thus, explanation emerges only once description has been
pursued to the 'bitter end'. It is from within the processes of economic
change that our own accounts must be constructed, and this militates
against theatrical declarations of new orders, eras, etc. We must explain
by using the descriptions of network construction and not by recourse
to some underlying historical logic. <Go to ISI>://A1995RB25100006
PICKERING, A. (1995): The Mangle of Practice : Time, Agency, and
Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
STAR, S. L. (1995): "Ecologies of Knowledge: Work and Politics
in Science and Technology," State University of New York Press.
— (1995): "The Politics of Formal Representations: Wizards,
Gurus, and Organizational Complexity," in Ecologies of Knowledge:
Work and Politics in Science and Technology, ed. by S. L. Star: State
University of New York Press, 88-118.
— (1995): "Introduction," in Ecologies of Knowledge:
Work and Politics in Science and Technology, ed. by S. L. Star: State
University of New York Press, 1-35.
BISHOP, A. P., and S. L. STAR (1996): "Social Informatics of
Digital Library Use and Infrastructure."
Reviews literature on digital libraries (DLs) by examining its conceptions;
concepts related to social informatics; researchers exploring DL social
informatics; methods of DL design; social aspects of DL infrastructure
and use; and research approaches to DL social informatics. Presents
questions for further research and discusses social and technological
elements that influence research. (Contains 320 references.) (PEN)
FRICKEL, S. (1996): "Engineering Heterogeneous Accounts: The
Case of Submarine Thermal Reactor Mark-I," Science Technology & Human
Values, 21, 28-53. Within science and technology studies, few approaches
have generated more contention-or more misunderstanding-than the ''actor-network''
analyses of Callon, Latour, and Law. Although many have taken critical
issue with this approach, few studies have engaged the strengths and
weaknesses of actor-network theory on its own terms. This article presents
two arguments that constitute a critical engagement across (rather
than against) actor-network terrain. First, the author suggests that
the confusion surrounding actor-network accounts lies partially in
the ambiguous role played by ''social context'' and argues for the
political and explanatory importance of resketching the boundaries
between the laboratory and society. Second, the author argues that
a semiotic perspective is not necessarily an exclusive one and that
different ways of telling stories about technoscientific practice can
be combined usefully. These arguments are illustrated with a mostly
Latourian account of the development of the STR Mark-I, the world's
first ''fully engineered'' nuclear reactor. <Go to ISI>://A1996TM85200002
HAYTHORNTHWAITE, C. (1996): "Social Network Analysis: An Approach
and Technique for the Study of Information Exchange*1," Library & Information
Science Research, 18, 323-342. Social network analysis is an approach
and set of techniques used to study the exchange of resources among
actors (i.e., individuals, groups, or organizations). One such resource
is information. Regular patterns of information exchange reveal themselves
as social networks, with actors as nodes in the network and information
exchange relationships as connectors between nodes. Just as roads structure
the flow of resources among cities, information exchange relationships
structure the flow of information among actors. Social network analysis
assesses information opportunities for individuals or groups of individuals
in terms of exposure to and control of information. By gaining awareness
of existing information exchange routes, information providers can
act on information opportunities and make changes to information routes
to improve the delivery of information services. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W5R-45MD77D-3/2/80a1d1ab1484fcbbd4d9d8cef7af2ec5
LATOUR, B. (1996): "On Actor-Network Theory - a Few Clarifications," Soziale
Welt-Zeitschrift Fur Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung Und Praxis,
47, 369-&. Three resources have been developed over the ages to
deal with agency. The first one is to attribute to them naturality,
and to link them with nature. The second one is to grant them sociality,
and to tie them to the social fabric. The third one is to consider
them as a semiotic construction, and to relate agency with building
of meaning. The originality of science studies comes from the impossibility
of clearly differentiating between these three resources. Microbes,
neutrinos of DNA are at the same time natural, social and discourse.
They are real, human and semiotic entities in the same breath. The
article explores the consequences of this peculiar situation which
has not been underlined before science studies forced us to retie the
links between these three resources. The actor-network theory as developed
by Gallon and his colleagues is an attempt to invent a vocabulary to
deal with this new situation. The article reviews those difficulties
and Fries to overcome them by showing how they may be used to account
for the construction of entities, that is for the attribution of nature,
society and meaning. <Go to ISI>://A1996YB85100001
— (1996): Aramis, or the Love of Technology. Harvard University
Press.
— (1996): "On Interobjectivity," Mind, Culture, and
Activity: An International Journal, 3, 228-245. Explores social interaction & interobjectivity,
discussing sociobiology & various critiques of the social differentiation
between humans & other animals. In recent years, sociobiology has
extended to animals certain traits historically depicted as solely
human: (1) the roles of different social actors, (2) the potential
for rational calculation, (3) social structure beyond mere interactions, & (4)
the existence of power & dominance relationships. As with humans,
achievement in the primate world is dependent on interactions with
other social actors, & previous experiences shape present actions.
The assumption that the complexity of the human social world distinguishes
humans from primates is rejected, & it is argued that the actual
distinction is related to humans' capacity to isolate themselves from
the social world &/or reject the rules of society. Although humans
can never escape the objects & actors of the social world, they
have the ability to localize interactions through the restriction of
outside influences affecting their choices & relationships. Human
interactions are also determined by outside elements, times, & places
that exceed the narrow historical memory of other primates. Further,
human relationships are distinguished by the presence of nonbodily
artifacts, objects that are socially constructed & influential.
58 References. T. Sevier.
— (1996): "Pursuing the Discussion of Interobjectivity
with a Few Friends," Mind, Culture, and Activity: An International
Journal, 3, 266-269. A response to comments by Michael Lynch, Marc
Berg, & Yrjo Engestrom on the author's article "On Interobjectivity" (for
all, 1996 [see abstracts 9709133, 9709059, 9709091, & 9709126,
respectively]) takes issue with the implied ban on master narratives & the
unease with grand theory in their comments. It is suggested that such
metatheory is perfectly valid & helpful if it remains aware of
itself as one narrative among others. The purpose of this project is
to make an effort to avoid employing objects as the background of human
action, & instead, to reveal how objects may share action with
other actants. The property thus foregrounded is the multiplicity of
different temporal scales & a reconception of the body as a series
of parts & parcels involved in this unfolding process. It is argued
that several of the critics misread the essay in a way that reveals
a very deep dilemma in how social theory explains action; further,
the terms mediation & dialectics, which are normally offered to
solve this dilemma, are not as helpful as the critics suppose. 2 References.
D. M. Smith.
MYERS, G. (1996): "Out of the Laboratory and Down to the Bay," Written
Communication, 13, 5-43.
PELS, D. (1996): "The Politics of Symmetry," Social Studies
of Science, 26, 277-304. While symmetry and impartiality have become
ruling principles in S&TS, defining its core ideal of a 'value-free
relativism', their philosophical anchorage has attracted much less
discussion than the issue or:how far their jurisdiction can be extended
or generalized. This paper seeks to argue that symmetry and agnosticism
unwarrantably present as generalizable procedure what are in fact contingent
knowledge-political attempts to reposition various fields of controversy.
They present a methodological version of what remains a rather exceptional
case in a larger class of 'third positions: which define various types
of situated distance and various mixtures of detachment and involvement
An inspection of influential symmetrical 'translations' of the dispute
between Hobbes and Boyle, and of recent 'epistemological chicken' and
'capturing' debates, reveals some of the epistemological and political
hazards which afflict S&TS's convulsive forward push of the 'symmetry
frontier' Given such perils, a case is made for 'weak asymmetry' with
regard to the issues of truth vs error, science vs politics, and culture
vs nature. <Go to ISI>://A1996UR23500004
SINGLETON, V. (1996): "Feminism, Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
and Postmodernism: Politics, Theory and Me," Social Studies of
Science, 26, 445-468. Is postmodernism debilitating for feminists approaching
science? is the actor-network approach, which rejects dualisms and
universalism, politically impotent Or is such a critique epistemologically
conservative? I explore these questions by drawing on empirical research
examining the UK Cervical Screening Programme (CSP). Specifically,
I attempt to answer the question of whether or not women should participate
in the CSP and undertake a cervical smear test Because the CSP is constantly
changing as participants' identities multiply in negotiation, I propose
that there is no stable paint from which a single decision about lay
participation can be made, however politically useful it may be to
do so, I demonstrate my discomfort with talking about whether women
should or should not participate. Given the dynamic nature of the Programme,
a 'should' discourse is inappropriate, and can also be guilt-inducing
and oppressive to women. My preference is for a discourse which emphasizes
that women could participate. <Go to ISI>://A1996UR23500010
STAR, S. L. (1996): "Working Together: Symbolic Interactionism,
Activity Theory, and Information Systems."
(From the chapter ) [suggests that], jointly, activity theory, interactionism,
and information-systems research have some important insights to offer
scholarship and development / symbolic interactionism affords information-systems
research a body of empirical studies of work and interaction, in the
context of an elaborated philosophical framework that emphasizes collectivities
and consequences / for activity theory, it is rich in understanding
the subtle differences between types of work and practice, and how
those are realized within and between communities / activity theory
offers the most sophisticated aproach [the author has] found toward
understanding the historical and material specificity of cognition,
and a way to do away with arguments about perception and cognition
that are either idealist or determinist finally, much of the cutting-edge
research in information systems (especially that in distributed artificial
intelligence and computer-supported cooperative work) critiques the
dominant metaphors of computer science as either too closed (and therefore
irrelevant to the real world), or too much based on a priori, hyperrational
assumptions about human behavior that do not hold up to investigation,
especially investigation of collective or organizational phenomena
/ [the author presents his] points through an exegesis of several classic
articles from 1950s interactionist studies of work and workplace culture:
several pieces by H. S. Becker on the cultural and work worlds of jazz
musicians (1951; 1953; 1953-1954) and "Banana Time': Job Satisfaction
and Informal Interaction," by D. F. Roy (1959) / [analyze] how
these articles might be read from the point of view of activity theory
and conclude with a general discussion of the points from information-systems
development (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
STRATHERN, M. (1996): "Cutting the Network," Journal of
the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2, 517-535. New technologies have
stimulated the rehearsal of old debates about what is new and what
is old in descriptions of social life. This article considers some
of the current uses to which the concepts of `hybrids' and `networks'
are being put. It could be seen as following Latour's call for a symmetrical
anthropology that gathers together modern and nonmodern forms of knowledge.
In the process, the article reflects on the power of analytical narratives
to extend endlessly, and on the interesting place that property ownership
holds in a world that sometimes appears limitless. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1359-0987%28199609%292%3A3%3C517%3ACTN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6
BLOOMFIELD, B. P., and T. VURDUBAKIS (1997): "Visions of Organization
and Organizations of Vision: The Representational Practices of Information
Systems Development," Accounting Organizations and Society, 22,
639-668. This paper examines how particular ''inscription devices''
institute versions of the objects that they purport to render visible.
It refers to a group of representational practices centred on data
modelling and information requirements analysis to illustrate the argument,
and sets the issue in the context of the practice of representation
constitutive of the grammatocentric organization-in this case the UK
National Health Service. A central theme of the paper concerns the
way visions of organization (articulated through vocabularies of efficiency,
effectiveness, the centrality of information in management, management
by objectives, etc.) are translated into specific alignments of the
gaze, specific organizations of vision (such as data modelling, etc.).
(C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. <Go to ISI>://A1997XV25600002
BOWKER, G. C., S. L. STAR, W. TURNER, and L. GASSER (1997): "Social
Science, Technical Systems and Cooperative Work: Beyond the Great Divide," Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
CALLON, M., and B. LATOUR (1997): ""You Will Not Calculate!" Or
How to Make the Gift and Capital Symmetrical," La Revue du MAUSS,
9, 45-70. Argues that the fall of communism has allowed capitalism
to be studied more realistically, so that the debate between liberalism & antiutilitarianism
may be reformulated. Capitalism is described as one of many forms of
market organization, & the distinction between the terms market & market
economy is discussed. The calculating & optimizing agents associated
with different types of economies are addressed, using the idea of
formatting. Means of limiting exchange excesses are investigated, a
critique of antiutilitarianism is presented, & how formatting relates
to notions of gift & exchange is examined. It is contended that
capitalism may be undermined if people cease believing in it. Ways
that science & technology may contribute to this end by following
the example of economic anthropology are suggested. D. Weibel.
CALLON, M., and J. LAW (1997): "After the Individual in Society:
Lessons on Collectivity from Science, Technology and Society," Canadian
Journal of Sociology-Cahiers Canadiens De Sociologie, 22, 165-182.
The social sciences have devised a series of strategies in order to
overcome the division between individual and collective action. However,
science, technology and society (STS) has shown that this distinction
is only one possible configuration far action and its distribution.
In order to investigate other possible configurations, STS proposes
four principles: that the social is heterogeneous in character; that
all entities are networks of heterogeneous elements; that these networks
are both variable in geometry and in principle unpredictable; and that
every stable social arrangement is simultaneously a point (an individual)
and a network (a collective). If sociological analysis is to overcome
the individualism/holism division it should attend to the range of
hybrid configurations. <Go to ISI>://A1997YB16500001
— (1997): "After the Individual in Society: Lessons on
Collectivity from Science, Technology and Society," Canadian Journal
of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 22, 165-182. The social
sciences have devised a series of strategies to overcome the individual-collective
action division. Examples from science, technology, & society are
used to undergird the idea that the individual-collective distinction
is only one possible configuration for action & its distribution.
To investigate other possible configurations, four principles are discussed:
(1) the social is heterogeneous in character; (2) all entities are
networks of heterogeneous elements; (3) these networks are both variable
in geometry &, in principle, unpredictable; & (4) every stable
social arrangement is simultaneously a point (an individual) & a
network (a collective). If sociological analysis is to overcome the
individualism-holism division, it should attend to the range of hybrid
configurations. 23 References. Adapted from the source document.
GARRETY, K. (1997): "Social Worlds, Actor-Networks and Controversy:
The Case of Cholesterol, Dietary Fat and Heart Disease," Social
Studies of Science, 27, 727-773. Knowledge which links dietary fat
and cholesterol to coronary heart disease (CHD) has been controversial
for more than forty years. While policies advocating fat and cholesterol
restriction are now deeply ingrained in affluent western societies,
the scientific 'facts' on which they are supposedly based are highly
contested. Applying concepts from actor-network theory and the symbolic
interactionist social worlds approach, I argue that knowledge and dietary
recommendations relating to cholesterol, fat and CHD are the outcome
of complex social negotiations which can only be understood in their
cultural, commercial and political contexts. Policies were framed in
the 1960s before 'proof' of their efficacy was available. Since then,
ambiguous experimental results have been shaped to support the policies.
I argue that, despite its many attractive features, actor-network theory
cannot adequately deal with protracted controversies. Social worlds
theory provides a much more useful framework for investigating long
debates in which the 'facts' remain elusive. <Go to ISI>://000073325400002
HALL, P. M. (1997): "Meta-Power, Social Organization, and the
Shaping of Social Action," Symbolic Interaction, 20, 397-418.
Interactionist analyses of social organization stimulate examination
of how social situations and collective activity are shaped. Meta-power,
the creation and control of distal situations, and organization as
a structuration of metapower are used as tools for exploring the shaping
of situations. Five metapower processes are presented: strategic agency,
rules and conventions, structuring situations, culture construction,
and empowering delegates. These processes illustrate how situations
are created or altered. This paper offers a view of social organization
that emphasizes relations among situations, linkages between consequences
and conditions, and networks of collective activity across space and
time. The conclusion calls for additional research to make more explicit
the nature of social organization and its social conditions. <Go
to ISI>://A1997YA68400005
HANDS, D. W. (1997): "Conjectures and Reputations: The Sociology
of Scientific Knowledge and the History of Economic Thought," History
of Political Economy, 29, 695-739. <Go to ISI>://000073413700008
HANSETH, O., and E. MONTEIRO (1997): "Inscribing Behaviour in
Information Infrastructure Standards," Accounting, Management
and Information Technologies, 7, 183. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VFY-3SX25DF-1/2/1cbe8c267aa28ff425506b69ba2252c4
HARAWAY, D. J. (1997): Modest B- Switness@Second B- Smillennium.Femaleman
B- Smeets B- Soncomouse : Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.
MCSWEENEY, B. (1997): "The Unbearable Ambiguity of Accounting," Accounting
Organizations and Society, 22, 691-712. The paper argues that neither
current, nor reformed, accounting can make unambiguous representations,
but concludes that the pursuit of that unrealizable ideal is nonetheless
perfectly real and eminently productive. Two significant texts in which
the claim of judgement-free accounting (accrual or cash-flow) is privileged
are analysed. Their attempts to explain, as distinct from simply assert,
the possibility are shown to require a series of self-cancelling rhetorical
moves. A number of implications of the analysis are then considered.
In contrast with some prior Literature which has concluded that a general
abandonment of the myth of unambiguous accounting representations is
both desirable and possible the article argues, in a discussion of
the notion of a ''regulative ideal'', that there is no necessary Link
between their critiques and the action they advocate. (C) 1997 Elsevier
Science Ltd. <Go to ISI>://A1997XV25600004
MURDOCH, J. (1997): "Inhuman/Nonhuman/Human: Actor-Network Theory
and the Prospects for a Nondualistic and Symmetrical Perspective on
Nature and Society," Environment and Planning D-Society & Space,
15, 731-756. Recently human geographers and sociologists have begun
to focus on the prospects for theories without dualisms. As a result
of research on technology, animals, and the environment, it has become
evident that a human-centred perspective, which continually positions
humans as the only significant actors, cannot adequately take into
account the various nonhumans which make up our world and upon which
we depend. In large part the human-centredness of much social science
derives from a sharp divide, a dualism, between nature and society
and between the work of natural and human scientists. In this paper
I consider one attempt to transgress this divide and assess the prospects
for theories of this kind. The focus here is upon actor-network theory
(ANT), an approach developed by Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John
Law within social studies of science. I first outline the social studies
which form the background to the development of ANT and then go on
to elaborate the main contours of the approach, with particular emphasis
on its transgression of the nature-society distinction. I conclude
with a critical assessment of its strengths and weaknesses and attempt
to show how it might be usefully combined with other, more traditional,
social scientific concerns. <Go to ISI>://A1997YJ39400006
— (1997): "Towards a Geography of Heterogeneous Associations," Progress
in Human Geography, 21, 321-337. Dualisms have been a recurring feature
of sociospatial analysis. Micro/macro, local/global, subject/object,
particular/universal - one or more of these dualistic frameworks can
be discerned in many geographical texts. Dissolving the dualisms, somehow
finding a way through the gaps which open up between them, requires
the development of an approach which allows the various scales of social
life to be treated symmetrically so that we never have to shift to
a different register when studying large-scale or 'big' (usually termed
structural) phenomena. It is proposed in this article that a geography
of associations, which traces how actions are embedded in materials
and then extended through time and space, provides one means of overcoming
the dualisms. Drawing upon actor-network theory it is argued that interactions
are both 'localized' and 'globalized' using nonhuman entities and these
permit certain actor-networks to act at a distance on others. Patterns
of centrality and marginality thus emerge as particular power geometries
are drawn. Tracing these power geometries by following the associations
can only be undertaken in a nondualistic fashion. <Go to ISI>://A1997YA34900002
STRUBING, J. (1997): "Symbolic Interactionism Revisited: Concepts
for Science and Technology Studies," Zeitschrift Fur Soziologie,
26, 368-&. German STS research has paid little attention to the
empirical and theoretical contributions of symbolic interactionism.
Therefore, this article aims to give both an overall view of the development
of theoretical concepts from E.C. Hughes and A.L. Strauss to the recent
STS studies of, for example, S.L. Star and J. Fujimura and a short
introduction to some of the key concepts the latter have developed
in their empirical work in the domains of engineering work, molecular
biology, and distributed artificial intelligence. Following this, some
aspects of the special achievements of symbolic interactionism are
discussed. Although this is not a comparison of the STS-approaches,
some comparative notions with respect to different constructivist approaches
from ethnomethodology to laboratory studies to the actor-network approach
appear in the concluding section. <Go to ISI>://A1997YE43900004
TIMMERMANS, S., and M. BERG (1997): "Standardization in Action:
Achieving Local Universality through Medical Protocols," Social
Studies of Science, 27, 273-305. In this paper, we argue that universality
is always 'local universality'. The achievement of local universality
depends on how standards manage the tension involved in transforming
work practices, while simultaneously being grounded in those practices.
We investigate how this is done in two case studies - an oncology protocol
and the Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) protocol. These protocols
are viewed as technoscientific scripts which crystallize multiple trajectories.
In the process of obtaining local universality, we illustrate how protocols
feed off previous standards and practices. We then indicate how the
protocols function through the distributed work of a multitude of heterogeneous
actors. Finally, we argue that, in this process, the protocols themselves
are necessarily changed and partially reappropriated. <Go to ISI>://A1997WX71700003
WALSHAM, G. (1997): "Actor-Network Theory and Is Research: Current
Status and Future Prospects," in Information Systems and Qualitative
Research, ed. by A. S. Lee, J. Liebenau, and J. I. DeGross: Springer,
466-480.
VARIAN, H. R. (1997): "The Aea's Electronic Publishing Plans:
A Progress Report," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 11, 95-104.
This paper describes the American Economic Association's electronic
publishing plans. Special attention is given to the JSTOR project and
to pricing issues. There is also some speculation about how journals
and publication will evolve in this new medium. http://www.aeaweb.org/jep/
BOWKER, G., C., and S. L. STAR (1998): Building Information Infrastructures
for Social Worlds - the Role of Classifications and Standards.
http://springerlink.metapress.com/index/A99T1YX6V8JQAW1P
CALLON, M. (1998): "The Laws of the Markets," Blackwell
Publishers.
— (1998): "Introduction: The Embeddedness of Economic
Markets in Economics," in The Laws of the Markets, ed. by M. Callon:
Blackwell Publishers, 244-269.
— (1998): "An Essay on Framing and Overflowing: Economic
Externalities Revisited by Sociology," in The Laws of the Markets,
ed. by M. Callon: Blackwell Publishers, 244-269.
KAGHAN, W., and N. PHILLIPS (1998): "Building the Tower of Babel:
Communities of Practice and Paradigmatic Pluralism in Organization
Studies," Organization, 5, 191-215. In this paper, we argue that
the work of Thomas Kuhn lends itself to two conflicting interpretations
of the nature of scientific work, and that these have very different
implications for debates on paradigmatic pluralism within organization
studies. We begin by framing two ideal typical interpretations (a reductionist
interpretation and an irreductionist interpretation) of the allegory
of the Tower of Babel. We then explore in more depth the irreductionist
interpretation of Kuhn that has driven research in the social studies
of science' over the last two decades. In line with irreductionist
studies, we examine the concept of boundaries between scientific fields
and between science and society and argue for a more fluid and dynamic
conception than has been common in previous work. We suggest revisions
of more traditional conceptions of paradigm, incommensurability, and
mature and immature science. We end by briefly discussing these issues
in the context of the debates on paradigmatic pluralism in organization
theory and strategic management. <Go to ISI>://000074007800003
LEE, N. (1998): "Towards an Immature Sociology," Sociological
Review, 46, 458-482. Sociological theory displays a tendency to depict
the social world in terms of completed 'beings'. The social, thus depicted,
is a world of powers to 'finish' (such as the power granted to convention
to provide for social order), and finished products (such as agents
and ethical points-of-view). As sociologists of childhood have attempted
to bring children into sociological focus in their own right, the disciplinary
concern with the 'complete' has required that children be attributed
the properties assumed more normally to belong to adults. The sociology
of childhood has thus preserved the privilege of the complete and the
mature over the incomplete and the immature. In this paper the key
sociological issues of convention, agency and ethics are given a theoretical
interpretation that makes them fit for understanding childhood. The
ability of convention to complete social order is questioned. Agency
is portrayed as the emergent property of networks of dependency rather
than the possession of individuals. An alternative to the ethics of
'positions' is offered in the form of an ethics of 'motion'. Where
extant sociologies of childhood have brought children into the 'finished'
world of sociological theory, this paper uses childhood's ontological
ambiguity to open the door onto an unfinished social world. <Go
to ISI>://000074933800003
LLEWELLYN, S. (1998): "Boundary Work: Costing and Caring in
the Social Services," Accounting Organizations and Society, 23,
23-47. "Where does it stop on costs?"-this paper offers some
responses to this question on the appropriate boundaries for costing
expertise. The question was posed by a contracts officer within a social
services department. The context for the question was an empirical
research study in which front line welfare professionals were asked
to comment, first, on costing information which could, possibly, assist
in making "value for money" assessments and, second, on the
contracting regime within which such costing information assumes a
potentially highlighted significance. At the first stage of the study
welfare professionals were found to be engaged in boundary-work to
prevent the encroachment of costs on care activities. "Costing" and "caring" were
being managed as "disengaged domains" through the boundary
work of obfuscation, "reality-defining" and marginalization.
Consequent upon the initial study the social services departments were
re-visited two years later. By this time it was apparent that boundary-work
had allowed some engagement between costing and caring. The paper argues
that processes of alignment between costing and caring and the reconstitution
of organizational tasks (including the creation of care "managers")
have allowed social work professionals to accept some costing work-work
which had previously been defined as "the other". The major
themes of this paper are: the exploration of the responses of operational
social services personnel to their new financial roles, and the interpretation
of change in the social services context through the ideas of boundary-work.
These themes are developed through a consideration of the ambiguous
tasks of welfare-professionals and the consequent indeterminacy of
resourcing decisions. The paper concludes that the limits of applicability
of costing are yet to be set in the domain of the social services.
(C) 1938 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. <Go to ISI>://000071158800002
MURDOCH, J. (1998): "The Spaces of Actor-Network Theory," Geoforum,
29, 357-374. In this paper I want to consider whether actor-network
theory [ANT] gives rise to a new kind of geography, or, perhaps more
specifically, a new kind of geographical analysis. The paper therefore
seeks to identify the main types of spaces implicated in the typical
network configurations found in actor-network studies. Following a
review of the ANT literature I conclude that two main spatial types
can be discerned, linked to the degrees of remote control and autonomy
found in networks. I characterise these two types as 'spaces of prescription'
and 'spaces of negotiation'. I go on to elaborate what a geography
of prescription and negotiation might imply both for spatial analysis
and actor-network theory. This paper is therefore one attempt to think
through some of the implications that ANT holds for the study of space.
(C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. <Go to ISI>://000078934200001
STAR, S. L. (1998): "Leaks of Experience: The Link between Science
and Knowledge?."
(From the chapter ) This chapter illustrates how membership in a
community of practice is not just about apprenticeship and indoctrination,
but a matter of linking layers and realms of experience with the initial
questions of membership in the community. Lave and Wenger (1991) dubbed
the process of acquiring membership in a community of practice one
of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) and equated this with
cognition. That is, knowing itself is about membership, participation,
and entering into a world of skill and shared experience. The concept
helps restore both collectivity and praxis to cognitive notions. This
chapter adds to this concept the importance of experience and how its
problematics link some central questions in science, science education,
and sociology of science. In doing so, it raises the possibility of
an inverse or complementary concept of LPP: something like illegitimate
central marginality. These are experiences that seem to occur at the
center of a community of practice, but that somehow do not fit, which
leak out of the community conventions and norms. (PsycINFO Database
Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
BLOOMFIELD, B. P., and T. VURDUBAKIS (1999): "The Outer Limits:
Monsters, Actor Networks and the Writing of Displacement," Organization,
6, 625-647. This article focuses on science fiction and actor network
theory as ways of writing displacement which are relevant to organization
studies. Recent work within organizational theory and related (sub)disciplines
has suggested that the articulation of organization as a privileged
site of presence is made possible by that which is Othered and excluded
(or rather deferred) as representing disorganization and disorder.
Organizations in this view constitute 'incomplete and transient' accomplishments
always under threat from various forms of intrusion and displacement.
By way of illustration, two examples of displacement/intrusion and
their associated organizational 'dramas of proof' are examined as a
way of exploring how the Other, the alien and out of place, is realized
in representation. <Go to ISI>://000083789800004
BLOOR, D. (1999): "Anti-Latour," Studies In History and
Philosophy of Science Part A, 30, 81. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V70-3VTSBDX-3/2/7c92f1d586163ea36aafc5ede7220a5d
— (1999): "Discussion: Reply to Bruno Latour," Studies
In History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 30, 131-136. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V70-3VTSBDX-5/2/75e782425c7c0993a889725b42c8612d
BOWKER, G. C., and S. L. STAR (1999): Sorting Things Out: Classification
and Its Consequences.
BOWKER, G. C., S. L. STAR, W. TURNER, and L. GASSER (1999): "Social
Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work: Beyond the Great
Divide," Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on, 42,
132-134.
CALAS, M. B., and L. SMIRCICH (1999): "Past Postmodernism? Reflections
and Tentative Directions," Academy of Management Review, 24, 649-671.
In this article we first reflect on the significant and positive impact
of postmodernism for organizational theorizing during the past decade.
Through several examples we point to contributions that poststructuralist
perspectives have brought to the field. Finally, we consider four contemporary
theoretical tendencies-feminist poststructuralist theorizing, postcolonial
analyses, actor-network theory, and narrative approaches to knowledge-as
heirs (apparent) of the postmodern turn for organizational theorizing
past postmodernism. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0363-7425%28199910%2924%3A4%3C649%3APPRATD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8
CALLON, M. (1999): "Actor-Network Theory - the Market Test," in
Actor Network Theory and After, ed. by J. Law, and J. Hassard. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers / The Sociological Review, 181-195.
— (1999): "Neither Engaged Intellectual, nor Disengaged
Intellectual: The Double Strategy of Attachment and Detachment," Sociologie
du Travail, 41, 65-78. To be heard & employed, sociological studies
must take several principles into account. First, the sociologist cannot
simply relate a study; he must instead be an active performer in his
work & give an accurate representation of his findings. Second,
to successfully present himself, he must remember that instruments & actions
speak louder than words. Third, he must convey to others the importance
of his work & convince them to make use of it. Fourth, he must
construct proposals & solutions that have their own independence.
These proposals must be adaptable to different situations & evolve
with time. Finally, the sociologist must think seriously about the
attachment & detachment that each different project requires. 23
References. C. Vogelei.
GARRETY, K., and R. BADHAM (1999): "Trajectories, Social Worlds,
and Boundary Objects: A Framework for Analyzing the Politics of Technology," Human
Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing, 9, 277-290. Many people recognize
that politics plays a central role in sociotechnical change. Despite
this recognition, however, there is little discussion in the human
factors literature about what the term "politics" actually
means, and how it can be studied. In this article, we propose a definition
of politics, based on symbolic interactionism, a sociological tradition
that emphasizes the close relationship between human agency and social
structures. We illustrate the use of the approach, and some of its
key concepts, through a case study of a human factors intervention
in the trial of an intelligent manufacturing system in Australia. (C)
1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. <Go to ISI>://000080882200005
HANSEN, A., and J. MOURITSEN (1999): "Managerial Technology
and Netted Networks. 'Competitiveness' in Action: The Work of Translating
Performance in a High-Tech Firm," Organization, 6, 451-471. Organizational
practices weave in and our of different networks. In this paper, we
argue and illustrate that the existence and importance of networks
in organizations vary according to particular management concerns.
Some networks are typically dormant and are called forth only in situations
of 'crisis'; they may be invisible to organizational participants in
conditions of normality. Via organizational concerns, such as hierarchy
and control, productivity and profitability, in some episodes some
networks (which we call managerial technologies) are made important
to condition other networks that operate in continuous time (we call
them business technologies). The paper's empirical domain is a small
high-tech producer in Denmark. The paper discusses the linkages between
actor networks, attempts to discuss how each makes claims to 'competitiveness'
and assesses how they mobilize each other in situations where one network
is impacting on other networks to condition and change them. This reflects
the intricate effects of different networks all having a spokesperson
and a materiality that claim privileged access to 'competitiveness'
and its translation into organizational decision-making. <Go to
ISI>://000081949900005
HASSARD, J., J. LAW, and N. LEE (1999): "Themed Section: Actor-Network
Theory and Managerialism - Preface," Organization, 6, 387-390. <Go
to ISI>://000081949900001
JENSEN, T. E. (1999): "The Construction of Scientific Facts
in Social Science - a Case Study in How Data Are Combined in an Anthropoloical
Text," Nordisk Psykologi, 51, 260-278. This article examines the
following question: How do social scientists construct an ordered,
coherent account from the different types of data they collect through,
for example, participant observations and interviews? The question
is discussed in relation to the traditional methodological literature
and through a case study of an anthropological test by Latour & Woolgar
(1979). The case study outlines three distinct data combination methods
used sequentially by Latour & Woolgar. Reflecting on the case study,
the author depicts social science as continual transformations of previously
established combinations of ontologies and data. This constructionist
view rejects the idea of social scientific bets as "discoveries" and
advocates the view that facts are constructions within particular socio-material
networks. <Go to ISI>://000084898000002
KLING, R., and G. MCKIM (1999): "Scholarly Communication and
the Continuum of Electronic Publishing," Journal of the American
Society for Information Science, 50, 890-906. Provides an analytical
approach for evaluating disciplinary conventions and for proposing
policies about scholarly electronic publishing. Characterises 3 dimensions
of scholarly publishing as a communicative practice (publicity, access
and trustworthiness) and examines several forms of paper and electronic
publications in this framework. The common claim that e-publishing
substantially expands access is oversimplified. Peer reviewing provides
valuable functions for scholarly communication that are not effectively
replaced by self-posting articles in electronic media. (Original abstract
- amended)
LATOUR, B. (1999): "On Recalling Ant," in Actor Network
Theory and After, ed. by J. Law, and J. Hassard. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers / The Sociological Review, 15-25.
— (1999): "Glossary," in Pandora's Hope : Essays
on the Reality of Science Studies: Harvard University Press, 303-311.
— (1999): Pandora's Hope : Essays on the Reality of Science
Studies. Harvard University Press.
— (1999): "A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans," in
Pandora's Hope : Essays on the Reality of Science Studies: Harvard
University Press, 174-215.
— (1999): "One More Turn after the Social Turn..." in
The Science Studies Reader, ed. by A. Biagioli, 276-289.
— (1999): "Discussion: For David Bloor... And Beyond:
A Reply to David Bloor’s ‘Anti-Latour'," Studies In
History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 30, 113-129. A response to
Bloor's article, "Anti-Latour" (1999), contends that Bloor's
claim that a new approach to the sociology of knowledge represents
a morally & politically reactionary form of naïve
realism & highlights the serious differences in methodology splitting
the discipline. Two sides in the debate are described, maintaining
that Bloor wants to keep science studies within the narrow confines
of the last 10 years. It is argued that the Strong Program has become
an obstacle for the progression of science studies, & Bloor's charge
of misrepresentation of the Edinburgh School is itself a misrepresentation,
since he cannot deny its reliance on a self-referential definition
of causality for society. It is argued that Bloor's failure to recognize
the limitations of his thinking hinges on different understandings
of social & naturalistic explanations, empiricism, & the nature
of relativism. A call is made for a reworking of the origin of the
notion of nature that is at the core of the history of absolutism & the
Strong Program itself. 3 Figures, 30 References. J. Lindroth.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V70-3VTSBDX-4/2/176376de4e4c62a87e0a45d631ec2a47
— (1999): "Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise
the World," in The Science Studies Reader, ed. by A. Biagioli:
Routledge, 258-275.
LAW, J. (1999): "After Ant: Complexity, Naming, and Topology," in
Actor Network Theory and After, ed. by J. Law, and J. Hassard. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers / The Sociological Review, 1-14.
LEE, N., and J. HASSARD (1999): "Organization Unbound: Actor-Network
Theory, Research Strategy and Institutional Flexibility," Organization,
6, 391-404. We develop two related Actor-Network Theory (ANT) arguments
for organizational analysis. The first concerns research strategy and
draws upon Latour's (1999) notion of definitional 'sliding' to describe
how ANT overcomes its analytical limitations by removing conditions
that exclude the 'other'. Through this discussion, we argue that, research
wise, ANT appears to be ontologically relativist, in permitting the
world to be organized differentially, yet empirically realist in providing
'theory-laden' descriptions of organization. Our second argument concerns
institutional boundedness and flexibility, and suggests that ANT's
ontological slipperiness may actually be of value for studies of organizational
form. We outline how, under AN?: the analytical focus shifts from structural
prescription to processual deconstruction, the associated political
dimension concerning where and for whom boundaries are produced/consumed.
Overall, we argue for organizational field research that avoids any
obligation to impose and defend its own theoretical discriminations. <Go
to ISI>://000081949900002
LENOIR, T. (1999): "Was That Last Turn a Right Turn?," in
The Science Studies Reader, ed. by A. Biagioli, 290-301.
MUNRO, R. (1999): "Power and Discretion: Membership Work in
the Time of Technology," Organization, 6, 429-450. The aim of
this paper is to rework contemporary notions of power by acknowledging
discretion and membership as the 'other' side of an increasingly familiar
story of organizational domination through calculation and surveillance.
The paper first identifies neglected aspects of power, particularly
associated with a discretionary ability to defer affirmations of membership.
Such power effects might seem ephemeral and temporary, but when considered
alongside translation effects generated by the technologies of managing
particularly accounting numbers, it becomes clearer that discretion
can be both redistributed and accumulated in organizations. The ensuing
power effects become extended across space and time. It is argued therefore
that any full reworking of power needs to consider how 'centres of
discretion' are created simultaneously alongside 'centres of calculation'. <Go
to ISI>://000081949900004
STAR, S. L. (1999): "The Ethnography of Infrastructure," American
Behavioral Scientist, 43, 377-391. This article asks methodological
questions about studying infrastructure with some of the tools & perspectives
of ethnography. Infrastructure is both relational & ecological
- it means different things to different groups, & it is part of
the balance of action, tools, & the built environment, inseparable
from them. It also is frequently mundane to the point of boredom, involving
things such as plugs, standards, & bureaucratic forms. Some of
the difficulties of studying infrastructure are how to scale up from
traditional ethnographic sites, how to manage large quantities of data
such as those produced by transaction logs, & how to understand
the interplay of online & offline behavior. Some of the tricks
of the trade involved in meeting these challenges include studying
the design of infrastructure, understanding the paradoxes of infrastructure
as both transparent & opaque, including invisible work in the ecological
analysis, & pinpointing the epistemological status of indictors.
39 References. Adapted from the source document.
STAR, S. L., and A. STRAUSS (1999): "Layers of Silence, Arenas
of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work," Computer
Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 8, 9-30. No work is inherently either
visible or invisible. We always ’’see‘‘ work
through a selection of indicators: straining muscles, finished artifacts,
a changed state of affairs. The indicators change with context, and
that context becomes a negotiation about the relationship between visible
and invisible work. With shifts in industrial practice these negotiations
require longer chains of inference and representation, and may become
solely abstract.
This article provides a framework for analyzing invisible work in
CSCW systems. We sample across a variety of kinds of work to enrich
the understanding of how invisibility and visibility operate. Processes
examined include creating a ’’non-person‘‘ in
domestic work; disembedding background work; and going backstage. Understanding
these processes may inform the design of CSCW systems and the development
of related social theory. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1008651105359
TATNALL, A., and A. GILDNING (1999): "Actor-Network Theory and
Information Systems Research," Wellington, New Zealand, 955-966.
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/acis99/Papers/PaperTatnall-069.pdf
WOOLGAR, S., and G. COOPER (1999): "Do Artefacts Have
Ambivalence? Moses' Bridges, Winner's Bridges and Other Urban Legends
in S&Ts," Social Studies of Science, 29, 433-449. <Go to
ISI>://000081401100005
CIBORRA, C. (2000): From Control to Drift : The Dynamics of Corporate
Information Infastructures. Oxford [England] ; New York: Oxford University
Press.
DE LAET, M. (2000): "Patents, Travel, Space: Ethnographic Encounters
with Objects in Transit," Environment and Planning D-Society & Space,
18, 149-168. In this paper, an ethnographical take on objects in motion,
I follow the travel of patents from their places of origin in the Western
world of technoscience to newly developing worlds. I argue that not
only does the influx of patents and patent systems change the sociotechnical
configurations in which they emerge; the patent itself-or so I claim-changes
with its travel as well, and so it is a different thing in different
places. I thus link the nature of things with the places in which they
operate, and frame the patent as both a changeable object and an agent
of change. <Go to ISI>://000086845100003
DE LAET, M., and A. MOL (2000): "The Zimbabwe Bush Pump: Mechanics
of a Fluid Technology," Social Studies of Science, 30, 225-263.
In this paper we investigate the intricacies of an admirable water
pumping device - the Zimbabwe Bush Pump 'B' type - so as to find out
what makes it an 'appropriate technology'. This turns out to be what
we call the 'fluidity' of the pump (of its boundaries, or of its working
order, and of its maker). We find that in travelling to intractable
places, an object that isn't too rigorously bounded, that doesn't impose
itself but tries to serve, that is adaptable, flexible and responsive
- in short, a fluid object - may well prove to be stronger than one
which is firm. By analyzing the success and failure of this device,
its agency and the way in which it shapes new configurations in the
Zimbabwean socio-technical landscape, we partake in the current move
in science and technology studies to transform what it means to be
an actor. And by mobilizing the term love for articulating our relation
to the Bush Pump, we try to contribute to shaping novel ways of 'doing'
normativity. <Go to ISI>://000086929700002
DEUTEN, J. A., and A. RIP (2000): "Narrative Infrastructure
in Product Creation Processes," Organization, 7, 69-93. In product
creation processes, perhaps even more than in organization processes
in general, uncertainties are addressed and complexity is reduced.
In retrospect, linearized success stories are told. The history of
a product innovation in a biotechnology firm is used to show how actually,
over time, attributions and typifications in stories, and the implied
stories contained in interactions, link up and an overall plot emerges.
Such a social-semiotic analysis identifies the narrative infrastructure
which enables, as well as constrains, further actions, just like narrative
enables and constrains the characters involved. in the specific 'genre'
of product creation processes, the role of 'hero' shifts from the project
team to the emerging product itself. Managers and other actors involved
can profit from the reflexive understanding offered by social-semiotic
analysis, and avoid becoming captive of the path they follow, er en,
though reflexivity may hinder the build-up of thrust in the process. <Go
to ISI>://000084919500005
EDWARDS, T. (2000): "The Machine at Work: Technology, Work and
Organisation," Journal of Management Studies, 37, 469-473. <Go
to ISI>://000088486800008
FOMIN, V., and T. KEIL (2000): Standardization: Bridging the Gap
between Economic and Social Theory. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia:
Association for Information Systems.
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=359640.359745#
FOX, S. (2000): "Communities of Practice, Foucault and Actor-Network
Theory," Journal of Management Studies, 37, 853-867. The paper
discusses some of the main contributions to the theory of communities
of practice (COP theory), especially as it relates to organizational
learning. The paper does not attempt a full overview but concentrates
on the notion of power relations. Early COP theory was formulated as
part of situated learning theory, and promised to work on issues of
social context and unequal power relations. Foucault's work and actor-network
theory (ANT) is introduced and forms the basis of a constructive critique
of COP theory. The paper argues that COP theory and ANT can enrich
each other and together make a stronger contribution to our understanding
of organizational learning. Specifically, these perspectives question
the value in viewing organizations as formal, canonical entities as
far as learning and change are concerned. <Go to ISI>://000166066400005
FULLER, S. (2000): "Why Science Studies Has Never Been Critical
of Science - Some Recent Lessons on How to Be a Helpful Nuisance and
a Harmless Radical," Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 30, 5-32.
Research in Science and Technology Studies (STS) tends to presume that
intellectual and political radicalism go hand in hand. One would therefore
expect that the most intellectually radical movement in the field relates
critically to its social conditions. However, this is not the case,
as demonstrated by the trajectory of the Parisian School of STS spearheaded
by Michel Gallon and Bruno Latour. Their position, "actor-network
theory," turns out to be little more than a strategic adaptation
to the democratization of expertise and the decline of the strong nation-state
in France over the past 25 years. This article provides a prehistory
of this client-driven, contract-based research culture in U.S, sociology
of the 1960s, followed by specific features of French philosophical
and political culture that have bred the distinctive tenets of actor-network
theory Insofar as actor-network theory has become the main paradigm
for contemporary STS research, it reflects a field that dodges normative
commitments in order to maintain a user-friendly presence. <Go to
ISI>://000085632600001
HETHERINGTON, K., and J. LAW (2000): "After Networks," Environment
and Planning D-Society & Space, 18, 127-132. <Go to ISI>://000086845100001
LATOUR, B. (2000): "When Things Strike Back: A Possible Contribution
of 'Science Studies' to the Social Sciences," British Journal
of Sociology, 51, 107-123. The contribution of the field of science
and technology studies (STS) to mainstream sociology has so far been
slim because of a misunderstanding about what it means to provide a
social explanation of a piece of science or of an artefact. The type
of explanation possible for religion, art or popular culture no longer
works in the case of hard science or technology. This does not mean,
it is argued, that science and technology escapes sociological explanation,
but that a deep redescription of what is a social explanation is in
order. Once this misunderstanding has been clarified, it becomes interesting
to measure up the challenge raised by STS to the usual epistemologies
social sciences believed necessary for their undertakings. The social
sciences imitate the natural sciences in a way that render them unable
to profit from the type of objectivity found in the natural sciences.
It is argued that by following the STS lead, social sciences may start
to imitate the natural sciences in a very different fashion. Once the
meanings of 'social' and of 'science' are reconfigured, the definition
of what a 'social science' is and what it can do in the political arena
is considered. Again it is not by imitating the philosophers of science's
ideas of what is a natural science that sociology can be made politically
relevant. <Go to ISI>://000084948500007
— (2000): "When Things Strike Back: A Possible Contribution
of 'Science Studies' to the Social Sciences," The British Journal
of Sociology, 51, 107-123. The contribution of the field of science & technology
studies (STS) to mainstream sociology has been minimal because of a
misunderstanding about what it means to provide a social explanation
of a piece of science or of an artefact. Here, the challenge raised
by STS to the usual epistemologies that social sciences believe necessary
for their undertakings are considered. The social sciences imitate
the natural sciences in a way that renders them unable to profit from
the type of objectivity found in the natural sciences. It is argued
that, once the meanings of "social" & of "science" are
reconfigured, the definition of what a "social science" is & what
it can do in the political arena can be considered. It is emphasized
that it is not by imitating the ideas of the philosophers of science
about what is a natural science that sociology can be made politically
relevant. 52 References. Adapted from the source document.
LAW, J. (2000): Aircraft Stories : Decentering the Object in Technoscience.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
WENGER, E. C., and W. M. SNYDER (2000): "Communities of Practice:
The Organizational Frontier.," Harvard Business School Publication
Corp., 139.
Focuses on communities of practice, informal groups of people who
share expertise and work on a joint enterprise. History of communities
of practice and how they differ from other forms of organization; Management
of the informal and self-organizing communities of practice; Emergence
of communities of practice in companies that thrive on knowledge; Comparison
of community of practice with formal work group, project team, and
informal network. INSET: Communities in Action.
A new organizational form, called the community of practice, promises
to complement existing structures and radically galvanize knowledge
sharing, learning, and change. Communities of practice are groups of
people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for
a joint enterprise. These communities have improved organizational
practice at companies as diverse as an international bank, a major
car manufacturer, and a US government agency. The authors found that
management cannot mandate these communities but they can bring the
right people together, provide an infrastructure in which they can
thrive, and measure the communities' value in nontraditional ways.
Managers need to understand what these communities are and how they
work, realize that they are the key to the challenge of the knowledge
economy, and appreciate the paradox that they require specific managerial
efforts to develop and integrate them.
BEAGLE, D. (2001): "The Sociotechnical Networks of Scholarly
Communication," portal: Libraries and the Academy, 1, 421-443.
The complex state of flux in scholarly communications and publishing
today cannot be described or analyzed adequately in economic or technological
terms. Actor-Network Theory (ANT) offers an interdisciplinary vocabulary
and methodology that may have promising application to understanding
this flux and its impact on libraries. Key terms and concepts advanced
by several ANT researchers are applied to an overview of the evolution
of scholarly communications networks and to an analysis of the strategy
of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).
A possible adaptation of the Jenkins-Fricke analytical matrix for tracking
actors across the network is also discussed, as well as its potential
as a predictive mechanism for anticipating future network elaboration.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/v001/1.4beagle.html
BOWKER, G. C., and S. L. STAR (2001): "Social Theoretical Issues
in the Design of Collaboratories: Customized Software for Community
Support Versus Large-Scale Infrastructure."
(From the chapter ) Examines social issues in design utilizing some
of the past lessons from sociological studies of communities and networks.
The interest in terms such as electronic community have made the distinctions
between intimate versus distanced relationships important. The authors
seek to clarify some sense in which both apply to the development of
collaboratories. The discussion topics include the question of how
can electronic networks support a "community;" the Worm Community
System, a customized piece of software designed to support the collaborative
work of biologists sequencing the gene structure of c. elegans; the
collaboratory and the nature of work; the unusual role of theory in
electronic collaboration; and hands-on vs automated work. (PsycINFO
Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
— (2001): "Pure, Real and Rational Numbers: The American
Imaginary of Countability," Social Studies of Science, 31, 422-425.
Discusses two recent crises of quantification in US politics: (1) efforts
by the Census Bureau to estimate counts in certain areas (typically
poor, democratic, & multiethnic) & (2) the 2000 US elections,
where it became clear that poor, democratic, multiethnic areas were
not going to have their votes well counted because they were using
outmoded voting equipment (ie, punch cards). It is postulated that
a person is a full citizen in the US only if they are "countable," ie,
in the census & as a voter. "Uncountables" are the American
version of untouchables in India: a caste that can never aspire to
social wealth & worth. Adapted from the source document.
BRIERS, M., and W. F. CHUA (2001): "The Role of Actor-Networks
and Boundary Objects in Management Accounting Change: A Field Study
of an Implementation of Activity-Based Costing," Accounting Organizations
and Society, 26, 237-269. This field study seeks to illustrate how
an organisation's accounting system can be changed by a heterogeneous
actor-network of local and global actors and actants. In particular,
it focusses on the role of boundary that were able to stabilise and
mediate diverse interests. Five types of boundary objects were identified
- data repositories, visionary objects ideal type objects, coincident
boundaries and standardized protocols. Here, accounting change was
anti-heroic - the effort of many as opposed to a powerful few had to
be corralled. Also, change was cyclical, as new accounting technologies
were adopted on faith, made to 'work/succeed' temporarily, and then
abandoned. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. <Go
to ISI>://000167379300003
— (2001): "The Role of Actor-Networks and Boundary Objects
in Management Accounting Change: A Field Study of an Implementation
of Activity-Based Costing," Accounting Organizations and Society,
26, 237-269. This field study seeks to illustrate how an organisation's
accounting system can be changed by a heterogeneous actor-network of
local and global actors and actants. In particular, it focusses on
the role of boundary that were able to stabilise and mediate diverse
interests. Five types of boundary objects were identified - data repositories,
visionary objects ideal type objects, coincident boundaries and standardized
protocols. Here, accounting change was anti-heroic - the effort of
many as opposed to a powerful few had to be corralled. Also, change
was cyclical, as new accounting technologies were adopted on faith,
made to 'work/succeed' temporarily, and then abandoned. (C) 2001 Elsevier
Science Ltd. All rights reserved. <Go to ISI>://000167379300003
CALLON, M. A. N. T. (2001): "International Encyclopedia of the
Social & Behavioral Sciences," in. Oxford: Elsevier Science
Ltd, 62-66.
The term 'actor network theory' (ANT) combines two words usually
considered as opposites: actor and network. It is reminiscent of the
old, traditional tensions at the heart of the social sciences, such
as those between agency and structure or micro- and macro- analysis.
Yet, ANT, also known as the sociology of translation, is not just another
attempt to show the artificial or dialectical nature of these classical
oppositions. On the contrary, its purpose is to show how they are constructed
and to provide tools for analyzing that process. One of the core assumptions
of ANT is that what the social sciences usually call 'society' is an
ongoing achievement. ANT is an attempt to provide analytical tools
for explaining the very process by which society is constantly reconfigured.
What distinguishes it from other constructivist approaches is its explanation
of society in the making, in which science and technology play a key
part. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6WVS-46RT89G-4J/2/2a172d7b3a8e475b23be837b9b488128
ENTICOTT, G. (2001): "Calculating Nature: The Case of Badgers,
Bovine Tuberculosis and Cattle," Journal of Rural Studies, 17,
149-164. The aim of the paper is to examine the governmentalities associated
with attempts to manage nature. In particular, it assesses the role
that numbers have played in rural governance. Numbers are seen as an
important tool of modern government. However, like other aspects of
science, their use in governing nature has been contested by other
epistemologies. Drawing upon efforts to regulate the spread of bovine
tuberculosis in cattle, the paper firstly examines how numbers have
been used in this policy debate. Secondly, the paper outlines three
epistemologies of nature - nature as numbers, nature as known and ecological
nature - which have been employed in contesting government policy.
Finally the paper concludes by analysing the interactions of these
knowledges of nature and considering the voice of the badger in these
constructions of its identity. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights
reserved. <Go to ISI>://000169206700002
GRIFFITH, T. L., and D. J. DOUGHERTY (2001): "Beyond Socio-Technical
Systems: Introduction to the Special Issue," Journal of Engineering
and Technology Management, 18, 207-218. This article serves as an introductory
essay to this special issue of Journal of Technology and Management.
It identifies and articulates the broad themes of the five papers included
in this issue. Additionally, it outlines areas where further research
is likely to make considerable contributions to the field of socio-technical
systems. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VF3-44G8NV3-1/2/90f4d1e379bc3325d389563b346a4b5d
HANDS, D. W. (2001): Reflection without Rules : Economic Methodology
and Contemporary Science Theory. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge
University Press.
HARDY, C., N. PHILLIPS, and S. CLEGG (2001): "Reflexivity in
Organization and Management Theory: A Study of the Production of the
Research 'Subject'," Human Relations, 54, 531-560. In this article,
we draw on actor-network theory (ANT) to reflexively investigate the
role of the researcher and the research community in the production
of a research subject. We review our earlier work, which explores how
the dynamics of refugee systems help to produce the research subject
- in this case, the refugee, We then use ideas from ANT to move beyond
the more conventional institutional and discursive analyses that are
used in these articles. We include not just the activities of actors
in the refugee system in our analysis, but also our own activities
as researchers, as well as those of the broader research community.
We use the concept of translation to explore the role of these actors
in the processes of social construction that produce refugees as a
subject of academic study, which is related to, but distinct from,
the 'social' subject produced in the social setting under study. Generalizing
from our own research experience, we argue for a reconceptualization
of reflexivity in organization and management theory, which moves beyond
the common view of heroic individuals struggling to understand and
manage their role in their research towards an understanding of reflexivity
as involving the research community as a whole. <Go to ISI>://000168504500001
HIRSCHAUER, S. (2001): "Ethnographic Writing and the Silence
of the Social - Towards a Methodology of Description," Zeitschrift
Fur Soziologie, 30, 429-451. This article treats one of the problems
of ethnographic methodology. It spells out description as a fundamental
sociological practice. The paper focusses on working out the main problem
which is solved by descriptions: the verbalization of the "silent" dimension
of the social. First, ethnographic writing is introduced as a documentary
procedure. It has been devalued by more advanced recording techniques
which have set a naturalistic standard with respect to the reification
and decontextualization of "data". This standard is discussed
in the perpective of the sociology of knowledge. Subsequently, the
article elaborates on those problems which are left untouched by all
empirical procedures that rely on primordial verbalizations of informants:
interviews, discourse-analysis, and conversation- analysis. Ethnographic
writing has to solve the problems of the voiceless, the mute, the unspeakable,
the prelinguistic, and the indescribable. Ethnography puts something
into words which did not previously exist in language. To fulfill this
task of shifting the limits of articulation descriptions have to turn
away from the logic of recording and develop into theory-oriented research
practice, which must be assessed not in terms of its documentary accuracy,
but in terms of its analytical performance. <Go to ISI>://000173130100002
KAGHAN, W. N., and G. C. BOWKER (2001): "Out of Machine Age?:
Complexity, Sociotechnical Systems and Actor Network Theory," Journal
of Engineering and Technology Management, 18, 253-269. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VF3-44G8NV3-4/2/965f372cf1168bedb24719125aa55834
KARSTEN, H., K. LYYTINEN, M. HURSKAINEN, and T. KOSKELAINEN (2001): "Crossing
Boundaries and Conscripting Participation: Representing and Integrating
Knowledge in a Paper Machinery Project," European Journal of Information
Systems, 10, 89-98. In large, complex knowledge management tasks, representing
and integrating knowledge present major challenges. To understand these,
we studied two processes: perspective taking across communities of
knowing with boundary objects and perspective making within a community
by the use of conscription devices. A mutually modifiable object, with
sufficient complexity and manageability, appeared to be of crucial
importance within a community. Between communities, the role of representations
and negotiation over their meaning were emphasised. Implications for
computer support point towards combining free form and structure, open
and controlled access and modifiability, and parallel synchronised
and unregulated communication. <Go to ISI>://000171713200004
LATOUR, B. (2001): "A Sociology without Objects? Remarks on
Interobjectivity," Berliner Journal fur Soziologie, 11, 237-252.
This article of social theory reintroduces the object in the definition
of society & shows how this can solve the conflict between micro- & macrodefinitions
of social order. The reflections questioning central paradigms in sociology,
ethnomethodology, & anthropology lead to a renewed conception of
agency, action, & actor. An enlargement of the notion of intersubjectivity
by the notion of interobjectivity allows one to take into account the
specific achievements of human & nonhuman actors within a "framed
interaction," which in turn distinguishes human & simian society.
33 References. Adapted from the source document.
LOWE, A. (2001): "Casemix Accounting Systems and Medical Coding
- Organisational Actors Balanced On "Leaky Black Boxes"," Journal
of Organizational Change Management, 14, 79-100. The adoption of DRG
coding may be seen as a central feature of the mechanisms of the health
reforms in New Zealand This paper presents a story of the use of DRG
coding by describing the experience of one major health provider The
conventional literature portrays casemix accounting and medical coding
systems as rational techniques for the collection and Provision of
information for management and contracting decisions/negotiations.
Presents a different perspective on the implications and effects of
the adoption of DRG technology, in particular the part played by DRG
coding technology as a part of a casemix system is explicated from
an actor network theory perspective. Medical coding and the DRG methodology
will be argued to represent "black boxes". Such technological "knowledge
objects" provide strong points in the networks which are so important
to the processes of change in contemporary organisations. <Go to
ISI>://000167370600006
LYNCH, M. S. A. T. S. E. (2001): "International Encyclopedia
of the Social & Behavioral Sciences," in. Oxford: Elsevier
Science Ltd, 13644-13647.
Ethnomethodology is a research program that studies 'folk methods'
(tacit knowledge, routine practices, and ordinary language) for producing
social order. Starting in the 1960s, ethnomethodologists studied practices
in a broad range of ordinary and professional settings. Ethnomethodology's
orientation to local practices and situated knowledge influenced social
constructionist and discourse-analytic approaches in science and technology
studies. Ethnomethodologists examined social science research practices,
and assigned no special epistemological status to social scientific
methods. This research policy is known as 'ethnomethodological indifference,'
and it is similar in some respects to the 'symmetry' postulate in the
sociology of scientific knowledge. Unlike many sociologists of scientific
knowledge, ethnomethodologists do not treat professional sociology
as a basis for authoritative explanations of other practices. Ethnomethodology
has been criticized for its apparent lack of epistemological foundation
and normative commitment, but proponents of the approach argue that
their understandings and judgments have an ordinary basis in communal
life rather than an epistemological foundation furnished by an academic
school, theory, or method. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6WVS-46RN35F-4F/2/0964cc4b1fe38dc26108f4d75f09325f
MURDOCH, J. (2001): "Ecologising Sociology: Actor-Network Theory,
Co-Construction and the Problem of Human Exemptionalism," Sociology-the
Journal of the British Sociological Association, 35, 111-133. While
various attempts have been made to Link nature and society more closely
together within environmental sociology, it now appears as though there
is a general acceptance of rather traditional divisions between these
two domains. Yet ecology specifies that natural and social entities
are bound together in complex interrelations. Why then does sociology
insist on sifting out the social from the natural! The paper takes
this question as its starting point and seeks to identify what environmental
sociology might gain and lose from a shift towards ecological thinking.
It does so by examining the case of actor-network theory, an approach
that, in significant respects, closely approximates a kind of 'ecological
sociology: Actor-network theory is 'co-constructionist': it seeks to
identify how relations and entities come into being together. Critics
have focused on the problems of co-constructionism: they have argued
that human actors generally possess powers of reflection (through language)
and that these powers of reflection provide motive forces for action.
Thus some form of social analysis is still necessary. Any ecological
sociology will thus need to bring these two perspectives together so
that humans and non-humans can be considered within the same frame
of reference but so the distinctions that generally field between the
two can also be assessed. <Go to ISI>://000168350200007
NEWTON, T. (2001): "Organization: The Relevance and the Limitations
of Elias," Organization, 8, 467-495. In this introductory paper,
I use a quotation from Elias's (1992) essay on time in order to introduce
some key Eliasian concepts. I then explore the relation between power,
interdependency and subjectivity through reference to Elias's oft-cited
studies of court society as well as his less known analyses of time.
Drawing on these referents, I discuss the relation of Elias to current
organization theory focusing on Foucauldian work, Marx and labour process
theory and, especially, actor-network theory. Eliasian argument has
a number of points of contact with current fields of organizational
analysis such as organizational strategy, violence in organizations,
emotion in organizations, knowledge and discourse, globalization, organizations
and the natural environment, etc. The paper briefly reviews such examples
before considering certain limitations in Elias's conceptualization
of interdependency and subjectivity. <Go to ISI>://000169997500002
POLLOCK, N., and J. CORNFORD (2001): "Customising Industry Standard
Computer Systems for Universities: Erp Systems and the University as
a 'Unique' Organisation," 320-331.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are widely used by large
corporations around the world. Recently universities have turned to
ERP as a means of replacing existing management and administration
computer systems. In this article we provide analysis of the rollout
of an ERP system in one particular institution in the UK, the particular
focus being on how the development, implementation and use of both
generic and university specific functionality is mediated and shaped
by a fundamental and long standing tension within universities: this
is the extent to which higher education institutions are organisations
much like any other and the extent to which they are 'unique'. Our
aim is not to resolve this tension but rather to show how similarities
and differences are actively constructed and literally 'brought into
being' during various phases of this technical project. This occurs
both as a process of standardisation within the University and as series
of struggles to customise the system. Our conclusion is that managing
this process has become a key task, as well as difficulty for universities.
The research presented here is based on a participant observation study
carried over the period of three years, and is informed by ideas from
actor network theory as well as material culture
SCHATZKI, T. R., K. KNORR-CETINA, and E. V. SAVIGNY (2001): The Practice
Turn in Contemporary Theory. London ; New York: Routledge.
STARK, D. (2001): "Actor Network Theory and After," Contemporary
Sociology-a Journal of Reviews, 30, 96-97. <Go to ISI>://000166757400064
THEVENOT, L. (2001): "Organized Complexity: Conventions of Coordination
and the Composition of Economic Arrangements," European Journal
of Social Theory, 4, 405-425. This article introduces a framework which
aims at capturing the complexity of economic organizations. The analysis
of most legitimate conventions of coordination results in a new approach
to the firm as a compromising device between several modes of coordination
which engage different repertoires of evaluation. This contribution
to the Economie des conventions offers an analytical tool to operate
comparative research on firms, intermediate regulatory committees or
public policies. 91 References. [Copyright 2001 Sage Publications Ltd.].
BARRY, A. (2002): "The Anti-Political Economy," Economy
and Society, 31, 268-284. This paper develops Michel Callon's analysis
of the technological economy in two ways. First, the paper is concerned
with the way that political activity is framed through the use of a
variety of technical devices. Arguing against the view that politics
can be located in all forms of social and economic activity, the paper
suggests that politics should be regarded as a rather specialist activity
that is often directed towards 'anti-political' ends. Second, through
a discussion of what the paper terms 'the fragility of metrological
regimes' and the 'inventiveness of measurement', the paper argues that
measurement and calculation can have the effect of disrupting the frame
of politics, and creating a conduit for the cross-contamination of
the economic and the political. DOI: 10.1080/03085140220123162
BARRY, A., and D. SLATER (2002): "Introduction: The Technological
Economy," Economy and Society, 31, 175-193. This article is an
overview of Michel Callon's contribution to the reformulation of economic
sociology and anthropology. It contextualizes Callon's concepts within
science and technology studies, and indicates the main lines of influence
on his thinking about economic processes. Callon's work also opens
up a number of debates and challenges to current perspectives within
economic sociology. Finally, the article considers the way in which
Callon's perspective reconfigures both the relation of politics and
economics, and the nature of politics itself.
DOI: 10.1080/03085140220123117
BENKLER, Y. (2002): "Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and the
Nature of the Firm," The Yale Law Journal, 112, 369. This article
explains why free software is one example of a much broader social-economic
phenomenon emerging in the digitally networked environment, a third
mode of production called commons-based peer production. The widespread
use of commons-based peer production on the Internet through a number
of detailed examples is demonstrated. The article uses these examples
to reveal fundamental characteristics of commons-based peer production
that distinguish it from the property- and contract-based modes of
firms and markets. The central distinguishing characteristic is that
groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects
following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals
rather than market prices or managerial commands. The article then
explains why this mode has systematic advantages over markets and managerial
hierarchies in the digitally networked environment when the object
of production is information or culture.
BROWN, S. D. (2002): "Michel Serres - Science, Translation and
the Logic of the Parasite," Theory Culture & Society, 19,
1-+. The work of Michel Serres has not found a great audience within
Anglophone Social Science, despite his substantial influence on modem
Science Studies. This article offers an introduction to his thought.
Serres is a global thinker who describes his work as 'structuralist'.
The notion of translation as a way of describing the communication
and movements between different forms of knowledge and cultural practice
is central. Serres offers a philosophy of science that is in stark
opposition to the Bachelardian tradition of 'epistemic ruptures'. In
order to make a break with 'breaks', Serres offers an account of science
and cultural practice as multiplicities that are immersed within noise.
Structure, when it emerges, comes about in acts of parasitism. Serres
then explores how human relations obey a 'parasite logic' which contains
an attendant risk of sacrifice. This risk is managed through the circulation
of 'quasi-objects'. Serres' later work poses the question of what we
can hope for when this circulation itself begins to falter. <Go
to ISI>://000178255900001
CALLON, M. (2002): "From Science as an Economics Activity to
Socioeconomics of Scientific Research: The Dynamics of Emergent and
Consolidated Techno-Economic Networks," in Science Bought and
Sold : Essays in the Economics of Science ed. by P. Mirowski, and E.-M.
Sent: University Of Chicago Press, 277-317.
— (2002): "From Science as an Economic Activity to Socioeconomics
of Scientific Research: The Dynamics of Emergent and Consolidated Techno-Economics
Networks," in Science Bought and Sold : Essays in the Economics
of Science, ed. by P. Mirowski, and E.-M. Sent. Chicago, Ill.: University
of Chicago Press, 277-317.
CALLON, M., C. MEADEL, and V. RABEHARISOA (2002): "The Economy
of Qualities," Economy and Society, 31, 194-217. The aim of this
paper is to highlight the main characteristics of what the authors
call "the economy of qualities." The authors show that qualifying
products & positioning goods are major concerns for agents evolving
in the economy of qualities. Competition in such an economy is structured
through two basic mechanisms. The first is what the authors propose
to call the process of singularization of products. The second is the
mechanism whereby consumers are attached to, & detached from, goods
that are proposed to them. At the heart of these logics, one can find
multiple sociotechnical devices that are designed by economic agents,
which ensure the distribution of cognitive competencies, & which
constantly & finely tune supply & demand. Relying on Jean Gadrey's
work, the authors claim that the economy of qualities is nowhere more
effective than in services providing activities, & especially in
those sectors that invest heavily in New Information & Communication
Technologies (ICTs). Finally, the authors suggest that, in the economy
of qualities, the functioning & the organization of markets are
issues that are shared by scholars & actors. In these highly reflexive
markets, a collaboration between them is needed. 34 References. Adapted
from the source document. DOI: 10.1080/03085140220123126
DAVENPORT, E., and H. HALL (2002): "Organizational Knowledge
and Communities of Practice," Annual Review of Information Science
and Technology, 36, 171-227. <Go to ISI>://000174552900005
DOOLIN, B., and A. LOWE (2002): "To Reveal Is to Critique: Actor-Network
Theory and Critical Information Systems Research," Journal of
Information Technology, 17, 69-78. It has been suggested that, in order
to maintain its relevance, critical research must develop a strong
emphasis on empirical work rather than the conceptual emphasis that
has typically characterized critical scholarship in management. A critical
project of this nature is applicable in the information systems (IS)
arena, which has a growing tradition of qualitative inquiry. Despite
its relativist ontology, actor-network theory places a strong emphasis
on empirical inquiry and this paper argues that actor-network theory,
with its careful tracing and recording of heterogeneous networks, is
well suited to the generation of detailed and contextual empirical
knowledge about IS. The intention in this paper is to explore the relevance
of IS research informed by actor-network theory in the pursuit of a
broader critical research project as defined in earlier work. <Go
to ISI>://000177615200004
FEW, R. (2002): "Researching Actor Power: Analyzing Mechanisms
of Interaction in Negotiations over Space," Area, 34, 29-38. Turning
complex theories on social power into research practice is no easy
task. Drawing on recent debates in geography and associated disciplines,
this paper illustrates one means of operationalizing the study of power
deployed by actors in a negotiating arena through the elucidation of
motives, resources and tactics. The discussion is based on the methods
and findings of a case study of community involvement in protected
area planning. <Go to ISI>://000174852300004
FRANCK, G. (2002): "The Scientific Economy of Attention: A Novel
Approach to the Collective Rationality of Science," Scientometrics,
55, 3-26. Describes science as a highly developed market economy in
which researchers invest their own attention in order to obtain the
attention of others. Viewed like this, scientific communication appears
to be a market where information is exchanged for attention. Scientific
information is measured in terms of the attention it earns. Since scientists
demand scientific information as a means of production, the attention
that a theory attracts is a measure of its value as a capital good.
On the other hand, the attention a scientist earns is capitalized into
the asset called reputation. (Original abstract - amended)
HINDS, P., and S. KIESLER (2002): Distributed Work. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.
HINE, C. (2002): "Cyberscience and Social Boundaries: The Implications
of Laboratory Talk on the Internet," Sociological Research Online,
7. This paper examines the use of an online forum for the discussion
of laboratory science. It is argued that such forums are significant
in the light of claims made for the impact of information and communications
technologies (ICTs) on scientific research, and of broader debates
about the role of ICTs in reconfiguring social boundaries. It appears
that the impacts of ICTs on scientific research are likely to be diverse
and unpredictable, in line with emerging findings in other application
domains. In particular, the potential to break down the boundaries
between science and lay persons, and between different areas of scientific
research, is likely to be limited by the ways in which particular forums
are preserved as bounded spaces for specific specialisms. In the case
of the forum studied in this paper, discursive practices function to
re-establish laboratory boundaries in the online setting. Laboratory
talk on the Internet may help to break down barriers between individual
laboratories, but is not, in itself, any more accessible to lay people
than talk in the private spaces of the laboratory. <Go to ISI>://000177790400006
KING, J. L., and R. L. FROST (2002): "Managing Distance over
Time: The Evolution of Technologies of Dis/Ambiguation," in Distributed
Work, ed. by P. Hinds, and S. Kiesler. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
3-26.
LAMONT, M., and V. MOLNAR (2002): "The Study of Boundaries in
the Social Sciences," Annual Review of Sociology, 28, 167-195.
In recent years, the concept of boundaries has been at the center of
influential research agendas in anthropology, history, political science,
social psychology, and sociology. This article surveys some of these
developments while describing the value added provided by the concept,
particularly concerning the study of relational processes. It discusses
literatures on (a) social and collective identity; (b) class, ethnic/racial,
and gender/sex inequality; (c) professions, knowledge, and science;
and (d) communities, national identities, and spatial boundaries. It
points to similar processes at work across a range of institutions
and social locations. It also suggests paths for further developments,
focusing on the relationship between social and symbolic boundaries,
cultural mechanisms for the production of boundaries, difference and
hybridity, and cultural membership and group classifications. http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/loi/soc
LATOUR, B. (2002): "Morality and Technology: The End of the
Means," Theory, Culture & Society, 19, 247-260. Technology
is always limited to the realm of means, while morality is supposed
to deal with ends. In this theoretical article about comparing those
two regimes of enunciation, it is argued that technology is on the
contrary characterized by the 'ends of means' that is the impossibility
of being limited to tools; technical artifacts are never tools if what
is meant by this is a transmission of function in a mastered way. Once
this modification of the meaning of technology is accepted, then it
is possible to relate technology, in a totally different way, to morality
that is not about values, but about the exploration of ends. 24 References.
[Copyright 2002 Sage Publications Ltd.].
LAW, J., and A. MOL (2002): Complexities : Social Studies of Knowledge
Practices. Durham: Duke University Press.
MILLER, D. (2002): "Turning Callon the Right Way Up," Economy
and Society, 31, 218-233. This paper argues that, contrary to his own
claims, Callon's work amounts to a defence of the economists' model
of a framed and abstracted market against empirical evidence that contemporary
exchange rarely if ever works according to the laws of the market.
I start with an example from an Indian village, which shows how other
societies also try to frame particular genres of exchange to protect
themselves from other varieties of exchange. But both there and within
capitalism the frame is precisely a moral system of how exchange ought
to be carried out. I then use the example of car purchasing to suggest
the highly entangled world of actual exchange within capitalism both
between the exchange partners and also between consumers and commerce
more generally. Indeed, the actual case studies in Callon's The Laws
of the Markets seem to support this conclusion rather than the model
put forward in his own introduction and conclusion. These studies,
as others cited here, suggest the centrality of entanglements also
for higher-level exchanges, such as stock markets and corporate take-overs,
and not just for shoppers or other individual actors. As an alternative
to Callon I briefly summarize an argument published elsewhere, called
'virtualism', in which I examine the increasing ability of economists
and other agents of abstract models such as audit and consultancy to
transform the world into closer approximations of their theories and
models. I suggest this provides a more fruitful way of understanding
the growth and power of abstraction in the contemporary economy. DOI:
10.1080/03085140220123135
MIROWSKI, P., and E.-M. SENT (2002): Science Bought and Sold : Essays
in the Economics of Science. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
MOL, A. (2002): The Body Multiple : Ontology in Medical Practice.
Durham: Duke University Press.
NEWTON, T. J. (2002): "Creating the New Ecological Order? Elias
and Actor-Network Theory," Academy of Management Review, 27, 523-540.
This article provides a critique of current work on the "greening" of
organizations, especially work based on "ecocentric" argument.
I question the meaning of "nature" and use studies of the
sociology of order and networks to debate the assumptions of current "green" discourse
and its normative rationales. I advance an interdependency network
perspective, applying it to the greening of organizations, green technologies,
and issues of globalization, and I argue that this perspective offers
an alternative theoretical rationale and a potential basis for future
research. <Go to ISI>://000178546600005
O'LEARY, M., W. ORLIKOWSKI, and J. YATES (2002): "Distributed
Work over the Centuries: Trust and Control in the Hundson's Bay Company,
1670-1826," in Distributed Work, ed. by P. Hinds, and S. Kiesler.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 27-54.
ORLIKOWSKI, W. J. (2002): "Knowing in Practice: Enacting a Collective
Capability in Distributed Organizing," Organization Science, 13,
249-273. In this paper, I outline a perspective on knowing in practice
which highlights the essential role of human action in knowing how
to get things done in complex organizational work. The perspective
suggests that knowing is not a static embedded capability or stable
disposition of actors, but rather an ongoing social accomplishment,
constituted and reconstituted as actors engage the world in practice.
In interpreting the findings of an empirical study conducted in a geographically
dispersed high-tech organization, I suggest that the competence to
do global product development is both collective and distributed, grounded
in the everyday practices of organizational members. I conclude by
discussing some of the research implications of a perspective on organizational
knowing in practice. <Go to ISI>://000175510900004
PELS, D., K. HETHERINGTON, and F. VANDENBERGHE (2002): "The
Status of the Object - Performances, Mediations, and Techniques," Theory
Culture & Society, 19, 1-+. In their substantive introduction,
the editors first revisit two classical sites of controversy which
have offered frameworks for theorizing the interplay between materiality
and sociality: reification and fetishism. Obviously, these critical
vocabularies emerge as crucial sites of perplexity as soon as the ontological
boundary between subjects and objects is rendered equally problematic
and fluid as the epistemological boundary between the imaginary and
the real. A thumbnail sketch of the history of the two discursive traditions
(from Marxism up to Actor Network Theory) provides an elaborate systematic
framework for introducing the individual articles. The first axis of
debate is generated by conceptual residues of the traditional tug-of-war
between idealism and materialism which continues to infiltrate recent
redescriptions of the web of sociality/materiality. The concern here
is how much autonomy and agency can be granted to material objects
in view of their social inscription and symbolic construction, and
how far conceptual experiments with the ontological symmetry between
humans and nonhumans may take us and/or should be permitted to go.
The second axis of debate concerns the fate of critical theory and
of ethico-political sensibility in the face of heightened uncertainties
about the distinction between what is real, what is constructed, and
what is imaginary, and between what may count as a person and what
as a thing. <Go to ISI>://000180392000001
SLATER, D. (2002): "From Calculation to Alienation: Disentangling
Economic Abstractions," Economy and Society, 31, 234-249. This
article uses a debate between Michel Callon and Daniel Miller to explore
tensions within economic sociology and anthropology.The tension is
between characterizations of markets and economic rationality that
seem to dissolve them into a generalized notion of culture and those
which seem to abstract them as specific social forms. The paper argues
that markets are best defined in terms of a form of transaction rather
than a specific mode of calculation: market transactions involve the
alienation of goods in the form of property. Such transactions require
the kinds of socio-technical apparatuses that Callon describes, in
order to establish both alienability and its limits; on the other hand,
and drawing on Callon's own concepts of framing and overflowing, such
transactions allow for more diverse, ambiguous and contradictory forms
of calculation than Callon seems to allow. The latter point is developed
particularly in relation to cultural calculation, typified by marketing
and advertising. DOI: 10.1080/03085140220123144
STRATHERN, M. (2002): "Externalities in Comparative Guise," Economy
and Society, 31, 250-267. For those working with social science presumptions,
ethical principles can seem to come out of nowhere. This paper wonders
whether they operate like the positive externalities Callon wishes
to derive from economists. In exploring the question, it is forced
to consider different models of internal and external positioning.
It does this through taking up two manifestations of the technological
economy concerned with information management, following examples drawn
from Callon's own work (competitive patenting and ethical deliberations
on biotechnology). DOI: 10.1080/03085140220123153
YAKURA, E. K. (2002): "Charting Time: Timelines as Temporal
Boundary Objects," Academy of Management Journal, 45, 956-970.
This article investigates the use of visual artifacts to represent
time. Timelines, or "Gantt charts," are widely used for scheduling,
budgeting, and project management, and they are woven into the fabric
of organizational life. Timelines embody objectivist, monotemporal
assumptions about time yet allow organizational and occupational subgroups
with different assumptions to negotiate and manage time prospectively
and retrospectively. Timelines thus function as temporal boundary objects,
visual representations of time that are both interpretively flexible
and robust. <Go to ISI>://000178849900008
BIGGART, N. W., and T. D. BEAMISH (2003): "The Economic Sociology
of Conventions: Habit, Custom, Practice, and Routine in Market Order," Annual
Review of Sociology, 29, 443-464. Economic sociology and economics
have tried to explain the organization and stability of market capitalism
mostly by arguing for the effects of social structure on the patterning
of relations, or for the role of the price system in balancing the
demands of individual economic actors. In North America, the primary
alternative to structural and individualist theories of market order
has been network theory, a meso-level attempt to bridge over- and undersocialized
views of actors. In Europe, the primary attempt to develop more realistic
economics has centered on the role of conventions in shaping economic
activity. We describe theories of market order, show how convention
theory and related approaches represent a novel alternative, and suggest
how convention theory can supplement network theory and institutional
approaches to understanding market order. http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/loi/soc
BRUUN, H., and R. LANGLAIS (2003): "On the Embodied Nature of
Action," Acta Sociologica, 46, 31-49. A theory of the embodiment
of action is proposed. Reflections on relations between human intentions,
the human body and the notion of agency lead us to argue that phenomenological
analysis is not sufficient for such a theory. Our consideration, that
the most fundamental level of embodied agency is that of life itself,
brings us to the philosophy of biology and the theory of the organism:
briefly, certain parts of the natural environment are intrinsic to
the constitution of organisms and, in their more sophisticated configuration,
as agents. Action is embodied in the sense that certain physiological
processes are internal in relation to it and play a constitutive role
in its performance. The way in which environment, context and consciousness
affect and constitute the nature of agency at personal and sub-personal
levels is elaborated. We see that human agents perceive and act upon
their world through a complex shifting between those levels. A summary
of the ways in which the social sciences can be enriched by this more
comprehensive view of human agency provides the basis of justification
for claiming Actor-Network Theory (ANT), originally developed by sociologists
studying science and technology, as a promising framework for the continuation
of this reasoning. <Go to ISI>://000182585600003
CALLON, M., and F. MUNIESA (2003): "Economic Markets as Collective
Calculating Devices," Reseaux, 21, 189-233. The authors propose
a theoretical framework that can empirically address the calculative
character of markets without debunking their calculative properties.
After first constructing a broad definition of calculation, grounded
on the field of science & technology studies, they then confront
this definition with three constituent elements of markets: economic
goods, economic agents, & economic exchanges. First they examine
the question of the calculability of goods: in order to be calculated,
goods must be calculable. They then introduce the notion of calculative
distributed agencies to understand how these calculable goods are actually
calculated. Thirdly, they consider the rules & material devices
that organize the encounter between (& aggregation of) individual
supplies & demands, ie, the specific organizations that allow for
a calculated exchange & a market output. Those three elements define
concrete markets as collective organized devices that calculate compromises
on the values of goods. In each, they encounter different versions
of their broad definition of calculation that they illustrate with
some examples, mainly from the fields of financial markets & mass
retail. 85 References. Adapted from the source document.
CALLON, M., and V. RABEHARISOA (2003): "Research "In the
Wild" And the Shaping of New Social Identities," Technology
in Society, 25, 193-204. This article examines new forms of techno-science-society
interactions, in which non-scientists work with scientists to produce & disseminate
knowledge. The term "research in the wild" is coined to name
a special version of this new phenomenon. The primary illustration
for this new form of research is connected with the Assoc Francaise
contra les Myopathies (AFM), the history of which is particularly suitable
for exploring certain mechanisms at work in the co-production of scientific
knowledge & social identities. The article first compares laboratory
research with research in the wild, emphasizing patient interest in
maintaining control over cooperation. It then notes the intimate interrelations
between the construction of patient identities & the collective
form of research in which they participate. Finally, it examines the
role of genetics, both as it is integrated into the construction of
the collective, & also into the production of mechanisms of exclusion
- the reverse side of the constitution of a collective identity. 36
References. Adapted from the source document.
HALL, H. (2003): "Borrowed Theory - Applying Exchange Theories
in Information Science Research," Library & Information Science
Research, 25, 287-306. This article discusses the applicability of "borrowing" theory
originally developed in other disciplines to information science research
and, in particular, the analytical concepts and assumptions of social
exchange theory as a framework for exploring motivational factors of
knowledge sharing in large, distributed, information-intensive organizations.
Social exchange theory relates to sociology, psychology, and anthropology;
this article discusses the extent to which knowledge has been regarded
as an "exchange resource." This section is followed by an
analysis of previous work that has tied exchange theory to areas of
interest to information scientists. An ongoing research project tests
the analytical concepts and assumptions of social exchange theory in
a knowledge market and the potential for such work to generate further
theory. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. <Go to ISI>://000185297700003
JONNES, J. (2003): Empires of Light : Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse,
and the Race to Electrify the World. New York: Random House.
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/random0415/2002031866.html
KLING, R., G. MCKIM, and A. KING (2003): "A Bit More to It:
Scholarly Communication Forums as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks. ," 54,
47 In this article, we examine the conceptual models that
help us understand the development and sustainability of scholarly
and professional communication forums on the Internet, such as conferences,
pre-print servers, field-wide data sets, and collaboratories. We first
present and document the information processing model that is implicitly
advanced in most discussions about scholarly communications—the "Standard
Model." Then we present an alternative model, one that considers
information technologies as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks (STINs).
STIN models provide a richer understanding of human behavior with online
scholarly communications forums. They also help to further a more complete
understanding of the conditions and activities that support the sustainability
of these forums within a field than does the Standard Model. We illustrate
the significance of STIN models with examples of scholarly communication
forums drawn from the fields of high-energy physics, molecular biology,
and information systems. The article also includes a method for modeling
electronic forums as STINs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
SPINUZZI, C. (2003): "More Than One, Less Than Many: A Review
of Three “Post-Ant” Books," Currents in Electronic
Literacy. http://currents.cwrl.utexas.edu/fall03/spinuzzi.html
STAR, S. L., G. BOWKER, and L. NEUMANN (2003): "Transparency
Beyond the Individual Level of Scale: Convergence between Information
Artifacts and Communities of Practice," in Digital Library Use:
Social Practice in Design and Evaluation, ed. by A. Bishop, B. Butterfield,
and N. Van House. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
VAN HOUSE, N. A. (2003): "Science and Technology Studies and
Information Studies," in Annual Review of Information Science
and Technology, ed. by B. Cronin: Information Today, Inc., 3-86.
VAN HOUSE, N. A. (2003): "Digital Libraries and Collaborative
Knowledge Construction," in Digital Library Use: Social Practice
in Design and Evaluation, ed. by A. Bishop, B. Butterfield, and N.
Van House. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 271-295.
BERG, M., O. HANSETH, and M. AANESTAD (2004): Actor-Network Theory
and Information Systems. Bradford, England: Emerald Group Pub.
GENDRON, Y., and M. BARRETT (2004): "Professionalization in
Action: Accountants' Attempt at Building a Network of Support for the
Webtrust Seal of Assurance," Contemporary Accounting Research,
21, 563-602. This paper examines the attempts by the North American
accounting institutes to develop a new market in e-commerce assurance
based on their claims to professional expertise through the WebTrust
project. Employing actor-network theory in an in-depth longitudinal
field study, we investigate how WebTrust was originally developed and
promoted as a seal of business-to-consumer assurance, which largely
failed to generate support in the marketplace. Proponents were subsequently
able to generate more interest in the eyes of managers of online organizations
by reshaping WebTrust as a flexible set of principles and criteria
for systems advice and business-to-business assurance. Our analysis
suggests that attempts to expand the accounting profession's domain
of expertise reflect a trial-and-error process where the outcome achieved
may be far from the vision that motivated the institutes into under-taking
the project in the first place. We further show that the initial network
of support for such projects can be quite fragile and dynamic as various
actors reposition themselves around the shifting meanings attributed
to the project. <Go to ISI>://000224079400004
HANSETH, O., M. AANESTAD, and M. BERG (2004): "Guest Editors’ Introduction:Actor-Network
Theory and Information Systems. What's So Special?," Information
Technology & People, 17, 116-123. In this editorial introduction
Allen Lee's definition of the information systems (IS) field is taken
as the starting point: “Research in the information systems field
examines more than just the technological system, or just the social
system, or even the two systems side by side; in addition, it investigates
the phenomena that emerge when the two interact” (Lee, A. “Editorial”,
MISQ, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2001, p. iii). By emphasizing the last part of
this, it is argued that actor-network theory (ANT) can provide IS research
with unique and very powerful tools to help us overcome the current
poor understanding of the information technology (IT) artifact (Orlikowski,
W. and Iacono, S., “Research commentary: desperately seeking
the ‘IT’ in IT research – a call for theorizing the
IT artifact”, Information Systems Research, Vol. 10 No. 2, 2001,
pp. 121-34). These tools include a broad range of concepts describing
the interwoven relationships between the social. DOI: 10.1108/09593840410542466
JOSSERAND, E. (2004): "Organizational Knowledge in the Making:
How Firms Create, Use and Institutionalize Knowledge," Organization
Studies, 25, 487-491. <Go to ISI>://000220652400009
LATOUR, B. (2004): "Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From
Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern," Convergencia, 11, 17-49.
Worrisome signs exist that scientific & philosophical criticism
are suffering from the illusion that they have been successful in their
efforts, but there is a lack of confidence in their output. Analogous
to a military exercise, scholars need to reevaluate the threats to
their labor & modernize their equipment & training. A return
to a realist attitude is advocated. The identification of the new object
of study, the "thing," & difficulties in perceiving & controlling
the object are discussed. If a new set of critical methods & thinking
is developed, it will be problematic to identify this new path using
the old title of social criticism. 5 Figures, 49 References. M. Pflum.
LOCKIE, S. (2004): "Collective Agency, Non-Human Causality and
Environmental Social Movements - a Case Study of the Australian 'Landcare
Movement'," Journal of Sociology, 40, 41-57. This article explores
the implications for social movement theory of recent work in the sociology
of scientific knowledge (SSK) that explicitly rejects dualisms between
society and nature, structure and agency, and macro and micro-levels
of analysis. In doing so it argues that SSK offers: (1) a theoretically
useful definition of collective agency as an achievement of interaction;
that is (2) sensitive to the influence of both humans and non-humans
in the networks of the social; and (3) provides practical conceptual
tools with which to analyse dynamics of power and agency in the ordering
of networks. Applying this framework to a case study of the Australian
'landcare movement' it is argued that a range of practices have been
used to enact 'action at a distance' over Australian farmers and to
'order' agricultural practices in ways that are consistent with corporate
interests while minimizing opposition from conservation organizations
otherwise highly critical of chemical agriculture. <Go to ISI>://000220914900003
MCLEAN, C., and J. HASSARD (2004): "Symmetrical Absence/Symmetrical
Absurdity: Critical Notes on the Production of Actor-Network Accounts," Journal
of Management Studies, 41, 493-519. An enduring concern within management
and organization studies (MOS) is how to conduct research from perspectives
deemed 'alternatives' to those of functionalism and positivism. Our
aim is to address this concern with regard to an approach employed
by Karen Legge in research on knowledge workers, namely that of actor-network
theory (ANT) (or the 'sociology of translation'). Following an introduction
to ANT, the views of some its key proponents, and Legge's own use of
the approach, the paper presents critical notes on five issues related
to the production of ANT accounts - the inclusion and exclusion of
actors; the treatment of humans and non-humans; the nature of privileging
and status; the handling of agency and structure; and the nature of
politics and power in 'heterogeneous engineering'. We discuss the relationships
between these issues and the key ANT goal of achieving a sense of 'general
symmetry' in the accounting process. In so doing we note how ANT authors
are frequently chastised for either failing to take sufficient account
of, or promoting too strong a sense of, analytical symmetry in their
writing. It is argued that the primary challenge facing ANT researchers
is to produce accounts that are robust enough to negate the twin charges
of symmetrical absence and symmetrical absurdity. <Go to ISI>://000220887000007
MCNAMARA, C., J. BAXTER, and W. F. CHUA (2004): "Making and
Managing Organisational Knowledge(S)," Management Accounting Research,
15, 53-76. This paper engages with critical discourse problematising
knowledge management. It does so in the context of a field study of
a multinational, fast moving consumer goods company based in Australia.
Applying actor-network theory, four knowledge networks are assembled:
first, knowledge as reassembling, repositing and reusing; second, knowledge
as importing and standardising skills; third, knowledge as sharing,
linking and acting from a distance; and, fourth, knowledge as locating
knowledge. These knowledge networks highlight the heterogeneous constructs
mobilised by organisational participants in the name of knowledge management.
As such, this paper contributes to an understanding of the constitution
of organisational knowledges--these being achieved through a diverse
set of activities, actors and actants. The paper also highlights a
plurality of organisational knowledges and thus questions the centrality
of accounting inscriptions in disciplinary accounts of knowledge networks.
It demonstrates the need to understand accounting knowledge objects
as part of a larger constellation of organisational knowledges. Finally,
it suggests that a plurality of knowledges enables a 'decentring' of
knowledge networks and the possible formation of localised sites of
resistance/domination in the post-industrial era. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6WMY-49YHC0H-1/2/8776ef43e4dae3e6b7aa9ece19210ecd
MONTEIRO, E. (2004): "Actor Network Theory and Cultural Aspects
of Interpretative Studies," in The Social Study of Information
and Communication Technology, ed. by C. Avgerou, C. Ciborra, and F.
Land. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 129-139.
ROSSI, M. A. (2004): "Decoding The "Free/Open Source (F/Oss)
Puzzle" - a Survey Oftheretical and Empirical Contributions."
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/rossi.pdf
THOMPSON, M. P. A. (2004): "Some Proposals for Strengthening
Organizational Activity Theory," Organization, 11, 579-602. This
paper seeks to highlight a perceived 'drift' of organizational activity
theory: from an original concern with the social mediation of human
consciousness through intersubjective interaction, to a focus on networked
relations between organizational communities through intercollective
interaction. It is argued that such a drift threatens the explanatory
power of Vygotsky's original formulation, which offers an explanation
for the social conditioning of meaning, but which nonetheless acknowledges
its location within individual human beings, not groups. In an attempt
to address this perceived situation and to contribute to the further
development of organizational activity theory, the paper draws upon
two ideas from the Russian semiologist Bakhtin, incorporating these
within a proposed framework for the application of activity theory
within organizational settings that remains consistent with Vygotsky's
original ideas. <Go to ISI>://000223969200001
WATTS, D. J. (2004): "The "New" Science of Networks," Annual
Review of Sociology, 30, 243-270. In recent years, the analysis and
modeling of networks, and also networked dynamical systems, have been
the subject of considerable interdisciplinary interest, yielding several
hundred papers in physics, mathematics, computer science, biology,
economics, and sociology journals (Newman 2003c), as well as a number
of books (Barabasi 2002, Buchanan 2002, Watts 2003). Here I review
the major findings of this emerging field and discuss briefly their
relationship with previous work in the social and mathematical sciences.
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.soc.30.020404.104342
WHITE, R., and M. BRADSHAW (2004): "Business in Action:
Framing and Overflowing in the Logistics of an Australian Company," Journal
of Sociology, 40, 5-20. As market relations become more pervasive,
so the classical sociological issue of the tension between 'economic'
and 'social' explanations becomes more salient than ever. Michel Callon
has proposed that the Actor-Network Theory (A-NT) developed in science
and technology studies provides a useful approach to this tension.
In this article we outline his innovatively traditional 'market test'
of A-NT, and then test and illustrate it through a contract between
an Australian company and a transport logistics consortium that it
fostered under changing conditions in its market. We exemplify Callon's
case for the co-emergence of calculative and cultural effects, and
conclude that business in action is a promising research site for their
global reconfiguration. <Go to ISI>://000220914900001
YEARLEY, S. (2004): Making Sense of Science: Understanding the Social
Study of Science. London: Sage.
ADLER, P. S. (2005): "The Evolving Object of Software Development," Organization,
12, 401-435. This paper contributes to an ongoing debate on the effects
of bureaucratic rationalization on relatively non-routine, knowledge-work
activities. It focuses on the Software Engineering Institute’s
Capability Maturity Model (CMM®) for software development.
In particular, it explores how the CMM affects the object of software
developers’ work and thereby affects organization
structure. Empirical evidence is drawn from interviews in four units
of a large software consulting firm. First, using contingency theory,
I address the technical dimensions of the development object. Here
CMM implementation reduced task uncertainty and helped master task
complexity and interdependence. Second, using institutional theory,
I broaden the focus to include the symbolic dimensions of the object.
Adherence to the CMM involved the sampled organizations in efforts
to ensure certification, and these symbolic conformance tasks interacted
in both disruptive and productive ways with technical improvement tasks.
Finally, using cultural-historical activity theory, I deepen the focus
to include the social-structural dimensions of the object. Through
these lenses, the software development task appears as basically contradictory,
aiming simultaneously at use value, in the form of great code, and
at exchange value, in the form of high fees and profits: the CMM deepened
rather than resolved this contradiction. The form of organization associated
with these mutations of the object of work is a form of bureaucracy
that is simultaneously mock, coercive, and enabling.
BRUNI, A. (2005): "Shadowing Software and Clinical Records:
On the Ethnography of Non-Humans and Heterogeneous Contexts," Organization,
12, 357-378. Recent years have seen growing sociological interest in
the role that objects and non-human actors perform in everyday life.
Whether as machines, information technologies, artworks, commodities
or architectures, objects today raise issues of complexity and controversy
(Pels et al., 2002). Borrowing from actor network theory the idea that
humans and non-humans are actively involved in the making of social
worlds, there are already those who call for a post-social world and
an object-centred sociality (Knorr-Cetina, 1997). But how can non-humans
be observed? Sociologists are accustomed to socio-constructionist approaches
to the sociology of science, or to analyses of tools and innovations
couched in terms of networks of actants; methodologically, however,
it seems that ideas about how to proceed methodologically are not very
well worked out. On the basis of a four-month ethnography conducted
in a hospital that has recently introduced a digital clinical records
system, I discuss the methodological aspects of shadowing non-humans.
In particular, adopting Star’s insight of an ‘ethnography
of the infrastructure’ (Star, 1999), I concentrate
on how to account for contexts characterized by multiple and non-homogeneous
actors and practices and on the implications of such a perspective
for organizational analysis.
CZARNIAWSKA, B., and T. HERNES (2005): Actor-Network Theory and Organizing.
Malmö
Copenhagen: Liber ;
Copenhagen Business School Press.
ENGESTRöM, Y., and F. BLACKLER (2005): "On the Life of
the Object," Organization, 12, 307-330.
LATOUR, B. (2005): Reassembling the Social : An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory.
Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
LAW, J., and V. SINGLETON (2005): "Object Lessons," Organization,
12, 331-355. During research on the management of alcoholic liver disease
the authors found that it was difficult to keep the condition in focus
through the course of the study. Perhaps this was a sign of methodological
failure, but this paper explores an alternative possibility: that social
science methods are ill adapted for the study of complex and messy
objects. The paper reviews arguments about the character of complex
objects as these have been recently elaborated within science, technology
and society (STS), and applies these to alcoholic liver disease. Three
versions of the object (as region, network and fluid) are found to
be relevant. But so, too, is a fourth, fire version, which treats objects
as patterns of discontinuity between absence and presence. It is argued
that the messiness of alcoholic liver disease in part becomes comprehensible
if we imagine it as a fire object.
MIETTINEN, R., and J. VIRKKUNEN (2005): "Epistemic Objects,
Artefacts and Organizational Change," Organization, 12, 437-456.
One of the key concepts of the neo-institutional studies of organizations
has been routine—an established, rule-governed pattern
of action. The concept of routine creates difficulties when used for
making sense of the emergence of new practices or change in organizations
and institutions. There are two reasons for this. First, routine was
introduced originally to account for the continuity of organizational
life. Second, it is based on theories of action and behaviour that
focus exclusively on the pre-reflective and embodied aspects of human
practice. This paper seeks an alternative approach by using the concepts
of epistemic object and artefact mediation of human activity. It argues
that representational artefacts, such as concepts and models, are instrumental
in inducing change in human practices. Using the work of occupational
health and safety inspectors as an example, it is shown how a practice
or set of routines is made into an object of enquiry in order to generate
a working hypothesis for an alternative practice. The hypothesis is
further objectified by designing a set of informational tools and procedures
that carry on the new practice.
SUCHMAN, L. (2005): "Affiliative Objects," Organization,
12, 379-399. Through the case of a particular organization devoted
to technological research and development, this paper investigates
how values of the ‘new’ operate
in what Appadurai (1986) has characterized as the social life of objects.
Drawing on previous scholarship in anthropology and science and technology
studies, I adopt the trope of the ‘affiliative
object’ to describe the relational dynamics of association
(and disassociation) that characterize the identification of objects
and persons. This perspective emphasizes the multiplicity of objects
within the unfolding and uncertain trajectories of organizational life,
as both problem and resource for organization members. The paper examines
how ‘object-centered sociality’ (Knorr-Cetina,
1997) is enacted as a strategic, but also contingent, resource in the
alignment of professional identities and organizational positionings.
NEYLAND, D. (2006): "Dismissed Content and Discontent: An Analysis
of the Strategic Aspects of Actor-Network Theory," Science Technology
Human Values, 31, 29-51. Actor-network theory (ANT) has contributed
greatly to the development of science and technology studies. However,
recent critiques appear to have left ANT in a gloomy theoretical black
box. What is the likelihood of ANT exiting its current theoretical
discontent? Is ANT worthy of salvation and on what grounds? Law argues
that recent critiques stem from ANT's development into a particular
theoretical strategy. However, this article will argue that by focusing
on strategy as messy and impure, ANT can be afforded the opportunity
to shift from a fixed approach to an ambiguous and contingent strategy,
well placed to carry on. The article achieves such an argument by first
highlighting how ANT has contributed to a recent study of strategy
in action; second, by outlining the strategic aspects of ANT; and third,
by using the study of strategy in action as a means of engaging with
ANT's current theoretical discontent.
http://sth.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/1/29 |