Between Stability and Instability : Using ANT and ANTa as analytical perspectives telling information technology stories

• This article has its background in the criticism, initiated above all by Bruno Latour and John Law in the end of the 1990s, against the current state of Actor-Network Theory (ANT). The first aim of the article is to see how the ANT approach relates to the notions of stability and instability when taking the starting point from the network construction and using the network based vocabulary in analysing the empirical material. What is empirically possible to tell by using ANT? Are there limitations and limits of the ANT based narratives? The second aim of the article is to see how the later development of ANT, sometimes called Actor-Network Theory and After (ANTa) , responds to the ANT criticism and if it can offer an alternative analytical approach to the traditional ANT. Are ANTa stories different than ANT stories? Can the ANTa perspective resolve the possible limits and limitations of ANT? How does the ANTa perspective discuss and relate to the issues of stability and instability? I will make an effort to bring together the same empirical material as in the ANT based analysis and in a reflexive manner analyse the same empirical material.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)