scholarly journals Shifting modes of governing municipal waste – A sociology of translation approach

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 922-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustavo Guzman ◽  
Mariana Mayumi P De Souza
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Municipal Waste ◽  
Multiple Stakeholders ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Sociology Of Translation ◽  
Implementation Studies ◽  
Human Networks

In this study, we investigate the shifting of modes of governing municipal waste, from disposal (waste-to-landfill) to waste as a resource (sustainable recycling). To this end, we frame this study combining the modes of governing approach developed by Bulkeley, Watson and Hudson with Bruno Latour’s sociology of translation approach (or Actor-Network Theory). Within this double framework, we investigate practices that emerge from the attempts made by multiple stakeholders to shift modes of governing waste. This study contributes to the modes of governing waste in particular and, to environmental policy implementation studies in general. We posit that shifting governing modes involves (i) the construction of human–non-human networks that support the stabilization of a particular governing mode; (ii) consideration of the role of non-humans, their agency and materiality and; (iii) the acknowledgement that counter-networks and unintended consequences are likely to emerge. When we add to this view the role of politics, a more complex, dynamic and rich picture of the phenomenon surfaces.

How Artefacts Do Leadership: A Ventriloquial Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 089331892199807
Author(s):  
Jonathan Clifton ◽  
Fernando Fachin ◽  
François Cooren
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Communication ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Distributed Leadership ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Human Actors

To date there has been little work that uses fine-grained interactional analyses of the in situ doing of leadership to make visible the role of non-human as well as human actants in this process. Using transcripts of naturally-occurring interaction as data, this study seeks to show how leadership is co-achieved by artefacts as an in-situ accomplishment. To do this we situate this study within recent work on distributed leadership and argue that it is not only distributed across human actors, but also across networks that include both human and non-human actors. Taking a discursive approach to leadership, we draw on Actor Network Theory and adopt a ventriloquial approach to sociomateriality as inspired by the Montreal School of organizational communication. Findings indicate that artefacts “do” leadership when a hybrid presence is made relevant to the interaction and when this presence provides authoritative grounds for influencing others to achieve the group’s goals.

scholarly journals What makes human–animal relations ‘organizational’? The de-scription of anthrozootechnical agencements

Organization ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 761-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoine Doré ◽  
Jérôme Michalon
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Performance Test ◽  
Dairy Farm ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Relational Properties ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Human Animal

Questions concerning animals’ role in society have received little attention from Organization Studies. This article develops and tests some theoretical and methodological propositions aimed at contributing to the elaboration of an analytical framework for interpreting our organized relations with animals and furthering our understanding of what makes human–animal relations ‘organizational’. First, examining the role of animals in the ‘non-human turn’ that has been emerging, especially with the Actor–Network Theory and the Symmetrical Anthropology project, it adresses the limits of the ‘non-human’ category to analyze situations of coordination of collective action involving animals. It then develops the concept of anthrozootechnical agencement to envisage the role of animals in the course of action through the lens of their relational properties and applies the notion of script to propose an operational formulation of the specifically organizational trials to which these particular agencements are subjected. Based on three case studies (the role of the leash in the organization of human–dog relations, the management of wolves’ return to France, and the production of milk on a dairy farm), this article shows that two main types of operation make human–animal relations ‘organizational’: first, the organization of anthrozootechnical relations is constituted by and constitutive of the combination of three types of specifically organizational test to which these particular agencements are subjected (the performance test, the coherence test, and the dimensioning test); second, the work of organizing anthrozootechnical relations then consists in elaborating, executing, and transforming heterogeneous scripts that are never strictly indexed on the nature (human, animal, technique) of the entities they concern.

scholarly journals Discursive Contextures of Science: Euro/West-Centrism and Science and Technology Studies

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amit Prasad
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Embryonic Stem ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Knowledge And Practice

Science and Technology Studies (STS) by the very act of showing the multiplicity, contingency, and context-dependence of scientific knowledge and practice, provincialized modern science. Postcolonial interventions within STS have pursued this goal even further. Nevertheless, Euro/West-centrism continues to inflect not only scientific practices and lay imaginaries, but also sociological and historical analyses of sciences. In this article, drawing on my own training within STS – first under J.P.S. Uberoi, who was concerned with structuralist analysis of modernity and science, and thereafter under Andy Pickering, when we focused on material agency and temporal emergence and extensively engaged with Actor Network Theory - I emphasize the continuing role of Euro/West-centric discourses in defining the “self” and the “other” and in impacting epistemological and ontological interventions. More broadly, building on a concept of Michael Lynch’s, I call for excavation and analysis of discursive contextures of sciences. In the second section of the article, through a brief analysis of embryonic stem cell therapy in a clinic in Delhi, I show how with shifting transnational landscape of technoscience certain discursive contextures are being “deterritorialized” and left “stuttering.”

Nonhuman Actors, Hybrid Networks, and Conflicts Over Municipal Waste Incinerators

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Magnani
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Municipal Waste ◽  
Waste To Energy ◽  
Natural Material ◽  
Environmental Conflicts ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Waste Incinerators

This article seeks to make an original contribution to the study of environmental conflicts on waste management infrastructures by applying concepts derived from actor-network theory in an empirical case study. The article is organized into three main parts. The first highlights how the bulk of the literature on the subject has systematically ignored the role of natural/material factors. The second part analyzes the theoretical and methodological contribution of actor-network theory to the analysis of environmental conflicts. Finally, the third part focuses on a case study from northern Italy concerning a conflict over a project for a large-scale municipal waste-to-energy incinerator. The author shows how the outcome of the conflict, namely the failure of the project notwithstanding a convergence of powerful interests, can only be fully understood by adopting a relational definition of agency that sees it as the effect of the process of building associations between humans and nonhumans.

scholarly journals Art&science. Autoetnografia artystki realizującej projekty w laboratoriach biologicznych

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 103-126
Author(s):  
Karolina Żyniewicz
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Art And Science ◽  
Science Field ◽  
Actor Network

The aim of the text is to present the use of the analytical autoethnographic method in studying the “art&science” phenomenon. It is attempt to show that the role of the artist can combine with the role of the ethnographer. The objects of study are the multilevel relations emerging during the realization of artistic projects in biological laboratories. These relations concern both humans (the artist, the scientists) and non-humans (laboratory organisms, equipment). On the basis of actor-network theory, the author presents how the liminal status of ethnographic research is modified when it connects with art. The form of conducting the research is both an example of activity in the art and science field and a new methodological proposal for the study of science and technology.

Consumer Creativity as a Prerequisite for the Adoption of New Technological Products

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Marianne Harbo Frederiksen ◽  
Stoyan Tanev
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
New Product Adoption ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Value Perception ◽  
Potential Consumer ◽  
Adoption Research ◽  
Consumer Creativity ◽  
Technological Products

Creativity is often conceptualized as actions and outcomes related to the creation of novel and useful ideas within the context of the development of new products. It is usually positioned in the activities of designers who play the role of “the creator”. In this paper the authors suggest “changing the subject” to consumers by claiming that creativity plays a key role in the adoption phase when they attempt to address their needs and preferences by appropriating the use value of everyday technological products. They emphasize that the product value perception which makes a potential consumer buy is the result of this consumer's own activities and efforts. Thus, the intensity of consumers' creative activities becomes a critical adoption factor. The authors suggest that activity-based approaches such as actor-network theory and activity theory could be quite appropriate in studying the dynamics and the design of new product adoption, and offer a comparative analysis indicating that actor-network theory has a greater potential to contribute to the interplay between consumer creativity and technology adoption research.

The Effects of Digitalization on Professional and Amateur Astronomy Considered Through the Categories of Identity and Attachment

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-52
Author(s):  
Ivan Tchalakov ◽  
Irina Popravko
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Professional Culture ◽  
Knowledge Communities ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Time Observation ◽  
Heterogeneous Coupling ◽  
Real Time Observation

Applying the notion of identity, the article analyses the role of real time observation of professional and amateur astronomers in the context of ongoing digitalization of research. Unveiling the importance of materiality and immediate relationships with instruments, we took a critical stance to the established research approaches to this subject, in particular the ethnography of profession and the actor-network theory (ANT). Bearing on of Julian Orr studies of professional culture and our own ANT notion of ‘heterogeneous coupling', an attempt was made to introduce a new language for analysing the two knowledge communities, based on the sociology of taste and attachment of Antoine Hennion and sociology of regimes of worth of Luck Boltanski, which allows to grasp both similarities and differences in the astronomers' identities.

The Role of Gossip in the Creation and Miscreation of Company Identity from the Perspective of Actor-Network Theory

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 40-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Bielenia-Grajewska
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Organizational Environment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Informal Communication ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Creation

In this paper an attempt will be made to show how the grapevine shapes the relations between companies and stakeholders. To narrow the scope of the research, attention will be focused solely on one type of colloquial corporate socializing, namely gossiping. The company, its organizational environment and its relation with gossip are studied by implying the notion of company identity. The interrelation between gossiping and company identity has not been discussed by many researchers, although informal communication as such spans a number of disciplines. Consequently, in this work the author will try to show both the negative and positive sides of gossip in forming corporate communities and their character. Taking into account the growing role of networks in creating and sustaining different types of communication, gossiping is studied through the perspective of Actor-Network Theory that facilitates an understanding of how human beings and non-living entities shape the way company identity is constructed and maintained.

scholarly journals Indicator Culture in Sport for Development and Peace: A Transnational Analysis of Governance Networks

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Henne
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Sport For Development ◽  
Governance Networks ◽  
The United Nations

This article offers a transnational analysis of sport for development and peace (SDP) governance, focusing specifically on the role of indicator culture. Building on earlier attempts to use actor-network theory to study law and governance, it illuminates how a focus on indicator culture requires considering how actors, both human and nonhuman, inform SDP governance. It draws upon multi-sited ethnographic research conducted at the United Nations and in Oceania and considers how bureaucratic mechanisms, political and funding mandates, and postcolonial ideologies converge. Taken together, they point to emergent tensions within the broader embrace of indicator culture across domains of governance.

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