Encountering Action-Network-Theory with Critical Anthropology: Focusing on the Discussion of the Social

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 393-445
Author(s):  
Mun Young Cho
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Action Network ◽  
Critical Anthropology

scholarly journals Fuck context, czyli splatając architekturę ze społeczeństwem

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 47-60
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Janas
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Social ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Action Network ◽  
Architecture Theory ◽  
The One ◽  
Human Actors

Fuck context, or interweaving architecture with societyThe majority of architectural studies tends to focus on relationships between architecture and its materiality on the one hand and the society or culture, on the other. In this perspective, buildings and projects, architects and their work can be understood only by placing them within the social context, structures, frames and conditions. Architecture is here and mirrors societal changes and processes, while the explanations are there. Buildings are stable, there is no action, all moves and all flows are outside, behind or hidden and the only thing researchers and designers should do is to unveil them.The ambition of this article is different. Starting from Rem Koolhaas’s well-known phrase — “fuck context” — I argue that the main purpose of studying architecture should not be explaining or interpreting buildings but trying to understand them and to follow, account and examine all human and non-human actors involved in the dynamic architectural network. This is why I propose to apply the Action-Network Theory as a new method of studying and analyzing architecture in the humanities and social sciences but also in architecture theory. If we pay attention to details, to actors and their actions as much as it is possible, to their associations and connections, to what buildings do rather than what they mean, a new and richer version of architecture will appear. And there will be no place, no necessity for context.

scholarly journals Social ties between criminal networks in cocaine trafficking in Europe

Crimen ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-345
Author(s):  
Kosara Stevanović
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
Criminal Networks ◽  
Criminal Network ◽  
The Social ◽  
Criminal Groups ◽  
In The Beginning

This paper is highlighting the main criminal networks that are trafficking cocaine in Europe, through the lenses of social embeddedness and criminal network theories. We will try to show that social ties between European and Latin American organized crime networks, as well as between different European crime networks, are the main reason for the staggering success of European criminal groups in cocaine trafficking in the 21st century. In the beginning, we lay out the social embeddedness theory and criminal network theory, and then we review the main criminal networks involved in cocaine trafficking in Europe and social ties between them, with special attention to Serbian and Montenegrin criminal networks. At the end of the article, we analyze what role does ethnicity, seen as social ties based on common language and tradition, play in cocaine trafficking in Europe.

scholarly journals Duše předmětu a tělo modlitby aneb zkoumání sociologických nejistot na případu Sóka Gakkai International

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Petra Tlčimuková
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Black Boxes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Soka Gakkai ◽  
The Relationship

This case study presents the results of long-term original ethnographic research on the international Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International (SGI). It focuses on the relationship between the material and immaterial and deals with the question of how to study them in the sociology of religion. The analysis builds upon the critique of the modernist paradigm and related research of religion in the social sciences as presented by Harman, Law and Latour. The methodology draws on the approach of Actor-Network Theory as presented by Bruno Latour, and pursues object-oriented ethnography, for the sake of which the concept of iconoclash is borrowed. This approach is applied to the research which focused on the key counterparts in the Buddhist praxis of SGI ‒ the phrase daimoku and the scroll called Gohonzon. The analysis deals mainly with the sources of sociological uncertainties related to the agency of the scroll. It looks at the processes concerning the establishing and dissolving of connections among involved elements, it opens up the black-boxes and proposes answers to the question of new conceptions of the physical as seen through Gohonzon.

scholarly journals A novel similarity measure for missing link prediction in social networks

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 1071
Author(s):  
Gogulamudi Naga Chandrika ◽  
E. Srinivasa Reddy
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Complex Networks ◽  
Similarity Measure ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Link Prediction ◽  
Prediction Methods ◽  
Missing Link ◽  
The Social ◽  
Hidden Patterns ◽  
Over Time

<p><span>Social Networks progress over time by the addition of new nodes and links, form associations with one community to the other community. Over a few decades, the fast expansion of Social Networks has attracted many researchers to pay more attention towards complex networks, the collection of social data, understand the social behaviors of complex networks and predict future conflicts. Thus, Link prediction is imperative to do research with social networks and network theory. The objective of this research is to find the hidden patterns and uncovered missing links over complex networks. Here, we developed a new similarity measure to predict missing links over social networks. The new method is computed on common neighbors with node-to-node distance to get better accuracy of missing link prediction. </span><span>We tested the proposed measure on a variety of real-world linked datasets which are formed from various linked social networks. The proposed approach performance is compared with contemporary link prediction methods. Our measure makes very effective and intuitive in predicting disappeared links in linked social networks.</span></p>

Entanglement, Materiality and the Social Organisation of Construction Workers in Classical Athens

2018 ◽  
pp. 512-528
Author(s):  
Diane Harris Cline
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Social Network Analysis ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
The Social ◽  
Building Program

This chapter views the “Periclean Building Program” through the lens of Actor Network Theory, in order to explore the ways in which the construction of these buildings transformed Athenian society and politics in the fifth century BC. It begins by applying some Actor Network Theory concepts to the process that was involved in getting approval for the building program as described by Thucydides and Plutarch in his Life of Pericles. Actor Network Theory blends entanglement (human-material thing interdependence) with network thinking, so it allows us to reframe our views to include social networks when we think about the political debate and social tensions in Athens that arose from Pericles’s proposal to construct the Parthenon and Propylaea on the Athenian Acropolis, the Telesterion at Eleusis, the Odeon at the base of the South slope of the Acropolis, and the long wall to Peiraeus. Social Network Analysis can model the social networks, and the clusters within them, that existed in mid-fifth century Athens. By using Social Network Analysis we can then show how the construction work itself transformed a fractious city into a harmonious one through sustained, collective efforts that engaged large numbers of lower class citizens, all responding to each other’s needs in a chaine operatoire..

Uncertainties Revisited

2019 ◽  
pp. 216-237
Author(s):  
Liesbeth Huybrechts ◽  
Katrien Dreessen ◽  
Selina Schepers
Keyword(s):  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Uncertainty Model ◽  
The Social ◽  
Matters Of Concern ◽  
Uncertainty Models ◽  
Do So

In this chapter, the authors use actor-network theory (ANT) to explore the relations between uncertainties in co-design processes and the quality of participation. To do so, the authors investigate Latour's discussion uncertainties in relation to social processes: the nature of actors, actions, objects, facts/matters of concern, and the study of the social. To engage with the discussion on uncertainties in co-design and, more specific in infrastructuring, this chapter clusters the diversity of articulations of the role and place of uncertainty in co-design into four uncertainty models: (1) the neoliberal, (2) the management, (3) the disruptive, and (4) the open uncertainty model. To deepen the reflections on the latter, the authors evaluate the relations between the role and place of uncertainty in two infrastructuring processes in the domain of healthcare and the quality of these processes. In the final reflections, the authors elaborate on how ANT supported in developing a “lens” to assess how uncertainties hinder or contribute to the quality of participation.

Actor-Network Theory and Autopoiesis

2009 ◽  
pp. 67-79
Author(s):  
Lars Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Process Analysis ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
Over Time

A new knowledge management perspective and tool, ANT/AUTOPOIESIS, for analysis of knowledge management in knowledge-intensive organizations is presented. An information technology (IT) research and innovation co-operation between university actors and companies interested in the area of smart home IT applications is used to illustrate analysis using this perspective. Actor-network theory (ANT) and the social theory of autopoiesis are used in analyzing knowledge management, starting from the foundation of a research co-operation. ANT provides the character of relations between actors and actants, how power is translated by actors and the transformation of relations over time. The social theory of autopoiesis provides the tools to analyze organizational closure and reproduction of organizational identity. The perspective used allows a process analysis, and at the same time analysis of structural characteristics of knowledge management. Knowledge management depends on powerful actors, whose power changes over time. Here this power is entrepreneurial and based on relations and actors’ innovation knowledge.

scholarly journals Recovering critique in an age of datafication

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 1135-1151
Author(s):  
Nick Couldry
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Questions

This article starts out from the need for critical work on processes of datafication and their consequences for the constitution of social knowledge and the social world. Current social science work on datafication has been greatly shaped by the theoretical approach of Bruno Latour, as reflected in the work of Actor Network Theory and Science and Technology Studies (ANT/STS). The article asks whether this approach, given its philosophical underpinnings, provides sufficient resources for the critical work that is required in relation to datafication. Drawing on Latour’s own reflections about the flatness of the social, it concludes that it does not, since key questions, in particular about the nature of social order cannot be asked or answered within ANT. In the article’s final section, three approaches from earlier social theory are considered as possible supplements to ANT/STS for a social science serious about addressing the challenges that datafication poses for society.

Eco-Apps: Design to Influence Environmentally Friendly Behavior

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eli Typhina
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Mobile Application ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Environmental Behavior ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Mobile Social Networking ◽  
The Social ◽  
Application Developers

The search for mechanisms to encourage pro-environmental behavior has ranged from marketing to community events. This study continues the search by exploring how the language and features programmed into mobile social networking applications influence users to experience nature and share those experiences. To guide data analysis, the study uses the social influence network theory and adapts components of influence from the field of online social networking. One hundred posts, spanning almost two years, were analyzed from the Sierra Club's mobile Facebook page, Foursquare's Outdoors Raleigh search, and #Litterati's Instagram feed. Results point to the language and features that can help mobile application developers, government agencies, and environmental advocates to better design mobile apps for pro-environmental behavior. The author concludes with a call for more novel data uploading options outside of text, such as uploading video, creating music to represent nature experiences, or use of external sensors with mobile devices.

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