Sejumlah pertanyaan pemandu yang tidak semua tersedia jawabannya di sini (rumusan akan di-update minggu depan, awal Mei 2020):
1) Kapan ANT lahir? Dalam konteks sosio-budaya-akademis yang seperti apa ‘kelahiran’ ANT? (menyusul, minggu depan)
2) Siapa saja tokoh-tokoh pemikir yang mengembangkan pendekatan ini? (di sana dan di sini akan muncul dalam jawaban di bawah ini)
3) Apa saja seminal case studies yang membuat ANT jadi semakin solid sebagai “teori” sosial baru? (lihat dalam penjelasan di bawah ini, khususnya sebagai jawaban atas pertanyaan No. 8)
4) Pandangan atau asumsi teoritis apa yg dilawan atau dikritik ANT? (menyusul, minggu depan)
5) Siapa saja tokoh-tokoh yang biasanya dirujuk pada fase awal perkembangan ANT? (lihat dalam penjelasan di bawah ini, khususnya sebagai jawaban atas pertanyaan No. 9)
6) Adakah sejumlah definisi operasional yang memadai untuk ANT?
6.1) “Actor-network theory declares that the world is full of hybrid entities (Latour, 1993) containing both human and non-human elements, and was developed to analyse situations where separation of these elements is difficult (Callon, 1997, 3)”
6.2) “an approach to the processes of social ordering that focuses on how associations between entities are created and sustained (“sociology of associations”) whose distinguishing feature is that it takes into account the roles of nonhuman as well as human entities in the production of social orders.” (Michael, 2017)
6.3) “ANT studies look for ways of revealing the generative intricacies that constitute and stabilize technical and social reality. One common strategy, for instance, is to focus on moments of sociotechnical controversy, when networks are interrupted and when their composition becomes problematic again.” (Bencherki, 2017)
7) Sebutkan dan jelaskan 3-5 ‘konsep kunci’ atau prinsip utama dari ANT!
ANT didasarkan pada tiga prinsip utama berikut ini (Callon, 1986b):
1) agnosticism (bukan ‘agama’)
2) generalised symmetry (between human and non-human agency): ANT operates through symmetrical accounts of reality by employing the same analytical terms to describe human and nonhuman agency. (Holmes, 2014, h. 422)
3) free association.
Selain tiga prinsip di atas, ANT juga didasarkan pada asumsi teoritis-cum-metodologis berikut ini:
1) The use of heterogeneous entities (Bijker, Hughes et al. 1987) avoiding questions of: ‘is it social?’ or ‘is it technical?’ as missing the point, which should be: “is this association stronger or weaker than that one?” (Latour 1988b :27).
2) Socio-technical account of phenomenon: ANT tidak terjebak dalam salah satu dari dua determinisme berikut ini: determinisme sosial <-- --> determinisme technical. “ANT proposes instead a socio-technical account (Latour 1986; Law and Callon 1988) in which neither social nor technical positions are privileged.”
3) Metode: bukan positivistik. “ANT is not a “positive” method that produces explanatory frameworks but an anti- or “negative” method that teaches students and scholars ‘how not to study [things]’ (Latour, 1993, 142).”
8) Tuliskan sejumlah kutipan/case-studies yang menguatkan “betapa konkretnya actant” dalam jejaring benda-dan-barang (artefak teknologi) dan gugus subjek pelaku:
8.1) Trans-fat yg ada dalam kripik kentang merk Lay: “Food is an actant in an agentic assemblage that includes among its members my metabolism, cognition, and moral sensibility. Human intentionality is surely an important element of the public that is emerging around the idea of diet, obesity, and food security, but it is not the only actor or necessarily the key operator in it” (Bennett, 2010, h. 51). [Lih. Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke UP.]
8.2) door-closer (Johnson, 1988)
8.3) drawing pencil: “Latour illustrates the process of description—writing a network—by differentiating the act of drawing with a pencil from drawing the shape of a pencil (Reassembling 142). He means that we cannot confuse the object of description (the pencil) with the method of explanation (the drawing of the shape of the pencil). Much in writing pedagogy seeks to explain and interpret or, in Latour’s terms, to offer one drawing of the shape of a pencil (poststructuralism) to classify the singular networks constructed by many different actual pencils (cultural texts) across time and space. Simply stated, it is one thing to provide students with a drawing of a pencil (for example, an assignment prompt directing them to document nonhuman actors in a certain fashion) that becomes their own pencil (descriptive tool). It is a different point of emphasis entirely to help them understand the difference between the pencil and the drawing of the pencil, and negotiating this gap even at a basic level is a necessary and crucial step if we are to think of applying ANT as a way to raise students’ political consciousness.” (Holmes, 2014)
8.4) germs and yeasts: the case of L. Pasteur (Latour, 1994)
8.5) actant-pedagogy: “ANT is a tool that I can only use after the activity of teaching to describe my efforts to employ actant-pedagogy within a contingent set of alliances, mediators, students, technologies, and networks of associations through which my intentional (and unintentional) pedagogical aims unfold. I suggest that actant-pedagogy is better understood as a strategic pedagogical effort to simulate ANT’s descriptive antimethodology to teach them how not to represent rhetorical situations through explanation and heuristic-driven critique alone.” (Holmes, 2014, 423)
9) Sebutkan duabelas karya yang paling sering dirujuk sebagai “kanon”-nya ANT?
1. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
2. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Hemel Hempstead, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
3. Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
4. Latour, Bruno dan Woolgar, Steve. 1979. Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. London: SAGE.
5. Law, John. 2004. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London: Routledge.
6. Law, John dan Hassard, John. Tim Penyunting. 1999. Actor Network Theory and After. Oxford: Blackwell.
7. Callon, Michel. 1986a. Some Elements in a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay. Dalam Power, Action and Belief, John Law, Penyunting, 196–233. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
8. Callon, Michel. 1986b. The Sociology of an Actor-Network:The Case of the Electric Vehicle. Dalam Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology, disunting oleh Michel Callon, John Law, dan Arie Rip, 19–34. London: Macmillan.
9. Callon, Michel. Penyunting. 1998. Laws of the Markets. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
10. Law, J. (1987). ‘Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion’. The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P. dan Pinch, T. J. Tim Penyunting. MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma: 111-134.
11. Law, J. (1991). ‘Introduction: monsters, machines and sociotechnical relations’. A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. Law, J. Penyunting. Routledge, London.
12. Law, J. (1992). ‘Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy and Heterogeneity’. Systems Practice 5(4): 379-393
Rujukan Pustaka
Cole, K. L. & Littlejohn, S. W. (2018). Translating moral orders: putting moral conflict theory in conversation with actor–network theory. Review of Communication, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/15358593.2018.1516798
Holmes, S. (2014). Multiple Bodies, Actants, and a Composition Classroom: Actor-Network Theory in Practice. Rhetoric Review, 33(4), 421–438. DOI: 10.1080/07350198.2014.947232
Sheehan, R. (2011). Actor-network theory as a reflexive tool: (inter)personal relations and relationships in the research process. Area, 43(3), 336–342. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2011.01000.x
Tatnall, A. dan Gilding, A. (1999). Actor-Network Theory and Information Systems Research. Proceeding 10th Australasian Conference on Information Systems, h. 955-966.
