Actor-network theory

Actor-network theory (ANT) is a methodological approach developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law that treats social and technical reality as effects of networked associations rather than as properties of discrete entities. The central move is analytical symmetry: human intentions and material resistances are granted equal explanatory weight. A door hinge and a bureaucratic regulation are both actants — entities that modify the behavior of other entities within a network.

ANT rejects the conventional sociological distinction between macro-structures and micro-interactions. There is no society that explains local events; there are only local events that, when stabilized and scaled, produce what we call society. This makes ANT a radical anti-essentialist framework: categories like nature, society, and technology are not foundations but outcomes — temporary settlements in ongoing processes of network-building.

The theory has been applied to scientific practice, technological innovation, legal systems, and medicine, always with the same question: how do networks hold together, and what happens when they break? A persistent criticism is that ANT's descriptive neutrality prevents normative evaluation — it can explain how networks stabilize but not whether they should. The question of whether ANT needs a political supplement, or whether its refusal of politics is itself political, remains unresolved.