2.1 Introduction
2.1.3 Approaches to sociology
In order to understand ANT as a social theory we need to understand Latour’s (2005) approach to sociology. Acording to Latour (2005), there are two approaches to sociology, namely, sociology of the social and sociology of associations or associology. What differentiates these two forms of sociology is that where as in the sociology of the social, the social or context is taken as a given, in the sociology of association, the social is produced through the associations created among the actors (Latour, 2005). Sociology of the social is the most popular view, and has been used by sociologists such as Durrheim to explain the social from the viewpoint of societal forces, the social overriding the biological, political, juridical, linguistic, etc., explanations, and therefore can be explained by social scientists.
Latour (2005) notes that the general trend within sociology has been to perceive the social as a given totality, which is “always already there,” to provide a solid foundation for our understanding of any other phenomena. He notes that sociologists of the social treat the social as what explains phenomena, thus treating it as an entity that is already there exerting formative forces of its own on other entities. Since the sociology of the social perspective views phenomena from within a stable framework, its methodical approach depends on reductive methodologies that cannot account for process, formation, association, and contingency.
According to Latour (2005), the traditional approach to sociology is concerned with the study of society and social forces and is contented with the undeniable existence of these social forces, and places its emphasis on humans as the only actors. Hence, in the sociology of the social the actors are embedded in a context that is readily available to explain the phenomenon being explored (Latour, 2005).
29
In contradiction of the sociology of the social’s view of the social as a given, Latour (2005) argues it is in fact the social itself which requires to be explained and maintains that researchers must always ask how the social is constituted via which associations and involving what actors.
This will allow scholars to pay their attention to all the possible agents and relations involved in a given assemblage. When explaining ANT Latour (2005) always starts by clarifying the meaning of the term social because he feels the term continues to be confused in sociology. In one of his explanations Latour (2005, p. 7), restricts the term social to mean only “a very peculiar movement of re-association and reassembling”.
For Latour, therefore, the social no longer refers to the domain of things which can be isolated from the rest of other things and examined separately. Instead, the social now only refers to a way in which certain things relate to other things. The word ‘social’ is construed as all- embracing, including both human (social or subject) and non-human (material or object) actors.
For Latour, therefore, there is no separate type of ‘social’ matter. Instead, the researcher’s job is to trace the various links between actors which are connected with a given case. In the tracing, the researcher comes across many different networks of associated actors which contribute to the reproduction of the phenomenon. In order to understand the connections among the associated actors the researcher needs to be conversant with the differentiation which Latour makes between the roles played by the different actors in these connections:
mediators and intermediaries. I will discuss these in detail later in the chapter, but briefly in Latour’s vocabulary an intermediary is an actant which transports meaning or force without transformation, while mediators are actants which have the capacity to transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or any element they can carry (Latour, 2005).
According to Latour (2005), sociologists of association treat society as what must be explained and refuse to treat it as something that is already there. In his sociology of associations Latour (2005, p. 35) interprets sociology “not as the ‘science of the social,’ but as the tracing of associations”. Latour’s main argument is that when studying the social, the scale is not to be inserted by the researcher Veldman (2007), but should be the result of what actors do. This implies that as researchers we should remain open to the multiplicity of elements in a network and see all of them as actors, instead of viewing them as placeholders or nodes that exist only to uphold the structure of a predefined system that can only be deductively proved or disproved to be true. This is because Latour (2005) views the social not as a type of thing either visible
30
or to be postulated, but as a consequence of associations. The social only becomes visible by the traces it leaves (under trials), when a new association is being produced between elements which themselves are in no way social (Veldman, 2007).
Sociology of associations is concerned with tracing associations of actors and their heterogeneous relations. According to Latour (2005)’ sociology of associations, social forces reside in the assemblages of thoroughly studied actants as opposed to unidentified social forces.
Latour (2005)’s interest is in a sociology that studies the variety of associations between actors that constitute a phenomenon. He reminds sociologists to avoid skipping the step of tracing associations in order to form shorthand explanations of action. The job of an ANT researcher therefore is to continually study the assemblages that are formed and their constructions in action, rather than to arrive at fixed points where the creative forces have disappeared. To carry out an ANT a study the researcher must remain with the local, with the actors providing a ‘thick description’, of themselves: “when faced with an object, attend first to the associations out of which it’s made and only later look at how it has renewed the repertoire of social ties” (Latour, 2005, p. 233). As a result, we can see a constant insistence on the study of action, of what becomes social actants, rather than a revelation of the imposing power relations or social forces behind an activity. As Latour (2005, p. 137) states: “there is only science of the particular”.
By sociology of associations Latour refers to a sociology that traces social relations created among different actors. The tracing is made possible by the assistance of the actors involved in any given phenomenon, who will constitute the relevant actors from which a network is built.
The danger of taking the social as a given in explaining the phenomenon being explored is that we deny actors the opportunity to account for their actions, as the associations among them unfold. In addition, the practice inhibits actors from making their own philosophies of what constitutes the social. However, the sociology of associations is mired in uncertainties, fluctuations and unknowns. Actors are observed in relation to dynamic associations and the (as)sociologist/researcher learns from those relations, rather than actors as situated in a pre-existing static social order to which they may become more aware and reflexive with the intervention of an omnipotologist. I will explore these uncertainties later in the chapter. Before this is done we need to elaborate on the distinctive tenets of ANT that are relevant to this study.
31