To avoid being labelled reductionist, that is trying to deduce or build explanations, I have called this section ‘Philosophical negotiation’ instead of the usual heading ‘Philosophical foundation’. Every research methodology stems from a particular philosophical standing (Hounshell, 1984). Research methods are not simply neutral tools, “they are shaped by the ontological and epistemological beliefs which underpin them” (Bryman, 2004, p. 4). Hounshell (1984), warns that ignoring the philosophical standing of the research methodology compromises the validity of the research practice, which can lead to distorted findings. With
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regard to the philosophical underpinnings of the study there are issues of ontology (What constitutes reality and how can we understand existence?) and epistemology (What constitutes valid knowledge and how can we obtain it?). These two aspects will direct how the researcher deploys the methodological tools of the study. Tuli (2012, p. 15), sums this up aptly:
The selection of research methodology depends on the paradigm that guides the research activity, more specifically, beliefs about the nature of reality and humanity (ontology), the theory of knowledge that informs the research (epistemology), and how that knowledge may be gained (methodology).
In research ontological, epistemological, and methodological beliefs are packaged together into paradigms; a paradigm is defined as “a set of propositions that explain how the world is perceived” (Sarantakos, 2005, p. 30). So by choosing a particular methodology, the researcher indirectly chooses a particular way of viewing the world and commits him/herself to certain ways of knowing the world. Therefore when carrying out a study it is important to examine the underlying ideas, values, and assumptions that the proposed methodology brings to the study.
Following this advice, I considered the rationale for using ANT as the methodological and analytical framework for this study from a philosophical point of view.
The methodology of this study is based on the ontological and epistemological perspectives of ANT, from which the theoretical framework for the study is drawn, as described in the previous chapter. With regard to research paradigm, ANT is widely valued for its apparently anti- essentialist or relativist ontology (Gibson, 1979). ANT sees reality as relative and co- constructed and something that exists within the network and in the translations, and therefore has been presented as a sociology of translation (Callon, 1986).
ANT’s ontological stance presumes a world that is processual and enactive (Conole, 2013). It views the world as inherently dynamic, complex, and multiple, and built upon relations, based on connections among entities. As such, ANT does not agree with the philosophy of causality used in social sciences (Latour, 2005), but explains that the relations are indeed the reality. As Latour (2005, p. 103) points out: “every time some A is said to be related to some B, it’s the social itself that is being generated”. The reality is nothing but actors embedded in their relationships and events are taking place in each instant (Latour et al., 2011). In other words, reality is thus co-constructed through relations. Any change, whether big or small, modifies the way that actors interrelate to each other. Reality is constituted in the network, and if there is an
“out-thereness” (Latour, 2005, p. 243), then it is an out there beyond the network, constituted
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by other networks. Neither individual agents nor technologies such as Web 2.0 are considered real outside their enactment in practice.
ANT is therefore suitable for questioning reality since it has been reified by the social explanations (Latour, 2005). There is no such thing as an objective reality; facts are not ‘just’
out there waiting to be discovered – the focus on investigation should be on what is related/
unrelated, and as long as other actors relate to the actor, it is considered real (Akrich, 1993), and the distinction between subjective and objective becomes meaningless. Actors are absolutely concrete entities and without relationships are utterly cut off from existence. The reality of the actor is its way of perturbing, transforming and jostling other things (Latour et al., 2011).
ANT ontology allows for the study of not only the resulting construct, but also of the heterogeneous elements participating in the construction (Latour, 2003). ANT ontology allows the researcher to investigate how the actors make connections, and shape the network they create through the relations they make. As Latour (2005, pp. 131-132) defines it, “network is a concept, not a thing out there. It is a tool to help describe something not what is being described
…. (It) is the trace left behind by some moving agent”. Latour refers to ANT as a theory of association, whose activity it is to trace and assemble associations or networks.
In an ANT study associations are the fulcrum of the inquiry. The process of tracing networks associations is the central premise of ANT methodology. Alliances are what really matter, and allies work to make the networks and their relations stronger or weaker than the one already existing (Latour, 1987, 1988). Central to ANT is the definition of objects as always being in relation to the network in which they are embedded. According to Law (1999), this is the relational materiality that underpins ANT’s ontology. ANT’s ambition is to treat entities and materialities as enacted and relational effects and to explore the configuration and reconfiguration of those relations (Law, 2004, p. 157).
The most controversial and yet most known resource from ANT’s ontological toolkit is the principle of generalised symmetry. According to this principle, humans and non-humans should be given equal analytical attention in the analysis of the unfolding of social actions.
Indeed this principle seems to be an odd analytical standpoint, given the seeming differences between the intentional actions of humans and the material causality of objects (Pickering,
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1993; Vandenberghe, 2002). However, it is arguably important in shedding light on ANT’s two ways of approaching actors, that is, as intermediaries or as mediators. As I have established in Chapter 2, intermediaries are actors which simply transport meaning and force without transformation, while mediators transform and translate meaning during the process of transportation.
As a result of the generalised symmetry principle, there are no actors that are ontologically more important than others (Latour et al., 2011). All the actors, both human and non-human, are on the same wavelength in making their relations and their position in the network stronger.
Thus, the role of non-humans has to be studied as well, because studying and taking them into account is what has been missing in many previous design studies (Latour, 2008). Furthermore, the principle of symmetry’s extension of agency to non-humans is not limited to material objects, but also includes things that may not have a clear material existence, for example concepts and texts. Since ANT’s focus is on actors and their relationships, the critical questions that researchers should be asking are not ‘What is it?’ but rather ‘How is it happening?’ and
‘How does this emerge?’
In practice, the relations created between non-human actors are not metaphysically different from those between human actors or human and non-human actors. Therefore, it is important not to change the register in our description, since the human and non-human actors have to be treated and described in the same way (Callon, 1986). However, ANT does not have a prescribed vocabulary or a way of describing these associations and network constructions and maintenance, but each researcher has to choose his/her own way of describing them because it is not possible to delineate a universal method of description (Callon, 1986).
Since nothing is known but only realised, ANT rejects explanations that appeal to the essential characteristics of actors (Latour, 1988). For example, the collaborative design process should be explored as a processing that is emerging from networks of designers, their tools, artefacts, and the institutions in which they take place. The aim is to denaturalise this process by viewing it as continually made and remade as opposed to existing ‘out there’ with inherent properties and characteristics (Borgeman et al., 2008).
In terms of epistemology ANT is often positioned as an approach that embraces epistemological relativism (Mould, 2008) and is resolutely reflexive. There is no universal
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truth, but the interpretations are constructed within a particular network. Therefore, studies involving ANT should seek to examine empirically how truth is produced rather than how it is discovered. ANT thus departs from the positivist assumption that research is a value-free way of uncovering reality. As a result, ANT is often considered to be a reflexive approach because it rejects the claims of objectivity that are typical of a positivist research paradigm. Instead, ANT seeks to tease out some ways of understanding held by actors on their own lived realities (Latour, 2005) by allowing them “to define the world in their own terms” (Law, 2007, p. 20), and seeking to “struggle against producing its own vision of the world” (Gibson, 1979, p. 398).
However, the challenge that I had to grapple with in the methodology of this study was how to make the non-human actors ‘talk’, that is how to make them provide descriptions of themselves or to produce scripts of what they are asking others, humans and non-humans to do (Latour, 2005).