Abstract: This paper describes an approach to studying innovation and change that is taken from the field of Science and Technology Studies. Actor-network theory draws attention to the performative nature of the implementation of new technologies Green Technology: An A-to-Z Guide Actor-Network Theory Contributors: Dustin Mulvaney & Paul Robbins Print Pub. Date: Online Pub. Date: May 31, Print ISBN: Online ISBN: DOI: / Print pages: This PDF has been generated from SAGE knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the According to Bruno Latour – one of actor-network theory‟s main proponents – every aspect of the term „actor-network theory‟ is doused with the possibility of misinterpretation or misrepresentation, and he therefore stands as a vehement critic of the entire notion– or at least this was the case in More recently, however, with his tongue-in-cheek „introduction’ to actor-network theory – written over two
(PDF) Actor network theory and the study of online learning | Chris Bigum - blogger.com
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au Abstract How innovations in tertiary education are theorised and understood is important for both policy and practice. This paper describes an approach to studying innovation and change that is taken from the field of Science and Technology Studies. Actor-network theory draws attention to the performative nature of the implementation of new technologies like quality systems and online teaching. The theory posits that the actor-network theory online dating is not populated with entities that possess certain essences in and of themselves, but rather that actor-network theory online dating world is a texture of relations—a network—which occasionally produces the effect of stabilised entities.
We examine the consequences of producing durable forms of actor-network theory online dating teaching and quality assurance and argue that contrary to popular claims about the benefits actor-network theory online dating these technologies that to achieve durable performances requires a conformity to existing performances of a university thus reproducing current patterns of inequity.
Introduction Conventional education with its sequential 'grade' system, its prerequisites and course sequences, and its hierarchical understanding of how knowledge is created is completely out of sync with the digital actor-network theory online dating itself.
Rashke, Quality has become a vogue term in Australian Higher Education. The recent establishment of the Australian Universities Quality Agency AUQA has, at least in institutional terms, put quality on the agenda of every university. In a similar timeframe, enthusiasm for online teaching has grown significantly in all Australian universities1. How such innovations are understood and studied is therefore significant. We take the view that the promotion of notions of quality through the development of actor-network theory online dating management or assurance systems in universities can be usefully understood as an instance of the development and implementation of a new technology.
We draw on Franklin to argue that technology is usefully seen as formalised practice and that new ways of doing things, be they assuring quality or teaching online, are amenable to analyses which are useful in the study of projects or new technologies. Actor-network theory We take actor-network theory ANT as actor-network theory online dating theoretical framing for examining these developments. ANT offers an alternative2 and, in our view, superior framing for studying innovations in education Bigum, ANT arose in the field of Science and Technology Studies STSinitially through the work of Bruno Latour, John Law, Michel Callon and now, through many others.
ANT has also come to be used in a growing number of other disciplinary spaces, including education for instance, Bigum et al. ANT has been characterised as a kind of relational materialism Law and Mol, actor-network theory online dating, in which networks of relations develop via negotiations and trade-offs between actors.
Each actor is understood as not having any innate capacities or attributes other than a capacity to negotiate with other actors actor-network theory online dating forming relationships. In this sense it can be included among a growing number of anti-essentialist approaches in the study of technology Grint and Woolgar, In ANT, networks are made up of actors which are both language-bearing i. human and non-language bearing non-human.
Roles and capacities are not pre-determined but emerge as a result of negotiation, trade-off and compromises between actors. Attributes such as agency or power are seen as properties of networks or assemblages not as qualities that are intrinsic to particular actors. Not things as non-living objects or things without language but things as quasi- objects, as heterogeneous networks or assemblies of humans and non-humans. In this way projects or innovations are seen in terms of a process of formation of these quasi-objects which, either, form or do not form through negotiation and compromise.
How the formation of such objects are studied and theorised matters. As Latour argues: You can study anything with classical sociology——anything except the sciences and the technologies, anything except projects. They go too fast. they become too soft or too hard. From an ANT perspective, an innovation such as a quality system or teaching online, the initial idea amounts to very little. It has no initial inertia or momentum. It is not autonomously propelled into educational systems.
If it progresses at all it does so by interesting and recruiting other actors and forming an alliance with them. Typically, this means the innovation is represented as providing a solution to a particular problem, actor-network theory online dating. In the case of the adoption of a quality system, the system might, in the case of an Australian university, be represented as the solution to the problem of an AUQA audit.
Online teaching might be represented as a solution to the problem of teaching remote students. Even in cases where a quality system or teaching online is mandated, actor-network theory online dating, the formation of an assemblage is still something to be negotiated. In other words, in order to effect the recruitment of new allies, the innovation has to change.
This marks a key difference between ANT and innovation diffusion theory Bigum, This implies constant policing of the assemblage, making sure that negotiated roles are maintained. Finally, when the all of the negotiation and policing is forgotten and the assemblage has become routinised then it will appear to be a fact of life for an educational institution. In this early or classical version of ANT, the formation of networks or assemblages tends to be seen from the standpoint of the innovator or manager.
Susan Leigh Star argues that additional stories and voices need to be voiced. In response to these and related problems, scholars have begun to employ ideas from what has been labelled the performative turn Conquergood, Law argues that the main difference between classical ANT and this later ANT work has to do with coherence and centredness. He argues that if notions of coherence and centredness are muted or eliminated that a different way to see the world emerges. The basic premises of heterogeneity and materiality remain but it is a world in which ontologies are less certain.
It should be noted that ANT is not the only framework to grapple with issues of performativity. The relationship between performance and our bodies has been explored by many feminist researchers over the past few decades.
Most notable among these is, of course, Judith Butler who drew attention to the artificiality of the distinction between sex and gender to highlight the fact that the feminine gender, for instance, could be performed by a body sexed either as male or as female. In this sense gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject that might be said to pre-exist the deed. there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results Butler, 25 Gender is the repeated stylisation of the body, a set of repeated acts within a actor-network theory online dating rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, actor-network theory online dating, of a natural sort of being.
A political genealogy of gender ontologies, if it is successful, will deconstruct the substantive appearance of gender into its constitutive acts and locate the account for those acts within the compulsory frames set by the various forces that police the social appearance of gender Butler, 33 These notions have been taken up by some ANT scholars and the parallels are clear: all these materials and endless others together perform Andrew Goldthorpe as Director of Daresbury.
But this isn't quite right either, for the Directorship is not reducible to whatever lies outside the skin either: it's obvious to those who watch him that Andrew is very smart. And very skilled. Like the rest of us, he embodies a set of relations, a set of memories, a set of preferences. The myth of high office is embodied in a set of performances, a set of materials, and a series of spatial arrangements, corporeal and otherwise. None is necessarily crucial, actor-network theory online dating if we take them together then they generate the effect.
Law, In this same sense this paper is a performance of various realities, ANT, quality, online teaching and other labelled phenomena. The paper makes present a representation of these realities and at the same time makes these realities.
The actor-network theory online dating assumption is that reality is brought into being in the act of knowing.
Further, that the relationship between knower and known is recursive and thus the knower and the known are made in the same performance, actor-network theory online dating. As Law and Singleton put it: the epistemological problem what is true and the ontological question what is are both resolved or not in the same moment. The improbability of the performative turn, then, is that it deals as much with ontology as with epistemology. Performing quality I am introduced to Robert the quality assurance man in his temporary office.
He is wearing a shirt and tie which separates him from most of the academics and many of the administrators at this university where casual attire is the norm, actor-network theory online dating.
He is friendly and reassuring, actor-network theory online dating. In front of him is a very large document. It appears to be between two and three inches thick. We are working from the document that has been developed by another Faculty in the same university with his support. I find out later that the Dean of that Faculty has been promoting this approach to quality assurance to the senior executive of the university.
Some months after our Actor-network theory online dating has successfully negotiated a full external quality audit, he is promoted to DVC and part of his portfolio includes quality, actor-network theory online dating.
Robert walks me through the style of the document, the flow charts depicting decision trees for various processes, the level of detail that will be required. He is reassuring that all that I will need to do is some editing of what is already there. He is confident we can adapt this document for our purposes to describe procedures and practices of research in the Faculty.
I ask about the section to do with key performance indicators KPIs and point out that these are things that have yet to be negotiated.
(PDF) What is Actor-Network Theory? | Farzana Dudhwala - blogger.com
How innovations in tertiary education are theorised and understood is important for both policy and practice. This paper describes an approach to studying innovation and change that is taken from the field of Science and Technology Studies · Actor-Network Theory (ANT), originally a social theory, seeks to organize objects and non-human entities into social networks. Its most innovative claim approaches these networks outside the According to Bruno Latour – one of actor-network theory‟s main proponents – every aspect of the term „actor-network theory‟ is doused with the possibility of misinterpretation or misrepresentation, and he therefore stands as a vehement critic of the entire notion– or at least this was the case in More recently, however, with his tongue-in-cheek „introduction’ to actor-network theory – written over two
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