Lessons from ANT

Most of the lessons I learned after a weekend with Actor-Network Theory (ANT) are applicable to ICP's research, and most of them are best phrased as negative exhortations:

1. don't turn nouns into verbs. That is, words like society and persuasion don't pick out specific, individual, and concrete things in the real world. Rather, they pick out a bundle of actions, actors, and objects interacting in a certain dynamic. So to take the obvious example, a commons, does not pick out one thing but rather a collections of actors acting on an object or bundle of objects in a certain way. This latter method of identifying the commons may be trickier than the former, but unless we use it we are likely to ignore key instantiations of the commons, and are likely to ignore what characteristics such instantiations all share.
2. don't forget objects in action. Building on the previous point, when describing any network we cannot ignore the role objects play. For example, if we tried to describe the social dynamic of a Berkman lunch lecture, we would fail to adequately describe the dynamic if we did not mention the seating arrangement, the powerpoint presentation, and the digital recording devices. Failure to account for objects and their impact on actors and actions will make it impossible to differentiate between different sorts of social dynamics.
3. don't forget objects in knowledge. Similar to the previous two points, we cannot think of knowledge as a thing just floating out in space. Knowledge is contained and performed in the real world: rules are codified in reports, research is put into presentations and lecture notes, and norms are conveyed through observation and repeated performance of those norms. We should be able to identify not only the means by which commons-based actions are performed, but how information necessary for and about those actions is conveyed.
4. don't create panopticons. That is, we should not assume that all members of a given social dynamic have all the information regarding that dynamic. This observation might be a little obvious ex ante, but we should be careful to investigate what actors know what information for a given situation. After all, it is plausible that some situations of commons use require that the actors do not have complete knowledge of their situation (the shepherds in Garrett Hardin's tragedy of the commons would probably institute a system of governance or private property if they were fully aware that they were participating in a commons).
5. don't forget humans are agents. Just because we account for objects in a given investigation shouldn't mean that we take individual actors to be puppets. People have real motivations that are to one degree or another independent of their environments. Failure to account for those motivations is a failure to account for a key part of what builds and sustains a network. Therefore, if a respondent tells us that she participates in a commons-based environment because she derives intrinsic happiness from working with others, we should not throw out her explanation and chock up her participation to the financial rewards she might gain from participation.
6. don't assume stability. Bringing all these previous points together, we should not consider networks to be fixed and unchanging entities. Rather, we should think of them as ongoing social practices, whose formation and maintenance require energy. When investigating instances of commons-based production, we should examine not only the forces that form the network but also the forces that keep that network together.

None of these exhortations are revolutionary, but I believe all could be useful to our research.

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