... Spectator2.0 = Surfer as Actor?

Actor-network theory, often abbreviated as ANT, is a distinctive approach to social theory and research which originated in the field of science studies. Although it is best known for its controversial insistence on the agency of nonhumans, ANT is also associated with forceful critiques of conventional and critical sociology. [VT pages]

* Actor-network theory tries to explain how material-semiotic networks come together to act as a whole (e.g. a bank is both a network and an actor that hangs together, and for certain purposes acts as a single entity)...

** The approach is related to other versions of material-semiotics (and notably the work of philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault and feminist scholar Donna Haraway). It can also be seen as a way of being faithful to the insights of ethnomethodology. There are also obvious links to symbolic interactionist approaches such as the newer forms of grounded theory like situational analysis that seek to frame social circumstances as various forms of relationships associated with situations.

*** In retrospect it is easy to see that ANT reflects many of the preoccupations of French Post-structuralism, and in particular a concern with non-foundational and multiple material-semiotic relations.

... It talks, for instance, of Actants to denote human and non-human actors, and assumes that the actors in a network take the shape that they do by virtue of their relations with one another. It assumes that nothing lies outside the network of relations, and as noted above, suggests that there is no difference in the ability of technology, humans, animals, or other non-humans to act (and that there are only enacted alliances.) It further notes that as soon as an actor engages with an actor-network it too is caught up in the web of relations, and becomes part of the 'entelechy'.

... If taken to its logical conclusion, nearly any actor can be considered merely a sum of other, smaller actors. An automobile is an example of a complex system. It contains many electronic and mechanical components, all of which are essentially hidden from view to the driver, who simply deals with the car as a single object. [Punctualisation]

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