Actor-Network-Theory

A promising approach in this vein is offered by Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), which is likewise sociological in origin. It pursues an approach focused on social constructivism and aims to dispense with categories of a priori validity, suggesting that it might be able to provide the conceptual flexibility sought here.²¹ Born from a search for a “new sociology” for a modern society increasingly permeated with technology and characterised by its cooperative development and versatile theo-retical form, ANT can, however, be a difficult instrument to wield, especially for a non-sociologist.²² Besides its lack of a unified theoretical basis, the continuous critical evolution of this model, as well as its self-reflexive and self-deconstructive tendencies, complicate its interdisciplinary use.²³ The point of engaging with these ideas is thus primarily to contour certain methodological principles of this study prior to integrating them into the discipline of Ancient History. Given that caveat I feel justified in ignoring the dispute about the principles of sociology that suf-fuses much of the ANT literature, as well as its main focus, the modern sociology of technology.²⁴ Accordingly, the main interest will be in the way representatives of ANT have dealt with problems of the sociology of power. Although these too are explored using questions from the sphere of the sociology of technology or of science, their methods and overall results are certainly worth taking into con-sideration and even adopting, at least up to a point.²⁵

21 For the discussion of ANT I have drawn on the overview by Ingo Schulz-Schaeffer 2011², as well as select works by ANT scholars, including Bruno Latour’s program-matic ‘introduction’ (idem. Eine neue Soziologie für eine neue Welt. Einführung in die Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie. Translated by Gustav Roßler. Frankfurt a.M. 2007) and the ANT Handbook: Belliger, Andréa and Krieger, David J. (eds.). ANThology. Ein einführendes Handbuch zur Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie. Bielefeld 2006. To avoid unnecessary confusion, this study will not use one of ANT’s central concepts, the actant. An actant may be (inadequately) described as a compound translator, a network figuration of entities that generates action, be they objects or humans (see Latour 2007, 78-102, esp. 95f.). The category of ‘actor’ (which I use) is thereby expanded to encompass the non-individual and the non-human (Latour 1996, 369).

22 This search for a “new sociology” provides Bruno Latour (2007) with his title.

23 On self-reflexive deconstruction see Schulz-Schaeffer 2011², 284f.; 290-293. As a con-structivist approach with an explicit interest in the sociology of science ANT is forced to reflect on itself as its genesis, development, and usage are processes that demand analysis in themselves.

24 See Latour 2007, 9-30, for the debate between ANT and the “sociology of the social”.

25 On ANT’s objective to explain society as a whole see Schulz-Schaeffer 2011², 277;

295-298. It is worth noting, however, that the main thrust of this objective is to theorise in how far human life is structured by non-human actors by investigating how objects constitute the social (see Callon, Michel and Latour, Bruno. “Don’t Throw the Baby

Put simply, ANT scholars study social action by understanding actions and the sum of influential factors that affect this action as a network, with the aim of making the complexity of social action apparent.²⁶ The radical dimension of this seemingly simply principle may be best illustrated by offering an example. In an influential article, the French sociologist Michel Callon, who is with Bruno Latour one of the main representatives of ANT, addressed the attempts by scientists to save the population of a species of bivalve, scrobicularia plana, which is unique to the Baie de Saint-Brieuc on the Côte Émeraude (Bretagne). Doing so led him to engage with questions that are central also to this study.²⁷ He based his analysis on three controversial premises: 1) the sociologist should describe interactions as neutrally as possible. 2) All parties involved in the configuration observed should be described in the same categories. 3) All differentiations between the natural and the social, which seem to exist a priori, need to be abandoned.²⁸

The first two of these principles can be easily adopted for the study conducted here, although the reasons and their final form will differ – after all, the objective is not the description of modern society. For Callon, the premise of neutrality entails that the categories of analysis are not prescribed, but are determined by the interactions of the actors.²⁹ The consequence is that non-human entities, the scallops in Callon’s case, should be analysed in the same way as human actors.

These ideals are understandable, but even in the form envisioned by Callon, are very difficult to implement fully. Our perception of what is relevant to any given interaction presupposes a process of selection that cannot be neutral, as it is necessarily performed by an observer – “every decoding is another encoding”.³⁰

Out with the Bath School! A Reply to Collins and Yearly”, in: Andrew Pickering (ed.).

Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago 1992, 343-368, here 359).

26 Schulz-Schaeffer 2011², 286f., provides a summary of the various objectives of the ANT approach.

27 Callon, Michel. “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay”, in: John Law (ed.). Power, Action, and Belief. A New Sociology of Knowledge? (=Sociological Review Monograph 32). London and Boston 1986, 196-232. Although scrobicularia plana (in French ‘scrobiculaire’, in English

‘Peppery furrow shell’; in German ‘Große Pfeffermuschel’) is the sole member of its genus, and not a true scallop at all, I adhere in what follows to the term used in Callon’s paper.

28 Callon 1986, 196; 200f.

29 See also Callon, Michel. “Techno-economic Networks and Irreversibility”, in: John Law (ed.). A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination (=So-ciological Review Monograph 38). London and Boston 1991, 132-161, here 143.

30 The quotation is from what might be called a ‘network-novel’: Lodge, David. A Small World. New York 1984, 25. For its academic background see Hall, Stuart. “Encoding / Decoding”, in: idem, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis (eds.). Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–79. London 1980, 128-138, and

Despite this caveat, expanding the inquiry to include historical actors that are usu-ally not treated as such, or treated as categoricusu-ally alien, is certainly a principle adopted in my study, largely because of my interest in identity.³¹ In accordance with my general agreement with the first premise, I also adopt Callon’s definition of the social actor, as it is flexible enough to allow for the description of the entities evidenced in the surviving source material as actors within a closed po-litical interaction network. An actor is thus “[a]ny entity that more or less suc-cessfully defines and builds a world filled by other entities with histories, identities and interrelationships of their own.” This in effect describes all entities that change meaning in a given situation, a definition that leads back to Foucault but expands upon him by adding a helpful narrative dimension.³² We have thus taken an important step forward in combining networks and power for the purpose of analysing narrative.

The second premise, categorical equality in description, is likewise central to this undertaking. Approaching actors and actions with identical methodological tools creates comparability and allows the reconstruction of a coherent political system rather than one fractured into many different shards. This aim is achieved by employing a unified, abstract terminology across the board. At the same time, focusing the research interest on questions of power as a pervasive societal dynamic helps to avoid the kind of analytical levelling this kind of broad application of the same analytical categories might entail otherwise.

The third premise presents a thornier problem. It relates to a fundamental interest of ANT, namely the treatment of non-human entities as actors on an equal footing; in formulating it, the sociologist interested in technology is ob-viously concerned with things such as sheets of aluminium, baggage trolleys, elec-trical door openers, etc.³³ The dichotomy between the natural and the social is accordingly viewed as a construction that is perpetually being re-performed by

Bakhtin, Michail M. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin 1986, 160f.: “the inter-pretation of symbolic structures is forced into an infinity of symbolic contextual meanings and therefore it cannot be scientific in the way precise sciences are scientific.” While ANT does develop a kind of pure observer who need only follow the semantic systems of the actors observed, the fundamental subjectivity of any available perspective seems underproblematised. On the problem of social observation see Luhmann 1988, 69f.; 92f.; 1117-1126.

31 I take it for granted that a ‘neutral’ perspective can never be achieved, and I nowhere postulate it.

32 Callon 1991, 140. This further constitutes a further significant expansion of Max Weber’s definition of social action (Weber 1972⁵ [1922], 11-13).

33 See the overview by Schulz-Schaeffer 2011², 280-284, as well as the neat summaries by Callon 1991, 139 and Latour 2007, 24-27.

actors, and is thus in permanent flux.³⁴ Since this question is not my primary field of interest and introduces a large number of further analytical steps, I will retreat to firmer ground, found in the considerations of Alfred Gell regarding the

‘agency’ of (art) objects.³⁵ In his view, individual persons are equal to the sum of their external relations and interactions, and objects are traces of their agency.

This makes objects, and especially artefacts, secondary, but reflective of human consciousness via their analogous structure. The difference between human and object actors then lies in the complexity of their networks of relations, as humans develop a far more complex network than objects do, on account of their capacity for ‘direct’ agency. On the other hand, since the agency of both objects and hu-mans is the product of cultural action, both are necessarily generated by human actors.³⁶ This does not mean, however, that object agency is in all cases secondary, let alone non-existent.³⁷

Let us return to Michel Callon and the seafood problem. In applying these three premises in his analysis of the scientific project to save the scallops of St.

Brieuc bay, he first identifies the various actors involved, including the scientists, the interested wider scientific community, the Briochin fishermen with their eco-nomic interests, and finally the key element, the scallops everything hinges on.

The interactions between these actors are conceived of as connections that can be abstractly understood as transforming the actors into a network situationally unified by an objective: ‘save the scallops.’ This network is first created and then modified by so-called translations, i.e. changes or re-interpretations of the rela-tions between the entities involved.³⁸ In this case, these are mundane things such as meetings, incentives, agreements, and publications, but they are more broadly relevant to an interest in power politics as they allow an actor to establish itself as

34 Callon 1986, 221. See also Latour 2007, 185-187.

35 Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford 1998, 220-223. For similar critical caveats see Schulz-Schaeffer 2011², 295; 297f., but note Callon 1991, 140f. Ultimately, the difference is not really very substantial and hinges on the question whether agency is assigned only to the ‘originator’ of an action or to both originator and mediator. Gell’s approach has been used to resolve similar difficulties also by Collins, Derek. Magic in the Ancient World. Malden, MA 2008, e.g. 94f.

36 Compare the concept of autopoiesis and the development of communication in system theory; see Luhmann 1988, 65f., 80-91. In system theory terms, objects are not subject to double contingency, as they are unable to reflect on, or even hold, expectations for future action. This provides a clear theoretical solution to the problem.

37 Cf. Gell 1998, 220: “Artworks are like social agents, in that they are the outcome of social initiatives which reflect a specific, socially inculcated sensibility.”

38 Callon elsewhere defines translations as all “(re-)definitions of the identity, the charac-teristics, and the behaviours of any entities that are intended to establish connections between them, i.e. form networks” (1991, 140).

an obligatory passage point (OPP) for a specific set of interactions related to the objective. In this capacity, it acts as a central point of reference and an instance of control capable of defining the significance of the world within this network.³⁹ On this model, therefore, power consists in the creation, maintenance, and semantici-sation of interaction networks, which results in qualitative and quantitative changes in connectivity within such a network.

A significant advantage of the ANT approach is that it allows Callon to differentiate these translations based on functional criteria rather than a catalogue of ideal types. As has become clear, the translation process begins with what he calls a problématisation, the identification of a problem or aim, as well as the actors related to it.⁴⁰ The entire model is thus both subjective and constructionist: the

‘problem/aim’ appears as the centre of the world and of the network con-figuration of actors established around it. The next step, which Callon terms intéressement, consists in the interaction processes actors pursue in practice in order to construct this network, which in turn usually involves the self-construction and acceptance of one as OPP.⁴¹ This involves, for instance, gauging the motivations of the relevant actors. Closely related is the third step of enrolment: the actor constructs and communicates a value order so as to achieve his goal of mobilisation.

This final step consists in the actor’s employment of the OPP status to generate and direct agency in accordance with the value system he has constructed. If these steps are successful, the actor establishes itself as the controlling instance for a specific set of interactions in relation to the other entities, which in turn enables the attainment of the translation’s goal over time.

From my point of view, the pivotal advantage of this approach is that it is functionally oriented rather than typologising: interactions are not studied in terms of ideal types, which often occur in the real world only as diffuse amal-gamations and are ultimately just a priori constructs, but are categorised on the basis of their function in structuring a network over time. Once one looks beyond the single world Callon picks out, the translation processes identified by him are therefore concurrent, plural, and ‘nested’, which in turn means that they can be traced at all levels of human interaction, from the individual to the inter-collective.

39 Callon 1986, 196; 203-218. In this scenario, the ‘world’ is very small, consisting only of the problem of saving the scallops and the network of translations and actants re-volving around it. The strengths of this approach therefore lie in situational analysis, not in theorising society.

40 Again, to keep things manageable, I speak simply of actors and largely disregard the ANT concept of actant, which would admittedly be more precise.

41 The Petit Robert defines intéressement as “action d’intéresser (une personne) aux béné-fices de l’entreprise, par une rémunération qui s’ajoute au salaire”.

The basic principles of this analytical method, i.e. its focus on situationally con-structed value orders and the means of their construction and stabilisation through narrative connections, shall thus number among my principal metho-dological tools throughout the following case studies.

The networks of ANT are infinitely situational and consist of translations, i.e.

definitions of one actor’s identity by another within the ‘world’ of the trans-lation.⁴² Two processes, convergence and irreversibilisation, further determine the dynamics of the translation process as a network. Successful definition attempts generate a shared space and create equivalence among actors, whereas unsuc-cessful processes result in the opposite.⁴³ The greater the convergence, the clearer and more accepted the identity definitions, i.e. the relational equivalence of the entities involved.⁴⁴ Particularly dense and normatively organised networks are also the most irreversible, i.e. offer the most resistance to actions that aim to revert or redefine the translations that shape them.⁴⁵ These specifications have a certain general relevance for the study of the Diadoch period, as they allow for a more precise assessment of the abstract structures of normatively organised networks, as they emerge from the source materials.

Before we continue our investigation of power as network, a number of critical points need to be mentioned in order to avoid blindly appropriating interdisciplinary methodology. It is important to realise that any translation and any problématisation is itself the result of other network configurations, all of which Callon smoothly disregards in his small-scale case study: “Where they [the sci-entists] came from and why they act is of little importance at this point of the investigation”.⁴⁶ The categories he develops are thus suited to the description of analytically isolated groups of interactions focused on a specific core that is of interest, but the act of selection that precedes the analysis is always fundamentally arbitrary. The fact that the boundaries of the network to be analysed are purely subjective is a basic methodological problem that is particularly pertinent to

42 Callon 1991, 142f.; Latour 1996, 371-373.

43 Callon 1991, 145.

44 Callon (1991, 149 n. 38) considers using word-context-analysis as an empirical means of quantifying the success of translation, on the premise that translations are positively manifested in texts that function as actants.

45 Callon 1991, 150f.: “Minimally, norms for interfaces require at least one pertinent var-iable which may take one of two possible values – for instance good or bad, pass or fail. But they can extend to fine tuning between multiple continuous variables by way of upper and lower threshold limits. The more precise and quantified these standards, the more a successful translation becomes irreversible. A network which irrevers-ibilises itself is a network that has become heavy with norms.” (Quotation from p.

151).

46 Callon 1986, 202-204, quotation from p. 203. Cf. Callon 1991, 142.

studies concerned with contemporary subject matter. In the context of Ancient History, this problem, though present, is in practice less severe due to the nature of the source material – the networks that can be reliably addressed are already limited by the information available, which results from discourse deemed signif-icant enough to be recorded. Still, three things should be briefly noted: 1) Any selection of a network for the purpose of study is ultimately arbitrary and a subjec-tive network process; 2) for practical reasons, any investigation has to leave large parts of the network uninvestigated, treating them as black boxes that are not necessarily always as predictable and transparent as M. Callon asserts;⁴⁷ 3) com-municating research results is itself a complex network process, rendering the theory self-reflexive.

A more significant problem in applying this method in another disciplinary context, however, is that it does not explicitly develop an analytical meta-level beyond providing descriptive and categorising concepts, preventing its use as a convenient hermeneutic aid in historical analysis. This limitation is a fundamental principle of ANT, born from its self-reflexive criticism of sociology, and certainly makes sense in an inner-disciplinary context: the social is not to be reduced to a mere component that can be used to explain other things, but is to emerge from the mesh of the actors and networks as the critical result of sociological inquiry.⁴⁸ For the project pursued here, this is not sufficient: the aim must be to offer insights into the reconstructed networks that go beyond their description. In my

A more significant problem in applying this method in another disciplinary context, however, is that it does not explicitly develop an analytical meta-level beyond providing descriptive and categorising concepts, preventing its use as a convenient hermeneutic aid in historical analysis. This limitation is a fundamental principle of ANT, born from its self-reflexive criticism of sociology, and certainly makes sense in an inner-disciplinary context: the social is not to be reduced to a mere component that can be used to explain other things, but is to emerge from the mesh of the actors and networks as the critical result of sociological inquiry.⁴⁸ For the project pursued here, this is not sufficient: the aim must be to offer insights into the reconstructed networks that go beyond their description. In my