Who Pays? Can We Pay Them Back?

This chapter is about a very old question that is thrown up again in discussion related to ANT. Do orders have necessary limits to what can belong to them? It is possible to read ANT as containing or demanding a moral commitment to the inclusion of the disenfranchised. It can often seem to be in the business of giving credit where credit is due, spreading recognition to even the most unexpected quarters. To sustain itself such a morality would depend on the possibility of infinite inclusion. By identifying this picture of 'belonging-by-assemblage' and its traditional counterpart 'belonging-by-banishment' and by finding both at play within ANT, the papers argues that ANT is an ethical rather than a moral enterprise, bringing the unanswered question of the nature of belonging to bear across domains, rather than approaching each domain with a 'cookie-cutter' moral formula. The disturbing 'unsecuring' of belonging that ANT involves continues within the philosophical tradition ANT trades on and contributes to in the form of an abiding controversy over the place of the natural world.     

ANT and Politics: Working in and on the World

While it is possible to define ANT in a series of abstract bullet points to do so is to miss most of the point. Instead it explores and theorises the world through rich case studies. This means that, like symbolic interactionism, for ANT words are never enough: you need to practice it. In this paper we work empirically, drawing on an ANT-inflected ethnography of Norwegian salmon farming, and also dialogically. We do this because we want to show that for ANT theory is created, recreated, explored and tinkered with in particular research practices. Indeed, ANT is probably best understood as a sensibility, a set of empirical interferences in the world, a worldly practice, or a lively craft that cherishes the slow processes of knowing rather than immediately seeking results or closure. In particular it is sensible to materiality, relationality, heterogeneity, and process. At its best it understands itself as working in the world to create analytical contexts; but also on the world, to articulate and press particular contexts and their politics. As a part of this it explores the contingencies of power, generating tools to undo the inevitability of that power, while working on the assumption that other and better worlds are possible.     

Cosmopolitics: towards a new articulation of politics,science and critique

This paper explores how Ulrich Beck's world‐risk‐society theory (WRST) and Bruno Latour's Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) can be combined to advance a theory of cosmopolitics. On the one hand, WRST helps to examine ‘cosmopolitan politics’, how actors try to inject cosmopolitanism into existing political practices and institutions anchored in the logic of nationalism. On the other hand, ANT sheds light on ‘cosmological politics’, how scientists participate in the construction of reality as a reference point for political struggles. By combining the WRST and ANT perspectives, it becomes possible to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of cosmopolitics that takes into account both political and ontological dimensions. The proposed synthesis of WRST and ANT also calls for a renewal of critical theory by making social scientists aware of their performative involvement in cosmopolitics. This renewal prompts social scientists to explore how they can pragmatically support certain ideals of cosmopolitics through continuous dialogues with their objects of study, actors who inhabit different nations and different cosmoses.     

Translating an Eletronic Panopticon Educational technology and the re-articulation of lecturer-student relations in online learning

Around the world universities are currently in the midst of an online learning revolution. Australia is no exception, with new online learning software packages being used throughout the country at various levels of implementation. This paper reports on research conducted at a regional campus in Australia, which is trialing an online educational software package. Using Foucault's writing on disciplinary techniques and the panopticon as a diagram of power in tandem with the translation approach outlined within Actor-Network Theory (ANT), this paper demonstrates how certain functions within an educational software package act interdependently as an electronic disciplinary technique that renders the student as an object, making them knowable to the lecturer and the university. This technologically-mediated objectification of the student enables lecturers to act upon the actions of the student at-a-distance, and thus carries the effects of disciplinary power to them in new ways. The subsequent analysis shows how the introduction of online technology into university education serves to produce multiple translations of disciplinary and counter-disciplinary practices between lecturers and students. The success or failure of the lecturer's attempts to translate the actions of the students through the educational technology was not necessarily related to any intentional resistance by the students. Instead, the production of multiple learning practices produced in association with the online technology served to exacerbate the ambivalent and ambiguous subject positions inhabited by the students. This affected the students' translation of the lecturer's course instructions, resulting in some students engaging in questionable pedagogical practices.     

Science of Selection: Social Technologies in the Norwegian Educational and Vocational Fields 1910–1940

This article analyses how applied psychology redefined societies' views on abilities and disabilities during the early twentieth century. It studies the making of this new knowledge as two interrelated processes: first, the experimental laboratory developments of scientific knowledge, and second, the translation of quantitative techniques for measuring intelligence and aptitudes into real‐life situations for political reasons. The two unified processes ‘scientification’ and ‘politicisation’ point to how abilities and aptitudes were redefined due to scientific and political authorities and interests. This article aims to give a critical overview of the international innovations of applied psychology analysed as ‘social technologies’, and how these technologies transformed the Norwegian educational and vocational systems. The main empirical sources are seminal professional and political texts.     

Translating Racial Genomics: Passages in and Beyond the Lab

While qualitative studies of science have traditionally focused on sciences as bounded cultures, or cohesive communities that operate in well-defined research settings, Actor-Network Theory (ANT) helps to envision the complex processual formation of scientific associations across a diverse array of social entities and sites. Using the case of race and health disparities research in genetic science, this article explores how ANT’s emphasis on agentic symmetry, and the translation of interests between humans and nonhumans, makes visible the multiplicity of agencies and research institutes that, guided by the US federal government’s Directive No. 15, marshaled genomics to construct race as a social problem. It also examines the multiplicity of methodological strategies such an analysis entails. Here, qualitative analysis of government regulations, policy councils, funding mechanisms, scientific practices, and statements from key scientists in elite biomedical positions is used to show how it came to be that racial governance became an “obligatory passage point” for scientists, and, in a second movement, that genomics became an obligatory passage point for conceiving large-scale analysis of racial stratification. Yet, going beyond current conceptions of ANT, I consider how tracing translation in and beyond the lab can expose a third multiplicity: the multiplicity of obligatory passage points in a given network. I argue that ANT, taken to its logical end, involves study of a plurality of mutually reinforcing actors that co-constitute one another and synergistically push collective agendas.     

Learning how to be (a) patient: visual analysis of accessible health information leaflets for people with intellectual disabilities

Creation of jargon-free Easy Read health texts, incorporating carefully chosen words and images, is promoted as a way of removing health access barriers for people with intellectual disabilities. Using a social semiotic framework, this article explores the social construction of the patient with intellectual disabilities within a sample of adapted health texts, focusing on the visual images used. Images were coded and analysed according to dimensions suggested by Kress and van Leeuwen’s work on ‘visual grammar’. Images highlight the inclusion of patients with intellectual disabilities in mainstream healthcare settings. However, these patients are depicted as being inserted into somewhat idealized healthcare routines that are pre-determined and micro-managed through to completion. Consideration of risks and choices associated with healthcare use are downplayed. The article concludes that the care of patients with intellectual disabilities continues to constitute potential trouble for mainstream healthcare providers, rather than being an expected aspect of everyday practice.     

Designing ‘older’ rather than denying ageing: Problematizing anti-ageing discourse in relation to cosmetic surgery undertaken by older people

This paper problematizes anti-ageing discourse and interpretations that cosmetic surgery is an ageist practice and older people who undergo cosmetic surgery are denying ageing. It argues that conceptions of cosmetic surgery as anti-ageing are premised on an essentialist conception of the ‘naturally ageing body’. Interview data and media texts are used to demonstrate how, through the notion of “re” suggested by terms such as rejuvenation, reversal and renewal, anti-ageing discourses inscribe ‘ageing’ in the practice of cosmetic surgery by older people. The oppressive interpretation that older people who undergo cosmetic surgery are ‘denying ageing,’ and associated subjection to moral critique, are effects of this discourse. To counter interpretations of cosmetic surgery as ‘anti-ageing’, the paper takes up the idea that cosmetic surgery is undertaken to look better not younger. To advance this argument, the paper suggests that the forms of rationality associated with cosmetic surgery constitute a contemporary regimen of ‘care of the self’ which enable ethical agency and creative self-stylisation. Through this framework cosmetic surgery can be re-imagined as a practice for designing ‘older’ rather than denying ageing.     

Breaking the taboo: a history of monetary financing in Canada, 1930–1975

Monetary financing – the funding of state expenditure via the creation of new money rather than through taxation or borrowing – has become a taboo policy instrument in advanced economies. It is generally associated with dangerously high inflation and/or war. Relatedly, a key institutional feature of modern independent central banks is that they are not obligated to support government expenditure via money creation. Since the financial crisis of 2007–2008, however, unorthodox monetary policies, in particular quantitative easing, coupled with stagnant growth and high levels of public and private debt have led to questions over the monetary financing taboo. Debates on the topic have so far been mainly theoretical with little attention to the social and political dynamics of historical instances of monetary financing. This paper analyses one of the most significant twentieth‐century cases: Canada from the period after the Great Depression up until the monetarist revolution of the 1970s. The period was a successful one for the Canadian economy, with high growth and employment and manageable inflation. It offers some interesting insights into the relationship between states and central banks and present‐day discussions around the governance of money creation.     

Hybrids,materiality, and black boxes: Concepts of actor‐network theory in data journalism research

Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) vocabulary offers meaningful sensibilities for explorations of data‐driven newswork. Concepts of hybrids, materiality, and black boxes are increasingly mentioned across digital journalism studies and appear to be particularly constructive to examine the relations between data, computation, and journalism practice, epistemology, reflexivity, and journalistic artefacts. After outlining central concepts of ANT, this literature review provides an overview of research agendas that propose sociotechnical dimensions, followed by a structured review of findings generated through ANT‐informed explorations of data journalism. In a closing summary, presented findings and limitations of ANT are discussed.     

Managing Care and Joined Up Thinking in the Curriculum

This paper discusses the curriculum development of a level three undergraduate course in managing care. It was produced and is presented by The Open University. The course is aimed at frontline managers in health and social care. The course team made consultation with service users, carers and managers a priority in developing the curriculum. The paper discusses this consultation process and the learning gained from it. A major contribution was to clarify debates about how far the course should have one core curriculum and how far it should offer specialist options for managers in different settings. Service users and carers had strong views on the need for better co‐ordination of services and recognition of individual needs rather than divisions into service‐led categories. Managers stressed the importance of reflecting the reality of frontline management. This helped the course team to develop a framework that stresses the commonality in the work and the importance of ‘practice‐led’ management. Service users and managers were involved as critical readers of course texts to ensure that the consultation process continued through the course development. A second strand is the need for the course to be accessible to those not yet in management positions, and extracts from an interactive CD‐ROM which presents case study material demonstrate the innovative joined up and accessible approach taken to student learning needs.     

Social Change and Social Policy in Japan

This paper aims to present and discuss social change and social policy in Japan after the mid-20th century from a sociological viewpoint. Japanese social change and social policy from the mid-20th century onward can be categorized into three models in chronological order: escape from mass poverty by means of industrialization, improvement of the social security system to establish a welfare state, and parallel progress of aspiration for a welfare society and workfare. Defined concretely, these are (1) the period that established and improved social security, which started immediately after the end of World War II and ended in 1973, when Japan began to suffer from low growth after enjoying high growth; (2) the period in which finance for social security was adjusted, halfway through which the country experienced a bubble economy; and (3) the period after the 1990s, in which the structural reform of social security went hand-in-hand with labor policy and the advent of globalization. In each of the three periods, the direction of social policy was affected by factors that caused changes in such areas as industrial structure (the decline of agriculture), demographic structure (an aging society), and family structure and work pattern (the growing trend of nuclear families, single-person households, and irregular employment). In Japan, life security now attracts increasing attention, and employment security rather than social security has been the central issue. As it is greatly affected by globalization, employment security grows less conspicuous and makes the vulnerability of social security grow more conspicuous. Social policy has the potential to become an area with which to struggle for national integration and fissures between social groups.     

Translations in social work

This article is concerned with the relation between classical texts within social work and the interpretation of these classics in contemporary literature. It aims to explore how classical texts influence and work in our perception of, and writing about, our history, but also how they influence our perception of social work today. A study is made of Mary Richmond’s classic text Social diagnosis [1917. Social diagnosis. New York, NY: The Russell Sage Foundation] and later interpretations of her text in secondary literature. Through this analysis, a grand narrative within the effective history of social work: social work as a ‘borrowing field’ is questioned. Using translation theory as an alternative to the borrowing metaphor, I analyze the transference of ideas and concepts from other disciplines into social work and how these processes have been perceived. The dynamic processes of translation places social work within an interdisciplinary field, where ideas and concepts are continually exchanged between disciplines. It is the thesis of this article that research into authorities within the discipline and early contributions to the development of social work strengthen the discipline’s insight into past and current theoretical contributions within the discipline itself and the knowledge base of social work.     

The riddle of things: Activity theory and actor‐network theory as approaches to studying innovations

This article compares cultural‐historical activity theory (AT) and actor‐network theory (ANT) as approaches to studying technical innovations. The concept of nature and society production in the ANT and the concept of activity in the AT have much in common as attempts to transcend the dualism between subject and object, nature and society. The symmetrical (ANT) and the dialectical (AT) interpretations of the concept of mediation are compared. It is suggested that the historically developed, artifact‐mediated structure of human activity is instrumental in studying interaction and coevolution of social and material entities. Three limitations of the concept of generalized symmetry, or symmetrical mediation, become evident when the concept is used in empirical studies of innovation: First, it does not supply any criteria for defining the nature and scope of actors in a heterogeneous network. Second, it leads to an asymmetrical, Machiavellian analysis of innovation in which the contribution of designers, users, and nonhuman entities remains marginal. Third, it does not provide any explanation for the intentionality and competence of humans. It is suggested that these problems can be solved if the innovation network is studied as a network of activity systems. Nonhuman entities are included in the analysis as historically developed arrays of tools and raw materials of the activity systems. This approach is elaborated by analyzing an unsuccessful innovation process, the production of ethanol from wood through the use of cellulose‐degrading enzymes. It is suggested that instead of applying the symmetrical semiotic language proposed by ANT in the analysis, a dialogue that utilizes the historically developed resources and languages of different thought communities is needed.     

That's classic A Gadamerian defence of the classic text in sociology

Many in sociology believe the discipline to be ill served by its classic authors, and that there are now good strategic and cognitive reasons to dispense with the canon. To some, in this more heterogeneous, postmodern world, Marx, Weber and Durkheim have outlived their usefulness and inhibit rather than encourage the growth of sociology. Using Gadamer's hermeneutics as a resource this paper challenges such claims, arguing instead that classic texts are an important and valid product of the human sciences. Classic texts illuminate the real nature of the present by showing how much it still shares with the past. To jettison classic texts would not democratise, but impoverish the discipline.     

Actor-Network Theory, Gabriel Tarde and the Study of an Urban Social Movement: The Case of Can Ricart, Barcelona

This article explores the possibilities that a deeper engagement with the work of Gabriel Tarde opens for Actor-Network Theory (ANT). It argues that the combination of ANT’s methodological and analytical orientation and Tarde’s neo-monadology offers a useful framework for the study of new forms of political activism. Findings from an ethnographic project on the conflict surrounding the eviction and demolition of the Can Ricart factory in Barcelona are used to discuss: a) how ANT transforms the objects of inquiry into performative, relational entanglements (or monads); and b) how Tarde’s neo-monadology helps to re-imagine the political in ANT, moving away from the design of new parliamentary forms and towards a politics of invention. Three key moments of invention in the conflict of Can Ricart are examined: the assemblage of a new activist collective, the fabrication of the very factory the movement was trying to save, and the generation of a bifurcation in the conditions of possibility in which the conflict was taking place.     

'A cook book to be read. What about it?': Alice Toklas,Gertrude Stein and the Language of the Kitchen

Abstract

This essay analyses the way that the writings of Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas use food as part of a poetics of intimacy and argues that the continuity between art and the everyday in Stein's Tender Buttons (1914) and in The Alice B Toklas Cookbook (1954) can be read as a trace of the way that both women acted as the constant and moving background to each other's lives and texts. The paper proposes that Toklas's highly involved, expensive and often impractical recipes provide a meditation on wider and more complex desires than just bodily hunger, particularly at the time of Toklas and Stein's stay in occupied France and after Stein's death in 1946 when Toklas wrote the Cookbook to avoid having to sell Stein's collection of early twentieth century masterpieces. The paper finds antecedents for both the quality of 'obstinate and homely shrewdness' in Stein and Toklas's texts in the brusque and authoritative women's voices captured in nineteenth century cookbooks and suggests that through the fetish status of the nouns in both recipes and in poetry Gertrude and Alice use the reciprocal making and writing of food to articulate, represent and direct desire.     

Translation as Erasure: Thoughts on Modernity's Epistemic Violence

This essay opens the question of translation so as to reflect upon the movement at the borders of modernity. In particular it focuses on the question of translation as erasure, that is, as a mechanism through which modernity expands and demarcates its proper place, its territory. This operation of translation renders invisible everything that does not fit in the “parameters of legibility” of modernity's epistemic territory. Modernity's epistemic territory designates both the realm where the discourses of modernity thrive and their very horizon of intelligibility. Translation brings to view the epistemic borders where a politics of visibility is at play between erasure and visibility, disdain and recognition. To recognize the political content of modernity's epistemic territory is to recognize that the question of global social inequality cannot be addressed simply as the consequence of an incomplete modernity. It is to acknowledge that knowledge has been part and parcel of the modern / colonial systems of oppression and destitution. The epistemic territorial practices are such that all that lies outside their realm is made invisible, is excluded from the real and is actively disdained, even unnamed. At the borders their is the movement of rejection but also the movement of incorporation; where translation appears as a process of selection, classification and appropriation that erases all that does not fit into the proper place of the already established epistemic territory. The final part of the essay looks for that which escapes from the movement of translation as incorporation and addresses the question of untranslatability. This question help us reveal elements that are outside the field of appropriation of modernity. Finally we speak of translation as struggle. Thinking in terms of epistemic translation is already to begin thinking with a vocabulary of transition, of the borders; not transition in terms of chronological change, but rather referring to a transit at the borders of modernity's epistemic territory. The epistemic hegemony of modernity rests in a politics of border keeping, a politics of epistemic translation.     

The business of writing: literature as a commodity in Claudia Piñeiro’s Betibú

This article presents considerations about the status of literature as a commodity and writers as professionals in the twenty-first century. These considerations are based on an analysis of Argentine writer Claudia Piñeiro’s Betibú (2011), which follows the story of an Argentine crime novel writer who becomes a ghostwriter after her latest novel receives harsh reviews for being considered commercial rather than literary. I argue that the novel in question points out misconceptions about the influence of the book industry on the aesthetic quality of literary writing, highlighting the need for literary criticism to look into everyday relations between readers, authors, and editors.