Category Archives: Technical English in Human Geography

Introduction into Actor Network Theory

Final presentation about Actor Network Theory (ANT).

In the course Technical English in Human Geography, I choose to use this as a chance to learn a little bit about ANT, invented from Bruno Latour and Michel Callon, and get some insights in the ideas of social constructionism and the thinking of the school of post-structuralism, of which I’ve heard some interesting ideas before.

I’ve never read a whole scientific work about ANT and the concepts related to it before, but were in touch with those ideas through friends and small articles. So fortunately, literature research was not as hard as thought, thankfully to my philosophical phase caused by the Technik Ethik Politik course.

The most interesting ideas of ANT for me were the deconstruction of social constructionism and the network perspective on interaction between nature, technology and society – at least the attempt to do both by the use of a neutral language.

So right now, there is still a lot to read and think about ANT, cause I don’t have the feeling that I really understand it. But all after all, I see the opportunity to learn more about scientific practice and society through the engagement in ANT, so hopefully I will use it in future.

The slides are also available on the course GitHub repo.