Actor-Network Theory

Trials, Trails and Translations
First Edition
Mike Michael - University of Sydney, Australia
Actor-Network Theory
November 2016 | 200 pages | Sage UK
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Hardcover
ISBN: 9781446293959
Available from January 0001

Description

In this thought-provoking and engaging book, Mike Michael brings us a powerful overview of Actor-Network Theory. Covering a breadth of topics, Michael demonstrates how ANT has become a major theoretical framework, influencing scholarly work across a range of fields.

Critical and playful, this book fills a notable gap in the literature as Michael expertly explicates the theory and demonstrates how its key concepts can be applied. Comparing and contrasting ANT with other social scientific perspectives, Michael provides a robust and reflexive account of its analytic and empirical promise. A perfect companion for any student of Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, Geography, Management & Organisation Studies, Media & Communication, and Cultural Studies.

Contents

Introduction

Introduction

Actor-network Theory: Old and New Routes

Actor-network Theory: Old and New Routes

'Classical' Actor-network Theory

'Classical' Actor-network Theory

Critiques, Concerns and Co-productions

Critiques, Concerns and Co-productions

ANT and Some Big Sociological Questions

ANT and Some Big Sociological Questions

On some Disciplinary Translations of ANT

On some Disciplinary Translations of ANT

On Some Post-ANTs

On Some Post-ANTs

Conclusions: Some Prospects and Some Practical Orientations

Conclusions: Some Prospects and Some Practical Orientations

Additional materials

Description

In this thought-provoking and engaging book, Mike Michael brings us a powerful overview of Actor-Network Theory. Covering a breadth of topics, Michael demonstrates how ANT has become a major theoretical framework, influencing scholarly work across a range of fields.

Critical and playful, this book fills a notable gap in the literature as Michael expertly explicates the theory and demonstrates how its key concepts can be applied. Comparing and contrasting ANT with other social scientific perspectives, Michael provides a robust and reflexive account of its analytic and empirical promise. A perfect companion for any student of Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, Geography, Management & Organisation Studies, Media & Communication, and Cultural Studies.

Contents

Introduction

Introduction

Actor-network Theory: Old and New Routes

Actor-network Theory: Old and New Routes

'Classical' Actor-network Theory

'Classical' Actor-network Theory

Critiques, Concerns and Co-productions

Critiques, Concerns and Co-productions

ANT and Some Big Sociological Questions

ANT and Some Big Sociological Questions

On some Disciplinary Translations of ANT

On some Disciplinary Translations of ANT

On Some Post-ANTs

On Some Post-ANTs

Conclusions: Some Prospects and Some Practical Orientations

Conclusions: Some Prospects and Some Practical Orientations

Additional materials

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Actor-Network Theory

Trials, Trails and Translations


November 2016 | 200 pages | Sage UK

Format Published Date ISBN Price
Hardcover 31/03/2026 9781446293959 $173.00
Paperback 31/03/2026 9781446293966 $92.00

In this thought-provoking and engaging book, Mike Michael brings us a powerful overview of Actor-Network Theory. Covering a breadth of topics, Michael demonstrates how ANT has become a major theoretical framework, influencing scholarly work across a range of fields.

Critical and playful, this book fills a notable gap in the literature as Michael expertly explicates the theory and demonstrates how its key concepts can be applied. Comparing and contrasting ANT with other social scientific perspectives, Michael provides a robust and reflexive account of its analytic and empirical promise. A perfect companion for any student of Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, Geography, Management & Organisation Studies, Media & Communication, and Cultural Studies.


Table Of Contents:

  • Introduction
  • Actor-network Theory: Old and New Routes
  • 'Classical' Actor-network Theory
  • Critiques, Concerns and Co-productions
  • ANT and Some Big Sociological Questions
  • On some Disciplinary Translations of ANT
  • On Some Post-ANTs
  • Conclusions: Some Prospects and Some Practical Orientations

Recent Product Reviews:

Dear M, the manuscript of your ANT book managed to lure me away from all kinds of urgent tasks. Wow. You did the rest of us a great favour. It is sharp and casts its net widely while attending to all the right details. I will highly recommend it to my students. And, if I get a chance, to everyone else, of course. Best, A
Annemarie Mol, University of Amsterdam
Mike Michael provides a clear and comprehensive map to ANT: its histories, concepts and problematizations. Building on his own personal engagement with ANT, he creates a compelling, reflexive and sometimes-humorous invitation to its network of associations. An excellent introduction to this significant field.
Maja Horst, University of Copenhagen
This smart provocative book deepens conceptual understandings of actor network theory and offers an acute assessment of its intellectual history and significance. Mike Michael’s engagement with formative texts and debates in ANT will excite anyone interested in social theory and its generative force. In the shift from studying society to studying networks and relations crude causality gives way to explorations of process and performativity. Michael examines this profound shift and shows how it is at the heart of ANT’s trials and tribulations and also its radical impact.
Gay Hawkins, Western Sydney University
Mike Michael’s book would be of great value for researchers interested in Actor-Network Theory but lost in the growing number of its variants. It contextualizes ANT by explaining its roots, but it also projects it into the future by presenting possible post-ANTs. Both the veterans and the novices of ANT will find the book useful.
Barbara Czarniawska, University of Gothenburg
What is actor-network theory and what can we do with it? Its adherents have always insisted that their approach does not need faithful, obedient spokespersons, and if there is someone who can be trusted to introduce ANT in a suitably irreverent and creative spirit it is the sociologist of Velcro, animals, expectations, design and idiotic methodology, Mike Michael. Written in a casual style, this book nevertheless offers a highly useful map of ANT's defining ideas, studies, commitments and methodological innovations.
Noortje Marres, University of Warwick Coventry

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