Faculty
Anne Beaulieu, University of Groningen; Mike Michael, Goldsmiths, University of London; Noortje Marres, Goldsmiths, University of London, and Ursula Plesner, Department of Organization, CBS

Course Coordinator
Ursula Plesner, Department of Organization, CBS

Only PhD students are accepted, and the course is aimed at students with a social scientific background, with a project drawing on ANT or other socio-technical approaches.

In preparation of the course, students are expected to produce a short paper. It must include a description of their project (1 page), discussions of the central methodological challenges of the project (1 page), as well as an excerpt from the analyses of the thesis (2-3 pages). Students are also expected to prepare a short presentation of their paper and to participate actively in discussions.

Deadline for submitting course registration and short papers: 1 October 2012.

Participation in the entire course is a prerequisite for receiving the course diploma.

This course will address some of the methodological challenges of producing analyses based on Actor-Network-Theory and related theoretical frameworks (predominantly approaches which have grown out of the tradition of Science and Technology Studies).

The aim is to interrogate how we might devise concrete research strategies based on Actor-Network-Theory’s material semiotic approach, in particular the principles of symmetry and agnosticism. A premise underlying the concept of actor-networks is that we should not strive for the reconciliation of dualities (between, for instance, subject/object, material/symbolic, virtual/real), but completely dissolve them and follow how heterogeneous actants are interwoven in complex assemblages that both comprise and transcend such categories.

Now, while ANT scholars have argued theoretically for the dissolution of dualities and offered countless empirical stories of heterogeneous networks, the ANT literature is rarely particularly articulate about what we could call middle-range methodological issues regarding, for instance, casing, delineation, etc. Hence, although theoretical discussions and empirical examples are part of this course, it will give priority to discussions about challenges arising from concrete research designs. If we consider ANT a methodology of the in-between of ‘the virtual and the real’, ‘the immaterial and the material’, ‘the social and the technical’, we might ask how we turn this type of methodological sensibility into concrete strategies.

We will discuss the possibilities and pitfalls of giving equal attention to different kinds of interpretations, agencies and elements in our production and analysis of empirical material. And we will discuss how to go about creating convincing accounts which do not privilege particular actors or presuppose established groups, and which are not stuck in social explanations or technological determinist views. We will explore how to produce analyses which interweave resources such as to bring out the diversity of empirical situations rather than rely on the structuring of accounts into virtual and real, immaterial and material, and social and technical. And, we will ask, if the analytical ambition is to weave together different types of resources into integrated wholes, how do we decide what the whole is, and which types of resources to exclude

The morning sessions are devoted to lectures given by invited guest faculty. They offer examples of coherent vocabularies tackling some of the issues described above.  The rest of the course is designed to focus on the methodological problems arising from the participants’ own work. Therefore, each afternoon is structured thematically, to address the central challenges described in participants’ papers. The required papers are thus of the utmost importance as input to the course.

Students should acquire a refined understanding of ANT as a methodological framework and be able to formulate coherent answers to questions about their own methodological use of ANT-principles. The course does not introduce to specific methods, neither does it give an introduction to ANT as theory.

The teaching style of the course is a mixture of lectures, discussion seminars with short presentations, and group work. A large part of the course consists of dialogues in which students are expected to be very active. Rather than presenting programmatic statements of ANT or offering case-stories to learn from, we will have discussions of incomplete research designs as our basis for exploring how ANT methodological principles can be translated into specific methods. This is to support PhD students in demonstrating methodological craftsmanship through convincing accounts of mundane choices and middle-range methodological concerns.

Suggested further readings