Francisco Tirado and Daniel López (eds.), Teoría del Actor-Red. Más allá de los Estudios de Ciencia y Tecnología, Amentia Editorial, 2012
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17218
application/pdf
2038-3460
17218
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Claudio Ramos-Zincke
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Francisco Tirado and Daniel López (eds.), Actor-Network Theory. Beyond Science and Technology Studies, Amentia Editorial, 2012
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Book Reviews
2015-01-29
2023-06-14
2015-01-29
2023-07-27
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Claudio Ramos-Zincke
2014
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17218
107
University Alberto Hurtado, Chile
2038-3460
2
en
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Francisco Tirado and Daniel López (eds.), Actor-Network Theory. Beyond Science and Technology Studies, Amentia Editorial, 2012
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5
Book Review                                                                  107
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    Francisco Tirado and Daniel López (eds.)
Teoría del Actor-Red. Más allá de los Estudios de Ciencia y Tecnología [Actor-
Network Theory. Beyond Science and Technology Studies]
Barcelona: Amentia Editorial, 2012, pp. 398

Claudio Ramos-Zincke University Alberto Hurtado, Chile

    Over 30 years, actor-network theory (ANT) has evolved from a pro-
posal for the study of science and technology to a theoretical approach
about reality in general, questioning the basic notions of modernity, chal-
lenging sociology and other social sciences, and involving explicit ethical
and political implications. Throughout this journey, ANT has sustained
an intense dialogue and self-criticism. Today, it is an internationally rec-
ognized approach with institutional consolidations but nevertheless main-
taining a spirit of inquiry and questioning. This book, product of a group
of researchers from Spain and Latin American countries, is an expression
of that spirit. It consists of twelve chapters, one introductory, sketching
some highlights of the trajectory of ANT, and eleven containing research
results or reflections based on ANT. They innovatively explore realities in
which science and technology are involved, appealing to the conceptual
and theoretical tools provided by the ANT, but revising them and relat-
ing them to other approaches and adding new conceptualizations.
    The three chapters that follow the introduction are directly based on
empirical investigations and are extremely interesting. In a long and sub-
stantial chapter, Jorge Castillo & Francisco Tirado analyze the new reality
of cancer. Through the practices and technologies of the current biomed-
icine, especially of the genetic analysis, a cancer has been constituted that
extends itself beyond human tissues, a cancer that even exists in healthy
people. It is a presymptomatic cancer, constituted in a probabilistic way,
and identified through the results of the oncological genetics. Now, can-
cer patients are also those who have risk of contracting it and that could
be intervened in a preventive manner. In this way, the disease incorpo-
rates several superposed levels: an individual, bodily level; a family, ge-
nealogical level, and a population level at which statistical calculations are
made. The cancer is, therefore, a phenomenon extended at those three
levels or scales that are folded in the individual patient, involving a multi-
tude of actors and practices of very diverse nature. In spite of that com-
plexity, the network of medical operations enact, according to the au-
thors, a well harmonized and non multiple disease. Castillo & Tirado also
argue that the medical protocols play a central role in the coordination of
the diagnostic processes, technological handling, treatment and monitor-
ing. These protocols would be a central force harmonizing the disease,
108                                                          Tecnoscienza – 5 (2)

avoiding a differentiated ontology, despite the existence of multiple
scales. It would be possible to discuss if the integrative force that Castillo
& Tirado attribute to the protocols is so powerful and effective as they
assume, and if this is the main integrative factor, but their exposition is
well argued. The authors conclude that this type of cancer represents a
peculiar type of object that they call “potential object”. It is the result of
calculations in an extended field that are instantiated in a specific body.
This would reflect a variety of objects and processes of enactment differ-
ent from those habitually treated by the ANT.
    In the next chapter, Blanca Callen studies another particular type of
technological, scientific objects: computer programs built using free soft-
ware (FS), whose constituent code is released and may be copied, distrib-
uted, used and modified by anyone, contrasting with the restrictive logic
of commercial circulation. Unlike what is usually raised by the ANT, the
effectiveness and success of these objects based on FS does not derive
from their black boxing but precisely from the opposite: from its open-
ness and transparency. The construction of socio-technical objects using
FS proves, according to Callen, that the stabilization and proper function-
ing of an object do not necessarily require its closing and blackening. The
sustainability and quality of these products based on FS are provided by
the users' collaboration and appropriation of the products. This openness
of the productive process rather than destabilize it, contributes to its im-
provement and reinforcement. These objects, instead of “immutable mo-
biles”, in terms of Latour, are “mutable mobiles”, fluid objects, whose
advantages lie on such character. In a larger perspective, this proposition
supports the benefits of using ample collaboration in the construction of
facticity and can be read in the perspective of an ontological democratiza-
tion.
    Tomás Sánchez Criado studies how the user of telecare services for
seniors is constituted and maintained. His investigation is in continuity
with the approach of the co-construction between users and technology,
and incorporates Mol's notions of multiple reality and their articulations.
The user is understood, therefore, as an effect of multiple material and
semiotic processes; as an assemblage developed through diverse practices.
These practices include a certain type of legal, bureaucratic work and the
management carried out by the suppliers of the service regarding relatives
and acquaintances who can inform about the user and help him. Along
with this, Sánchez Criado seeks to address the psychosocial domain and
subjective process involved, to which the ANT has not paid attention. He
recognizes, thus, in that process of user enactment, a particular semiotic
and material articulation allowing the constitution of a singular subjective
dominion, habitualized, located and dynamic.
    In the remaining chapters the authors present different reflections,
more tentative, connecting approaches and making conceptual discus-
sions around the ANT. In six of them, the main center of attention is the
relation of ANT with politics, giving special value to Stenger's notion of
Book Review                                                             109
“Cosmopolitics”, assumed by Latour, and to the derived proposal of “on-
tological democratization”. Such notions propose a configuration that is
not actual, involving a normative concern. This means, as Yann Bona and
Salvador Rodriguez say, to take care of several different cosmos, without
the universal rules and possibilities of convergence expected by a Kantian
cosmopolitanism. This raises the need for mediation, for which role sci-
ence has special conditions as a connecting “diplomacy”. It is a political -
diplomatic and scientific work with a prospect of future construction,
which deviates from the direction assumed by the original ANT. Besides,
part of this diplomatic work would be with the own “sociologists of the
social” who have been questioned and fought relentlessly by Latour
based on his “sociology of associations” approach. Such “internal” di-
plomacy would also be a new direction for the ANT, not easy to carry
out. Paloma García expands on this diplomatic role of the social scientist
who seeks to communicate different worlds or cosmopolitics among
themselves. This is a scientist who seeks to connect worlds, from within
and not from some external point of reference, promoting an ontological
pluralism. However, according to García, Latour particularly addresses
the interpretive descriptive work and not the intervention mechanisms
that such diplomatic perspective requires; he does not elaborate pro-
posals on how to enhance the ontological democracy that involves a com-
plex relationship with various publics, in many cases conflicting among
them. Latour's method, according to this author, it would not be sensible
to a “heterogeneous public opinion”, which would limit its practical im-
pact. The transformative potential of this line of work would be limited
by its lack of attention to the socio-technical mechanisms of agency in-
volved in such diplomatic mission. In this matter, it would have been
helpful that Garcia included further discussion and assessment of ap-
proaches such as Callon, Lascoumes & Barthe (2009) on Hybrid Forums
and its practical applications, where it is taken care of such plurality,
adressing specific mechanisms to be used.
    In his text, Israel Rodríguez draws up the trajectory of the network
concept in ANT and some of the criticism it has received. He highlights
the increasingly prominent political orientation of ANT, with its ideas of
des-ontologization and ontological politicization. He also shows a special
concern for the spatialization of networks and the resulting complex con-
figurations. In this regard, he explores connections with other concepts,
such as Peter Sloterdijk's notion of “spheres”, which could be under-
stood as strong networks of relations that operate protectively. There are
many and varied stabilizations, such as these spheres, resulting from the
movement of the networks; one could conclude that the ANT's emphasis
on the movement and circulation perhaps should be balanced with fur-
ther study of the crystallizations that are being generated and that con-
tribute to the ever-growing complexity of networks.
    The text by Ignacio Farías provides a theoretical perspective useful to
frame several lines of inquiry that arise from the book's chapters, for ex-
110                                                          Tecnoscienza – 5 (2)

ample on potential objects or on the stabilization of complex configura-
tions. His central question is how the complex social plurality is formed,
how to reconcile the logic of networks with the existence of configura-
tions that traditional sociology has identified as social subsystems, fields
and value spheres: politics, economics, science, art, etc. In fact, the same
Latour (2013), in his last book, arrives at similar distinctions, now under-
stood as “modes of existence”. Farías, based on Niklas Luhmann's theo-
ry, argues that ANT, with its emphasis on ongoing practices, leaves out
the “virtual”, which may serve as background for the actual. Social reality
depends on communication, and each communication introduces a dif-
ference between what is indicated and a horizon of possibilities. Social
meaning is inevitably a combination of presence and absence; it is based
on differences and anticipations. Luhmann shows how different forms of
semantic accumulation and communicative configuration, such as the
economic, legal, political, artistic and scientific systems, have been consti-
tuted historically. These configurations, or networks of meaning, operate
in a world of possibilities with respect to any specific practice. To the ex-
tent that, in each wave of practices, neither all those elements of meaning
nor all those connections are actualized, Farías attributes to them the
character of virtual. These virtual stocks of meaning have a procedure of
selection, accumulation and maintenance, which is based on the constant
local application of a general criterion or code. The recursivity in the ap-
plication of such a code, around the reference problem, gives form,
through historical evolution, to social differentiation. This is a theoretical
perspective of exploration that is very suggestive. Along with its potential-
ity, however, it contains a number of aspects that require clarification or
deepening. To begin with, the apparent dissociation between a practical-
material-actual dimension and another semantic-virtual dimension would
require to be specified, in order to avoid confusing it with the ontological
separations and purifications that precisely Latour questions.
    This book is aimed mainly at an academic audience already interested
in the study of science and technology, and especially at an audience with
some knowledge of ANT. This public can better appreciate the questions,
comparisons and new conceptualizations. However, for those who have
less knowledge on ANT, several chapters include illustrative syntheses
and reviews about it that will facilitate them to approach this theory.




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