Actor-Network Theory and Social Reflexivity: Humans and Technologies in a Collaborative Research...

SOCL919: Actor Network Theory and Social Reflexivity 31304694

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Actor-Network Theory and Social Reflexivity: Humans and

Technologies in a Collaborative Research Project

Collaborative research is widely understood to be the co-production of knowledge within a

team (Phillips et al. 2013). The level of co-production is likely to vary throughout a research

project and for each person involved due to the participatory nature of the task and the

inherent tensions, contradictions, dilemmas and power imbalances this brings (Phillips 2011).

During the collaborative research project I completed with four other MA students, tensions

arose within the group mainly due to difference of opinions, power struggles and the role of

technology.

Technology has become irreplaceable in the co-production of knowledge, especially within

collaborative research when it is relied upon not only for processing, but for communication

(Schroeder 2010). It is difficult to imagine a research project in which technology is not

entrusted with data and information affecting future decisions. However, much of the

research undertaken on collaborative work limits the co-production of knowledge to humans

(Phillips et al. 2013, Butcher and Jeffrey 2007, Boozeman and Gaughan 2011) despite the

increasingly significant, mediating role of technology. Consequently, this essay focuses upon

the role of technology using Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to provide an often overlooked,

non-anthropocentric reflection of the research project.

ANT is used to reflect upon the role of technology and how we (actors), worked in networks

with the following non-human technologies (actants): hardware, social networking sites and

software. ANT was one of the first theories to assign agency to actants in consideration and

reflection of the complex inter-relations between actors and actants and is therefore a theory

from which the agency of technology can be examined. Donna Haraway’s post-humanist


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theory will additionally be drawn upon as a furthering of ANT to show the moulding of

technology and humans into cyborgs. First, I define anthropocentric reflexivity and social

reflexivity, and introduce Actor-Network Theory.

Reflexivity and Actor-Network Theory

Scott and Marshall (2009) define reflexivity in reference to Gouldner’s (1970)

anthropormorphic work in which he argues that objective knowledge is inconceivable

because knowledge is a product of the knower. As an antithesis to positivist social science,

Gouldner called for the implementation of critical and reflexive sociology which accounts for

the role of the self upon the research (Holland 1999). Gouldner’s perception of reflexivity

adopts an intrinsically anthropocentric and therefore sociologically reductionist stance by

focusing solely on the influence of the self. It is impossible to conduct research without

affecting, or be affected by, other actors/actants (Law 2004), and consequently a wider

conception of reflexivity is required.

ANT was created within the realm of Science and Technology Studies (STS) in opposition to

the positivist claim that the scientific method produces a privileged form of knowledge

(Latour 2005). Knowledge is a social product formulated through a network of heterogeneous

materials, co-produced as a consequence of the inter-relations between actors and actants

(Law 1992). Knowledge co-production depends upon materio-semiotic networks, including

technology, which shape the social (Ibid.).

Actants are differentiated into two groups: intermediaries and mediators. Whilst defining the

inputs of intermediators is sufficient to define their outputs, mediators, in contrast, generate

outputs that cannot be determined by its inputs as they are multipliers of difference and thus

transformative (Miettinen 2009). Technology is therefore a mediator as its social

ramifications go far beyond that which can be predicted by, for example, simply typing up a


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report on a laptop. Sociological research needs to consider the role of technology within

networks in recognition of our increasing reliance, and its influence on, modern day society.

I do not claim to be a faithful translator for ANT, the actors, the actants, or the network I

represent in this essay. My centering as the only credible spokesperson for the network

(Latour 1983) is an unfortunate consequence of non-collaborative university coursework and

the lack of communicable understanding between actors and actants. Representation always

betrays its object as “the process of coming to know [objects]… is also a process of

translation” (Law 2003b: 10) in which those actants that I represent are inherently absent

from the milieu and thus silenced and displaced in the first person (Callon 1986).

Throughout this essay, I attempt to translate for actors and actants to account for their

differing situated descriptions of the network(s) in which they are involved. I aim to highlight

the value of using social reflexivity and ANT to account for the heterogeneous network in a

collaborative research project and to prove that singular, anthropocentric reflexivity cannot

provide a comprehensive view of the co-production of knowledge.

The Research Network

Three primary networks can be identified as operating within the research project: (1) the first

research network that conducted fieldwork; (2) the second research network that conducted

fieldwork; (3) the research network. This essay focuses upon the actors and technological

actants within the (3) research team network in the context of their mediating roles (Figure 1).

For example, when transcribing interviews, a Dictaphone is considered a mediator between

interviewee and transcriber by guaranteeing the accuracy of historical accounts beyond the

capability of human memory: the Dictaphone is therefore fundamental to the co-production

of knowledge (cf. Storey 2014). The role of technology is selectively analysed to provide an

in-depth reflexive account of its influence upon the collaborative research project.


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Figure 1: The technological actants and actors’ interactions in research network 3


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Technological Hardware: Trust, Dependency and Permanency

Technology was a major actant in the research network and formed a central part of the

relational outcomes. One of the most important actants within the research network, if not the

most important, were laptops. As shown in Figure 1, all the other actors and technological

actants were somehow reliant upon the laptop.

The concept of ‘Digital Natives’ (Prensky 2001) has developed since 2000 as a result of the

technological partiality of students born after 1980 (Oblinger and Oblinger 2005). The

extreme reliance upon technology within the current academic generation

(Palfrey and Gasser 2008) was clearly demonstrated by the research team: each time we met,

five laptops, five phones and the interactive whiteboard were in use (Figure 2).

Figure 2: An example of the actors and technological actants in a group meeting

Laptop

Unfortunately, my laptop broke two weeks before the submission date of the research project

report. In addition to the stress of a fast approaching deadline, my laptop was the only storage

device for all of our coded interview data. Panic ensued. I managed to extract the data and

save it to an external hard-drive, although much to our dismay, it was incompatible with other

laptops. After four hours of worry, the hard-drive miraculously functioned for a short period


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during which the data was quickly extracted from NVivo (coding software) and saved in

multiple locations.

My laptop’s dis-functioning caused me to question our technological propensity as we had

been entrusting our data onto hardware of which we had limited understanding. The

mediating role of the laptop became apparent from the unconditional trust that I bestow on it

every night that my work will still be there when I switch it on the next day. There are only a

handful of people who I would trust with my coursework, yet bizarrely, I trust that the data

will be saved and re-accessible in the future on any computer I choose to use. This common

trait amongst students raises the question as to why we place more trust in technology than

we do in each other?

ANT aims to achieve generalised symmetry by not imposing asymmetric a priori

assumptions of causal relations between actors and actants (Latour 2005). It challenges the

myth that “a priori qualities and meanings inhere in technology regardless of context”

(Ackerman et al. 2012: 2378) and rather, technology’s qualities and meanings become

evident a posteriori through frequent inter-relations from which trust is engendered based on

the reliability of technology in meeting our expectations (Sommerville et al. 2006). Our

experience with any laptop makes us trust all laptops whilst our relations with some humans

do not make us trust all humans. Therefore, although the qualities and meanings are a

posteriori, they become universal and generalisable to technology.

The trust we endow on technology is largely due to its practical dependability, whereby

dependability is defined technically in terms of performance metrics and tolerances but

defined everyday as a generalised display of trust:

the determination of whether a system is trusted or not consists in the ways in

which people make everyday judgements about trust which may accord, but which


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may also not accord with criteria that designers and engineers use to determine the

dependability of a system (Button 2006: xii)

Trust is an occasioned matter and comes to light when it is systematically breached

(Button 2006). When my laptop broke, the occasion made me re-evaluate my belief and trust

in technology. Was failure mechanistic or did the machine purposefully, and rationally, break

in response to human induced faults?

Technology’s self-evolution provides agency to the machine implying the existence of an

environment attributable to the machine as well as one attributable to the human. Therefore

from the laptop’s perspective, the human is simply considered a system element equal to

other software and hardware (Sommerville et al. 2006). Humans cause technical problems for

the laptop because “failures in the development system as a result of human errors lead to the

introduction of faults in the operational system” (Ibid.: 177). The laptop is an actant to which

humans provide negative inputs potentially initiating a built-in system of self-preservation,

the worst outcome of which is rationally deduced self-destruction. One might consider the

machine’s reasoning to be based upon greater rationality than that of a human due to the level

of faults it has to achieve before the machine may destroy itself. Is the machine more rational

than its creator?

In the case of my laptop breaking, had I created too many faults in the operating system

initiating self-destruction? ANT allows us to reflect upon multiple perspectives that exist

surrounding each scenario accounting for multiple actors and actants. It therefore serves to

provide us with a greater understanding of the human/technology relationship on multiple

levels: the dependent human, the creator of problems and the self-evolution of the machine in

response to errors. If using Gouldner’s anthropocentric approach to reflexivity, I would focus

only upon the actor’s reaction to the laptop breakage whereas social reflexivity encompass

multi-dimensional focuses: the cause of breakage, the inter-relations between actors and


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actants, and the effect of the breakage upon networks. For example, my laptop’s death caused

me to post less frequent research project updates on Twitter due to the hassle of having to use

another technological device. This may have prevented us from connecting with other

individuals interested in the project who had been following our hashtag, #girlsaspirations.

Thus, the failure of my laptop is likely to have instigated chain reactions of consequences in

other networks. If the scenario were to re-occur, I would adopt a less self-centred viewpoint

and instead consider how I could minimise the impact upon all networks that the laptop is a

part of to ensure knowledge co-production can still occur.

Interactive Whiteboard

The interactive whiteboard also became a vital part of collaborative team work in which we

discovered more and more mediating qualities as the research project progressed. Whilst we

were unstable and dynamic, the solidity of the whiteboard around which we gathered

provided us with continuity throughout the 10 week process. Whilst we were sometimes

unreliable and late for meetings, the permanency of the whiteboard meant work could still be

done regardless of the number of actors present. Additionally, the whiteboard subdued the

power differentials between said actors because it provided opportunities for everyone to put

forward their opinions (Haug 2013). On the other hand, the singular laptop input capability of

the whiteboard enhanced a position of dominance within the group because the person using

the laptop was in a position of power from which they could define the outcomes of the

meeting. Arguably, the power differentials within the research group seemed to improve our

effectiveness and forged our team identity as each actor was dependent upon the role of the

others (Doorewaard and Brouns 2003).

The actant’s continuity caused essential differences to arise between the actors and the

technological actants a posteriori. We found ourselves servants of the whiteboard’s schedule

and availability, utilising its services by meeting in its predetermined environment twice a


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week to amalgamate our work into the final project. The trust we bestowed on the interactive

whiteboard, whilst similar to that bestowed on the laptops, centered around the concept of

permanency than dependency.

Smartphone

When editing the final report, various technologies were used by each actor. Two actors each

edited a hard copy of a draft version of the final report which they were supposed to scan and

upload to Dropbox to allow another two actors, myself included, to review it and to make

appropriate changes. One of the actors could not use a scanner and instead, used a smart

phone to take a photograph of each edited page and sent them to me via text message.

The “agglomeration of multiple digital devices” into the smartphone means its use varies

depending on the function required (Wang et al. 2014: 2). The smartphone provided a base in

the collaborative research from which apps and websites were accessed, journals were read,

notes were taken and team communication occurred. The smartphone’s diverse functionality

meant it became a key intermediary actant by facilitating access to other actors and actants

within the network.

Section Summary

As shown, technological hardware has become an integral mediator of collaborative research

projects as a result of the trust we bestow upon it. Our dependency upon technology is born

from continuous inter-relations which reinforces the permanency of machines within human

culture. Hardware is also an intermediary as it provides access to software necessary for

actors to communicate.


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Social Networking Sites and Technological Software: Consistency,

Irreplaceability and Access

Electronic devices enabled us to make use of five main software programmes/social

networking sites which were actants within our research: Facebook, Twitter, NVivo,

Microsoft Word and Dropbox. With no accessible substitutes, this section concentrates on the

role of Facebook and NVivo within the project.

Facebook

Social networking sites are the fastest-growing and most popular of the internet-based

technologies amongst students in Higher Education (Robyler et al. 2010) with over 95 % of

British students using them (Madge et al. 2009). Their use for formal academic

communication between faculty members and students is still limited, probably a result of

faculty perceiving the sites to be social rather than educational (Robyler et al. 2010).

However, despite the broad reluctance of academic staff’s to use social networking sites,

Facebook has been shown to be a significant aid in collaborative research and collaborative

learning by making distance communication between actors much easier (Irwin et al. 2012).

Facebook was the core communication technology used in our research project, enabling us

to work together when spatially distant. All actors had a virtual presence on Facebook

meaning it was the easiest way to communicate with one another as a group, share files and

ensure we were all working to a pre-established target. Documents were uploaded into our

Facebook group for other team members to view, edit and format into the final report. The

most significant use of this service occurred the weekend before submission with 10 files

uploaded (Figure 3).


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Figure 3: Our use of Facebook to share files. Photograph taken 07/12/14.

Selwyn (2009) conducted ethnographic research with 909 undergraduate students in a UK

University and found Facebook was used for five main purposes:

Recounting and reflecting on the university experience

Exchange of practical information

Exchange of academic information

Displays of supplication and/or disengagement

Banter (i.e.) exchange of humour and nonsense

In our case, Facebook was primarily used for the exchange of practical and academic

information. It proved vital for sharing room bookings, posting meeting times and creating

fieldwork events. In future group work, I would propose to use Facebook to organise events

due to its ease of use and wide applicability.


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Bikson and Eveland (2014) found that computer based communication technologies can help

reduce barriers to social interaction in working groups and broaden leadership roles.

Facebook certainly made social interaction much easier and therefore it could be argued that

it reduced social barriers when actors were spatially distant. However, it also created barriers

by inhibiting the use of alternative communication tools/actants, such as email. The broad

applicability of Facebook sometimes caused us to forget that other, more effective,

communication technologies were available, such as making a simple phone call.

However, despite their existence, using a myriad of technologies would have likely caused

incoherence as identified by previous research students (cf. Beacham 2014). All actors were

familiar with Facebook and subsequently comfortable using it for academic purposes. The

use of one technology for communication provided all actors with an accurate and identical

record of all dialogue. This allowed actors to keep track of progress, view files in a single

online location and easily refer to previous online conversations for the development of ideas.

Although substitutes exist for the functions of Facebook, such as Google Docs or Dropbox

for file exchange, Facebook provides a unique platform from which multiple services can be

performed in one online space. Thus, Facebook was the key actant for ensuring continuity

and consistency in our project from start to finish, even though it silenced other actants in the

process.

NVivo

NVivo was used within the research project to thematically analyse and categorise our

interview data to a greater level of detail (Rubin and Rubin 2012). In contrast to manual

paper coding, the digital coding within NVivo allowed all actors to access the data from a

central online database. The software mediated the research analysis by providing a platform

on which codes were amalgamated into themes, memos were linked to interview

transcriptions, quantitative data were linked to qualitative data and, all data sources were


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brought together. Using NVivo’s structured coding processes facilitated consistent analysis

by all actors thereby improving the validity of the results. On the other hand, the rigidity of

the programme’s functioning might be argued to limit creativity and predetermine findings

(John and Johnson 2000).

I was the only actor with prior knowledge of NVivo and therefore taught the other actors how

to use the software using the interactive whiteboard. By using NVivo in this project, the

software may be incorporated into multiple networks as other team members may use it in

their future research. Thus, actors can mediate the networks in which technological actants

exist and vice versa.

Cyborg: the Entwinement of Technology and Biology

Thus far, I hope to have enlightened the reader regarding the importance of technological

actants to the production of knowledge, and the strength of the inter-relations between actors

and actants. However, if the actor and actant are so intimately related, why have I not

examined them as one?

During the STS ontological turn, ANT was heavily criticised for presupposing foundational,

functional differences between entities. ANT “actively dismantle[s] our ontological pre-

suppositions as to what constitutes a ‘human’ or a ‘technology’”

(Cyborg Anthropology 2012), yet the categorisation of entities suggests their functional

differences cannot be overcome and therefore, actors and actants cannot be combined. As a

result, post-humanist theories have developed to overcome ANT’s functionalist approach to

relational studies and improve the versatility of non-foundational theories.

Donna Haraway was a key post-humanist scholar during the STS ontological turn and created

a partially related, feminist technoscience alternative to ANT (Gough 2004) which recognises

agency in intra-relations. She suggests that actors can become ‘cyborgs’ or mixtures of


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human and machine, where the biology and the technology become so intimately entangled

that they could not be riven (Harraway 1991). Haraway’s cyborg theory therefore

compliments ANT’s concept of generalised symmetry by breaking down asymmetric power

dualisms (Law 2009) whilst going one step further by mixing humans and non-humans

together (Gough 2004).

Within our research project, cyborgs can be conceived in the continual use, and presence, of

smartphones. Attributing agency to objects forces us to examine multiple, rather than

singular, realities in consideration of ontologies rather than ontology (Mol 2014). Ontologies

are entangled with one another, such as that of humans and technologies in cyborgs, thus

creating more than one but less than many versions of reality (Strathern, 2005).

Haraway’s post-humanist feminism provides an alternative, ontologically multiple approach

to ANT in which distinctions between humans and technology are dismantled. Within ANT,

the perception of reality held by each actor and actant is examined independently of other

alternative realities without “the privilege of a cyborg-like split vision” (Law 2003a: 9).

Although post-humanism develops ANT by allowing for the entanglement of entities and

recognising the fractional nature of reality (Law 2003a), this leads to a loss of categories

useful for distinguishing actants and actors. Post-humanism denies human distinctions and in

doing so, gives no guidance of how to define entities. In theory, there are no essential

differences between actors and actants, however as shown, differences are widely recognised

in practice. I have therefore used ANT in this work due to its theoretical recognition of

differences between actors and actants and the possibility of interdependency. Haraway’s

post-humanist theory collapses difference by allowing for the integration of multiple

ontologies, and therefore has limitations when applied to the examination of a network in

practice.


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Conclusions

Throughout this essay I have attempted to illustrate the pivotal role technology has played in

our research project. In doing so, I have highlighted the importance of the stable, reliable and

permanent nature of technology compared to the unstable, unreliable and temporary nature of

humans within knowledge co-production. Our a posteriori trust and dependability in

technology was clearly demonstrated when my laptop broke and threatened the successful

completion of the research task. Only following mechanistic failure do we question our

reliance upon technology and consider the similarities that exist between mankind and the

machine, from which one might plausibly conclude that the self-evolution of technology

during the 21st century has developed a more rational ‘thinker’ than its creator.

ANT provides a lens through which I have examined the inter-relations between technology

and humans and reflected upon the research process. A network was formulated in the

research process in which actors and actants became dependent upon each other. In the

absence of technology, we would have struggled to complete the research project and our

agency would have been reduced due to a lack of capacity. Our research project was

intrinsically dependent upon technology.

The traditional concept of anthropocentric reflexivity does not allow for the inclusion of

actants which, as shown, are vital for the co-production of knowledge due to the inter-

dependency between actants and actors. ANT expands the traditional notion of reflexivity to

include the social milieu and the network(s) in which knowledge is produced. ANT has

provided an important framework for analysis by recognising the functional role of

technology within a network and, allowing for the examination of inter-relations between

actors and actants. Post-humanism could be used to further examine the construction of


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cyborgs within the research project, however in comparison, ANT highlights actors and

actants inter-dependence rather than collapsing their differences.

The examination of inter-relations has provided an alternative reflexive account of the

research process and the construction of the research network ontology. Awareness of the

networks upon which the research project relies and the role of technology helps actants and

actors to effectively work together to construct research and the final report. As this essay has

shown, it is important to recognise the relations upon which we depend and take care to

maintain these throughout the project. We should try to not take technology for granted and

thus avoid the associated panic when an inter-relation breaks down.

Word Count: 3940


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