Actor-network Research Articles

Interconnected influence: Unraveling purdue pharmaceutical's role in the global response to the opioid crisis

BackgroundThe global pharmaceutical industry has a long history of prioritizing profits over public health through widespread practices such as price gouging, deceptive marketing, and fraud. A prominent example of this issue is the mislabeling and mass-marketing of OxyContin by Purdue Pharmaceuticals (Purdue) that catalyzed the opioid crises in and beyond the United States. MethodsGuided by Actor-Network Theory, this case study employs Visual Network Analysis to map the actors-networks involved in responding to the harms caused by Purdue. Data was generated from peer-reviewed and grey literature published between 2007 and 2022 (n = 40) and imported into Gephi visualization software where centrality metrics were applied. ResultsA total of 39 actors and 99 relationships were visualized based on the relational thinking that actors who are heavily interconnected with others are rendered important. Centrality measures identified the socio-technical centrality of Purdue in influencing the response to the harms it caused. Purdue exerted influence through various avenues, most prominently through the creation and cooptation of pain advocacy groups, their close ties with United States elected officials, and through embedding pro-opioid messaging in international guidance documents. In doing so, Purdue was able to extend the reach and impact of their opioid promotion, while simultaneously limiting the capacity of regulatory bodies to pursue accountability and implement policies to mitigate opioid-related harms. ConclusionThis study advances understandings of the complex interplay between transnational pharmaceutical companies, global health systems, regulatory bodies, and public health. In doing so, we underscore the need for stronger regulation and increased transparency surrounding the interactions between pharma, patient groups, governments, and international organizations to better address and prevent future harms.

GWO-ANFIS-RD3PG: A reinforcement learning approach with dynamic adjustment and dual replay mechanism for building energy forecasting

Reliable prediction of building energy consumption is essential for effective and sustainable energy management. Traditional forecasting methods, however, face challenges when dealing with sudden changes in energy consumption. To address the above-mentioned issue, we introduce the GWO-ANFIS-RD3PG prediction model in this paper. This model aims to ensure global forecasting accuracy while minimizing prediction errors at sudden change points. A Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) algorithm with the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) is proposed to predict the energy consumption type and its fluctuation magnitude for the next time step. Within the Recurrent Dual Experience Replay Buffer DDPG (RD3PG) prediction module, we employ Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), as the actor network in the Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG), to account for long-term dependencies in time series data. Notably, we introduce an adaptive action modification mechanism that allows the agent to optimize actions based on the output of the aforementioned ANFIS, enabling real-time adjustments during sudden change. To further enhance the model’s performance, we adopt a dual experience replay mechanism to store data samples from sudden change points, capturing insight information during these anomalies. Experimental results on two real-world datasets demonstrate that this method reduces MAE by 5.81% and 13.47%, and RMSE by 5.69% and 15.21% compared to the state-of-art models, showing the significance of the proposed method for energy efficiency improvement in real-world building operations.

Unveiling the missing innovation – an actor–network theory analysis of regulatory efforts towards universal design

Unveiling the missing innovation – an actor–network theory analysis of regulatory efforts towards universal design

Alternative organization without vertical hierarchies of spatial scale?

Vertical hierarchies of spatial scale—where society in general, and organizations in particular, are differentiated into levels of spatial size—have often been criticized by those encouraging alternatives to capitalist organizing. These vertical scalings are said to promote authoritarianism, a monolithic capitalist economic system, uneven concentrations of social and organizational power and wealth, and ecologically destructive organizational growth. Consequently, so the argument goes, alternative organizing must scale horizontally whereby smaller organizations autonomously associate together into loose networks or federations. The aim of this contribution is to problematize such critiques of vertical hierarchies of scaling for alternative organization. To do so, I combine Management and Organization Studies (MOS) scholarship on scaling alternative organization with two theorizations of the politics of scale in human geography—namely those derived from Neo-Marxist Political Economy and Actor-Network Theories. My argument is that all those looking to understand and encourage the scaling of alternatives to capitalist organizing should engage with and not simply reject vertical scalar hierarchies.

Under the iceberg of “one-stop”: explore multi-actor engagement in one-stop digital cultural platforms through actor-network and commons theories

PurposeThis study investigates the roles and interactions of various actors of one-stop digital culture platforms (ODCPs) by applying actor-network theory (ANT).Design/methodology/approachData were collected from focus group interviews with 19 participants and over 20 policy texts related to the digitization of cultural services in China. Utilizing ANT as the analytical framework, we employed the grounded theory to analyze the dataset.FindingsThe empirical results indicate that: (1) governments, cultural institutions, enterprises and users each play dual roles, contributing to the functionality and development of ODCPs; (2) introduces the theory of commons to reconceptualize ODCPs as commons, highlighting the need for collective management and shared responsibility in the governance of ODCPs.Originality/valueThis study identifies and elaborates on the different roles of stakeholders and addresses conceptual ambiguities within ODCP projects. By introducing the theory of commons into the governance of ODCPs, this research provides new theoretical guidance for decision-makers and practitioners involved in ODCP projects.

(Re)framing used goods: marketing strategies in second-hand retail

PurposeThis paper aims to identify marketing strategies incentivizing consumers to purchase used goods and explain how socio-material arrangements frame second-hand retail (SHR). The growing significance and professionalization of SHR underscore the pivotal role of marketing, necessitating an exploration of how second-hand stores can stimulate the consumption of used items.Design/methodology/approachEthnographically inspired fieldwork was conducted across a second-hand shopping mall with 17 stores in Sweden, utilizing actor-network theory (ANT) concepts to examine marketing activities and how these form strategies.FindingsThe findings reveal two marketing strategies: enrolling sustainability supporters and second-hand shoppers. Additionally, the findings provide examples of how SHR can be framed as environmentally friendly, socially sustainable, value for money, creatively experiential and facilitating sustainable consumer behavior.Practical implicationsUnderstanding the framing processes inherent in second-hand retailing presents opportunities to reinforce the transition to a circular economy. Second-hand retailers can leverage marketing to imbue used goods with greater significance for consumers, which necessitates marketing competencies.Originality/valueThe paper delves into activities that enhance the attractiveness of used goods, a research area that warrants increased attention.

Sporting mega-events, physical activity, and Actor Network Theory: Mapping actants of movement at the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

This article explores the potential of Bruno Latour's Actor Network Theory (ANT) for rethinking the relationship between sporting mega-events and physical activity (PA). Engaging with ANT as theory and methodology, we explore how PA is a result of human–nonhuman interactions occurring during and around sporting events. More specifically, based upon a collaborative ethnography of the 2023 FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) Women's World Cup (FWWC23), we focus on humans and nonhumans (football, physical spaces, and seats) as actants (intermediaries and mediators) that enabled and/or constrained PA. In so doing, we provide an alternative to PA initiatives (such as the collaboration between FIFA and the World Health Organization with the BeActive #BringtheMoves campaign at the FWWC23) that focus on human intentionality and view the body as controllable. Instead, in this article we recognize PA as a complex phenomenon dis/re/assembling as objects, humans, and actants interact in (un)expected ways. Simultaneously, we discuss both the affordances and challenges offered by ANT in sporting mega-event literature and for research and policies that link sporting events and PA.

Mapping epistemic pluralism: A network analysis of discursive practices in communities promoting refused knowledge about healthcare and wellbeing

This article presents an analysis of discourses performed in communities that share and disseminate knowledge refused by institutional science. The study focuses on an online community concerned with alkaline water, food, and lifestyle, aiming at understanding how promoters of refused knowledge in this community enrol other forms of knowledge, including science. Theoretically, this work is framed in Science & Technology Studies, and in the tradition of actor-network theory, situating itself in a recent turn that takes epistemic instability and pluralism into due consideration, thus overcoming opaque views of the opposition between science and non-science. Empirically, this fine-grained analytic purpose is addressed by a mixed-method strategy in which discursive practices are observed through a web-ethnography conducted between January 2020 and December 2021 on the relevant online spaces and then analysed qualitatively and quantitively by means of formal techniques. Relying on the tools of social network analysis, the discursive space of the community under study is formalised as a two-mode network of knowledge claims and heterogeneous actors enrolled in discourse to sustain those claims. Then, community detection is performed to map the different assemblages of claims and actors and the relevant repertoires characterising those assemblages. Finally, multiple correspondence analysis applied to two-mode networks is used to highlight the dimensions of concern and meaning expressed in the knowledge organisation of this community.

Between institutions and narratives: Understanding collective action in innovation policy processes

AbstractExplanations for collective action focus on both institutions and narratives. On the one hand, institutional approaches emphasize the role of rules that guide human behavior. On the other hand, accounting for the narratives through which policy actors make sense of their actions helps in understanding strategic behavior. However, applying institutional and narrative perspectives together is daunting, in part because there has not been a common way to integrate the two approaches. In this article, we draw from Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) to elaborate a novel analytical approach that combines ANT with the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) and the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). We use IGT's and NPF's analytical categories in a processual perspective to examine how policy‐makers strategically use institutions and narratives to create and stabilize a network of actors in innovation policy processes. We illustrate our approach through an in‐depth analysis of the development of a smart city.

Hybrid learning-based visual path following for an industrial robot

Abstract This study proposes a novel hybrid learning approach for developing a visual path-following algorithm for industrial robots. The process involves three steps: data collection from a simulation environment, network training, and testing on a real robot. The actor network is trained using supervised learning for 500 epochs. A semitrained network is then obtained at the $250^{th}$ epoch. This network is further trained for another 250 epochs using reinforcement learning methods within the simulation environment. Networks trained with supervised learning (500 epochs) and the proposed hybrid learning method (250 epochs each of supervised and reinforcement learning) are compared. The hybrid learning approach achieves a significantly lower average error (30.9 mm) compared with supervised learning (39.3 mm) on real-world images. Additionally, the hybrid approach exhibits faster processing times (31.7 s) compared with supervised learning (35.0 s). The proposed method is implemented on a KUKA Agilus KR6 R900 six-axis robot, demonstrating its effectiveness. Furthermore, the hybrid approach reduces the total power consumption of the robot’s motors compared with the supervised learning method. These results suggest that the hybrid learning approach offers a more effective and efficient solution for visual path following in industrial robots compared with traditional supervised learning.

Merging Worklife Organizational Innovation and Educational Programs: Promoting Continuous Adaptations to the Global Economy

AbstractThis essay honors the accomplishments of Morten Levin both by analyzing some of the key innovative educational programs he created and by extending the elements of that analysis to two other cases, that of Aker Solutions and the Mondragon Cooperatives. We acknowledge that the relationship between higher education institutions and manufacturing-service-public sector organizations is multiplex and has undergone multiple transformations over the decades. It is also affected by the national political economy and the scope and diversity of the higher education sector itself. Creating sustained and yet dynamic relations among these actors in service of both higher education and the efficacy and innovativeness of worklife organizations is a significant challenge which all the cases we present have addressed with some success. What the efforts have in common is a democratizing action research built on an ethos and worldview of the benefits of collaboration and co-creation, and organizational capabilities built on Actor Network strategies to promote collaboration and innovation as a way of adapting to the rapidly changing world conditions effectively. We argue that there are many more such examples in existence and that a key role for action research is to document them, show how more collaborative and adaptive organizational processes are possible and show how neoliberal New Public Management is an authoritarian “wrong turn” with dire consequences. Ultimately, this essay is an argument against the “iron cage” view of bureaucracy as always coercive and stultifying and show that it is not bureaucracy but the authoritarian approaches to creating coercive bureaucracies that destroy organizational collaborations and innovation.

What Next for Actor Network Theory? Inventing around Latour on a planet in distress

This is a reflection piece on the theme ‘what will happen to actor-network theory (ANT) after Latour?’ We distinguish three scenarios but focus on the one we see as the least probable but most interesting for sociology and related disciplines. With inspiration from the anthropologist Marilyn Strathern, we think of this third scenario as a way of “inventing around” Latour. In this scenario, classical ANT tenets are prolonged and refracted through Latour's later work on modes of existence and critical zones. This mutant ANT is subject to further transformations through encounters with empirical situations and concepts from many other places. We use two brief cases for illustration. The first considers the empirical potentials and possible pitfalls of Latour's modes of existence in relation to the emergence of carbon markets as a form of Anthropocene politics. The second examines recent urban upheavals and transformations in Bangkok through the lens of urban critical zones, which make visible problems of co-existence that shade into pluriversal cosmopolitics because the city is full of beings that are both modern and amodern. These cases point the way to a scenario in which ANT is still unfinished, and far from “uncritical”. It is an “indisciplinary” scenario, where ANT with sociology and adjacent disciplines venture into complex landscapes of planetary ecological disruptions and postcolonial tensions without any false protection from certified theory and pre-defined politics.

A ‘translation’ perspective on socio-ecological displacement: insights from the 2014 Tokwe-Mukorsi flood in Zimbabwe

With socio-ecological displacement increasingly becoming an existential threat to many communities worldwide, there is a need for deepened understanding of salient socio-political dynamics that complicate displacement processes. Such understanding is crucial for reducing the risks associated with relocation as well as enhancing relocation management and building resilience among victims. This article utilises the concept of ‘translation’ in Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to examine the socio-political dynamics that characterised the 2014 Tokwe-Mukorsi forced displacement of over 3000 rural households in Southern Zimbabwe. Drawing on the narrations of victims in focus group discussions and of government officials (key-informants), as well as on relevant secondary data, the article engages the shifts in position by the dominant actor in the displacement and relocation processes, not to mention the imposition of new interpretations of reality, including the redefinition and distribution of roles, with a view to highlighting the ultimate determinants of resettlement outcomes. The paper found, in the main, that the power struggles between protagonists and the impact of those struggles on the relocation process, as well as the state’s dominance, ultimately exacerbated the victims’ distress.

Open comments on Blok & Bruun Jensen's paper ‘What next for actor network theory? Inventing around Latour on a planet in distress’

My comment mostly underlines the inadequacy of the tone of the paper, very critical about the way Latour has been criticized on one side, and somehow dogmatic on the other, in the way the authors present. Latour's propositions, from Actor Network Theory (ANT) to the Inquiry into the Modes of Existence (IME), though himself conceived them as proposals to be discussed, modified, criticized, something himself and Callon had done very early about ANT, in 1999.

What may be: policy enactment in education, a new conceptual framework with actor-network theory

ABSTRACT In this article, I present a new conceptual framework constructed using sensemaking theory and Actor–Network Theory (ANT) to demonstrate layers of policy enactment. The framework reimagines policy enactment as a sociomaterial ethico-political activity by considering the factors that mediate policy enactment and the assemblages facilitating the translation of policy into action. The framework forms an idealised cycle, using concepts from sensemaking theory including sensegiving and the system builder and Actor-Network Theory; problematisation, interessement, enrolment, mobilisation and stabilisation. This framework is then applied to research focussing on a forming Multi-Academy Trust and the attempt to establish joint 6th form provision. This highlights the potential human, contextual and material difficulties faced by schools as they attempt to translate national policy into practice and work together. The conceptual framework provides an alternative way of thinking about policy enactment, one that allows a reflection on the difficulties associated with translating policy into practice whilst also offering insights to help these to be overcome.

Policy, system and service design influence on healthcare inequities for people with end-of-life chronic obstructive airways disease, their support people and health professionals

BackgroundPeople with end-of-life chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) experience debilitating physical limitations, with a high mortality rate. Our research has shown health system design and delivery leads to inequitable outcomes. Enabling people with end-of-life COPD, their support people, and health professionals to partner in setting the agenda for resource allocation may inform health service improvement.DesignQualitative methodology utilising focus groups including patients, family, friends, informal support people, health care workers and professionals.MethodsThe analysis, utilising critical theory and Actor-Network theory, positioned people with severe COPD, their support people and health professionals as experts in end-of-life care. Analyses triangulated these perspectives, and were reviewed by the research investigators and an expert reference group.ResultsParticipants (n=74) in seven focus groups reported their experiences of inequity within the healthcare system. Equity was an overarching phenomenon identified by participants, with three specific themes being described: policy design, system design, and service design.ConclusionExperiences of patients, their support people and health professionals as experts in end-of-life COPD care can inform health systems and health service design to address current inequities in funding and delivery of care for end-of-life COPD.

Modes of existence, capitalism, and lived socio-ecological struggles: Whither actor-network theory in a world in crisis?

In response to the forum article ‘What Next for Actor-Network Theory?’, this piece takes up the suggestion that a fruitful way forward for actor-network theory (ANT) would be to engage with ideas ‘originating from elsewhere’, such as from other theoretical traditions. Examining this, I suggest that the version of ANT brought into such dialogue matters, and that – contrary to the suggestion of the forum article – Latour's late ‘modes of existence’ project is not the most conducive for this purpose. I then assess the prospects for a productive cross-fertilisation between a less meta-ontological articulation of ANT and other theoretical repertoires, identifying an obstacle to this in the tendency of ANT to use other traditions of social thought largely as a foil against which to define itself, which mitigates against proper engagement with the strengths of those traditions. Taking a lead from the examples discussed in the forum article, I flesh this out by highlighting some of the shortcomings of ANT, relative to political ecology for instance, as a way of understanding socio-ecological relations and conflicts, in part because of its habitual disdain for certain sorts of ‘grand abstractions’, in particular, ‘capitalism’. I argue conversely that such abstractions not only speak to the lived realities of historically embedded structural violence and dispossession at the heart of socio-ecological struggles, but are crucial for situating people's lives in the context of wider relations and processes, something one might well deem a key purpose of sociology.

Calculated Randomness, Control and Creation: Artistic Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The recent emergence of generative AI, particularly prompt-based models, and its embedding in many social domains and practices has revived the notion of co-creation and distributed agency already familiar in art practice and theory. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and its central notion of agency, this article explores the extent to which the collaboration between the artist and AI represents a new form of co-creation and distributed agency. It compares AI art with artistic movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Minimalism and Conceptual Art, which also challenged the notion of the autonomous artist and her agency by incorporating randomness on the one hand and rule-based systems on the other. In contrast, artistic practice with AI can be described as an iterative process of creative feedback loops, oscillating between order and disorder, (calculated) randomness and calculation, enabling a very specific kind of self-reflection and entanglement with the alienation of one’s own perspective. Furthermore, this article argues that most artistic projects that explore and work with AI are, in their own specific way, a demonstration of hybridity and entanglement, as well as the distribution of agency between the human and the non-human, and can thus be described as a network phenomenon.

The Process and Significance of Human and Object Networks in the BTS Phenomenon : BTS, Actor-Network Theory, and the Rhizomic System

The Process and Significance of Human and Object Networks in the BTS Phenomenon : BTS, Actor-Network Theory, and the Rhizomic System

Consistency of Youth Identity Construction in Media Texts: Development and Adaptation of Actor-Network Theory for Empirical Media Research (Сase Study)

The formation of youth identity in communication is on the agenda of many areas of humanitarian knowledge. We analyzed communication within the framework of an educational media project, which resulted in the construction of the expected identity. In the course of the analysis, we used a conceptual model of communication that combines the stages of identity construction in interaction with the environment and the actions of actors from the standpoint of the methodology of actor-network theory. A three-dimensional model of communication is presented for the first time, where actors and actants change the communicative process by their affordances and resistance. The obtained results allow to delineate the necessary actions of human and non-human actors at each stage of communication and identity integration, giving the opportunity to justify a new theoretical direction in the study of the problems of identity construction through media communication. The methodology requires further testing, but there are already positive results. The tendency of actualization of urban identity of young people depending on the focus on interaction with the heritage of the city and according to the stages of communication, according to the conceptual model, has been established. The article is intended for specialists in mass communication and journalism, and will also be useful for those interested in the ontological turn in humanitarian knowledge, actor-network theory, discourse and media text analysis.