John Law (sociologist) explained

John Law
Birth Date:1946 5, df=yes
Alma Mater:University of Edinburgh
Thesis Title:Specialties in Science: A Sociological Study of X-ray Protein Crystallography
Main Interests:Actor-network theory
Principal Ideas:Heterogeneous engineering
Major Works:"Provincialising STS" (2015)
"STS as Method" (2015)
After Method (2004)
Aircraft Stories (2002)
"Notes on Materiality and Sociality" (with Annemarie Mol, 1995)
A Sociology of Monsters (editor, 1991)
"Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: the Case of the Portuguese Expansion" (1987, in The Social Construction of Technological Systems)
Awards:John Desmond Bernal Prize
Website:http://heterogeneities.net/
Discipline:Sociology, Science and technology studies
Footnotes:A director of the ESRC funded Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change

John Law (born 16 May 1946),[1] is a sociologist and science and technology studies scholar, currently on the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. Law coined the term Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in 1992 when synthesising work done with colleagues at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation.[2]

Actor-network theory

See main article: articles and Actor-Network Theory. Actor-network theory, sometimes abbreviated to ANT, is a social science approach for describing and explaining social, organisational, scientific and technological structures, processes and events. It assumes that all the components of such structures (whether these are human or otherwise) form a network of relations that can be mapped and described in the same terms or vocabulary.

Developed by STS scholars Michel Callon, Madeleine Akrich and Bruno Latour, Law himself, and others, ANT may alternatively be described as a 'material-semiotic' method. ANT strives to map relations that are simultaneously material (between things) and 'semiotic' (between concepts), for instance, the interactions in a bank involve both people and their ideas, and computers. Together these form a single network.

Professor John Law was one of the directors of the ESRC funded Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change.

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Notes and References

  1. Web site: Law, John, 1946- . Library of Congress . 13 February 2015 . data sheet (b. 5/16/46) .
  2. Akrich . Madeleine . 2023 . Actor Network Theory, Bruno Latour, and the CSI . Social Studies of Science . en . 53 . 2 . 169–173 . 10.1177/03063127231158102 . 36840444 . 0306-3127 . "It was John Law who, from an inside-outside position, did an important job of synthesizing all the work developed at the CSI at the time taking up the term ANT (Law, 1992), a term whose origin is difficult to trace but which stems from the ‘actor-network’ used by Michel Callon in his analysis of the electric vehicle.".

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