Bruno Latour: actor-network theory

• A. Individual human agents acting with intention
• B. Heterogeneous associations of humans and non-humans ✓
• C. Social classes and their economic relations
• D. Cultural meanings embedded in language

Why: Latour argues that society and science are built from networks linking humans and non-humans (objects, texts, instruments), so analysis must follow these heterogeneous associations rather than privileging humans or pre-given social structures.

• A. Only conscious human beings who make deliberate choices
• B. Any entity that makes a difference by acting or being acted upon within a network ✓
• C. A fixed social role assigned by institutions
• D. A scientific instrument used to measure natural phenomena

Why: Latour uses 'actant' to denote anything that modifies other elements in a network, whether human or non-human, so that agency is distributed rather than reserved for people with intentions.

• A. The French scallop fishermen of St Brieuc Bay
• B. The Berlin Pasteur experiments on anthrax
• C. The sleeping policeman (speed bump) that slows drivers ✓
• D. The Aramis electric car project in Paris

Why: Latour's 'Where Are the Missing Masses?' uses the speed bump, which delegates the social task of enforcing speed limits to a material object, showing how non-humans can act like social actors.

• A. A shift toward explaining scientific truth purely through social interests
• B. A move to study science as a social process while still treating the content of knowledge as open to empirical investigation ✓
• C. An abandonment of empirical research in favour of philosophical argument
• D. A focus on the political ideology of scientists

Why: The social turn, associated with the sociology of scientific knowledge and early Latour, sought to explain how knowledge is produced socially without assuming in advance that scientific content is either fully true or fully socially determined.

• A. Hiding scientific data to protect commercial secrets
• B. The process by which complex technologies or facts become taken for granted and their internal workings are ignored ✓
• C. Recording experiments in sealed containers for later analysis
• D. Rejecting a theory without evaluating its evidence

Why: Black-boxing occurs when a settled piece of knowledge or a working machine is treated as a single unit, with its contents and the controversies behind it forgotten, which is central to how networks stabilise.

• A. Only human beings who act intentionally in social situations
• B. Any entity, human or non-human, that makes a difference to the course of an action ✓
• C. A legal representative who acts on behalf of an institution
• D. A theatrical performer whose role is scripted by a social structure

Why: Latour defines an actant broadly as anything that modifies or redirects an action by making a difference. This includes humans, objects, animals, and technologies, so the term deliberately avoids privileging human intention.

• A. A speed bump that forces drivers to slow down ✓
• B. A written contract signed by two parties
• C. A spoken promise made between colleagues
• D. A government policy document read by citizens

Why: The speed bump is a classic Latour example: it delegates the social rule of slowing traffic to a material object, showing that non-humans can carry out the work of enforcing behavior. The other options involve human-to-human communication or are less central to his argument about material delegation.

• A. The formal election of representatives to speak for a community
• B. The transfer of an action or responsibility from a human to a non-human (or vice versa) ✓
• C. The hierarchical division of labor within a single organization
• D. The legal authority granted to a company to conduct business

Why: Delegation refers to how tasks or roles get shifted between human and non-human actants, such as a door closer taking over the job of making sure a door shuts. It is a key mechanism for understanding how agency is distributed across networks.

• A. Because non-humans are always more powerful than humans in social life
• B. Because both must be explained using the same analytical vocabulary, avoiding a prior assumption that only humans have agency ✓
• C. Because humans and machines have identical cognitive abilities
• D. Because social scientists must give equal time to every participant in an interview

Why: The principle of generalized symmetry means researchers use one set of concepts for both humans and non-humans, rather than assuming social explanations apply only to people. This lets analysts trace how agency is distributed across the whole network.

• A. Agency belongs only to conscious beings, while action can be performed by anything
• B. Agency is an attribute that actants possess inherently and independently of their relations
• C. Agency is produced through associations among actants rather than residing in any single one ✓
• D. Agency and action are identical, and neither applies to objects

Why: For Latour, agency is not a fixed property held by individuals but an effect generated through the connections and translations among actants in a network. It emerges from relations, which is why he speaks of networks of actors rather than isolated agents.

• A. The process of converting a scientific text from one language into another
• B. The process by which actors enrol others and link their interests, goals, and identities into a network ✓
• C. The mental act by which individuals interpret the meaning of scientific facts
• D. The standardization of measurement units across different laboratories

Why: For Latour (and Callon), translation describes how actors redefine and link together the interests of other actors, persuading them to align with a common project and thereby forming a network.

• A. Standardization
• B. Falsification
• C. Problematization ✓
• D. Quantification

Why: Callon's four moments are problematization, interessement, enrolment, and mobilization. Problematization is when an actor defines the problem and positions itself as indispensable to its solution.

• A. Because only human beings are considered actors in the network
• B. Because non-human entities such as objects, documents, and machines are also treated as actors that shape outcomes ✓
• C. Because the network is always controlled by a single dominant actor
• D. Because networks exist only in the minds of the researchers who study them

Why: ANT extends the concept of agency to non-humans as well as humans. Objects, instruments, texts, and organisms can make a difference to how a network holds together, so they count as actors.

• A. It is a physical location where all research data must be stored
• B. It is a point that all actors must pass through to reach their goals, making the focal actor indispensable ✓
• C. It is a legal requirement that all participants sign before joining a project
• D. It is a measurement threshold that determines when an experiment is complete

Why: An obligatory passage point is a situation in which the interests of other actors can only be met by going through the focal actor, which strengthens that actor's position and helps stabilize the network.

• A. The network becomes invisible to outsiders and no longer requires maintenance
• B. The network's internal complexity is hidden, and it is treated as a single unquestioned fact or entity ✓
• C. The network collapses because its actors no longer trust one another
• D. The network is transferred entirely to a computer system

Why: Black-boxing occurs when the work of building a network is hidden behind a stable result, so that users treat it as a given. Latour uses this idea to show how scientific facts and technologies appear self-evident once their making is forgotten.

• A. A physical container used to store laboratory samples safely
• B. A piece of established knowledge or technology whose internal complexity is hidden from view once it is accepted and used ✓
• C. A term for any experiment whose results cannot be reproduced
• D. A metaphor for the unknown regions of the natural world that science has yet to explore

Why: Latour uses 'black box' to describe how a finished scientific fact or machine is treated as a single unit, its inputs and internal controversies no longer visible, so people use it without questioning how it was built.

• A. It becomes more reliable because its components are clearly understood
• B. Its contents are revealed to be simple and uncontroversial
• C. The network of human and non-human actors that built it, and the disputes involved, become visible again
• D. It is automatically discarded as false knowledge

• A. Because scientists deliberately conceal their methods from the public
• B. Because facts are written in a secret language only experts can read
• C. Because once a claim is stabilized and widely accepted, its history of construction is forgotten and it is taken for granted
• D. Because black boxing is required by law to protect intellectual property

• A. Only human beings with conscious intentions
• B. Only scientists and institutions with formal authority
• C. Both human and non-human entities, such as instruments, texts, organisms, and machines, that shape outcomes
• D. Only non-human objects, since humans cannot be studied scientifically

• A. It shows that science is neutral and free from social influence
• B. It reveals that scientific authority can rest on hidden negotiations, so questioning black boxes is a way of examining whose interests and choices shaped accepted knowledge
• C. It argues that politicians should be trained in laboratory methods
• D. It suggests that the public should trust experts without exception

• A. Facts are discovered fully formed in nature and simply reported by scientists
• B. Facts are produced through laboratory practices, instruments, and inscriptions rather than existing independently
• C. Facts are determined entirely by the social hierarchy of the scientific community
• D. Facts are purely subjective opinions with no connection to material reality

• A. The engraving of a scientist's name on published papers
• B. Written or graphic traces, such as graphs, printouts, and diagrams, produced by instruments that can be manipulated and combined
• C. The formal legal contract signed between a laboratory and its funders
• D. The verbal agreement reached among researchers during a meeting

• A. Only human beings who act intentionally within social groups
• B. Any entity, human or non-human, that acts or makes a difference within a network
• C. A professional actor hired to perform in scientific demonstrations
• D. A chemical compound that triggers a reaction in an experiment

• A. Because laboratories are isolated from all outside influence, making them neutral
• B. Because it is where scientific claims are constructed and where the links between humans, instruments, and materials become visible
• C. Because laboratories are the only places where mathematics is actually used
• D. Because laboratory work is identical across all disciplines and cultures

• A. Hiding experimental data from the public to protect proprietary information
• B. The process by which a complex set of processes becomes a settled fact or device that is taken for granted and no longer questioned
• C. Recording experiments on video for later analysis
• D. The physical storage of hazardous chemicals in sealed containers

• A. Nature and society must be kept strictly separate, with science describing nature and politics governing society. ✓
• B. Humans and non-humans are equal participants in a single network of associations.
• C. Religion provides the only legitimate source of knowledge about the material world.
• D. Knowledge is entirely socially constructed with no connection to external reality.

Why: Latour argues that modernity rests on a constitution that separates nature (the domain of science and objects) from society (the domain of politics and subjects), even though in practice humans constantly produce hybrids that blur this boundary.

• A. A purely natural object that has been untouched by human activity.
• B. A mixture of nature and culture, such as the ozone hole or a genetically modified crop, that cannot be neatly classified as either. ✓
• C. A human being who has been replaced by a machine.
• D. A political alliance between scientists and religious leaders.

Why: Hybrids are entities that are simultaneously natural and social, like the ozone hole, which is both a physical phenomenon and a product of chemical, political, and economic networks. Modernity's constitution makes such entities hard to recognize and name.

• A. The work of making hybrids invisible by sorting them into the separate categories of nature or society while proliferating mixtures in practice. ✓
• B. The chemical process used in laboratories to isolate pure substances.
• C. A religious ritual that cleanses believers of sin.
• D. The democratic removal of corrupt politicians from office.

Why: Latour calls purification the work of 'translation' being disguised as pure separation: moderns sort hybrids into the nature or society pigeonholes, which hides the mixing that continuously occurs, even as the mixtures multiply.

• A. Because modern technology has not yet been fully developed.
• B. Because modern societies have failed to achieve democracy.
• C. Because the modern constitution's separation of nature and society has never matched the actual practice, which has always involved hybrids and networks. ✓
• D. Because pre-modern societies were more advanced than modern ones.

Why: Latour contends that the purifying constitution of modernity describes what moderns say they do, but their actual practices constantly generate hybrids. Thus modernity's self-understanding and its practice have never coincided.

• A. Purification eliminates hybrids entirely, so they no longer exist after modernity begins.
• B. Purification and hybridization are separate processes that never interact.
• C. Hybridization is the only real process, and purification is merely a theory with no effects.
• D. Purification is the rule-bound separation of nature and society, while hybridization continues to multiply in practice, so the two proceed in parallel and the more purification is claimed, the more hybrids accumulate. ✓

Why: Latour argues that the two work together: moderns purify in theory while hybridization accelerates in practice. The gap between the two is what makes modernity paradoxical, and why he says we have never been modern.

• A. The social is a distinct domain of human relations that explains all other phenomena
• B. The social is not a pre-given domain but is produced through associations among heterogeneous actors, human and non-human ✓
• C. The social is reducible to individual psychological motivations and rational choices
• D. The social is fixed by cultural norms that remain stable across time and place

Why: Latour argues that 'the social' is not a special substance or domain that explains things; it is the temporary, traceable product of associations among diverse actors, including objects, texts, and technologies.

• A. Only conscious human beings who intentionally act on others
• B. Any entity that modifies, redirects, or makes a difference to the course of action of others, human or non-human ✓
• C. A legal representative who acts on behalf of an institution
• D. A passive resource that is manipulated by active human agents

Why: Latour uses the term 'actant' to avoid presupposing human intentionality. Anything that makes a difference in an action, such as a door closer or a speed bump, counts as an actant.

• A. Because social forces never travel without being transformed, shifted, or reinterpreted by each actor they pass through ✓
• B. Because translation refers only to linguistic conversion between languages
• C. Because transmission is the more accurate term for describing how technology spreads
• D. Because translation implies that actors always perfectly preserve the meaning they receive

Why: Latour contends that when something passes from one actor to another it is modified in the process. Translation captures this transformation, whereas transmission wrongly suggests an unchanged, lossless carrying of force.

• A. A study of formal organizations and their hierarchical structures
• B. A method of tracing the connections and controversies through which collectives are assembled and stabilized ✓
• C. A survey method that measures attitudes toward social institutions
• D. A theory that social groups are defined by shared identities and common values

Why: Latour proposes that sociologists follow the associations and controversies that build collectives, rather than assuming a pre-existing 'social' context. The goal is to trace how groups form, rather than to invoke ready-made social categories.

• A. Because it is a symbol of social status within institutions
• B. Because it is a legal document that enforces building regulations
• C. Because it delegates a form of behavioral control, such as ensuring doors close, that would otherwise require human supervision ✓
• D. Because it has consciousness and can choose how to close doors

Why: Latour's example shows that technical objects embody prescriptions for behavior. The door closer takes over a task (enforcing closure) that a human porter once performed, illustrating how non-humans participate in social order.