Comparación de las poblaciones de Austria y Francia.

Although ANT has been used in many research areas, it has encountered several criticisms from other sociological schools of thought. The aim of this sub-section is to assess the criticisms that are articulated around three main themes:

radicalisation of non-human entities, blurred boundaries, and feasibility of task. It

34 _{For more information on these approaches, see, for instance, J Rose and Jones (2005) and}

Engen, Pickering, and Walland (2016), respectively.

35 _{See Section 2 below for a discussion on the use of Goffman and Bourdieu in TS.} 36 _{See Chapter 2}

81 will also demonstrate how safeguards can be put in place in order to overcome each of these criticisms.

Firstly, ANT’s main critique is voiced against ANT’s radicalisation of non-human entities in the actor’s definition. As discussed in Section 1.1.1 above, any element can be considered an actor as long as it acts and/or modifies the other actors in a network. Dudhwala (2009, p. 5) argues that one of the main criticisms of ANT is that ANT researchers “emphasiz[e] the power of objects over humans.” In other words, the influence or emphasis put on non-human actors by ANT researchers tends to be disproportionate to that given to humans, and ANT researchers may run the risk of “reduc[ing] human actors to mere objects” (Ziemkendorf, 2007, p. 11). However, as Latour states,

ANT is not the empty claim that objects do things ‘instead’ of human actors: it simply says that no science of the social can even begin if the question of who and what participates in the action is not first of all thoroughly explored, even though it might mean letting elements in which, for lack of better

terms, we would call non-human. (italics in original) (Latour, 2005, p. 72) ANT’s aim is not a means to attribute more power to non-human actors, but to ensure that all the actors that take part in a network are accounted for. As Dudhwala (2009, p. 5) argues, this stance is innovative as sociology tends to “presume human relations [are] primary in history” (italics in original). Not emphasizing the power of humans over objects enables the ANT researcher to observe how the relationship between humans and non-human elements

intertwines. Indeed, a human actor may dictate how a non-human entity can act, but a non-human entity can also force the human actor to modify his behaviour.

A solution to help differentiate between human and non-human entities, and to move away from the issue of radicalisation may reside in defining the actors’ agency. Within the context of Information Systems, Rose and Truex (2000) define non-human actors as possessing perceived agency that is attributed by the

human actors. To some extent, this definition aligns with ANT’s definition of actors as the actions executed by human actors will provide non-human actors with some agency. Engen et al. (2016) take the argument further by arguing that human actors can demonstrate intentionality, which is not the case for non-human actors. In this instance, although non-human entities are accounted for in a network as actors, they are differentiated from human actors as they do not perform actions

82 intentionally. However, the advent of technologies raises further challenges

regarding non-human actors and intentionality, and it provides avenues for further research. For instance, captology and persuasive technology investigate

“interactive technologies that attempts to change [a person’s] attitudes and behaviour in some way” (Fogg, 1998, p. 225), where technologies and

intentionality may not be incompatible. Considering the type of technologies used in this study, which was described in Chapter 1, issues of radicalisation and non- human agency are limited to those where non-human actors possessing no interactive features are investigated. For this reason, it is not anticipated that agency will raise any concerns in this study as actors will be defined in ANT’s terms, which were discussed in Section 1.1.1 of this chapter. Nevertheless, this paves the way for avenues for further research so that ANT further defines non- human agency, in which the increasing use of interactive technologies and also the development of Artificial Intelligence are taken into account.

Secondly, ANT has been criticised as to whether it is a theory or a methodology. As Dudhwala (2009, p. 7) argues, “regardless of this insistence on being a method rather than a theory, the difference between methodology and theory is not so clear-cut, hence the terms are used interchangeably in most ANT texts.” As mentioned previously, ANT can be considered both as a theory and as a methodology, but controversies seem to stem from its interchangeable use in ANT-led studies. Monteiro (2000 para. 55) argues that ANT is in fact “a strategy of unpacking the complexity of everyday life.” For Monteiro, ANT can be considered a strategy that has theoretical and methodological implications to take into

consideration. However, in order to avoid ambiguities, it can be posited that the onus is on the ANT researchers to delimit clearly the scope, the definitions, and their understanding of ANT as a theory and/or methodology in their study.

Finally, Latour (2005, p. 25) asserts that “travelling with ANT, I am afraid to say, will turn out to be agonizingly slow”, as the researcher needs to carefully trace all the actors in a network. However, the researcher also needs to trace mediators that may have an indirect influence on an actor in a network. In other words, the researcher must consider previous networks and their participants to understand how an actor’s previous experience, for instance, may have influenced their action. In this context, the feasibility of retracing the actor’s previous networks

83 could be questioned, especially as Harman (2009) claims that there is an infinite list of mediators to reach when following actors in a network. The feasibility that no stone should be left unturned, as Latour (2005) argues, is therefore questionable at best. However, it could also be argued that this limitation in fact offers avenues for further research, and although tracing previous networks may be impractical, the ANT researcher’s study may still shed light on the actors’ association and their networks.

ANT has sparked various debates and criticisms. Some shortfalls identified can be attributed to ambiguities residing within ANT, or with the studies’ research designs. For these reasons, Section 1 delimited ANT’s definition, and it analysed how ANT differentiates from other sociological schools of thought. It finally highlighted some shortcomings and safeguards to put into place in order to overcome what ANT’s critics identified as shortcomings. The next section will examine how ANT has been used in Translation and Interpreting Studies.