NUEVAS PERSPECTIVAS SOBRE LOS PROCESOS DE LECTURA Y ESCRITURA.

This balanced attention given to ‘social’ and ‘natural’ actors is perhaps the most well-known ontological premise of ANT.Symmetryaccounts for the tensions that arise when social phenomena are traditionally considered in relation to humans and natural phenomena are traditionally considered in relation to objects. Symmetry is an approach for disturbing the dichotomous separation of phenomena as either social or natural. It asks researchers to consider how social phenomena are influenced by objects and natural phenomena are influenced by humans.

In one of his best known works, Latour (1996) tells the story of Aramis, a failed personal rapid transit (PRT) system in Paris. PRTs are above- or below-ground subway systems that use smaller scale vehicles meant for 3-10 passengers. By way of background, urban planners theorized PRT systems as a response to the rapid growth of cities following World War II. Pollution and traffic congestion had began to plague urban centres around the world, coupled with a decrease in capital in downtown areas as citizens migrated to the suburbs. Recognizing the need for an attractive commuting option, PRTs started being developed around the world as early as 1950 (Weiner, 2012). From 1969 - 1987, industry sponsors as well as the French government agency DATAR6 poured over 500 million francs developing and piloting Paris’ Aramis PRT.

After nearly two decades of research and development, though, Aramis failed. For Latour, this projects offered a ripe opportunity to explore the symmetry of human and nonhuman actors. Despite the many groups interested in the Aramis system and the technological advancements supporting its construction, Latour argues, the inability of human and nonhuman actors to form networks caused the project’s failure7. Latour central thesis is that ‘social’ explanations of Aramis’ failure were unsatisfying. Intangible and difficult concepts like ‘changes in policy’ or the ‘political landscape’ could never full explain what happened to Aramis. It had all of the people, funding, and technology needed to succeed. But still it failed. Finding out how and,

6_{Translated literally as the Inter-ministerial Delegation for Territorial Planning and Regional Attractiveness.} 7_{The term network will be described in the next section.}

24 CHAPTER2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY

Latour argues, is a question that can only be answered with symmetry. Neither a group of people nor a group of technologies led to the fall of Aramis. Humans and nonhumans acted together, and they deserved to be treated symmetrically.

Symmetry is a contentious idea. After several years of ANT study, I can commiserate. It is unsettling to reflect on ANT’s claim that nonhuman things negotiate with humans and other nonhuman things to create, assemble, organize and maintain networks. This difficulty accepting the agency of nonhumans is just the point ANT wishes to tease apart. Latour (1996, 2005) argues that we cannot conceive of the agency of a nonhuman actor because we are conditioned by the sociology of the social to think of agency as only a human characteristic. Oura priori conditioning says that nonhuman things cannot take on human characteristics.

Latour describes a scenario where the Aramis engineers were brainstorming the qualities of the automated controller that would ‘drive’ the Aramis personal rapid transit cars. They debated whether or not anthropomorphizing qualities of a human character would be appropriate. Would the Aramis be driven by an omniscient computer system or a physically present artificial, android driver—think of ‘Johnny Cab’ from the film Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990). The engineers were faced with literally “a matter of defining the human [anthropos] form [morphosis] of a nonhuman and deciding on the limits to its freedom” (Latour, 2005, p. 61). Machines and people work on one another in an ongoing negotiation.

Figure 2.1: Johnny Cab ©Chris Simon CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US

2.3. ANTONTOLOGY 25 planning an academic conference. Decorations, colours, signage, furniture and lighting are all nonhuman things that influence a given environment. The confluence of these elements influences the experiences and interactions of people in their environments. Latour describes the influence of these elements as the persuasion and collusion of both human and nonhuman actors in networks. Actors must win over other actors in order to see their networks succeed, and, where possible, these actors will resist new roles in order to maintain their extant agency.

In ANT, a sensitivity toward symmetry requires researchers accept two tenets. First, nonhuman objects have life cycles like humans. Instead of progressing through the human stages of life—being born, growing up and then dying—nonhumans move through stages of production: they begin as concepts, become projects, and eventually become objects. Objects are networks of relations manifested in the ideas, outcomes and needs of other networks. They are built on the projects, objects and institutions that have come before. Like humans, objects also recruit and enroll actors or, in the case of failed technologies like Aramis, degenerate, divide and dissolve into other networks. Second, researchers must accept that, like humans, a nonhuman object’s success isnot a given because it fills a ‘social need’ or ‘cultural need’. Networks of people and technologies must beinterested in an object for it to thrive and function. Elements “have to be recruited, seduced, modified, transformed, developed, brought on board”(Latour, 1996, p. 57). According to ANT, when social scientists explain the success or failure of people, concepts or objects as caused by social, political or cultural means, they miss important local explanations. The success or failure of human and nonhuman actors means strong or weak networks.