Actor-network theory

Actor-network theory, usually shortened to ANT, is an approach to social theory and method that treats the social and natural worlds as constantly shifting networks of relationships. Nothing is taken to exist outside those relationships, so people, objects, ideas and processes all count as participants on the same level, and no outside social force is allowed to explain what the network members are doing at present. Its best known and most disputed claim is that nonhumans can act or take part in networks just as humans do. It grew out of science and technology studies through the work of Michel Callon, Madeleine Akrich, Bruno Latour and John Law, and is described as a material-semiotic method that maps relations between things and between concepts together. Supporters call it less a unified theory than a strategy for noticing the assumptions hidden in everyday terms.