Dear Jeremy,
Many thanks again - especially for your patience!
Does this mean that an action always has an actant and an actee?
Or can one have an actant with no actee?
Or is it only the action that is of interst? In that case, would it imply
ant as an 'action network theory', which one might expect to represent
theories about networks of actions?
Best regards,
Terry
-----Original Message-----
From: jeremy hunsinger [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, 22 April 2009 10:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: actor-networks Re: Discourse on object level
Usually sequence is part of the narrative of the description of events,
which is part of the write up. it is usually handled by the methods of
analysis you use, such as ethnography, which keeps track of its own time.
however, you can see how that becomes a problem when you start talking about
atemporal methods like semiotics, there you probably wouldn't use time,
because it isn't really part of the method's normal analysis. but in
discourse analysis time is also present as one tracks the changes (actions)
in the discourse over time. now here's a trick that i've proposed and i
blame terry pratchett for the idea, but time... can also be accounted for as
an actor in actor-network if you plan on doing that. i could see how time
could become an actor if you were analyzing say an emergency room
where time acts in all kinds of relations to all kinds of things.
however, for the most part, people don't seem to use time as an actor, and
they just use the temporal relations common to the method they are using.
the problem might be with your construction below (and my prior loose
speaking)... which represents an actor/action divide. some actor- network
take the term actant from semiotics, Griemas i think, but maybe propp
before. they use actant to resolve the issue where people assume there is
an actor without action. There is no necessary divide between actor/action;
the 'actor' does not become apparent until the 'action'. That is to say,
that there are actions which are relations, and actants acting, but without
the action, we have no relations, and
thus no actor. Actants are things acting, there is no actor, without
the action, and thus no temporal divide.
In my prior example below, i posited the existence of an actor without
acting, the way we would do that would be to have actions ongoing (which
almost always happens) from that actant. usually any given actant is doing
many things in the system and the problem is sorting it out.
On Apr 22, 2009, at 9:52 AM, Terence Love wrote:
> Hi Jeremy,
>
> Thank you. That is really helpful and clarifies a lot.
>
> Wondering how in ant you handle information about sequence and time
> when an action happens?
>
> I can see how you correlate an action to an actor and identify classes
> of relationship between actors but identifying the sequence of actions
> and how they relate to identified actors, actor relationships and
> actions I'm unclear on.
>
> Best wishes and thanks,
>
> Terry
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jeremy hunsinger [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, 22 April 2009 8:52 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Cc: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: actor-networks Re: Discourse on object level
>
> reasons and causes are described after the analysis is finished.
> you look
> at the system of relations and you can then describe what happened and
> can infer whatever cause fits the described data. let's keep in mind
> that actor-network theory is not a method, it is a standpoint about
> how to treat research and how to gather that data using methods, such
> as semiotics, discourse analysis, or ethnography.
> it's primary use is to mould the data collection and to provide
> insights into data analysis.. it doesn't assign reasons so much as
> track actions and relations in networks. reasons and causes are
> things to be very skeptical about because frequently we have less than
> a cause and more of a conjunction or constant conjunction according to
> hume, so... actor network would note that x did y, but when y then
> immediately did things it would not note that x caused y, because as
> you can imagine y may merely have been waiting until time z to act,
> and action y was incidental. one can only find out these
> relationships through time.
>
> now after the analysis is over and you have your data and you see that
> every time x is in proximity of y, y acts somehow, you may be inclined
> to hypothesize a causal relation, and others over time may support
> that or deny that.
>
> one thing to note here is that mental models, 'reasons' can be
> 'actors' in actor-network. a good idea can 'act', recruiting people
> through people, etc. latter theories might call this unification of
> actors a mess or an assemblage. but it is very useful to be able to
> track an idea as an actor.
>
>
>
>
> On Apr 22, 2009, at 8:23 AM, Terence Love wrote:
>
>> Hi Jeremy,
>>
>> How do you deal with the reasons and causes for actions in ant?
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Terry
>>
>
|