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
>>
>
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