Actor-Network Theory

An approach that treats social order and knowledge as effects of heterogeneous networks of enrolled actors (human and non‑human); agency is distributed among people, objects and technologies which are connected through material‑semiotic relations and processes of translation, stabilization and enrolment.

An analytical framework that explains how social, technical and material effects emerge from networks composed of heterogeneous 'actors'—human and nonhuman—that enroll, translate and stabilize relations; it treats agency as the capacity to affect and be affected within a relational network rather than as an intrinsic property of individuals alone.

A framework for analysing how networks of heterogeneous entities—human and non-human (people, technologies, texts, institutions)—are enrolled into associations through processes of translation and negotiation, producing durable arrangements or ‘black boxes’ whose stability explains observed information practices and artefacts.