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2012 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

Do Non-humans Make a Difference? The Actor-Network-Theory and the Social Innovation Paradigm

verfasst von : Alexander Degelsegger, Alexander Kesselring

Erschienen in: Challenge Social Innovation

Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

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Abstract

Social innovation is becoming a widely used term in international debates in the context of social challenges. Neither in political nor in social scientific discussion there seems to be a consensual definition or concept of social innovation. In search of a sociological understanding of social innovation this paper turns to Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT).

Latour is known for his insistence on the role of non-humans (which usually refers to technological artefacts) in society and how the reference to non-humans changes our understanding of social action and structure. In his view, the “social” is nothing but a type of relation, it is the way human and non-human actors link to each other, are translated and form actor-networks in a “flat” world without a “context” or “macro-level”. As a consequence, we cannot separate technological artefacts from the “social sphere” of humans anymore. Furthermore, Latour and Callon introduced a variety of general concepts that allow to empirically study this world of relations and translations.

This article discusses the potentials in applying Latour’s version of ANT to social innovation following two main questions: Does ANT provide empirical tools appropriate for analyzing innovation processes that do not have technology as their main driver and output? Does ANT help us to conceptualise social innovation in a way that avoids the exclusion of technical artefacts per se?

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Vorheriges Kapitel Shaping Social Innovation by Social Research

Nächstes Kapitel Social Innovation: What Is Coming Apart and What Is Being Rebuilt?

European Union: In 2009 the bureau of European policy advisers (BEPA) organised a workshop on social innovation with an expert meeting together with EU president Barroso: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/81%26format=HTML%26aged=0%26language=DE%26guiLanguage=en

Great Britain: The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) funds and implements different programmes for the support of national innovation capacity, among these are also programmes on social innovation: http://www.nesta.org.uk.

The Young Foundation is a social innovation incubator and research centre: http://www.youngfoundation.org.uk/.

Social Innovation Exchange (SIX) is a platform for social innovation in Europe: http://socialinnovationexchange.org/.

United States: Under President Obama the White House established an “Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation” see: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/.

Social innovation centres exist in Canada, Denmark, Australia, Austria, Spain and other countries.

It also becomes clear from analyses like Van de Ven et al. (2008) that innovation processes have no clear beginning nor end.

Again: no clear beginning.

“Program manager states intention to extend reach with cochlear implants into the residual hearing population to expand market potential” (Van de Ven et al. 2008, 283).

As a side note: Akrich et al. (2002a, b) themselves ventured into generating inputs from their theoretical edifice to professional (commercial, market-oriented) innovation management.

Akrich, M. (1992). The de-scription of technical objects. In W. E. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping technology, building society. Studies in sociotechnical change (pp. 205–224). Cambridge: MIT Press.

Akrich, M., Callon, M., & Latour, B. (2002a). The key to success in innovation part I: The art of interessement. International Journal of Innovation Management, 6(2), 187–206.CrossRef

Akrich, M., Callon, M., & Latour, B. (2002b). The key to success in innovation part II: The art of choosing good spokespersons. International Journal of Innovation Management, 6(2), 207–225.CrossRef

Belliger, A., & Krieger, D. (2006). Einführung in die Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie. In A. Belliger & D. Krieger (Eds.), ANThology. Ein einführendes Handbuch zur Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie (pp. 13–50). Bielefeld: Transcript.

Bloor, D. (1991/1976). Knowledge and social imagery (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Callon, M. (1986). Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, action and belief: A new sociology of knowledge? (pp. 196–233). London: Routledge.

Callon, M., & Latour, B. (1981). Unscrewing the big Leviathan: How actors macrostructure reality and how sociologists help them to do so. In K. Knorr-Cetina & A. V. Cicourel (Eds.), Advances in social theory and methodology. Toward an integration of micro and macro sociologies (pp. 277–304). Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Etzioni, A. (1968). The active society. A theory of societal and political processes. London: Collier-Macmillan.

Latour, B. (1987). Science in action. How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Latour, B. (1992). Technology is society made durable. In J. Law (Ed.), A sociology of monsters: Essays on power, technology and domination (pp. 103–131). London: Routledge.

Latour, B. (1994). On technical mediation – philosophy, sociology, genealogy. Common Knowledge, 3(2), 29–64.

Latour, B. (1999a). On recalling ANT. In J. Law & J. Hassard (Eds.), Actor network theory and after (pp. 15–25). Oxford: Blackwell.

Latour, B. (1999b). Pandora’s hope: Essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Latour, B. (2007). Reassembling the social. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Latour, B. (2008). Wir sind nie modern gewesen. Versuch einer symmetrischen Anthropologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Phills, J. A. J., Deiglmeier, K., & Miller, D. T. (2008). Rediscovering social innovation. In Social innovation review (Fall). Stanford: Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Rammert, W., & Schulz-Schaeffer, I. (2002). Ko¨nnen Maschinen handeln? Soziologische Beitra¨ge zum Verha¨ltnis von Mensch und Technik. Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus.

Van de Ven, A. H., Polley, D., & Garud, R. (2008). The innovation journey. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zapf, W. (1994). Modernisierung, Wohlfahrtsentwicklung und Transformation. Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung WZB.

Titel: Do Non-humans Make a Difference? The Actor-Network-Theory and the Social Innovation Paradigm
verfasst von: Alexander Degelsegger
Alexander Kesselring
Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Buch: Challenge Social Innovation
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32878-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-642-32879-4

Copyright-Jahr: 2012
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32879-4_4

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