Moving and mapping (with) Actor-Network Theory

Referring to the conceptual work of sociologist and urbanist AbdouMaliq Simone (2014), who advocates the figure of the 'near South' to reframe standard geopolitical notions of 'North' and 'South', they term this proposed relation to ANT as 'modes of thinking and speaking near ANT, that is, not simply deploying the existing ANT canon of concepts, research strategies and writing experiments, but keeping them near as a source of questions, problems and inspiration' [xxii, italics added]. Tracing the pragmatic differences of the two repertoires, and building on recent debates on care in science and technology studies, he argues that a care repertoire would enable researchers to transform research situations of disconcertment into productive moments, not only for the purpose of developing concepts and methods further, but also for taking research as an opportunity to reshape the (perhaps otherwise neglected) arrangements of those involved in our studies. According to him, these characters do not resemble individual authors, rather they indicate the most central intellectual stances advanced by ANT scholars in the field of market studies and beyond. In his chapter, Nigel Clark cautions that ANT's symmetry principle could lead to neglecting the analytical value of processes largely dominated by nonhumans, such as the global climate regime.