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Re-assembling Actor-Network Theory and urban history

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2016

BERT DE MUNCK
BERT DE MUNCK*
Affiliation:
Centre for Urban History, University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, Antwerp 2000, Belgium
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Extract

Few theories have left their mark on urban studies to the extent that Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has in the last few decades. Its background in Science and Technology Studies (STS), its critique of the explanatory value of such abstractions as ‘class’ and ‘society’ and its efforts to transcend society/nature and local/global binarisms inevitably challenged conventional views on cities, urbanization and urban phenomena. Economic and Marxist approaches to the city in particular have been challenged, at least to the extent that they invoke the explanatory force of the economy or capitalism as a global social system and, thus, fall back upon the binarisms under attack from ANT. The network approach questioned architectonic explanatory models (substructure vs. superstructure) and deepened our understanding of actors and agency (both emerging from networks of humans and non-humans). However, ANT has always been subject to criticism too.

Type
Special Section on urban agency
Information
Urban History , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 111 - 122
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

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