1.2 Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory
I
n the past few decades, the history of technology has been productively studied
from the perspective of social sciences, sociology in particular. Most studies have
attempted to distance themselves from technological determinism, according to
which man cannot intervene in the inner logic of technology. Many historians of
technology have, therefore, endeavoured to focus on the formation of a technological
solution, as a process. Instead of treating ”technology” per se as the locus of historical
agency, the “soft determinists” locate it in a far more complex social, economic, polit-
ical and cultural matrix.^52 Understanding the past of technology requires that we
see it at the same time as a phenomenon that shapes society and one that is shaped
by different actors. Thus defined, technology is part of society and technological
change is part of social change.^53 One exponent of this line of architectural research
is Thomas Markus, who has emphasised the nature of buildings as social objects, as
processes in constant transition and as tools of power and classification.^54
The idea of reciprocity of the social and the material lends particular interest to
the actor-network theory developed by the French sociologist Bruno Latour from
the specific perspective of interpreting architecture, as he provides tools for tackling
the interplay between social networks and the material reality in a technology process,
which an architectural process can be classified as.
In their 2008 article “‘Give Me a Gun and I Will Make all Buildings Move’: An
ANT’s View of Architecture”, Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva discuss the application
of actor-network theory in architecture. The authors hold that while buildings appear
static, they are in fact under constant transformation. However, it is all but impossible
to observe buildings as series of transformations or a contest of different forces.^55
Latour and Yaneva see perspective drawing (3D modeling), which is based on
Euclidian geometry, as reductive. It falls short, for example, of representing various
social demands affecting the building process. Furthermore, the materiality of a build-
ing cannot be presented through Euclidian models. Latour and Yaneva take a critical
view of geometrical and mathematical models created by engineers being understood as
exhaustive representations of the “material” world. According to the authors, materiality
cannot be reduced to “objectivity”. For them, Euclidian geometry ultimately offers a
relatively subjective, human-centred or at least knowledge-centred approach, which
does not do any justice to the way humans and things exist.^56
52 Marx and Smith 1998 [1994], p. xiii.
53 MacKenzeit & Wajcman 1987, pp. 3–6, cited in Michelsen 2000, p. 73.
54 See Markus 1993, especially Chapter 1.
55 Ibidem.
56 Latour and Yaneva 2008, p. 84.