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Show 42 Methodologically, this analysis assembles the network by "keep[ing] the social flat" (Latour, 2005/2007, p. 165) and identifying how mediators (performative objects that transport, translate and transform meaning, unlike black boxes) negotiate the reality in which they live. This process of tracing and assembling collections of heterogeneous objects that transform and translate one another is central to using actor-network theory as a method. Latour (1984/1993, 1992/1996) also demonstrates this process in the first half of The Pasteurization of France and Aramis, or the Love of Technology by showing how microbes and personal rapid transit systems can succeed or fail in translating meaning and creating networks of alliances. William Cronon's (1992) book, Nature's Metropolis, can also be considered consistent with actor-network theory because it attempts to "flatten" divisions that separate nature from culture and city and country. As such, he details how nonhuman and human networks worked together to create Chicago's stature as the primary gateway to the American West. He analyzes how water sources, railway systems, and flows of grain, lumber, and meat-packers led to spurs in technological and marketing innovations that accomplished economic wonders unparalleled by other cities at the time. Importantly, Cronon demonstrates that the city and the hinterlands cannot be separated. They are both part of the same network that produces flows that transform ecologies, economies, and technologies. This argument is similar to the one the one used by Raymond Williams (1975) in The Country and the City, where he demonstrates that "we need to trace, historically and critically, the various forms of the ideas" (p. 289) that have created forms of interpretation that see the world in terms of dualisms that separate lived experiences |
