Performing Sociology Through Actor-Network Theory: From Impressionist Cartography to the Dirtiness of Mediations

Abstract

In this paper I try to outline the existence of certain problems I have found during my research work, within sociology discipline, when it comes to follow some of the main threads of the complex fabric that constitutes the Actor-Network Theory (ANT). In the same way, I suggest some possible subterfuges to go around those problems. Two are the problems and two are the subterfuges as well destined to tackle them. On the one hand, I face the problem of the magnitude and fidelity that ANT's descriptions demand, thoroughly detailed and local, which clashes with the requirements of sociological theory that seeks abstractions and regularities. The subterfuge I propose is the one called "impressionist cartography". On the other hand, I bump into the difficulty of the irreversibility of mediations and the sanitized representations carried out, sometimes, by ANT. In order to fight this, I use the subterfuge oriented to adopt the premise of the "inevitable dirtiness of mediations".