Compare methods

	Actor-Network Theory Analysis	Infrastructure Studies
Field	Science Technology Studies	Science Technology Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1984	1996
Originator	Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law	Susan Leigh Star, Geoffrey Bowker, Karen Ruhleder
Type	Material-semiotic theory and analytic method	Qualitative method for studying relational infrastructure
Seminal source	Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780199256051	Star, S. L., & Ruhleder, K. (1996). Steps toward an ecology of infrastructure: design and access for large information spaces. Information Systems Research, 7(1), 111-134.
Aliases	ANT analysis, Sociology of translation, Actant-network mapping	Infrastructural inversion, Ecology of infrastructure, Study of boundary objects
Related	4	4
Summary	Actor-Network Theory analysis treats society and technology as a single woven fabric, mapping how heterogeneous human and non-human actors—engineers, scallops, documents, machines, regulators—are linked into networks through a process of translation. Rather than explaining technical outcomes by appeal to pre-given social categories, ANT follows the actors themselves and describes how durable arrangements are assembled, stabilised, and sometimes undone.	The infrastructure studies method, developed by Susan Leigh Star, Geoffrey Bowker, and Karen Ruhleder, studies the normally invisible relational systems—standards, classifications, pipes, protocols, and installed bases—on which modern life silently depends. Its signature move is 'infrastructural inversion': deliberately foregrounding the background, treating the taken-for-granted substrate as the object of analysis, and reading its standards, classifications, and breakdowns to understand how it shapes work, knowledge, and lives.