Compare methods

	Sociotechnical Imaginaries Analysis	Actor-Network Theory Analysis
Field	Science Technology Studies	Science Technology Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2009	1984
Originator	Sheila Jasanoff & Sang-Hyun Kim	Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law
Type	Qualitative interpretive and comparative method	Material-semiotic theory and analytic method
Seminal source	Jasanoff, S., & Kim, S.-H. (2009). Containing the atom: sociotechnical imaginaries and nuclear power in the United States and South Korea. Minerva, 47(2), 119-146.	Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780199256051
Aliases	Sociotechnical imaginary analysis, Imaginaries of science and technology, Visions of desirable futures analysis	ANT analysis, Sociology of translation, Actant-network mapping
Related	4	4
Summary	Sociotechnical imaginaries analysis studies the collectively held, institutionally stabilised, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures that societies attach to science and technology. Introduced by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim in their 2009 comparison of nuclear power in the United States and South Korea, the concept treats imaginaries as more than rhetoric: they are co-produced with the material and political order, shaping how technologies are designed, governed, and lived. The method reconstructs these visions from public discourse, traces how they become embedded in institutions and policy, and compares how the same technology animates different imaginaries across nations or eras.	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.