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Law and ANT (and its Kin): Possibilities, Challenges, and Ways Forward
Author(s) -
Cloatre Emilie
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of law and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.263
H-Index - 48
eISSN - 1467-6478
pISSN - 0263-323X
DOI - 10.1111/jols.12133
Subject(s) - sketch , kinship , sociology , conversation , scholarship , materiality (auditing) , field (mathematics) , epistemology , ethnography , law , political science , computer science , philosophy , mathematics , communication , algorithm , anthropology , pure mathematics , aesthetics
This article interrogates the contributions that Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) has made, and can continue to make, to the critical study of law. Both within its original field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and beyond, ANT has enabled a reimagining of the ‘social’ as relational, heterogeneous, and fluid. In turn, it has argued for a renewed attention to materiality in social analysis. For law, such approach is potentially fruitful, significant, and disruptive of a number of assumptions of previous (socio‐)legal scholarship. In this article, I sketch out key elements (and critiques) of ANT, previous efforts to bring ANT into law, and discuss its potential for enhancing understandings of law. At the same time, I argue that ANT in law is best approached with a commitment to care, and to kinship, and in conversation with feminist thinkers, legal ethnographies, and the discrete voices of law.