Actor-Network Theory—The Market Test

Abstract

It is often argued that ANT fails to offer a satisfactory theory of the actor which is allegedly endowed either with limitless power, or deprived of any room for manoeuvre at all. The aim of this paper is to show that the absence of a theory of the actor, when combined with the role attributed to non-humans in the description of action, is precisely one of the strengths of ANT that it is most important to preserve. This is because this combination makes it possible to explain the existence and the working of economic markets. Any particular market is the consequence of operations of disentanglement, framing, internalization and externalization. ANT makes it possible to explain these operations and the emergence of calculating agents. Homo economicus is neither a pure invention, nor an impoverished vision of a real person. It indeed exists, but is the consequence of a process in which economic science places an active role. The conclusion is that ANT has passed one of the most demanding tests: that of the market.