Actor-Network Theory: Insights into the Study of Social-Ecological Resilience

Abstract

Actor-network theory, which emerged from science and technology studies in the 1980s, regards everything in the social and ecological systems as a continuous result of the network of relations where they are located. Social-ecological resilience, with its origins in systems ecology, focuses on the non-linear changing dynamics of social-ecological systems and their governance. Among them, social-ecological resilience study integrates different disciplines, backgrounds, and themes, which inevitably leads to the vagueness of its concept. Both actor-network theory and social-ecological resilience emphasize human-nature relationships and view social-ecological systems as dynamic and unpredictable “networks”. Therefore, this paper explored the potential conceptual or theoretical underpinnings that actor-network theory can provide in social-ecological resilience through interdisciplinary research. Specifically, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 30 fishing households from Chang-shan Archipelago in Northeastern China. The obtained interview data were analyzed through thematic analysis, and three main themes were generated, including “heterogeneous networks”, “agency”, and “translation”, which facilitated a reconceptualization of the three components of social-ecological resilience, namely, “linked social-ecological systems”, “changing dynamics” and “the ability to maintain resilience”, and also provided a new theoretical perspective on the adaptive governance of social-ecological systems.