Area (2011) 43.3, 274–280
doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2011.01026.x
On Actor-Network Theory and landscape Casey D Allen Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO 80217-3364, USA Email:
[email protected] Revised manuscript received 2 May 2011 Focusing primarily on the actor – human or nonhuman, individual or group, conscious or unconscious – Actor-Network Theory (ANT) explores the interconnectedness of all things. ANT recognises that all objects and things exhibit consciousness, and through a consciousness, interact heterogeneously in space; the location of the interaction(s), where they are performed homogeneously, is the landscape. If, as ANT promotes, all objects and things exhibit consciousness, then the closer in space they are to one another, the more essential they are to each other. These notions have specific ties to the on-going critique in landscape studies of focusing on rural and local scales, and the continuing debate in human (and physical) geography regarding the necessity of scale itself. Using ANT as a framework, and punctuated with true-life anecdotes, this article wraps the landscape-created-by-nature and the landscape-created-by-human debates into a non-dialectic whole, demonstrating, perhaps provocatively and controversially, that any landscape should be distinctly anti-dialectic and removed from scalar constraints. While ANT remains an often-overlooked and misunderstood technique for studying the landscape, this article’s crux rests in nothing less than attempting to lay the groundwork for using ANT as a practical technique when studying any landscape in any location at any time (and in any related disciplinary field). If indeed, as argued in this paper and as ANT suggests, everything is networked, then scale, specifically when applied to any landscape, becomes irrelevant. Key words: field experience, landscape theory, Actor-Network Theory, nature–society dialectic, heterogeneity, consumption
Introduction Arguably, landscape plays the leading role when it comes to the discipline of geography: it represents where we do everything. Yet there is constant debate – not only amongst geographers, but other scholars too – as to what constitutes landscape and how it should be studied. In this article I argue that when evoking ActorNetwork Theory (ANT), landscape represents the definitive stage where all events transpire. To accomplish this goal, I reconstitute the age old nature–society dialectic debate into a single, whole, and non-dialectic concept. The first section revisits the landscape-as-nature theme, offering insights and critiques of various ANT and ANTrelated scholars. The second section discusses landscape as a social construct, focusing on principles within Marxist geography and consumption. Using landscape as an intertwined ‘naturally-’ and ‘humanly-’ constructed conduit, I outline the implications and potential influ-
ence of this notion in a final section that elaborates specifically on the concept of using ANT to study anything in landscape – irrespective of the human–physical geography divide and, perhaps provocatively, even rendering scale unnecessary – both generally and specifically. Between each of these sections, I offer a true-life anecdote to help illustrate the concept in a real-world setting. The article also demonstrates that whether people understand landscape as nature or landscape as a societal/ human construct, experiencing one certainly leads to a revelation of the other, demonstrating two things: (1) that when landscape is viewed as solely a ‘human’ or solely a ‘natural’ construct, arrogance is the result – since throughout the mirror of history, human propensity to destroy, or at least change and/or manipulate that which they do not understand, has been a common reflection, and (2) that ANT is a viable method for studying anything in the landscape, because it folds the nature– society dialectic (and space–time) into one concept.
Area Vol. 43 No. 3, pp. 274–280, 2011 ISSN 0004-0894 © 2011 The Author. Area © 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
On Actor-Network Theory and landscape
Landscapes as human-in-nature Arguably, one of the most recognised definitions of landscape is ‘nature’ (though others are becoming increasingly recognised). It is no coincidence, for example, that Meinig (1979) lists this version of landscape first in his much-read article. Indeed, Duncan (2000) notes that landscape viewed as nature dates back to the early 17th century, when it was ‘under the influence of the Dutch landschap painters’ where it referred ‘to the appearance of an area’, specifically ‘the representation of scenery’. In the late 19th century, landscape was viewed as a single entity, particularly in respect to the picturesque (Duncan 2000). Earlier, in Medieval times, landscape meant ‘the land . . . inhabited . . . by people’, further extending the idea that humans and nature are always together (Duncan 2000). If humans and nature are always found together as a unified whole however, as Willems-Braun (1997) notes, then the location – the intersection – of humans and nature occurs in a place. This ‘place’ is the landscape. When landscape is perceived as nature – as an ‘essence’, ‘areas unaltered by man’ or ‘the physical world in its entirety’ (Castree 2000) – adequate examples of human meddling with the landscape can be seen in human history: the impact of Edenic Paradise on western thought (Cronon 1995b), the impacts of colonialism (Scott 2004), Colonialism, Manifest Destiny, and the list continues. . . . Yet, when viewed as ‘nature’, landscape represents more than a trinity of definitions, more than a mere capitalist construct (as Smith 1984 suggests), more than artifactual constructionism – as Demeritt (1998) and Cronon (1995a) point out – and more than a plethora of other definitions. In fact landscape, when viewed as nature, reflects Raymond Williams’ (1988) thoughts of being one of the most complex words in the English language. But if we ultimately view landscape only as a single construct, its very character (nature?) is negated. I put forth the suggestion that, when it comes to geography’s main tenets (i.e. place and space), landscape is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent – not unlike Borges’ Aleph (2004). An anecdotal ‘natural’ landscape experience – as human-in-nature – may help illuminate this concept.
Into the wilderness . . . It is midsummer in the mighty forests and majestic mountains. Lying on my back, naked, under green brush on a small rock outcrop covered with soft moss and decomposing leaves, I look over, a few yards away, and see my tent that stores my gear, several yards from the river where I soaked my body after the long trek into this remote place – where I soak each morning and evening. Even though I sleep outside, perhaps the tent gives me a feeling of security I lack in nature – in a literal and metaphorical
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sense – seeking to construct a shelter for ‘safety’ as all manner of animals have done for eons. Relaxing in this primeval setting allows me to ruminate about my purpose in coming to such a remote area: listen, observe and learn. My surroundings are devoid of people; no one ever hikes this far into the canyon. And as I stare through the verdant branches, at the constantly shifting cloud shapes in the cerulean sky, I begin to fall into a languid state of being – that place between awake and asleep – yet still calm and aware of my surroundings. Since childhood nature has always given me this feeling. Suddenly, like a light switch being flipped on in my noggin, I surprisingly grasp the seemingly-simple concept that nature manifests itself in two distinct ways: It is felt through the senses, of course – sight, sound, smell, etc. – but also felt in a more ethereal (natural?) way. And this inimitable trait gives nature a sense of omnipresence. Lying on my mossy bed, I see the resultant swaying of branches, hear the rustlings of leaves and feel the air slowly flow over my body as a slight breeze sweeps through the canyon. Yet in my semi-dazed state, the trees waving languorously in the breeze remind me of Whirling Dervishes I saw in Konya, Turkey, slowly swaying back and forth, to and fro, trying to achieve their nirvana. The rustling of the leaves sound like the soft whispers I might hear amidst ardent students ‘quietly’ studying in a library. And when the cool air touches my skin, I am reminded of the gentle caresses of a passionate lover. The feeling of nature extends beyond my five senses – even though my interpretation of the breeze (and every other ‘natural’ thing) is as a ‘human-in-nature’ – and stems from something with which I am already familiar, something perhaps socially constructed.
Landscapes as nature-in-human Many western scholars are quick to point out that without humans, there would be no nature (cf. Smith 1984; Demeritt 1998; Harvey 1996; Latour 1993); they persist in defining nature as a human/societal construct. One of the most critical examples of nature as a social construct is found in Marxist geography, where space, place and power play integral roles in the theatre of nature. A main argument of ‘space as a social product’ revolves around Soja’s (1980, 209) notion that contextual space, as opposed to created space, leaves humans with a ‘lingering sense of primordiality and physical composition, objectivity, and inevitability’. He views this as destructive to our ‘meaning of human spatiality’ because the contextual concept of space is so imbued in our lives that the term spatial has come to mean ‘a context for society – its container – rather than a structure created by society’ (1980, 210). Even so, he explains that, at least for his purposes, all space has at its base a social framework. In
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a similar fashion, Harvey (1989) uses an adaptation of Lefebvre’s three dimensions of space as actual demonstrations of how space is produced. The crux of Harvey’s (1989) argument is that these dimensions (assumingly whether used or produced) – summarised as space experienced, space perceived and space imagined – are dialectical (trilectic?). As such, all three dimensions are interrelated and mediated by the concept of what Bourdieu (in Harvey 1989) terms habitus. Habitus, according to Harvey (1989), is Foucault’s (in Harvey 1989) ‘body’, because, as Harvey (1989, 213) suggests, it is through this medium that ‘forces of repression, socialization, disciplining, and punishing are inflicted’. Especially important when studying landscape, Harvey (1989) combines Foucault’s idea of the body as a ‘container (i.e., contextual) of power’ with de Certeau’s (in Harvey 1989, 213) idea of power ‘as more open to human creativity’ creating a powerful impression of Marxist geography: that actors can be free in space, at least within limits. Similarly, Goss (1999), for example, stresses that the consumption humans perform creates intimate landscapes that would not exist except for the faith – brought on by freedom in space – people put in a commodity’s power. People are attracted to consumption because of the power it displays, because of their habitus and freedom to act in space. Landscape as consumption then is, as Thrift (2000c, 108) notes, inherent in the modern landscape and ‘an integral and obtrusive part of modernity, whether in the form of the shopping mall, the theme park, the heritage centre or the humble main street’. Consumption then, intricately networks society and becomes part of Thrift’s (2000a) version of landscape in an almost Marxist way: where chief players in Marxist Geography such as social, political and economic capital, are driven by Thrift’s notion of consumption and dialectically related to the social construct. His apparent attraction to consumption stems from his interests in the urban landscape, and his ideas are linked (networked?) via capitalistic endeavours and intersect with Marxist Geography tenets on political, social and economic levels. Yet for Thrift (2000c 2003) consumption is only part of the socially constructed landscape, as he, in ANT-like fashion, views entities as having a ‘vague’ conscious. The idea of an object – human or nonhuman – experiencing consciousness is closely associated with performativity theory and, more intimately, with the actor-network approach (cf. Thrift 2000b; Butler 1990). Drawing on ANT-related approaches, via the concept of a conscious entity, the nonhuman object exhibits consciousness by being connected to the human actor (or consciousness). Kirsch and Mitchell (2004, 698) extend the idea of a conscious object further, noting that ‘the [actor] . . . remains . . . an object, something to be set in motion’. The chair next to you, for example, is there, and because you,
the actor, know it is there – because you are conscious of it – the chair is connected to you. It is part of your network; the network. How does the chair then become conscious? Based on Heideggerian thought, Latour (2004) suggests that once an object (which, curiously, he defines as being static) is imbued with meaning and matters of fact and concern, it becomes a ‘thing’. This is not to say that an object has no connection or network. On the contrary, objects are connected and networked because they are actors waiting to be activated, but they only become things once meaning is instilled in them (Kirsch and Mitchell 2004). By the act of gaining consciousness then, the chair is transformed from an object, a static actor set in motion, to a thing, imbued with meaning. The chair (i.e. actor) becomes more closely networked to you (i.e. another actor), and the closer objects are to each other, the easier they can infuse meaning in each other, becoming things to each other, similar to Tobler’s (1970) suggested First Law of Geography. By intertwining Thrift’s (2000c) approach of landscape-as-consumption, Kirsch and Mitchell’s (2004) object, and Latour’s (2004) explanation of thing, an ANTlandscape model might be the result. And what better example of landscape-as-human construct – as consumption, objects and things – is there than one of the most populous and commercialised world cities?
Once upon a time in New York City . . . Surveying the landscape from the Empire State Building’s roof, Manhattan spreads out like a Scandinavian smorgasbord. Alongside thousands of other people, I make my way back to the streets via the several flights of stairs and quick, ear-popping elevator ride. I walk a few blocks east and south, away from the mass of people, and descend into a non-tourist subway station. I wait, silent and nearly alone (other than a few homeless folks) for the train that will whisk me along, under the city, to my next place of urban musing: Central Park. The tracks that lay before me wind through the dark recesses of the city, and as I gaze past a homeless man napping on a nearby bench to look at the route map, my brain makes an interesting connection. The subway system of Manhattan is its very ‘root’. Thousands of miles of tracks and caverns wind under the city, and new routes (pronounced either ‘rOUTs’ or ‘rOOTs’, depending on your regional vernacular) are developed as the city’s needs (and wants) grow. The route (root) map (see http://www.mta.info/nyct/ maps/submap.htm) behind the homeless man on the bench suddenly begins to have a new meaning, and I am excited at the realisation that even here, in the very bowels of a profoundly human construct, I found nature. My energised mind is jolted as a blast of air from the tunnel lets me know my train is arriving. As the train stops next to the platform, I climb aboard, lost in my insight,
Area Vol. 43 No. 3, pp. 274–280, 2011 ISSN 0004-0894 © 2011 The Author. Area © 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
On Actor-Network Theory and landscape realising that the routes (roots) of the subway lead to every major (and most minor) point in the city, closely connecting once-distant districts, and ultimately ending at the trunk of a tree (Grand Central, or some other Station). Suddenly the City’s nickname has new meaning to me: if the subway represents its roots, and Manhattan is known as ‘The Big Apple’, then perhaps the Boroughs are its seeds, the buildings its branches and fruit, the innumerable vehicles its pollen, and the people its pollinators. Manhattan is even surrounded by water to sustain the apple tree! I then make a cerebral connection that other mass-transit regions are similar: London, Paris, Santiago, even the BART in California. Still smiling from my metaphorically ‘natural’ epiphany, I emerge from the subway just across the street from Central Park – what I now see as the stem of the Big Apple because of all its greenery, and its ‘central’ location.
Using ANT to study landscape Nature–society views, dialectic or not, dominate landscape literature. These studies suggest that landscape is nothing more than a social construct, inherent in any group of people who have some thing or things in common (cf. Duncan and Ley 1993; Cosgrove and Domosh 1984; Price and Lewis 1993; Harvey 1996; Mitchell 2002; Rose 1993). What these approaches leave out, however, is that while landscape can be ‘viewed’ or studied as a social construct, there are innate – dare I say natural? – linkages between the person (actor) and/or group/s (actors) of people doing the viewing, and the landscape (even the landscape they help create) itself. This is where ANT benefits landscape theory the most: championing interconnectedness (Inkpen 2005; Hillman et al. 2008). At first glance, this might seem nearer to the realms of possibilism, and some might also add dialectics. Possibilism, however, emphasises only the human capacity to choose, and dialectics emphasises the need for binaries and opposites. ANT, on the other hand, stresses linkages between objects (human or nonhuman) whether choices are made or not (either consciously or unconsciously), without adherence to any dichotomous relations. Extending this concept further, ANT aids landscape theory by demonstrating the important notion of linkages over space and time – even if, as Massey (2005) points out, space is time – because networks are unaffected by spatio-temporal warping, they continue to function without regard to time or location. And this has important implications for scale debates in both human geography (cf. Marston et al. 2005; and resultant commentary: Hoefle 2006; Collinge 2006; Jonas 2006; Escobar 2007; Leitner and Miller 2007; Jones et al. 2007) and physical geography (cf. Burrough 1983; Hallett 1990; Malanson 1999; Phillips 1999 2005; Dodds and
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Rothman 2000; Hubbell 2001), because ANT effectively remove scale from the equation through incorporation of heterogeneity. As Murdoch (1997, 322) asserts, ANT ‘concentrates on yielding a unified theoretical perspective’, and through ‘heterogeneous associations’ brings ‘together the social and the physical/material’ (1997, 325), elaborating that interaction ‘is constituted, construed and configured by distant actions’ (1997, 329), and that heterogeneity remains ‘The key to understanding . . . the role played by resources in stabilizing and maintaining past actions in ways which allow them to bear upon the localized present’ (1997, 329). In this light, ‘Actors are networks rather than human beings and these networks are relentlessly heterogeneous’ (1997, 329) and, as Thrift (2000a, 4) adds, the world is a ‘multiplicity of different connections . . . fabricated out of a diverse range of materials’, all regardless of scale. This notion, further demonstrates ANT’s paramount significance when studying landscape, allowing the researcher, artist – whoever – to draw upon any entity – theory, object, thing, whatever – in their pursuit for understanding, despite scale, space, place and/or time where they reside, because they (and it – whatever they are doing) are free to act anywhere (a direct result of their power via their habitus). Though it has wide applicability, when perusing numerous landscape and landscape-related articles and books, ANT remains virtually unused, though visages of it permeate the literature. Hints of ANT are noticed with authors who use (sometimes unknowingly) the medium of performativity (cf. Butler 1990; Goss 1999; Basso 1996; Mitchell 1995), but even though performativity may be closely tied to ANT, rarely does the actor-network approach get mentioned, let alone elaborated. Other researchers use tenets (e.g. networks, connections) that undoubtedly have their roots in ANT, but fail to recognise them as such (Wilson and Burrough 1999; Eagleton 2000; McHugh 2003; Brierley et al. 2006; Hillman et al. 2008). Some evoke ANT as necessary to the discipline of geography (physical geography specifically), while noting perhaps no one really knows how to (or understands how to) use it, but consistently relate it to landscape (Inkpen 2005; Inkpen et al. 2007). Still others note ANT could be responsible for helping physical geographers better connect form(s) and process(es), since these things can be tied to human memory through other actors like climate and geology (cf. Brierley 2010). This quick but certainly not comprehensive critique is not meant to ‘point fingers’ at researchers who do not use ANT specifically. Instead, it aims to reveal the general unawareness and/or understanding of the actor-network approach, especially where landscape is concerned. Yet ANT is an evocative way to interpret and understand landscape, transcending the usual senses and scale issues prevalently associated with
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landscape studies and theory – something that, according to Muir (2005), the discipline of geography would do well to NOT overlook. Especially when ANT can play a central role in geography’s hallmark – fieldwork – through its ability to reject naïve positivist views of objects, things – and even actors – as existing in themselves a priori of any participation in social networks of interactions, including observed and named interactions (Allen and Lukinbeal 2011). In fact, ANT views reductionist explanations and dialectic relationships of any kind that link objects and things to natural, social or discursive categories as transparent – although it does recognise the importance of each (Latour 1993). This trait allows landscape to shrug off conventional and traditional western descriptive and explanatory methods. Indeed, as Thrift (2000a, 5) notes, ANT quietly endeavours to ‘rewrite the “constitution” of western knowledge’. Of course, rewriting the entire epistemology of landscape might seem naïve at first glance, but through ANT, landscape epistemology is not really rewritten, just better understood through a series of networks. This better understanding is rooted in two essential components of geography (and landscape studies): place and space (Thrift 2003). These fundamental components create new place and space (i.e. landscape) understandings that, because of the actions happening, allies ANT closely with performativity – the theory that a person (or group of persons) executes activities (Thrift 2000a 2003). ANT suggests that the actor is a number of different things – perhaps human, perhaps nonhuman; maybe conscious, maybe unconscious – and always embodies action (cf. Bruun and Langlais 2003; Butler, 1993). It further suggests that the actor can also be a group of things, and that each thing – as an individual or group – is linked, or networked.
Conclusion Pertinent to landscape specifically, ANT treats the topology of networks – the relationships between elements linked together in a system – as, in general, non-local. It often sees artefacts – human or non-human – as boundary objects that mediate non-local and scale-breaking interconnections. ANT’s interpretation of scale and objects (i.e. human or non-human ‘actors’) leads to a heterogeneous outlook of landscape that includes three main premises: translations (e.g. text, in all its forms), associations (e.g. actors – human or non-human) and mediations (e.g. messengers – human or non-human – that keep the ‘networks connected’ folding networks ‘into each other’) (Murdoch 1997). Functioning in space to produce a ‘simultaneous heterogeneity’ (Massey 2005), ANT represents an important step to move
beyond the often-critiqued notion that landscape focuses merely on the rural and local scale. This permutation of ANT also brings the often-problematic nature–society dialectic into focus as only part of a single, larger network. The network. While landscape can be viewed through certain lenses – individually or as part of a larger social construction, for example – ANT may represent one of the most powerful pieces of paraphernalia we can have in our landscape study cache. Certainly, experiencing a landscape through any of our senses – physical or ethereal – results in different appreciations and understandings among individuals and even larger social groups (all of which remain networked). Yet landscape will always be, regardless of how humans attempt to (de)construct, describe, and/or alter it. Perhaps even more profound, landscape, as both a concept and a term – or a form or a process, or an epistemology or an ontology – is best defined as the definitive ‘stage’ where everyone (and thus, everything) remains involved in production and consumption, whether aware of it or not. And ANT extends even deeper, as we (like all things) are constantly part of the landscape’s essences – sometimes literally in its essences (e.g. the wilderness or subway) – as either ‘humans-in-nature’ or ‘nature-in-humans’. Indeed, when landscapes are studied via ANT, our senses, including our awareness and understanding, become keener, and this in turn, allows us to see landscape – by virtue of the global (universal?) network connected by human and non-human actors – as the ultimate arena where events transpire: a space irrespective of scale where things (human or nonhuman, conscious or non-conscious, single or group) take place. Acknowledgements While three anonymous reviewers provided feedback, I would like to thank one anonymous reviewer in particular for the solid insights and brilliant encouragement. Your comments were instrumental in the final shaping of this article.
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