[STS-Africa] Working Paper Series on "Actor-Network Theory for Development"

[Henrik Ernstson]

Dear all,
this is just to let you know that there is a whole special issue published as a working paper series by Richard Heeks at the University of Manchester on ANT and Development with relevance for STS in Africa. 

See here: http://www.cdi.manchester.ac.uk/resources/ant4d/

There are papers with studies from Africa and I was part of this effort (Paper 4: Re-translating nature in post-apartheid Cape Town, Henrik Ernstson) and some are coming up in various journals. 

In his opening paper, Richard Heeks reflects on why it was so difficult to get any of the major development journals to accept a special issue on ANT and Development in 2010/11 which should be interesting to read. 

"ANT: A Bad Smell in Development Studies (or “Hell Hath No Fury Like an Academic Scorned”)
Collecting publication experiences from the contributors to the working paper series, a recurrent theme was rejection. ANT in the 2010s seems to carry the Sadim touch when it seeks to engage with development studies with a full house of rejections from every one of the leading development studies journals for either ANT-based papers or special issues/sections.

The rejection messages fell into four overall categories, adding to the overall impression that ANT in development studies is like a bad smell that everyone would like to just go away:

- “This is just description”; “What is the puzzle that ANT solves?”; “What is ANT’s value added for development”. These are legitimate criticisms, and issues that are in part addressed elsewhere in this paper.

- ANT is too old. Editors and reviewers rejected submissions because ANT is “neither new ... nor original” and because “Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) has been around for quite a while”. More directly, one commented, “There is a general feeling that ... ANT (and development) is no longer quite up to the minute in terms of current debates and concerns. ANT has indeed been an intriguing area of research but those consulted think that the time has rather gone by to do a special issue on it”. In other words, you should have caught the wave in the 1980s or 1990s because now the spotlight of academic fashion has moved on. Though you could wait a decade or two and try again in the hope that ANT will have become retro.

- I don’t understand ANT. Because ANT has few adherents in development studies, papers necessarily get put out to review – and rejected – by those who do not understand it well. These are reviewers who: think actors can only be human; think actors can only be individuals; assume Long’s work on actor-oriented approaches to development is the same as ANT; demand generalisations from ANT case studies; etc. Of course this doesn’t just happen with ANT but it was notable that, of 12 editors and reviewers involved in the review processes collated here, only two clearly demonstrated prior experience with ANT. Both of them recommended acceptance; the only two to do so.

-Thisisaboutpractice;developmentstudiesisn’tinterestedinpractice. Editors and reviewers can be quite narrow in their interpretation of what development studies covers: “Because your paper focuses on “how” issues, we do not feel that [leading development journal] would be the best outlet”: they declined to review it, and suggested it go to Development in Practice instead."

Best regards,
Henrik

See here: http://www.cdi.manchester.ac.uk/resources/ant4d/




*New publication* 
In ANTIPODE - 'Provincializing Urban Political Ecology—Towards a Situated UPE through African Urbanism' (2013)

Henrik Ernstson (PhD)
Department of History & African Studies, Stanford University (Wallenberg Stig Hagström scholar, 2013-2015)
African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town (Honorary Visiting Scholar)
KTH Environmental Humanities, KTH Institute of Technology (Research Fellow on leave)
Mobile: (US) +1-510-502-8394 / (SA) +27 79 082 4332.
Twitter: @rhizomia
Complete academic publication list.
Blog: http://www.rhizomia.net 
Projects: http://www.situatedecologies.net :: Situated Urban Political Ecologies Platform :: Book project: Grounding Urban Natures

*Other recent publications* 1. Ecosystem Services as Technology of Globalization (2013); 2. The Social Production of Ecosystem Services (2013). 3. Re-translating Nature in Post-Apartheid Cape Town (2013); 4. Transformative collective action... (2011).

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