The translation process

Actors participate in the actor-network through the translation process in which actors interact and make associations (Callon, 1990; Callon & Latour, 1981; Latour, 2005; Law, 2007) undergoing through negotiations, or trials of strength (Latour, 1987). Translation is another principle of ANT (Serres, 1974) which contributes to the formation of temporary ‘allies’, also defined as choreographies (Law & Lien, 2013) or associations/assemblages (Latour, 2005).

ANT strives to follow the actors in the movement within the network; design is the process of tracing the connections among actors within the network. Translation is not a stable phenomenon, as indicated by Callon’s study of scallops (1986b); it consists of the act of connecting, conveying messages, maintaining or altering relations. Translation ‘builds an actor-world from entities. It attaches characteristics to them and establishes more or less stable relationships between them’ (Callon, 1986a, pp. 25-26). In these relationships, the translation process by following the actors in their interactions allows to identify the ways in which relationships (alliances) are established, the roles the actors have in them, the

identification of who represent the interest of other actors, acting as spokesperson, while other actors are silenced (Callon, 1986b).

The translation process, as Callon (1986b) conceived it, is composed of different moments:

problematisation, interessment, enrolment and mobilisation. Although different, these moments at times do not have always clear boundaries. In the problematisation moment, actors in their negotiations try to convince other actors of sharing the same interest and attribute to the actors certain characteristics. By doing this, certain actors try to make themselves ‘indispensable’ to others, posing an obligatory passage point (OPP) (Callon, 1986b; Latour, 1994) to other actors. In the interessment, the actor tries to attribute/impose certain identities to the other actors while ‘weakening’ (Callon, 1986, p. 204) the links the actors have with others who might want to attribute them other identities. Actors then can enrol into the actor-network by espousing the program of action of the actor that attributed to it a role. The program of action (Latour, 2004) is a plan with which an actor plans to satisfy its interest/ reach its goal by recruiting actors with whom to achieve this goal. To enrol, the actor enrolling others adopts techniques/strategies that may facilitate actors’ enrolment.

These were identified in: physical, violence, seduction, transaction and consent without discussion (Callon, 1986b, p.68). By enrolling, the actors accept the role attributed to them and share the same interest of the actor that enrolled them and espouse its program of action. The acceptance of the role being given means that the actor is expected to perform following a script (Latour, 1994), which is part of the role the actor has been given and asked to perform. Then actors are mobilised, in the mobilisation phase, when they are displaced (Callon, 1986b). In the mobilisation phase, the links between the actors (alliances) are tested.

During the translation process, actors participating in a network may act as intermediary or mediator. Intermediaries are those who convey the message without altering it, while mediators do alter the messages that they convey (Latour, 2005). The role of mediators and intermediaries is not determined; intermediaries may become mediators and vice versa.

Because of the unpredictability of actors, they need to be closely followed by the researcher to understand the dynamics within the actor-network (associations, re-associations and translation in practices). Acting as intermediaries, the actors follow the script given to them, whereas acting as mediators, the actors divert from the role attributed not following the script they were given but making one up. The translation process brings to the fore ‘how a

few (actors) obtain the right to express and represent the many silent actors…they have mobilised’ (Callon, 1986b, p.19) acting as their spokesperson, that is on their behalf.

During the translation process, an actor ‘identifies other actors….and places them in relation to one another. Each actor builds a universe around him which is a complex and changing network of varied elements that he tries to link together and make dependent upon himself’

(Callon et al., 1983, p. 193) persuading others to espouse its goal and program of action and in doing so actors become allies and espousing the program of action of the author that has proposed it accepts the role it has given to it as it accepts to be represented by the actor. The actor who enrols other actors becomes the representative or spokesperson for the actors that have espoused its goal and program of action. The actors represented by the spokesperson, accepting to be represented by the spokesperson, are silenced. While for ANT a spokesperson can be any actor, some of the ANT critique has contested the role of the spokesperson by asserting that only humans can be spokesperson not nonhumans (Pels in McLean and Hassard (2004). Spokesperson represents those actors that enrolled in the network. While spokesperson act as representative of all the actors that accepted it as their representative, the actors are expected to act in a certain way, which is following the roles they were attributed by the actor (prescription). However, this does not always take place. Some actors may divert from the script they were given to perform, performing differently. This is the case of betrayals (Callon, 1986b) that is when actors do not conform to the role that given to them and to the script entailed to perform.

In an actor-network some of the actor-networks (and practices within) performed become stable and thus are not always object of negotiations but become black boxed (Callon & Latour, 1981). While the black boxes are like Pandora’s vase, while relatively stable are not immobile.

A black box is anything which ‘appears self-evident and obvious to the observer’ (Cressman, 2009, p. 6). Inversely, an actor-network unstable is not black boxed and undergoes through negotiations ‘movement’ (Latour, 1999, p.17). Part of the critique to ANT, which comes from the ANT and after, indicates that the stabilisation of actor-networks is only temporary, and that different practices produce different realities, as many as the practices (Mol, 2002). As different are the practices, there are ‘multiple versions of objects’ as many as the practices in which these perform. In this, reality(ies), which is performed in practices, is ‘historically, culturally and materially located, then it is also multiple (p.75). By studying anaemia, Mol observed that there

are three forms of anaemia, as there are three ways to diagnose it. Each means diagnose something different. Mol also found that the objects that took part to these diagnose techniques did not ‘necessarily overlap with those of others’ (p.78). There are different versions of anaemia, different performances, different realities that co-exist in the present’ (p.79).

Moreover, the objects that are performed ‘do not come done: they carry modes and modulations of other objects with them’ (p.81). This is an interesting aspect, which has some commonalities with the representativeness of spokesperson that represent also the actors that are not present. The conceptualisation of performative society as ‘an active exercise in negotiations and control’ (Strum & Latour, 1987, p. 797) where ‘ all social actors “perform”

society to some degree, are active participants from the beginning, probing and investigating, negotiating and renegotiating’ (Strum & Latour, 1987, p.797) is taken further by Mol who found that practices produce not a single reality but multiple realities and that the actors, or objects as she defines them, participating in the practices perform differently, thus performing different practices and different versions of them.