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Reassembling gender: Actor-network theory (ANT) and the making of the technology in gender
Vivian Anette Lagesen Social Studies of Science 2012 42: 442 originally published online 2 April 2012 DOI: 10.1177/0306312712437078 The online version of this article can be found at: http://sss.sagepub.com/content/42/3/442

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SSS42310.1177/0306312712437078LagesenSocial Studies of Science

Reassembling gender: Actor-network theory (ANT) and the making of the technology in gender
Vivian Anette Lagesen

Social Studies of Science 42(3) 442448 The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0306312712437078 sss.sagepub.com

Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

Keywords
actor-network theory, Bruno Latour, gender, technology

In 1987, Bruno Latour published his seminal outline of actor-network theory (ANT) Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. While ANT has remained controversial, its impact on science and technology studies (STS) is undeniable. One of the topics that emerged from Science in Action, and which Latour has continued to develop, perhaps most prominently in the 2005 volume Re-Assembling the Social, is a general theory of action. A main tenet of this theory is that society is an achievement of people engaging in producing a variety of associations of human and non-human elements. We might remind ourselves, paying attention to its subtitle, that Science in Action is an analysis of how scientists and engineers not only make technoscience, but society as well. Lately, Latour (2010) claims that in spite of his profound empirical interest, the main direction of his work is philosophical and centred on the critique of the concept of the modern. However, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Science in Action, it seems fitting to return to the sociological potential of Latours theory of action to explore further its potential to make sense of the role of technology the non-human actors in the re-assembly of how people construct themselves and their actions. I am interested in examining what Latours theory of action may contribute to a long-standing concern of feminist scholars in STS, namely the relationship between gender and technology.
Corresponding author: Vivian Anette Lagesen, Department for Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Dragvoll Trondheim 7491 Norway. Email: vivian.lagesen@ntnu.no

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This move may seem somehow ironic: most feminist STS scholars have sidestepped ANT because Latour, not least in Science in Action, has failed to address gender issues in science and technology (Cockburn, 1992; Wajcman, 1991). More pointedly, Susan Leigh Star (1991) argues that through its singular focus on the success of a few scientists and engineers Science in Action ignores the costs of these successes and the role of all the invisible work performed in technoscience not least by women. While I do not disagree with this criticism, I believe it is important to investigate more thoroughly whether there are any gains in applying ANT and Latours theory of action to the analysis of gender and technology. Are there perhaps benefits from thinking about gender as a process of reassembling human and non-human elements?

Deficiencies in traditional co-construction of gender and technology analysis

Could, for example, ANT prove useful for overcoming a particular difficulty in feminist analyses of gender and technology, namely the asymmetrical treatment of gender and technology (found in many standard accounts of the field)? The most prominent theoretical approach in feminist studies of technology has been the idea that gender and technology are co-constructed (Berg, 1994; Berg and Lie, 1995, Oudshoorn et al., 2002; Oudshoorn and Pinch, 2003; Wajcman, 2004; see also Landstrm, 2005). In principle, the logic of co-construction is quite simple: two variables or a set of variables interact and constitute new (co-constructed) objects. A widely acclaimed example of a feminist co-constructionist analysis of gender and technology is the study of the microwave oven by Cynthia Cockburn and Susan Ormrod (1993). They show that, at first, the microwave was designed to be sold as a masculine brown good along with television, video and hi-fi systems. It was marketed to men, assumed to be single and not particularly keen cooks. Thus, the microwave was developed and advertised as a high tech, masculine gadget to reheat pre-prepared food. However, this marketing failed, and the producers decided to change the microwave and its configured users. The new targeted group was women, and the microwave was redesigned for serious, versatile, feminine cooking. It was then sold as a white good among products such as conventional ovens, fridges and freezers. Cockburn and Ormrod argue that, in contrast to the men involved, women were seen, and some saw themselves, as being better at cooking than at using technology. When the microwave was placed in the white goods department, the expected customers were families/ couples shopping for their kitchen, depicted as a feminine domain. Store managers thought that customers would want to buy white goods from a saleswoman, rather than from (particularly young) men. Thus, Cockburn and Ormrod show how perceptions of gender roles were projected onto the microwave oven, shaping the microwave in a gendered way. This and many other major contributions to feminist studies of gender and technology convincingly show how technologies are gendered; in particular, how they are shaped by and linked to the pervasive sexual division of labour (others include, Casper and Clarke, 1998; Grint and Gill, 1995; Lie, 1995; Wajcman, 1991). However, compared with the

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ambition of co-construction to provide a dynamic and interactional account of the gendertechnology relationship, something is missing in these studies. There is a lack of concern with the way gender is constructed and the roles technology can play in the its construction and production. Gender is generally treated as a stable, pre-given category that shapes the technology under scrutiny. It is black-boxed, the content and behaviour of gender relations is assumed to be common knowledge, and their meanings are stabilized and no longer need to be considered (Ormrod, 1994: 32). How can gender be rendered more dynamic? It is here I believe that ANT offers interesting possibilities for perceiving both gender and technology as heterogeneous and malleable objects (see also Singleton, 1995, 1996). To explore this option, it is helpful to be more specific about what it actually means to do gender, and how to analyse the role of technology in the doing of gender. Leaning on ANT, we may claim that doing gender is an on-going movement where associations with bodies, norms, knowledge, interpretations, identities, technologies, and so on, are made and unmade in complex ways. Thus, gender is fluid and flexible because new associations are established, while old ones are dissolved. But what can this mean for empirical sociological analysis? How may we re-assemble gender with a focus on relationships with technologies?

Studying technology in gender

Much feminist analysis is concerned with how people do gender (West and Zimmerman, 1987). While this has meant an important break with essentialism, the perspective of doing gender is rather open. In what follows, I try to make use of Latours (2005) theory of action to study the doing of gender, considered as ways of assembling hybrid human and non-human elements. Latour suggests that we, first, should focus on how new elements in the assembling processes introduce new uncertainties or controversies, in our case, with respect to the doing of gender. For example, a womans life may change by being trained as an engineer, or by becoming rooted in new social media. When new objects are made part of a womans life, new relationships are made, to other humans as well as to non-human entities. Latour proposes that the next step, after new uncertainties or controversies have been analysed, is to study how involved actors work to overcome those uncertainties, to stabilize the controversies. This can be made to happen by finding new routines or standards. Thus, the doing of, in our case gender, changes. Let me try to clarify by introducing two empirical examples. They both concern women assembling knowledge about computers as part of their ways of doing gender. The first is Tine Kleif and Wendy Faulkners (2004) study of women who attended a women-only training course in information technology in the UK. Kleif and Faulkner show how this course had a huge impact on many of these womens lives. Their sense of achievement, feeling of empowerment and increase in confidence was substantial to many of them. A very telling quote from one of their informants (Caroline) is the following:

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I am not the same person . Besides learning all the stuff on the computer, the biggest thing was that it just gave you so much confidence. From what I was like on the first day of the course, to what I was like approaching Christmas time, you know, it was just completely different. It just gave you so much confidence. Nothing would faze you anymore, do you know what I mean? Nothing seemed daunting anymore. (Kleif and Faulkner, 2004: 125)

Another informant, Jacky, jokingly said this about her relationship with computers: I can drive it now. I can drive it anywhere I want it! A third woman, Begum, felt that the course had changed her whole life:
It has increased my confidence level thats the main thing. And its made me want to do things for myself; exercise, socialise. Before my life was just a mess. Its picking up now. (Kleif and Faulkner, 2004: 125)

To these women, at the outset, ICT represented a source of uncertainty, something that challenged their way of living but without providing new directions. The course helped them to assemble ICT and their gendered self in a new, stabilized fashion. Learning about and associating with ICT did something important for these womens self-identity and self-esteem, as well as technological practices. For some, it also expanded their agency and their roles in relation to many other people, including neighbours, friends and family: they became the ones who could help other people with their computers. Jacky also said it changed her perception of herself in a professional work situation as well: I always said Id never be a secretary. All that being a woman, you know, making his coffee, typing his letters its not me. With IT yere no really being a secretary (Jacky in Kleif and Faulkner, 2004: 127). In a sense, the doing of ICT reshaped the way these women did gender. My second example is taken from my own study of women computer science students (Lagesen, 2005). Here, I use the concept of becoming (Braidotti, 2002: 118119) to describe the association work done with respect to technology when doing gender. Braidotti uses the allegory of a metamorphosis to characterize the becoming process. Metamorphoses involves struggle and I wanted to describe this process of how women struggle to become computer scientists, highlighting the uncertainties that are produced and the strategies that stabilise them (Latour, 2005). To achieve this, my analysis focused on the complex and heterogeneous material and non-material associations that the women students produced in the process. To the extent that their gender remained fluid and flexible, it was because new associations were established, while old ones were dismantled. Still, the students I interviewed did envision new stable ways of being women computer scientists, but in different ways, associating with different aspects of computers and computer science. Karen was in her fourth year of a computer science programme. She had been attracted to the programme by an advertising campaign that linked traditional, (stereotyped), womens qualities to computer science (see also Lagesen, 2007). Karen clearly associated herself with the campaigns message that having those feminine characteristics made her particularly suitable for becoming a computer scientist. Initially, she had wanted to study engineering because it was a safe career-oriented choice, and because she liked mathematics:

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So, I thought very clearly that I should opt for mathematics and physics, to be on the safe side. I have always been a good girl and performed well and I also found mathematics to be fun. It was enjoyable until I started here [at the university]. Then it wasnt funny anymore. So I thought like: yeah, it might be exciting . I have always been a bit stubborn and wanted to do something else than my mum and dad. Both of them are teachers. So, it was also that [disenganging with the parents], I think.

However, after nearly 4 years, Karen expressed an outspoken dissatisfaction with her choice of education and the computer science programme:
I can just as well say it, sooner than later: I have made a completely wrong choice [laughing a little]. If I had been 18 again, then I would have chosen something completely different. I would not have chosen computer science and I would not have chosen engineering. But now it is a bit late to stop and start something else, so I just have to get the best out of [it].

Karen felt that the advertising campaign, which initially attracted her, had been deceitful, since she felt that the computer science programme turned out to be very narrowly technical. She was disappointed that the department had not changed the content of the programme when it had put so much effort into recruiting women. In addition, there were some opportunities to subvert the technical programme. Karen had chosen information systems as her speciality. This she considered to be the least technical option. She also selected other non-technical subjects whenever possible, which was her strategy of disengaging with computer science:
I have actually been quite proactive and used all available loopholes. When there has been an opportunity to choose freely, I have selected organization subjects and ... well, slightly softer topics. So now, I am taking human resources psychology.

Karen was quite particular about the kind of career she wanted and thus how she could stabilize herself as a woman computer scientist:
I have considered taking some course in education. They have a special programme for engineers in that. So perhaps I simply will work as a teacher or something within teaching. Or I may refocus my thesis toward learning in organizations, how computers may support learning and post-qualifying education. I have always liked to teach. I have worked a bit as a supply teacher. So I could fancy giving courses and things like that. So I will be quite picky in choosing a job. I know that I can well; I dont like it when people say that if everything else fails, they can always become teachers ... but.

In the end, Karen constructed herself as a non-technical computer scientist, doing gender by associating with a fairly complex and unstable set of elements. She wanted to become a woman computer scientist by associating with computer technology indirectly as an organizational consultant or teacher, dissociating herself from what she considered to be technical. Compared with the women in the first example, the ways Karen assembled computing knowledge as a part of her doing gender appears as more pent-up and less enthusiastic. These were two brief examples of doing gender and technology by way of associations, investigating the meaning of the technology in gender.

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Reassembling gender
To sum up, few feminists have actually tried to make use of ANT and Bruno Latours theory of action to study gender and technology; or, more specifically, to explore what different ways of relating to technologies may mean for the doing of gender. Given the 25th anniversary of Science in Action, it may be timely to pursue some of the constructive options offered by Latours work. Arguably, this would be in line with the work of Donna Haraway (1991, 2004), and not least with her critical concept of the cyborg, which she used to dissolve and subvert the gender binaries that abound in modern society. Clearly, ANT fits Haraways programme of anti-essentialism through its insistence of heterogeneity and the focus on practices of associating human and non-human elements. Actor-network is, has been, a semiotic machine for waging war on essential differences. It has insisted on the performative character of relations and the objects constituted in those relations. It has insisted on the possibility, at least in principle, that they might be otherwise (Law, 1999: 7). However, to the empirical sociologists, philosophical insights about the need to develop a programme of anti-essentialism in gender studies are important but insufficient. The question is what ANT and Latour may offer in terms of analytical strategies to avoid binaries and essentialisms, as well as dissolving asymmetries in the treatment of gender and technology. I cannot here provide a full-blown effort to explore the potential of ideas that ANT and Latour offer. However, I hope that the above examples may entice some readers to join in the pursuit of re-assembling gender (see also Srensen et al., 2011). References
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Biographical note
Vivian Anette Lagesen is Professor in Science and Technology Studies at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She has published widely in the field of gender, science and technology.

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