Spatial planning theory

Actor Network Theory

ANT is a promising research method showing researchers ‘where to travel’ and ‘what is worth seeing’. ANT has been applied in sustainable tourism studies by prof. dr. Rene van der Duim. (Van der Duim, 2005, 2010). The major contribution of ANT is an urge for abstainance from the use of broad predefined categories such as ‘social forces’, ‘governance’ of ‘market forces’. These categories are embedded in everyday speech and may serve as directing posts to research puzzles, but they cannot function as explanatory factors. ANT scholars focus in on the idiosyncrasies of the functioning of a specific institution and discern what makes it tick. Institutions such as planning laws, professional practices, scientific knowledge, emerging research themes are conceptualised as cognitive frames, rule systems, discourse coalitions or organizational configurations. Researchers are challenged to unveil networks of actors and actants thus producing allegedly better explanations than regular social science. ANT leaves the task of defining and ordering the social to the actors and focuses in on relations, enactments, translations and innovations. Researchers meticulously map out the emergence and decay of fluid networks. ANTS's main tenet is 'that actors themselves make everything, including their own frames, their own theories, their own contexts, their own metaphysics, even their own ontologies'. (Latour, 2005, 147) The type of questions guiding ANT studies concern how certain technologies, practices, rules, ideas and structures have (or have not) come about, how they are made possible, thanks to what and to whom, and finally what the effects are of these workings.

ANT’s introduction in the world of academic planning studies has provoked a fiery debate. Applications in the domain of spatial planning are explorative and have not been assessed thoroughly by leading theorists. So there is room for explorative experimental studies in the domain of spatial planning. Case studies may pertain to the emergence of sustainable area development (as the opposite to regional spatial planning), urban agriculture or cultural planning.

Contact: arnold.vandervalk@wur.nl