Actor-Network Theory Alternative Approach to Understanding the Market

Many economic theories are based on the assumption that the rules of the market an? the results of "natural" tendencies of rational individuals to gain their interests, and that those "natural laws" enable the market to be self-regulated Their critics insist on a more significant role of state and society in the regulation of the market. Differences between these two camps are apparent: the first approach is based on rational individuals, the second one is based on the embeddedness of markets in the social and political context. However, both approaches are based on modernist dichotomies between subject and object, individual and collective, nature and society which make it difficult to render the complexity of linking heterogeneous actors in the market. This text will propose Actor-Network Them as an alternative approach to understanding markets. Such an approach implies that neither can market be self-regulated nor can a state regulate it. The market is instead viewed as an actor-network in which heterogeneous actors participate in its construction and maintenance.