ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates the convergences and differences between the cultural turn and neo-empiricism. It focuses mainly on Actor-network theory, since it is through this interface that the relations between the cultural turn and neo-empiricism are discernible. Epistemological criticism is a major tenet in the cultural turn. Criticism is not only a heuristic tool which serves the purposes of authenticating evidence and supporting the conclusions of analytical models in the cultural turn, but also addresses the epistemological foundations of scholarship. A major difference between the cultural turn and neo-empiricism is the conceptualization of the human agent. The actor signals a shift of attention from the internal to the external qualities of the agent. A conceptual similarity between the cultural turn and neo-empiricism is the analytical focus on actions or practices. Neo-empiricism has been successful at breaking down the conceptual boundaries which are common in normative epistemology.
