ABSTRACT
Over the past ten to fifteen years, sociology has shown growing interest in spatial phenomena, especially in emphasizing space as more than a passive backdrop for social processes: once built, the spatio-material artefact does something to social life (Gieryn 2002). Some scholars have suggested that sociology is currently undergoing a ‘spatial turn’ (Warf and Arias 2008). The French sociologist Bruno Latour (2005) and his actor-network theory (ANT) plays a key role within this emerging research interest in space, in particular ANT’s ontological proposition that ‘human’ and ‘non-human’ agents hold a symmetrical capacity for agency. Regardless whether space is described in terms of a ‘non-representational aspect’ (Thrift 2008), ‘mobility systems’ (Urry 2007), ‘connectors’ (Yaneva 2009), or ‘networked infrastructures’ (Graham and Marvin 2001), recent sociology of space is standing on the shoulders of Latour’s non-human agents.
