This contribution is a modest remedy to the lack of attention to the differences ANT repertoires can contribute to making in our empirical inquiries. It seeks to pursue a reflexive and pragmatic confrontation with the ANT repertoires we articulate in order to test how they shape our case studies and are shaped by them. The aim of this paper is precisely to contribute to doing so by performing a consequential testing of the agnostic and care repertoire in a particular case study. To do so, I will draw on an ethnography case study I conducted on a telecare services some time ago. I will examine the “disconcertments” that the encounters with the telecare users produced in my fieldwork, which shifted the focus of my analysis from the sociotechnical setting-up of the telecare system to the fragility and affordances of the older peoples’ daily life arrangements. As a result of this, the pragmatic differences between the agnostic and care repertoires will be sketched out and discussed in light of the classic ANT literature and current debates on care and STS.
López, D. (2019). What if ANT wouldn’t pursue agnosticism but care?, In A. Blok, I. Farías & C. Roberts (eds) The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory, London; NY: Routledge.
