Social Psychology or Psychology of Associations? The latourian perspective on society

Abstract

In this essay, we aimed to discuss how the social is defined by the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and it´s possible contributions to social psychology. According to ANT, instead of considering the social a place or a kind of material that constitute certain phenomena, we should question the project of giving “social explanations” and rescue this term´s original meaning – etymologically, it´s closer to associations than to social bounds. A social psychology that follows this perspective considers that the non-humans have agency and product effects on the world, modifying our actions and our processes of sense attribution.