ACTOR-NETWORKS AND THE EVOLUTION OF ECONOMIC FORMS - COMBINING DESCRIPTION AND EXPLANATION IN THEORIES OF REGULATION, FLEXIBLE SPECIALIZATION, AND NETWORKS

Declarations of societal shift, economic transition, and the dawning o f a new era have now become commonplace in social science, particularl y in the analysis of economic forms. In this paper, three influential accounts of economic change are examined and are found to be overwhelm ingly concerned with identifying new orders, paradigms, or modes of ac cumulation. First, regulation theory is described. Although this persp ective is valuable in its focus upon institutional ensembles and inter relations, it lapses all too easily into structuralism; that is, these institutional ensembles can be explained by their structural 'couplin g' to the mode of production and the mode of regulation. Second, flexi ble specialization is considered. Here again the explanation of new in dustrial forms is distinguished from their description by the use of ' ideal types'. These types define the contours of the new era. Last, ne tworks are also identified as the dominant organizational form of the post-Fordist era. The argument proposed here is that networks are not new and are insufficiently distinct from other forms of organization, yet they do help to focus attention on network analysis. Drawing upon the work of actor-network theorists, such as Gallon, Latour, and Law, I argue that networks must be analyzed from within; that is, we should seek to follow network builders as they weave together heterogeneous materials. Thus, explanation emerges only once description has been pu rsued to the 'bitter end'. It is from within the processes of economic change that our own accounts must be constructed, and this militates against theatrical declarations of new orders, eras, etc. We must expl ain by using the descriptions of network construction and not by recou rse to some underlying historical logic.