Abstract
The history of Science & Technology Studies （STS） can be understood as a series of challenges to ‘the social’. The first attempt of such challenges is represented by the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge（SSK）, which was an early approach of STS. SSK attempted to overcome the narrow categories of traditional sociology based on the strict distinction between ‘the social’ and ‘the scientific （or the technical）’. Instead, SSK sought to explain ‘the technical’ by ‘the social’, and was thus called social constructivism on science and technology. Actor-Network Theory （ANT） represents the second challenge of STS to ‘the social’. It criticizes SSK in that the latter is still based on the dualism of ‘the social’ versus ‘the natural’（or rather humans vs. nonhumans）. ANT tries to overcome such a dualism by imputing agency to nonhuman beings. The contrastive perspectives of SSK and ANT on nonhuman agency has led to the so-called ‘Epistemological Chicken’ debate. This paper explores whether ANT seeks to abolish ‘the social’（even social sciences） by acknowledging nonhuman agency. In addition, we try to suggest that to acknowledge nonhuman agency is not only important for the development of science and technology but also for the ecologization of politics to redress the defects of modernism by illustrating a controversy over the 4 Major Rivers Project in Korea. This paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of the challenges of STS to ‘the social’ for the innovation of sociology.
