ANT Analysis on the River Management of Urban Taiwan A Case Study of Keelung River in Taipei Basin英文文献资料.docVIP

Advances in Applied Sociology 2012. Vol.2, No.3, 203-213 Published Online September 2012 in SciRes (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/aasoci) /10.4236/aasoci.2012.23027 ANT Analysis on the River Management of Urban Taiwan: A Case Study of Keelung River in Taipei Basin Tsu-Lung Chou Graduate Institute of Urban Planning, National Taipei University, New Taipei City, Chinese Taipei Email: houtl@.tw Received April 24 , 2012; revised May 27 , 2012; accepted June 10 , 2012 th th th This article provides a historical investigation on river management in urban Taiwan. It demonstrates the application of actor network theory (ANT) on the long-term development and evolution of river manage- ment network through a case study of the Keelung River in Taipei Basin. The study considers the forma- tion of the actors’ world of the Keelung River and the way the actors have affected flood drainage and the supply of land in the region. River management and induced disasters in the Basin are explored. Strengths and weaknesses of the ANT are also discussed. Keywords: Actor Network Theory; River Management; Keelung River Watershed Introduction man/nonhuman (Murdoch, 1997a). It is argued that actors can join together and able to transcend the binary interactive spec- trums of local/global, cultural/natural, and social/technical to form complex associations for mutual benefits. Secondly, the idea of symmetry dictates that the natural and the social, or non-human and human, are symmetrically treated as necessary counterparts in the analyses of any society-nature relationship. Finally, the ANT highlights analytical impartiality, in which the analyst is required to be as undecided as the actors they follow (Latour, 1987: pp. 175-176). The ANT explores how human and nonhuman actors are brought together in networks and for