Deineka A. Heuristic potential of actor-network theory for the sociological conceptualization of agency.

This research is devoted to the solution of the scientific problem, which consists in the mismatch between the gnoseological need for theoretical instrument capable of analyzing and describing the common activity of human and non-human agents of social life, and the actual state of the actor-network theory, claiming the status of such instrument, but does not meet the requirements of the full-fledged sociological theory of agency, which is due to the lack of scientific understanding of the theoretical relationship between ANT and classical sociological theories of action. The thesis shows why the issue of agency and social action can be considered as one of the central problems of theoretical knowledge in sociology. Sociology was formed as a science of peculiarities of human social behavior and its external determinants, and this context set the main tensions in sociological theories of action. To analyze it, we turned to those developments that the actor network theory contains in its arsenal. This approach, although increasingly popular as a new sociological theory, does not have a clear disciplinary identity and, as we have found, most often appears in contemporary theoretical discussions in three ways: as one of the newest paradigms in the sociology of science, as a general research method, also known as «material semiotics”, or as a fundamental theoretical project known as “sociology of associations”, contrasted with the so-called «sociology of social».