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Educational Leadership, Management,
and Administration through
Actor-Network Theory
Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration through Actor-Network

Theory presents how actor-network theory (ANT) and the related vocabularies
have much to offer to a critical re-imagination of the dynamics of management
in education and educational leadership. It extends the growing contemporary
perspective of ANT into the study of educational administration and management.
This book draws on case studies focusing on new configurations of educational
management and leadership. It presents new developments of ANT (“After
ANT” and “Near ANT”) and clarifies how these “sensibilities” can contribute
to thinking critically and intervening in the current dynamics of education.
The book proposes that ANT can offer an ecological understanding of
educational leadership which is helpful in abandoning the narrow humanistic
world of managerialism, considering a post-anthropocentric scenario where it
is necessary to compose together new “liveable” assemblages of humans and
non-humans.
This book will be of great interest to academics, scholars and post-graduate
students in the fields of educational management, leadership and administration,
as well as education policy. It will also be highly relevant to policy-makers and
experts of education policy at the national, European and international levels.
Paolo Landri is a Senior Researcher of the Institute of Research on Population

and Social Policies at National Research Council in Italy (CNR-IRPPS).
His main research interests concern educational organisations, professional
learning and educational policies.
Critical Studies in Educational Leadership, Management
and Administration Series
Series Editors: Pat Thomson
Jill Blackmore and Amanda Heffernan
This series draws on social and political theories from selected key thinkers
and activists to develop critical thinking leadership tools. Each text uses the
work of a particular theorist or theoretical approach, explains the theory, sug-
gests what it might bring to the ELMA field, and then offers analysis and case
studies to show how the tools might be used. Every book also offers a set of
questions that might be used by individual leaders in their own practices, and
in areas of further research by ELMA scholars.
In elaborating the particular approaches, each of the books also suggests a
professional and political agenda which addresses aspects of the tensions and
problems created by neoliberal and neoconservative policy agendas, and the
on-going need for educational systems to do better for many more of their
students than they do at present.
Titles in the series
Educational Leadership and Pierre Bourdieu

Pat Thomson
Educational Leadership: Theorising Professional Practice

in Neoliberal Times
Edited by Stephen J. Courtney, Ruth McGinity and Helen Gunter
Theorising Identity and Subjectivity in Educational Leadership

Research
Edited by Richard Niesche and Amanda Heffernan
Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration through

Paolo Landri
For more information about this series please visit: www.routledge.com/

Critical-Studies-in-Educational-Leadership-Management-and-Administration/
book-series/ELMA.
Educational Leadership,
Management, and
Administration through
Paolo Landri
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Paolo Landri
The right of Paolo Landri to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-60095-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-47049-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Garamond
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To Nora, Emanuele and Gabriele
Contents
List of figures viii

Series editor introduction ix
Acknowledgments xvi
1 Introducing actor-network theory 1
2 A way out from the modernistic constitution of educational

leadership management and administration 20
3 Symmetry: the entanglement of humans and non-humans 39
4 Translating schools in the calculative worlds of education

(with Radhika Gorur) 60
5 Stabilising networks and ontological politics 81
6 Near actor-network theory: limits, critiques and new

directions of research 101
Annotated bibliography 125

Index 135
Figures
3.1 Giving directions to school: M’s map 48

3.2 Giving directions to school: R’s map 49
3.3 Giving directions to school: E’s map 50
Series editor introduction
Imagine yourself walking into the foyer of the Department of Education, Vic-
toria, Australia. In front of you is a wall on which a series of names are dis-
played ceiling to floor. You glance quickly and note the following: Edward
de Bono, Richard Elmore, Michael Fullan, Andy Hargreaves, Maria Mon-
tessori, Linda Darling-Hammond, Daniel Goleman, Kenneth Leithwood.
Now imagine yourself in England. You decide to go to the website of the
state-owned leadership research and training National College, and you find
a section called “Key Thinkers.” When the screen changes, you find yourself
looking at a list which contains many of the same names.
Today, both of these things have disappeared. The names on the wall in
the Victoria have been removed, and the National College website has been
revamped. But both were in place for some years. Seeing them made us won-
der what was going on that the very same people were being lauded on both
sides of the world. We noted that both lists were dominated by North Ameri-
can men. In the Australian case, no Australians were listed, and in the case
of England, the English names were in a minority. Would this happen if we
were exploring a leadership space or place in Los Angeles? In Edinburgh? In
Cape Town? In Beijing? In Buenos Aires? In Toronto? It is interesting to think
about where and where not we might see similar listings.
We are sure that we would not have found this thirty years ago. While there
was an international circulation of educational ideas and texts, the develop-
ment of a celebrity leadership culture promoted by international gurus with
modernising know-how is a new phenomenon. It is worth considering why
this might be the case. We think immediately of four possible reasons.
1 Leadership now encompasses all aspects of “continuous educational

improvement.” All professionals (and increasingly children and young
people as well) are identified as leaders, doing leading and exercising lead-
ership. Headteachers, or principals, are deemed repositories of leadership
that they do or do not “distribute” to others to enable “delivery” to be
“maximised.” All educational professionals are spoken to or about as school
leaders, often without reference to role titles, and so just about everyone is
potentially included as a consumer of leadership ideas and models.
x Series editor introduction
2 There is now a much greater focus on leadership development. Educa-
tion policymakers from the right and left suggest that if policies are to
be implemented, then they need leaders at the local level to make it hap-
pen. Many have also decided that they only need to provide directions
for change and frameworks for what is to be done and then devolve the
means to secure resources necessary to the local leader.
3 Systems now assume that they need to be seen to be using “world’s best
practice.” National governments are highly conscious of their place in
international league tables, and their national credibility rests on being
able to show some kind of “continued improvement.” They are extremely
vulnerable to media portrayals of “failing” schools and/or systems. They
believe that there are international “solutions” to local problems which
may appear not dissimilar to problems in other jurisdictions.
4 There now seems to be a leadership industry made up of knowledge
producers and popularisers located in private companies, universities
and schools. This leadership industry has made significant interven-
tions in all spheres of activity, including in education and in educational
leadership. What is on offer from a select range of academics and con-
sultants, the traveling leadership entrepreneurs, is a set of tailor-made
as well as off-the-peg “solutions” to individuals, organisations and gov-
ernments. These solutions are sold as transnational, evidence-based and
transferable.
Te readiness of the leadership industry to provide policy and professional

solutions creates a situation in which it seems, if one examines the kinds
of training on ofer to potential school leaders, that there is a one-best way
to do leading and leadership and to be a leader. Te promotion of policy
anxiety, leadership and entrepreneurial activity is not necessarily, we sug-
gest, a virtuous circle. We call this conjunction the transnational leadership
package (TLP).
The emergence of the TLP

The TLP is not a homogenous body of work or people. It is derived from
different national and cultural settings. It draws on a range of intellectual
histories and practice traditions in different national contexts within the field
of educational leadership, management and administration (ELMA). There
are distinct, but interrelated, intellectual lineages within the field of ELMA
which can be backtracked from contemporary concerns to particular histori-
cal contexts and theoretical origins. We call these lineages paradigms. ELMA
paradigms cannot be easily disconnected from each other, either theoretically
or chronologically, as different approaches were often developed differently
in different places and at different times, in response to the failure, or lack
of explanatory power, of earlier paradigms. The ELMA paradigms, each with
their own internal logics, can be roughly depicted as follows:
Series editor introduction xi
1 the U.S. adoption of the Ford manufacturing Taylorist principles of sci-
entific management (standardisation specialisation, synchronisation,
concentration, maximisation and centralisation) as the “factory model”
to emulate in schooling during the 1920s. Its later renditions are the
school effectiveness and school improvement movements (SESI), and
this is now interlocked with education policy through the imposition,
across the entire public sector, of private sector market principles in the
form of new public management (NPM). The core principles underpin-
ning the resulting managerialisation and marketisation of schooling are
competition and compliance, efficiency and effectiveness. Numbers as
school rankings and comparisons are central to this push.
2 the post-war human relations movement, again largely U.S. driven. This
movement recognised how supportive social relations and participative
decision-making informed productivity. This human relations paradigm
is re-emerging in the 21st century in the therapeutic turn where emo-
tional intelligence, managing interpersonal relations and intercultural
communication are now seen as core leadership skills rather than a dis-
play of weakness. This paradigm informs the move away from the provi-
sion of public services through institutions toward brokerage, contracts
and partnerships. Notably it is visible in the contemporary organisational
and pedagogic discourse about personalised provision.
3 the U.S. theory movement of the 1960s sought to establish ELMA as
a value-free science. This paradigm has been ever present in ELMA but
has gained new clout through the contemporary focus on large-scale
quantitative studies, evidence-based/informed practice and data-driven
decision-making. Prime examples of this contemporary trend are the
involvement of TLP in the U.S. No Child Left Behind policy and Every
Child Matters in England.
4 the experiential or pragmatic perspective of the U.K. tradition, which
derived from a strong practitioner orientation and apprenticeship model
of leadership. This has recently re-emerged in the “what works” discourse
in England when leadership accreditation and training provisions were
taken up by governments and as teacher education is pushed back into
schools.
5 the socially critical, neo-Marxist and feminist perspectives, emerging
predominantly from the geographical margins of Australia, New Zealand
and Canada during the 1980s and 1990s. These are now being reinvigo-
rated with the revival of social justice as a leadership issue in the 2010s,
given the marked growth of educational inequality in both developed and
developing nation-states. This book series is located within this tradition.
Tere is now a convergence of the ELMA paradigms. Tis has occurred at the
same time as neoliberal policies have spread from the Anglophone nation-
states to Asia, the Middle East, Mexico, South Africa and South America.
Key aspects of the neoliberalist agenda are virtually enforced by international
xii Series editor introduction
bodies, such as the IMF, World Bank and OECD, and results of interna-
tional standardised testing, such as PISA, are now a crucial reference point
for policymakers in most countries in the world. Tis policy spread has been
made possible in part through the advocacy work of knowledge and know-
how entrepreneurs whose activity informs and is sometimes commissioned by
these international agencies. Te result is that there is now a coming together
of the ELMA paradigms through preferred models, such as transformational
leadership, which is simultaneously about delivery, an emotional commit-
ment to the delivery and a predictive evidenced-based process to delivering
the delivery! Tactical and pragmatic mediations may occur in some countries,
such as England, but in the main, the ELMA paradigms inform and com-
municate vision and mission for localised implementation.
ELMA can now be understood as a transnational field of educational
research, with a recognisable lexicon, key players and logics of practice. This
is the case regardless of whether we are looking at the TLP, other ELMA
scholars somewhat separate from it or socially critical scholars. Across ELMA,
generally, there is a trend toward both standardisation and normalisation as
to what constitutes good leadership through the development of leadership
training programs and professional standards nationally—a shift away from
post-occupancy professional development to leadership preparation, in some
instances requiring certification. Scholars from the fifth paradigm are also
positioned by these developments and engage in the kinds of critical, decon-
structive and reconstructive work that is the purpose of this book series.
Indeed, we have briefed our authors to engage in this process so that the
problematisation of the field of ELMA and its relationship with the TLP are
central to the engagement with theory and theorising.
The convergence of ELMA paradigms has also been actively produced by
particular scholars and professionals through a process of selective eclecticism
and appropriation of a set of concepts in response to the multiple and com-
plex challenges of school leadership and to opportunities offered by anxious
governments. This production and these products and producers are what we
refer to as the TLP.
The TLP is not the same as ELMA. It brings together concepts and prac-
tices that were formerly confined to particular localities and institutions into
a particular “saleable” form. The result is an assemblage of ideas and activities
that focus primarily on the needs of educational systems and national govern-
ments. These do not necessarily meet the needs of individual schools, their
students or their communities. The package is in fact constantly repackaged
and contains a few genuinely new ideas but plenty of normative rhetoric
about the urgency to buy and use.
The TLP consists of three mutually supporting strands:
1 a set of policy prescriptions based on the experiences of consultants work-

ing in contractual (and often informal) partnerships with governments
and agencies in particular jurisdictions, mostly North America and
Series editor introduction xiii
England, but also now including PISA success story, Finland. There are
ready-made sound bites in this strand combined with the authority of
“best practice.”
2 a series of meta-analyses and effectiveness studies, whose impressive sta-
tistical manipulations mostly boil down to saying that if you want to
improve students’ learning, then you have to focus on how teachers and
classroom practice can “deliver” higher outcome standards—and not on
networks, teams or devolution of funding since these alone won’t pro-
duce the desired test result improvements.
3 a cultural professional deficit where the identification of problems, agenda
setting and strategising is often perceived as rightly located outside of the
school and where notions of professional agency are reduced to tactical
localised delivery. However, some TLP manifestations have taken up the
Finland exemplar to argue that a well-qualified and intellectually active
teaching force is vital and that too much emphasis on testing and league
tabling is counter-productive. However, the role of leaders remains the
same in both versions, as does the primary goal of meeting system needs.
Te TLP provides a kind of (largely) Anglocentric IKEA fat-pack of policy

“levers” that will produce the actions and efects that count in national elec-
tions and international testing. While modern but cheap, it is worth “buying
into” largely because to be seen as diferent is risky.
However, there is considerable debate about whether these objectives meet
the needs of schools, communities, teachers and students in countries as
diverse as Denmark, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Wales and Singa-
pore. At a time when populations in many countries are also becoming more
diverse and less egalitarian, it is not clear that the TLP is up to the challenge.
We are not arguing here that the international circulation of ideas and
people is to be discouraged. Obviously, finding out what others are doing can
be very helpful as a means of generating new perspectives. The debate and
discussion that occur when people with different positions come together
are a Good Thing. However, we think it is ironic that at the same time as
national governments and transnational agencies are concerned about main-
taining the diversity of plants, animals and habitats, precisely the opposite is
occurring with education policy ideas and practices. “Good” leadership fea-
tures prominently among one-best global prescriptions and representations.
Many ELMA scholars not in the TLP, including those from critical paradigm,
suggest that there is no one best way of leading or changing a school and that
the models of transnational “success” need to promote diverse approaches
that are tailored to local needs histories and circumstances.
We take the view that what is needed in education is more than PISA
envy and “what works.” Prescribing a set of steps that governments and lead-
ers can take, regardless of wherever and whoever they are, eliminates one of
the most significant educational resources we have—our capacity to under-
stand, analyse and imagine within our local contexts. It is a fine irony that
xiv Series editor introduction
these intellectual practices are precisely the ones that education systems are
designed to inculcate in the next generation.
In these times, those who are engaged in educational leadership need, more
than ever, to think about their work—its purposes and processes as well as its
effects and outcomes. Our emphasis is on the educational, where the knowl-
edge, skills and processes that constitute professional practice are located in
teaching and learning; these provide the basis for leading and managing. This
series of books aims to support this kind of reflective educational work. Each
volume will focus on the conceptual tools and methodologies of a particular
social science theory and theorists. We draw on scholarship from sociology,
anthropology, philosophy, politics and cultural studies in order to interrogate,
interrupt and offer alternative ideas to the contemporary versions of TLP
and the broader field of ELMA. The series provides theoretical and method-
ological options for those who are engaged in the formal study of educational
leadership, management and administration. It provides alternative resources
for naming, framing and acting for those who are engaged in the practice of
educational leadership, management or administration or who are providing
training and policy for practising educational leaders.
The books series and critical thinking tools

This series of books might at first glance seem to be very removed from the
kinds of pressures that we have described. However, our motivation for gen-
erating the series is highly practical. As series editors, we come to and, we
hope, have informed the field of ELMA from different intellectual and occu-
pational histories.
Together, we take the view that now, more than ever, leading any educa-
tional institution requires intellectual work. Educational professionals must,
in our view, be able not simply to follow policy prescriptions. In order to do
the work of leading and leadership, educational professionals need to be able
to critically analyse policy directions, assess and evaluate their own institution
and its local national and international contexts, not only understand how
and why particular educational issues come to be center stage while others are
sidelined but also communicate this to others and call on a rich set of ideas in
order to develop directions for the institution in particular and for education
more generally. This requires, among other things, a set of critical thinking
tools. These are not all that are required, but they are an essential component
of professional practice.
This series draws on social and political theories from selected key thinkers
and activists to develop some critical thinking leadership tools. Each text uses
the work of a particular theorist or theoretical approach, explains the theory,
suggests what it might bring to the ELMA field and then offers analysis and
case studies to show how the tools might be used. Each book also offers a set
of questions that might be used by individual leaders in their own practices
and some possible areas for further research by ELMA scholars.
Series editor introduction xv
In elaborating the particular approaches, each of the books also suggests a
professional and political agenda which addresses aspects of the tensions and
problems created by neoliberal and neoconservative policy agendas and by
the ongoing need for educational systems to do better for many more of their
students than they do at present.
Pat Thomson, Helen Gunter, Jill Blackmore
Series Editors
Acknowledgments
The making of a book is a collective enterprise, even if it is a single-authored

volume. It is a sociomaterial practice that involves a network of people, tech-
nologies and materialities. There is, therefore, the need to recognise that it
comes to fruition thanks to many circumstances.
First of all, I have to thank the editors of the series, namely Pat Thomson,
Helen Gunter and Julie Blackmore. While initially the idea of introducing
actor-network theory to the field of educational management, administration
and leadership sounded odd to me, I accepted the challenge. I think at the
end that it was a useful exercise and led me back to one of my first fields of
expertise, organisation studies. This book welcomes the interference between
education and organisation studies. I have tried to argue that this overlap
is not necessarily entrapped in a managerialistic, neoliberal and modernistic
discourse.
Secondly, it is essential to acknowledge that this book benefitted from a col-
laboration with ANDIS (the National Association of School Headteachers),
one of the most representative professional associations of school leaders in
Italy, which helped me in understanding the contemporary transformations
of the managerial work in schools because of the policy of school autonomy
and in particular the change due to digitalisation. This collaboration has been
sustained by a research project called “The Sociomateriality of Work of the
Headteacher,” which led to an agreement between ANDIS and the overall
program known with the acronym INPOS (Innovation in Social Policies) of
the Institute of Research on Population and Social Policies. Here, I would like
to thank Paolino Marotta and the executive board of ANDIS, who sustained
my research even when it looked exoteric and was out of the perimeter of the
mainstream Italian literature.
Thirdly, without the almost year-long collaboration with the headteachers
and the schools, this volume would not have been possible. I learned a lot,
and I collected more materials than I was able to include. I had the chance to
interact with several headteachers I had met several years before at the begin-
ning of the policy of school autonomy when I supported them in training for
the passage to the new tasks of the independent schools. Thanks in particular
to Rossella De Luca, Emilia Di Blasi and Mena Nocera. My only hope is
Acknowledgments xvii
that this volume can offer them, the headteachers and teachers, some exciting
ideas. In that respect, this book is the first step in a collaboration I would like
to keep on developing.
Finally, I have to express thanks for the conversations I had with Emiliano
Grimaldi and Danilo Taglietti. They both helped me to better understand the
Foucaldian heritage of ANT.
1 Introducing actor-network theory
Aramis was a personal rapid transport system tested in Paris for a long time from 1970,
but finally abandoned in 1987. Officially, nobody knows why this system failed. Alter-
natively, better, there are many reasons. Someone or something killed the innovation,
and if it were an Agatha Christie novel there would be many potentially guilty parties
in the detective’s notebook. A list of 21 explanations can be offered, some of them
equally possible, and some that contradict one another. It could have been the minis-
ters, the local elected officials in Paris. Maybe, Aramis was not technically feasible, or
economically sustainable. Perhaps more experimentations, refinements, and trials were
needed to fix its hardware. Probably there is more than one guilty party in this failure.
Reconsidering this story, however, suggests that there is a solution to the quandary.
Aramis was not loved! The technical project remained the same, while the social envi-
ronment changed. There was no connection between the social and technical aspects.
Engineers and technologists had separated technology from society.
(Latour, 1996)
The preceding story is a summary of Bruno Latour’s book called Aramis, or

the Love of Technology (1996). The book is the story of a failed technology or,
more precisely, of a failed engagement between society and technology. It is
a story where non-humans (here “Aramis”) fail to acquire the capacity to act.
Like the Creature in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, Aramis was aban-
doned to its destiny. No one loved Aramis, it is said, and its bits and pieces
were finally disassembled.
Patient readers of this book might now feel somewhat disoriented: “What
am I reading? Is this an academic book or a sci-fi novel? Why are we talking
about non-human agency? Are we talking about robust theory?” Some may
have already closed the book. For the remaining (hopefully not few) readers,
however, the story offers, as will become more evident, some of the themes
(non-human agency, entanglement of technology and society) of an impres-
sive contemporary intellectual endeavor: actor-network theory (ANT), a help-
ful arena for rethinking the theory of agency and re-describing the dynamics
of educational leadership and management.
What is ANT? There are many definitions: a theory, a methodology, a
sensibility. ANT is less a single definite object of investigation, however, and
more a multiplicity without a fixed and standard identity. Nowadays, ANT
is a contemporary perspective crossing rapidly into many disciplinary fields.
It initially emerged in science and technology studies, contributing to their
constitution and shape, and has since traveled a great deal. In its travels, it
has solicited the emergence of unexpected landscapes on many topics, sub-
disciplines and disciplines, and at the same time, it has enriched its vocabu-
lary. A quick search for ANT on the Internet demonstrates that it has crossed
into disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, philosophy and economics
but also other fields, such as organisation studies, media investigation, policy
studies, medicine, art, disability studies and animal studies.
ANT has resisted being centered in a model by underlining and wittingly
privileging its flexibility. Often, success brings a tendency to protect, draw
boundaries and establish conventional frames. Here, instead, the success (but
also the criticism) has created a mechanism of reflexivity that has re-launched
the endless becoming of the perspective. ANT’s fluidity illustrates its com-
plexity and its capacity to flow and to resist the many attempts at black-
boxing it to a set of ordered principles. ANT is not “singular, but plural in
character,” and it is more interested in displacements and what happens when
it interferes in a multiplicity of sites (Law, 2006).
How can this assemblage be described, with due attention to its complexity?
How can we avoid the trap of reducing it to a static and rigid framework?
How can we present this elusive intellectual and collective endeavor? This
chapter will provide an introduction to the history of actor-network theory.
It will explain the name of the approach and describe the primary studies
that can be considered the starting point of the perspective (Callon, 1986a).
The difficulty of defining actor-network theory as a theory and the struggle
to present a theoretical sensibility that escapes the attempts of classification
will also be discussed.
In the following pages, I will focus, firstly, on how ANT emerges in the prac-
tice turn in science and technology studies. Secondly, I will draw attention to
its emergence and unfolding. Finally, I will describe how the book is a space
of encounter between ANT and educational leadership and management.
Fractures in science and technology studies

A good starting point with which to understand the emergence of ANT is to
talk about the practice turn in science and technology studies (STS) (Picker-
ing, 1992). Born at the beginning of the 1970s, the sociology of scientific
knowledge (SSK) intended to empirically study how scientific knowledge was
socially constructed by distancing it from the philosophical and sociological
reflections that analysed the dynamics of science without a close description
of the science in practice. At that time, the geography of SSK was clear, since
it was mostly concentrated in Edinburgh and Bath. In Edinburgh, scholars
such as Barry Barnes, David Bloor and Steven Shapin framed a macro-social
approach to studying science. Harry Collins in Bath focused on controversies
Introducing actor-network theory 3
and prompted innovative and original micro-social research, where scientific
knowledge was described as an unexpected outcome of the negotiations
among all scientific actors. The Edinburgh and Bath schools followed the
classical sociological discourse, along with the usual categories (macro-micro,
quantity-quality) of the sociological field.
During the 1980s, however, the landscape changed rapidly. Several books
on laboratory life had become particularly important: Laboratory Life by
Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar in 1979, Manufacture of Knowledge by
Karin Knorr Cetina (1981), and ethnomethodological studies of science.
Some philosophers of science started to analyse scientific knowledge by fol-
lowing the same principles as the sociological approach to knowledge. Several
researchers following symbolic interactionism became interested in studying
science empirically. To these scholars, we should add the works of Bruno
Latour and Michel Callon and their colleagues (Madeleine Akrich, in par-
ticular) working in Paris at the Centre for the Sociologies of Innovation.
While different in many aspects, these research projects shared a common
interest in investigating science and technology in practice (Pickering, 1992),
although it was unclear whether these investigations were aligned with the
sociology of scientific knowledge. SSK considers the culture of science to be
a single conceptual network, where concepts are linked together to a different
degree of abstraction and connected to the natural worlds through the many
empirical specifications of the scientific fields. Here, scientific practice
expands this conceptual network by analogy, creatively and indefinitely. The
ongoing reshaping of the conceptual network does not end the unitary char-
acter of the culture of science. Something accounted for the emergence of a
consensus in knowledge-making: sociological interests were this “something.”
The argumentation is as follows: knowledge-making is not only for the
sake of knowledge. There is an interest to follow, a need, or a problem arising
in a given historical contingency and in a specific social group that knowledge
is able to satisfy or resolve. The extension of the conceptual network will be
oriented, therefore, to sociological interests. Notably, the sociological inter-
ests of dominant groups provide the criteria by which to assess the usefulness
of the new creative enlargements of the scientific culture. In a controversy,
therefore, the closure in knowledge-making is accomplished by considering
the pressures and the negotiation among sociological interests. Knowledge
is not, therefore, a “mirror” of nature; it is sociologically related to a given
culture.
This standard understanding of SSK was contested by the group working
in Paris and other investigations during the 1980s. It was considered a simpli-
fied and reductive version of the culture of science. From the perspective of
science as practice, knowledge-making is more articulated. The complexity
of practice, in other words, overcomes the reductive descriptions provided by
philosophy and sociology. Philosophy tends to emphasise the philosophical
foundation of science; sociology underlines the role of the interests, by subor-
dinating science to the sociological arena.
The orientation toward practice involves new multidisciplinary perspec-
tives from which to gain a more productive and realistic understanding of
scientific knowledge-making. It implies “waging war” on discipline boundar-
ies and, more profoundly, problematising their roots in modern thinking.
Accordingly, ANT arises in the fracture determined by the contrast with the
a priori philosophical reflection of science and the empirical explanation of
SSK.
The story of ANT’s origins is also specifically French. The group in Paris
had to confront the sociology of scientific knowledge at the international
level (the controversy with Collins and Yearley [1992] is well known) and in
the sociological French academic arena.
Callon and Latour worked most of their long careers at the Centre of the
Sociology of Innovation (CSI) in Paris: a specific “niche” in the French aca-
demic landscape. The CSI is located within the Ecole des Mines (School of
Engineering), which is part of the celebrated network of the Grand Ecole, a
set of institutions in French higher education focused on engineering, com-
merce and veterinary practice and characterised by high standards in student
selection and by the highest qualifications of its students. The focus on inno-
vation and its positioning in a school of engineering led the Centre to assume
an inter- and trans-disciplinary approach, where social sciences were asked to
collaborate and hybridise their vocabularies according to the repertoires of
the natural sciences.
The landscape of French sociology, however, was strongly discipline-oriented
and was characterised until the middle of the 1990s by schools of thought, that
is, organised around a strong theoretical orientation, a leading scholarly figure
and several research programs. The “quadrumvirate” composed of Bourdieu,
Touraine, Crozier and Boudon dominated the scene (Cousin & Demaziere,
2014). Bourdieu, in particular, intended to reinforce sociology in the French
academy by distinguishing it as discipline differentiated from philosophy and
more in general from the humanities. His critique of the works of Latour and
Callon was severe and led to some trenchant statements.
In his lectures at the College of France, 2000–2001, on the new empirical
studies of sciences, he described the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK)
in a “good light.” He considered SSK quite limited in explaining external
social forces, however, and was critical of the new research in the laboratories,
devoting the most “acidic” comments to the first publications by Latour and
Callon (Bourdieu, 2003). They were accused of playing a game of being radi-
cal and trying to artificially differentiate their position in the field of study.
Bourdieu described Latour and Callon’s idea to give more space to texts and
more general objects in laboratories as bizarre. Notably, the redistribution
of the capacity to act, that is, the symmetric importance attributed to texts,
laboratory objects and technologies in scientific knowledge-making, was ridi-
culed. The use of the semiotic, according to Latour and Callon, would have
reduced human agency to the level of the effects emerging from a text and
full scientific knowledge to literary activity. The suggestion that humans and
non-humans should be considered on the same footing was described as mis-
leading, and their advice to take the agency of the “missing masses” of mate-
riality seriously was seen as so unhelpful that Bourdieu declared it a bogus
argument, leading to dead-end and meaningless discussions.
The harsh attack on Latour and Callon was justified by Bourdieu’s overall
program of giving sociology a prominent position in the French academy. In
a space that philosophers appeared to dominate, the emerging vocabulary of
ANT and the work of Latour and Callon did not fit into Bourdieu’s project
to develop a sociological explanation of science.
Latour and Callon’s work was criticised not only by Bourdieu but also by
Friedberg, another French sociologist who was closer to Crozier. According to
Friedberg, the challenge to the primacy of human agency was highly provoca-
tive. He shared with the Bourdieu the idea that a revision of the theory of
action was not necessary, as the “time for mutants is not coming” (my transla-
tion from Friedberg, 1993). While recognising the role of objects, technolo-
gies and innovations, he thought there was no need to include them in the
category of “actor,” which should be used exclusively for the human domain.
In sum, the papers by Callon and Latour were considered “indigestible”
and unassimilable in the existing sociological framework in France and the
U.K. It was not clear whether Callon and Latour brought philosophical or
only provocative arguments, probably harming sociological investigations
and the advancement of research in the emerging field of studying sciences.
Emergence and unfolding of actor-network theory

A look at the famous article on the domestication of fishers and scallops in
the Bay of Saint-Brieuc in France (Callon, 1986a) helps us to better under-
stand where the fractures in science and technology studies were created. We
will return to this article in Chapter 3. It is crucial, however, to underline that
the group in Paris proposed a sociology of translation, by problematising the
so-called strong programme in SSK.
In the French version of the article on the domestication of scallops and
fishers, Callon starts by recognising a “profound asymmetry” in the stud-
ies inspired by that program. The asymmetry involves the analyses of scien-
tific and technical controversies. While these analyses present the plurality
of descriptions of nature made by the researchers and engineers, without
assuming a hierarchy among them, they do not problematise the descrip-
tions of the social facts. In practice, they consider the “uncertainty” of nature
but do not include the ambiguities of knowledge-making about society in
their framework. However, they drew on social facts (norms, interests, social
classes) to account for the end of scientific and technical controversies. Social
sciences tend to have the “last word” regarding controversies about scientific
knowledge. Sociological interpretations proposed by researchers and engi-
neers are considered “off topic.” Theoretical and methodological consider-
ations raise some doubts about the relative stability of the social sciences,
however. Theoretically, the field is characterised by endless controversies
about determining social facts (norms? interests? institutions?). These studies
also tend to assume the stability of the identity of the actors participating in
the controversies.
A generalised principle of symmetry was proposed, therefore, to make the
description of the controversies more intelligible. Bloor’s principle of symmetry
intended to expand the sociological explanations, which had previously been
limited to scientific failures. According to Bloor (1991), it is possible to explain
“true” and “false” knowledge sociologically. Callon and Latour proposed to
extend the principle with the sociology of translation, by putting the same
sociological repertoire (micro-macro, actor-system) on the table. It implied
giving “voice” even to the sociological interpretations of researchers and engi-
neers, without placing them in a hierarchy and problematising the same nature-
society divide, treating it as an effect and not an a priori assumption.
This extension was considered “untenable” and provoked the debates we
have described. At the same time, it marked the autonomisation of the group.
The term sociology of translation identified the Centre of the Sociology of
Innovation in Paris. The expression “makes sense” in French and is retained as
confirmed in a recent publication where the foundational texts of this vocab-
ulary have been collected (Akrich, Callon, & Latour, 2013).
Internationally, the approach traveled with the acronym ANT, namely
actor-network theory. “Actor-network theory” comes from Callon’s article on
the electric vehicle (Callon, 1986c). In this article, he coined the expression
“actor-network” by translating the French “acteur-reseau” (Callon & Ferrary,
2006). The word network suggested that the vehicle should be attached to
the many necessary items for its creation and development; the word actor,
instead, indicated the outcome of the establishment of a stable network, where
a new vehicle could be imagined and designed. The association of “actor” and
“network” appeared, furthermore, immediately useful, as they were (and are)
widely used in sociological analysis. Initially considered a useful concept for
a single case, it became an “approach” in the introduction to Bijker, Hughes,
and Pinch’s (1989, p. 4) edited book on the new directions in science and
technology studies.
By then, the perimeter of ANT was defined by the works of Michel Callon,
Bruno Latour and John Law. It related, in particular, to several foundational
empirical studies: a) the electric vehicle and the domestication of scallops and
fishers realised by Callon (1986a, 1986b); b) the ethnography of the Salk
laboratory (Latour & Woolgar, 1979); c) the historical treatise on Pasteur by
Bruno Latour (1984); d) the case of the Portuguese vessels (Law, 1989), and
e) the ethnography of a large scientific laboratory carried out by John Law
(1994). It is also essential to recognise Madeleine Akrich’s contribution to the
definition of ANT repertoire. She developed detailed studies on the dynamics
of innovation by underlining the importance of the user (Akrich, 1998) and
with Latour shaped the semiotic grammar for the analysis of technical objects
(Akrich, 1992; Akrich & Latour, 1992).
Semiotics, in that respect, has been a key resource for the shaping of ANT
vocabulary, because it has provided the narrative program of this infra-language
(Høstaker, 2005; Law, 2009). Concepts such as inscriptions, translation,
actant, modalities, shifting in, shifting out and regime of enunciation were dis-
placed in ANT by Greimas’s structural analysis (Greimas & Courtés, 1979).
Greimas developed an actantial model and introduced the notion of the nar-
rative program, which is the change triggered by an actant on a given state of
affairs. An actant is defined at the most general level as what accomplishes an
act (Greimas & Courtés, 1979): it can therefore be a human or a non-human
(such as the ring in The Lord of the Rings), a subject or a digital platform. This
notion is introduced to explain that an entity can play a diverse role in a nar-
ration. It does not have a fixed character: it may be a subject or an object. It
is therefore a symmetrical term that attracted ANT scholars who intended to
devote more space in their accounts to objects, technologies and materialities.
The actantial model was seen as an instrument with which to give voice to
non-humans, a way to enrich the narrative models dominated by anthropo-
centric assumptions. It was not employed completely but used selectively to
describe the dynamics of power and innovation. The actantial model works
by drawing a comparison between machines and texts. As authors and readers
are inscribed in texts, similarly, builders and users are inscribed in a mecha-
nism. Here, the role of the researcher in studying technoscience is to de-scribe it—
that is, to disentangle the program of action with the help of semiotics. In
Technology Is Society Made Durable, Latour (1991) describes the invention of
the Kodak camera and of the market of amateur photographers as a sequence
of programs and anti-programs—that is, as a clash between the association of
actants (humans and non-humans) and anti-programs aimed at countering the
emergent associations. The overall story is told from the point of view of the
inventor (here, Eastman) by pointing out the syntagma of association and
the substitution—that is, the series of items substituting for similar items
in the chains of association. Eastman Kodak becomes a powerful actor-
network only at the end of the account. There is nothing at the beginning
of the story that could suggest it will become so important that it also
prepares the way for the invention of the mass marketing of photographs.
Semiotics is useful to draw attention to how innovation is given by success-
ful association of humans and non-humans—that is, by those associations
that have won the “test” (the trial of strength) of the anti-programs (those
programs of action countering the emergent associations). In the basic model,
the narrative envisages 1) the identification of the actants and, in particular,
those acting, and those who are affected by the actants; 2) the sequence of
programs and anti-programs confronting one another; and 3) the stabi-
lisation of actors—that is, the consolidation of some actants who finally
become “actors.” This standard narrative is repeated in the case of the
hotel key (Latour, 1991), of the speed-bump (the so-called “silent police-
man”) and the door (Latour, 1988). On this basis, the repertoire of ANT
unfolds and adapts to disentangle the overlap of humans and non-humans.
We are asked, accordingly, to pay attention to the distribution of competences
between technologies and humans with the introduction of new artefacts; to
prescriptions, wherein any new device obliges humans to use it properly and
avoid possible damage; to circumscriptions, which define the conditions for
using a machine; and to ascription, or the process leading to identifying the
sources of action that may not necessarily be the one who has been the initia-
tor (Latour, 1992).
The first foundational studies, the resources offered by semiotics, were
used in very selective ways, and the reflections of these authors in this period
contributed to defining an area of investigation that can be called “actor-
network theory 1990” (Law, 2009): the basic vocabulary of the approach.
This vocabulary emerged from the overlap in the scientific trajectories of
Michel Callon, Bruno Latour and John Law. While these trajectories sup-
ported the development of ANT, they later led to other destinations and
interests. They produced, however, the conditions enabling the emergence of
the vocabulary of ANT.
ANT, however, acquired an independent life. Those who contributed to its
first version continued to support it by also trying to refine and enrich it. Its
co-producers, in contrast, explored other directions of work.
Callon spent his academic career in the CSI in Paris, where he was first
a researcher and then a director from 1982 to 1994. Callon’s work covered
a wide range of topics: the anthropology of science and technology; socio-
economic innovations; the relationship between science, technology and
democracy; the anthropology of markets; and the sociology of health and
medicine. These works are related to ANT; at the same time, they are also
different. Callon contributed to the renewal of economic sociology. Its inves-
tigations highlight the performativity of knowledge and, in particular, of eco-
nomics: how the economy “thing” is shaped and reshaped by its specialised
discipline. He proposes the notion of a socio-technical assemblage (“agence-
ment sociotechnique”) to consider the concatenation of discourses, texts,
devices and bodies framing, inscribing and making possible a specific form of
action. This notion shifts the focus to the performance of calculative agencies
described not as isolated individuals but as a network of equipped entities and
accounts for the emergence of the repertoire of the competences of the world
of the “market” (Callon, 1999).
Bruno Latour and John Law followed other paths. Latour joined the CSI
in 1982, where he worked for 25 years. The collaboration between Callon
and Latour was very close and contributed to the consolidation of ANT. At
CSI, Latour would benefit from favorable conditions: he could devote all his
energies to research with a low teaching requirement and no administrative
tasks. Initially focused on science and technology, he expanded considerably
on his interests, to include law, politics, art and religion from 1990. He could
develop his work by reconstructing his entire program of research until it
was given more and more coherence and originality. He rapidly became one
of the most cited and authoritative scholars in the field of social sciences. In
2013, he was awarded the Holberg Prize, a prestigious acknowledgment, for
his studies on modernity and for challenging the conceptual frameworks of
modernity. In an autobiographical article, he traced the origins of his think-
ing back to biblical exegesis, but Latour was always active, as his interests were
focused on many topics and crossed many disciplines. Although he is now
proud to come out as a philosopher (an “empirical philosopher”) (Latour,
2010), he can also be enlisted as a sociologist (indeed, he was thought to be
a sociologist at the time of his ANT studies) and an anthropologist as well, if
one includes his many ethnographies.
Latour undoubtedly contributed to the consolidation and development of
ANT. He did this, however, in the framework of his project of reinventing
modernity, which was probably the main thread of his work. The turning
point in his trajectory was the publication of We Have Never Been Modern
(Latour, 1993), where he argued that we have misunderstood the conditions
of modernity. From this publication, he undertook broader research that
finally led to a positive reply to the philosophical pamphlet on modernity:
a book on the modes of existence, a notion that allowed him to bring to the
forefront of the debate the “felicity conditions” of the central institutions of
modernity (Latour, 2013). Indeed, Latour never ceased to support ANT. Its
vocabulary was criticised, however, he continued reprising it (Latour, 2005).
With his work on Portuguese vessels and the ethnography of a large scien-
tific laboratory, John Law contributed to the refinement of ANT vocabulary.
He was also important for its circulation: he held a crucial online thematic
list at Lancaster University1 for those interested in understanding the devel-
opment of this emerging perspective. This list is still on the webpage of the
Centre for Science Studies at Lancaster University and is organised in three
sections: a) theory, b) substantive issues and c) related issues (updated until
April 2000).
Law published articles and edited volumes that oriented the debate. It is
essential to recall A Sociology of Monsters (Law, 1991) and Actor-Network The-
ory and After (Law & Hassard, 1999), which are milestones for understanding
the debate within ANT.
Law underlines many times the Foucauldian heritage of ANT. For him,
ANT is an empirical program of post-structuralism (Law, 2009, p. 145). He
notes how “actor-networks” are “scaled-down” versions of “epistemes,” or
“discourses,” two central notions in Foucault’s thinking. He re-emphasised
the link with Foucault, already described in the book Organising Modernity
(Law, 1994), by considering the role played by “modes of ordering” in the
analysis of agency, from a perspective of relational materialism. At the same
time, he considers the closeness between “actor-network” and Deleuze and
Guattari’s lines of thinking. Law claimed to find little difference between the
two notions of “assemblage” (or, even better, agencement) and actor-network.
Finally, his intellectual trajectory intersected with the new developments of
the theory of complexity and post-colonial perspective to give due attention
to voices of the non-Western way of thinking.
Although Law was trained as a sociologist, his work is interdisciplinary.
Institutionally, he was affiliated first with Keele and Lancaster Universities
before being part of the Open University and becoming the director of the
Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC), where he was con-
venor of the Social Life of Methods initiative.
The leading figures of ANT, in sum, shared some features. They were inter-
disciplinary, as they crossed many disciplines in social science and the human-
ities. Initially, their work in science studies was oriented in a non-foundational
way and challenged stabilised categories and dichotomies (humans/non-
humans, nature/culture, micro/macro). They fought against a description of
the social that was characterised by social spheres, fields and sub-systems and
proposed looking at the social as a process. Together, they counter the idea
of social explanation. For them, it is the “social” that has to be explained; it
is not something that can explain something else. They invite us to consider
description not as mere representation but as a re-articulation of the social.
These essential characteristics shaped the basic vocabulary of ANT. How-
ever, they have not deterministically established its “relative existence.” The
official story of ANT distinguished between “ANT 1990” and “ANT and
After” (Law, 2009). A critical turning point occurred at the end of the 1990s
with the publication of Actor-Network Theory and After (Law & Hassard,
1999). This book reflects on the early vocabulary of ANT 1990 and proposes
new directions by suggesting partly the opening of a new phase and also the
ending of the original approach (Latour, 1999; Mol, 1999).
Ten years of research had tested ANT: its vocabulary revealed properties,
possibilities and “blind spots.” Its characteristics could be better understood.
On the one hand, ANT was contributing to the lively description of science
and technology; on the other hand, it was risking merely repeating itself in
the endless investigation of the power of materialities in the making of the
social. Even worse, and paradoxically, it could appear “naïve” in ignoring the
political aspects of the approach. Notably, the widespread attention paid to
the virtues of the designers, researchers and engineers in the first ANT studies
could bias the perspective toward managerialism or to an uncritical accep-
tance of the model of White Western Man conquering the world by drawing
on science and technology. It was then severely criticised by feminist scholars
(Haraway, 2004) and also by those who saw its possible association with the
hegemonic discourses of liberalism (Lee & Brown, 1994).
Far from leading to the end of ANT, however, these critiques relaunched
the approach. The responses to these remarks (Callon & Law, 1997; Latour,
2005; Law & Mol, 2002; Mol, 1999) and the updated vocabulary, on one
hand, and the increasing attention to the contemporary dynamics of the so-
called knowledge society, and the revision of the theory of agency suggested
by the notion of the “actor-network,” on the other, made ANT more and
more attractive outside the perimeters of science and technology studies.
ANT revealed a high fluidity. Instead of being a standard “theory,” a clear
set of definitions and statements, it remained an open-ended vocabulary and
manifested a tendency to overflow. It resisted the tendency to be fixed. It is
fair to remember rather that initially the word theory was not included. Mol
(2010) recalled Callon’s claim that ANT is not a theory. Notably, it is not a
theory in the classic sense, as it does not provide general explanation or an
overarching framework. It is not an all-encompassing model that establishes
links between causes and effects. Also, it does not offer a consistent method.
It is more a repertoire that invites us to follow new roads. In that respect,
however, there is no suggestion of a “safe walk,” as it is more an invitation to
surprising situations. It is not a repetition of a standard theory but a call for
cases that produce contrasts with earlier cases. To contribute to ANT, you are
expected to add other layers, to enrich the repertoire.
According to Mol (2010, pp. 261–2),
researchers involved in ANT are amateurs of reality. Their theoretical

repertoires allow them to attune themselves to the world, to learn to be
affected by it. Thus, ANT re-sembles the props, equipment, knowledge
and skills assembled by other amateurs. It helps to train researchers’ per-
ceptions and perceptiveness, senses and sensitivity.
More than a theory, as the “T” in the acronym misleadingly tends to suggest,
it outlines an approach, or a “sensibility, a way to sense and draw nearer to
a phenomenon” (Fenwick, Edwards, & Sawchuck, 2011, p. 171). In this,
ANT is not a “meta-language,” that is, a conclusive “theory of everything,”
but an “infra-language” (Latour, 2005) for describing the multiple worlds of
practice and to appreciate them. It involves helping scholars to understand
and become attuned (seeing, feeling, tasting) with the world (Mol, 2010).
ANTiES: actor-network education studies

Since it emerged and became independent, ANT has traveled widely. It affected
and was affected by many fields of research. It was helpful in re-describing the
worlds of health, informatics, design, transport, agriculture, economics and
law and in suggesting some conditions of possibilities for reassembling disci-
plines, such as sociology and economics. Its movements as well its vocabulary
were enriched, so that it is possible to distinguish diverse stages of its unfold-
ing: Early ANT, ANT and After ANT. In this book, I will draw on the fol-
lowing classification: “Origin stories,” “ANT 1990” and “ANT and After,”
proposed by Law (2009), with the aims of following the journey of this rep-
ertoire in education studies and inviting ANT to follow a new road: the study
of the dynamics of educational leadership and management.
Overall, the number of ANT education studies (ANTiES) is small if com-
pared with those in sociology, geography and technology studies. Perhaps
its initial interest in science and technology appeared far from the topics of
investigation in the field of education. ANTiES were quite limited during
the 1990s: such literature unfolded in the 1990s, and the amount doubled
in the new millennium (almost 263 works) (Fenwick & Edwards, 2019).
ANTiES grew from four interferences with 1) science and technology educa-
tion, 2) adult education, 3) organisation studies and 4) policy studies. This
literature developed thanks to scholars working at the crossroads of areas
of investigation or in projects that imply the overlapping and the bridging
of these circuits. Not surprisingly, the first uptake of ANT was by scholars
in science education (Fountain, 1999; Rolf, 1996; Roth & McGinn, 1997;
Verran, 1999). The first book to explicitly refer to ANT, to guide and make
sense of empirical findings in education, was published in 1994 (Nespor,
1994). Early ANTiES shared the “ANT 1990” vocabulary. Here, there was
an interest in understanding, particularly in science education, how ANT
could be educationally relevant and in other research projects how ANT
could contribute to curriculum studies to demonstrate, for example, the
circulation of knowledge at university (Nespor, 2002) or to offer new con-
cepts for literacy studies in adult education (Clarke, 2002). It was, however,
with the publication of Helen Verran’s chapter in the aforementioned Actor-
Network Theory and After (Verran, 1999) that we could identify a wave of
broader uptake in education. A second book on the materiality of learning
related to the unfolding of ANT while presenting an empirical case in edu-
cation (Sørensen, 2009), and in 2010, a full book collected and systemati-
cally presented the intersection between ANT and education (Fenwick &
Edwards, 2010).
This broader uptake was related to the move to “ANT and After.” Most
papers on education found ANT helpful in curriculum analysis, educational
reforms and technology. Studies on identity politics and inequalities (that
is on classical themes in education) in that framework were less frequent.
The shift toward these topics was encouraged by ANT’s engagement with
post-structuralism, feminism and post-colonial studies (Fenwick & Edwards,
2010) and more widely by the consideration of sociomaterial approaches in
an effort to renew investigations into education policy and practice (Fenwick
et al., 2011; Fenwick & Landri, 2012).
There were few studies which looked into educational leadership and man-
agement, however (Kamp, 2018; Koyama, 2014; Mulcahy & Perillo, 2010;
Perillo, 2008). Although ANTiES include an increasing literature in educa-
tion policies (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010) and ANT is recognised as a useful
approach to analysis in this field (Ball & Shilling, 2017), there is a gap on
researching the dynamics of educational leadership and management. ANT
includes the radical indeterminacy of the actor (Callon, 1999): there is no
stable theory that defines an actor. Their motivations, intentions, strategies
and size are not predetermined. This position has probably discouraged the
investigation of educational leadership and management, where the literature
is overtly humanistic and draws on classifications according to traits, features
and intentions. This argument, however, should not lead to the conclusion
that educational leadership and management is an illegitimate topic for inves-
tigation in that approach. As will be clearer later in the book, ANT is not
interested in deconstructing and debunking but in disentangling and recom-
posing. The approach is not aimed at unveiling and destroying but studying
differently and critically and in interfering with the phenomenon.
While ANT is a strategy for decentring from the dominant anthropocen-
trism, it is worth remembering the classical studies of Latour on Pasteur net-
work (Latour, 1983) and Law’s ethnography at Daresbury SERC Laboratory
(Law, 1994) to illustrate that this repertoire does not lead to the disappear-
ance of the “human.” In his study, Latour illustrates how Pasteur was able to
associate with a chain of heterogeneous bits and pieces in order to become an
obligatory point of passage in a process of knowledge accumulation (Latour,
1983). Law describes, instead, the multiple organisational reality of the labo-
ratory and the multiple performance of the organisational leadership (Law,
1994). However, a quick look at organisation studies suggests that ANT is
widely used and counters managerial, rationalistic and simplistic readings of
an organisation. It is a resource with which to contrast a narrow empiricism
and give a complex account of organisational leadership (Czarniawska &
Hernes, 2020).
With the idea of producing a space of encounter, this book offers ANT
readings of educational leadership, management and administration. The
enactment of this space envisages the presentation of the basic vocabulary
of this theoretical sensibility and its empirical illustration. ANT, here, pro-
duces re-descriptions of the assemblages of educational leadership, management
and administration. These re-descriptions will not be mere representations
of something external waiting to be grasped. They emerge from the inter-
ference of the vocabulary of ANT and the educational settings in which I
studied educational reforms and organisations in Europe and, in particular,
in Italy. They can be considered the relational effect of what I learned from
this extended experiment. I will draw, therefore, on past program research,
as well as on contemporary investigations into the transformation of Ital-
ian schooling in the latest two decades (Gunter, Grimaldi, Hall, & Serp-
ieri, 2016; Landri, 2000, 2006, 2009, 2015; Landri & Serpieri, 2004). The
empirical materials come from case studies of schools and education policy
analysis of the transformation of the governance regime in Italy since the
1990s. They have mostly been collected through multi-sited ethnographies
and policy historiography. Some of the materials have been gathered recently
in a research project with a professional association of headteachers (ANDIS)
who made themselves available to read their professional practice through the
sensibility of ANT (Landri, 2019).
The book also draws on recent work on the digital governance of educa-
tion (Landri, 2018) and on a comparison between two digital platforms in
Australia and Italy. The presentation of the basic vocabulary of ANT and
what it can offer to the analysis of the dynamics of educational leadership and
management will help readers to understand what we gain (and what we lose)
when we step back from the modern constitution and embrace a new vocabu-
lary, trying to be more respectful of the multiple realities in which we live.
Structure of the book
The volume comprises six chapters and an annotated bibliography. I will first
describe how ANT is positioned in modernistic debate. In the following three
chapters, I will focus on three concepts of the ANT repertoire: “symmetry,”
“translation” and “network.” Finally, I will highlight the criticisms of ANT
and suggest new directions for research. In presenting the three concepts, I
will draw mostly on studies from the origins of ANT and “ANT 1990,” but in
empirically demonstrating how ANT can be used to disentangle the dynam-
ics of educational leadership and management, I will also refer to the “ANT
and After” vocabulary.
In the next chapter, I will argue that the field of educational leadership
management and administration (ELMA) and the related dominant reper-
toire of knowledge are firmly based in the modernistic constitution. A pre-
sentation of and the comment of Latour’s (1993) book We Have Been Modern
will outline the humanistic premises of ELMA and the need to recognise a
different conceptualisation of education practice and management in edu-
cation. A non-modern view will be introduced, where the construction of
systems implies increasing imbroglios and hybridisations between politics,
science, technology and culture as its presupposition. I will argue that ANT
counters the modernistic framework with an ecological understanding of edu-
cational leadership, management and administration practice.
The three central chapters of the book will introduce ANT vocabulary.
Chapter 3 will present the first basic term of ANT: the principle of sym-
metry. The idea is taken from the sociological investigation of science and
is extended here to treat humans and non-humans equally. The principle
redistributes the capacity to act and to raise doubts about who and what
the actors are without assuming a humanistic view that attributes the only
source of action to the humans. It instead works to recognise the complex-
ity of the intertwinement of humans and non-humans. The notion invites
us to consider the materialities of the management of education. Empirical
cases investigating the everyday practice of managerial work in Italy and, in
particular, the digital governance of education (Williamson, 2016) will illus-
trate how it is changing the sociomateriality of educational management and
administration.
Chapter 4 will introduce the second fundamental concept of ANT: the
notion of translation, a key term since this theoretical sensibility is commonly
called the “sociology of translation” in France. The chapter will explain the
classic model of translation (Callon, 1986b), but the term is widely discussed
as applied to education. The use of “translation” is helpful to understand
the dynamics of power relations, to illustrate how some actors (human and
non-human) translate others and become spokespersons with the authority
to speak on behalf of or in the name of others. The chapter will address the
development of the current regimes of accountability and how schools become
translated into calculative worlds of education. Empirically, the chapter will
illustrate a comparison between the “Scuola in Chiaro” platform in Italy and
the “My School” platform in Australia. The chapter is co-authored with Rad-
hika Gorur and draws on her empirical works on the platform (Gorur, 2013,
2018; Gorur & Koyama, 2013).
Chapter 5 will focus on the notion of the network and, in particular, on
the way this term is used in ANT. An investigation of the mechanism of
network stabilisation will lead to analysis of the notion of the “black box”
and “boundary object” to understand how networks align and consolidate
over time. The alignment of a network in a regime of translation is never
complete. The many possible enactments of policy or practice also suggest the
performance of many and collateral realities that lead to the issue of the co-
existence of political ontologies or the dominance of realism at the expense of
different performances of reality. Empirical cases are drawn from analysis of
the new regime of accountability in Italy: they show the stabilisation mecha-
nisms and also the multiple enactments of newly emerging configurations
of educational management and administration. Notably, it focuses on how
school autonomy in Italy is a multiple reality and illustrates the complex work
of the co-existence of the enactments of these realities.
In Chapter 6, I will address the limits and critiques of ANT. Far from being
static, ANT has dealt with several criticisms that have contributed to its devel-
opment in the After ANT vocabularies and have enriched and kept alive its
vocabulary. The principle of symmetry, the power of non-humans and the
emphasis on network effects have frequently led to misunderstandings. In this
chapter, I will analyse the general criticisms and, in particular, those oriented
to its use in education. To relaunch this sensibility, the chapter will draw some
conclusions about the effects of the ANT repertoire and propose a renewed
research agenda for developing an ecological understanding of the dynamics
of educational leadership and management. The chapter suggests the cross-
fertilisation of ANT with new directions of investigation. In particular, it will
try to connect with the new phase of ANT studies, “Near ANT” (Blok, Farías, &
Roberts, 2019). The cross-fertilisation is intended to expand the research into
the affective side of those assemblages of people, technologies and policies
composing the educational management and administration field.
The volume concludes with a select and annotated bibliography for orien-
tating readers in the many worlds of ANT and ANT in education.
Note
1 The Actor Network Resource: Thematic List. http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/sciencestudies/the-actor-
network-resource-thematic-list/
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2 A way out from the modernistic
constitution of educational
leadership management
and administration
Chapter 1 briefly illustrated the history of ANT by trying to find a con-

venient genre through which to explain the trajectory of a sensibility that
escapes any attempt at framing it in an ordered vocabulary. The existence
of this infra-language has been related to the unfolding of the practice turn
in science studies, that is, to the development of field investigations in
science laboratories, the making of technologies bringing to the forefront
the realities of science-making in contrast with older philosophical and
epistemological reflection where the dominant interests were on the logics,
the language or the history of science. I have described, notably, the assem-
blage that prepared the emergence of ANT and its development: aspects
of ANT’s circulatory system, its “blood flow” (Latour, 1999). The first
chapter thus focused on fundamental research—on how ANT emerged
and distanced itself by becoming independent and distinguished from
the sociology of scientific knowledge and on the institutions where ANT
groups flourish.
Before we examine its basic concepts and consider the empirical illustra-
tions of ANT in the next chapters, I will examine what ANT has to offer to
the analysis of educational leadership, management and administration. I will
first consider how educational leadership, management and administration
literature and practice are firmly interlaced with modernistic assumptions.
Drawing on Gunter (2016), I will map this field, which is composed of four
arenas of investigation and practice. The chapter will secondly introduce and
comment on Latour’s (1993) book We Have Never Been Modern, an important
work where he develops the philosophical underpinnings of ANT. While not
all of Latour’s reflections are necessarily shared by other researchers following
the ANT sensibility, this book offers, nonetheless, a chance to understand
the position of ANT with respect to modernity and, in particular, modernity
thinking. Finally, I will show how ANT has affected the world of organisation
studies and the exit it offers for modernistic reflections and investigations and
the practice of organising (Alcadipani & Hassard, 2010; Wæraas & Nielsen,
2016). ANT provides a non-modernistic view that involves the re-description
of educational leadership, management and administration practice in an
ecological way.
A way out from modernistic constitution 21
The modernistic constitution of ELMA
The modernistic constitution profoundly shapes the contemporary discourse
of educational management, administration and leadership. While there is a
notable level of semantic ambiguity related to the diverse cultural traditions
of school organisation, the dominant perspective in this field is still the mod-
ern organisation theory (Hatch, 2013). The first analysis in this framework
dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century and refers to the work
of Franklin Bobbitt, who applied the principles of scientific management to
education. He argued that there are universal criteria of efficiency-efficacy
that can be applied to any organised setting (Bobbitt, 1913). The premise
is that educational administrators could benefit from the experience of busi-
ness and, in particular, from the implementation of Taylorism (Taylor, 1911),
which was seen as a solution to the emerging problems of industrialisation
and mass schooling.
Scientific management and standard-based reform notably emerged at the
same time. Scientific management entails the setting of measurable standards
to evaluate the accomplishment of organisational and professional perfor-
mances. The logic involves, above all, the rationalisation and standardisation
of the field. It is easy to note the continuity of this discourse in the current
educational reforms that focus on principles of school accountability and
the procedures of new public management: even now, schools are expected
to improve by modeling themselves on business models and, in particu-
lar, to make the outcome of learning in measurable order to better manage
education.
The insistence on standardisation involves attention to educational leadership.
The permanent crisis in education seems to call for “super-educational-
heroes,” namely teachers and headteachers, to be solved. A vast amount of
literature, accordingly, focuses on this theme, and the field resounds with
managerial fads and more and more refined models of educational leadership
that follow, partly, emerging theoretical tendencies and more and more com-
pleted empirical description of leaders and leading practices. The field is so
articulated, and there are few systematic attempts to map it and also to clarify
the panoply of conceptualisations offered. In that respect, it is useful to con-
sider this as a field characterised by struggles—that is, by positions competing
over and within theory and method (Gunter & Ribbins, 2013).
In the most recent comprehensive mapping exercises, Gunter (2016)
describes the field as shaped by four networks of researching professionals and
professional researchers: 1) educational administration; 2) educational effective-
ness and improvement research; 3) entrepreneurs and popularisers; and 4) critical
education policy and leadership studies.
Educational administration (EA) is a label used by those who focus specifi-
cally on professional practice. While there are many national variations, the
primary historical antecedent of the network is in the United States of Amer-
ica. Educational administration is an arena that comprises both professionals
22 A way out from modernistic constitution
who work in educational organisations and professionals who have moved
into higher education. The network involves the presence of formal organ-
isations in each nation-state, such as UCEA in the U.S. or BELMAS in the
U.K., and international links, such as EFEA and CCEAM. Knowledge, here,
is highly codified in handbooks and texts, where the state-of-art is defined and
experts are fixed and identified. The network can also have an academic point
of reference, such as the Institute of Education in London and Teachers Col-
lege at Columbia University in the U.S. Knowledge production is informed
mostly by positivism and behaviorism. In particular, there is a concern to
develop a science of educational administration based on evidence and, at the
same time, an orientation toward an input-process-output-feedback model
for control. Knowledge production is from an instrumentalist perspective; it
is intended to be problem-solving. A humanistic orientation is also evident in
the emphasis associated with the attention paid to what leaders do and how
they interpret organisational situations. Politically, this arena is allied with a
welfarist ideology, but there is acceptance of the business model of manage-
ment, demonstrating the influence of neoliberalism and neoconservativism.
Educational effectiveness and improvement research (EEIR) widens its per-
spective from the school to education but retains focus on student outcomes
and school improvement. It is difficult to pinpoint the origins of the network;
however, several researchers have traced the source of the network back to
Coleman et al.’s article (1966) problematising the school effect. The network
is interested in producing evidence that school or education matters. It has
an international dimension, where key knowledge leaders emerge and careers
are planned with chairs and institutional centers. Some associations, or some
parts of them, such as the AERA Leadership for School Improvement Spe-
cial Interest Group or ICSEI, are essential sites for meetings, collaborations
and exchanges of ideas. Some journals, such as School Effectiveness and School
Improvement and the Journal of Educational Change, are important loci of
debate. The network devotes specific attention to leadership: “leadership” is
considered the most important element, after classroom teaching, in produc-
ing learning outcomes.
Leadership is also a condition for school improvement. This feeds the devel-
opment and the refinement of the models of leadership: a) transformational
leadership, focusing on visions and charisma to bring about organisational
change; b) distributed leadership, which counters the idea of heroism by high-
lighting the relational, widespread quality of leadership; and c) instructional
leadership, stating the importance of the connections between school, curric-
ulum and outcomes. Ongoing debates here advance the agenda on leadership
and at the same time, reproduce and expand the growing importance of this
aspect (Bush & Glover, 2014). While there is a trend to redistribute leader-
ship and to remove the centrality of the headteacher, discussions dwell on the
highest school organisation roles and enact school organisation as a hierarchi-
cal space, even in the distributed leadership approach (Gunter, 2016, p. 138;
Gunter & Ribbins, 2013). Knowledge claims are validated in positivistic
and behavioristic epistemologies that are dominant: there is an effort, fur-
thermore, to improve the methodological framework. Here, the attention is
on correlations and making stronger argumentation based on experiments
involving randomised control, aligning with science as medicine and provid-
ing solid evidence-based research and policies through meta-analysis. Behav-
ioristic values are visible in the identification of behaviors, traits and practices
that have an impact on educational effectiveness and school improvement.
As in the educational administration arena, knowledge is considered
instrumental to school improvement. Networks have assumed widespread
importance in the current neoliberal agenda and with the related expansion of
the principle of new public management (NPM), although the translation of
NPM in national settings has been influenced by the institutional heritages
of the architecture of the educational systems (Gunter, Grimaldi, Hall, &
Serpieri, 2016). Overall, the geography of the network reveals that its core is
located in the Occidental West and, in particular, in U.K. and European links
between researchers. The exercise of internal critique, as found in the former
network, is rare. There is a tendency to shift smoothly from an empirical
basis that is assumed to be robust by default when expressed in numbers to
prescriptive and normative statements. Occasionally, it is recognised that the
knowledge base for leadership is not as strong as claimed, but there is a belief
that methodological change will surely confirm its primacy. Accordingly, the
knowledge of leadership appears as a doxa that is hard for the government,
researchers and school professionals to contest or think otherwise about.
Entrepreneurs and popularisers (EP) are a third growing arena, developing as
an effect of the global leadership industry. This arena emerges on the premise
of the commodification of knowledge production in the field. International
scale assessment, the consolidation of metrics in education and the need to
raise educational standards at the global and national levels, however, do not
answer the question of how to achieve this outcome. Leadership, or more pre-
cisely a transnational leadership package (Thomson, Gunter, Helen, & Black-
more, 2014), provides a reply. This package furnishes ready-made solutions
that can be applied everywhere: a global arrangement that can fit anywhere.
The complexity of situations and national heritages disappears and is made
irrelevant. The arena is populated by authoritative knowledge leaders and
is not aimed at developing a scholarly debate. Philosophical discussions are
“put into brackets,” and a set of assumptions, suggestions and prescriptions
reinforce the inevitability of the discourse of the leadership. This arena of
private knowledge actors relies on the knowledge repertoire of educational
administration and educational effectiveness and improvement research, and
it is aimed at the circulation of the research findings required by the new
conditions of new public management in educational settings.
Another territory, or rather a more dispersed interstitial geography, defines
critical educational policy and leadership studies (CEPaLS). The critical stance
is aimed at bringing the power structures, formerly concealed in mostly
EA, EEIR and EP works, to the forefront and at redirecting leadership and
knowledge production regarding educational leadership toward equality and
a democratic agenda. The strategy involves countering the dominant thinking
a) to reveal the imbrication of the discourse of leadership into instrumentalist
and managerialist perspectives and b) to open it to alternative conceptualisa-
tions. Notably, CEPaLS are interested in restoring the educational dimension
of leadership, which diminished over the last twenty years because of the
spread of the neoliberal agenda. Further, this arena intends to look at a more
democratic means of school organisation, where the principle of hierarchy is
made problematic and modes of co-leadership are explored. Here, the same
idea of “headship” can be challenged by shared or, in the most radical version,
anarchic forms of power structures (Gunter, 2016, p. 168). Several works
combine critical analysis with activism, by supporting critical performativ-
ity, as we described earlier. The groups working in this arena examine school
leadership or investigate it in broader critical descriptions of education policy.
Networking is visible in the editorial boards of authoritative journals, such
as the Journal of Education Policy or the International Journal of Leadership in
Education. Usually, knowledge production draws on case studies or, in gen-
eral, qualitative research that highlights the power structures in play in every-
day school practice. Theoretically, there are many sources of inspiration; they
rely sociologically mostly on Bourdieu, neo-Marxist perspectives and post-
structuralism and educationally on pragmatism or critical pedagogical theory.
Politically, critical studies tend toward an engagement with civic welfarism to
support public education and to combat neoliberalism and neoconservatism.
Critical studies have to confront the issues of “relevance” and “elitism.” In
times of fast policy-driven knowledge, their knowledge seems to have more
impact in the long term, rather than being immediately usable. As it is mostly
directed to open questions, it also sometimes moves away from the everyday
practice of school management, regardless of the insights it provides.
Drawn from the impressive book by Gunter (2016), the four arenas we
have so far described draw the field well. The terrain is set, and at the same
time, Gunter shows how these arenas frequently overlap. The arenas depict
the “collateral realities” of leadership, dominated by a “modernistic outlook.”
Behaviorism and positivism are the main epistemologies. Methodologically,
the school is represented in correlations or (in more refined projects) causal
models of variables. “Leadership” is a crucial variable, as are “teaching” and
“learning outcomes.”
Anthropologically, “super leaders” (leaders and teachers) translate the world
of school into cascades of data. The modernist style purifies the messiness of
school organisation. Well-defined and clear-cut categories settle the educa-
tional disorder. A simplified reality composed of human actors (leaders, fol-
lowers and students) is enacted. EA, EEIR and EP are oriented to a work of
modernisation by relying on evidence-based data. At the same time, the three
arenas defend themselves from attack in critical studies by considering such
studies as “irrelevant” or “philosophical,” and a boundary is created between
“science” and “politics.” While the political nature of knowledge production
on leadership is concealed in EA, EEIR and EP, it is fully recognised and an
object of investigation in CEPaLS. Enduring debates on the divide between
“theory” and “practice” tend again to establish a line between critical studies,
on the one hand, and the more applied arenas of investigation, on the other
hand.
The longevity of the “modernistic outlook” could appear somewhat sur-
prising, as its historical sources can be traced back a century. Its continu-
ation is related, nonetheless, to the overall effect of the neoliberal agenda
sustained by international bodies such as the IMF, OECD and World Bank
and to the growing effect of large-scale assessment as a knowledge base for
educational policy-making in Europe and epitomised elsewhere by programs
such as PISA. There is also a risk of further reduction in the plurality of the
field, due to the convergence of ELMA with a transnational leadership pack-
age, emerging as a ready-made set of solutions drawing on the most “substan-
tial evidence” from the dominant arenas of networks of research professionals
and professional researchers (Thomson et al., 2014). Is ELMA inevitably
entrenched in that modern and, to some extent, nightmarish framework?
Is there no way out for the growing field and the increase of pluralism? Are
critical studies condemned to silence? Are there additional resources that can
be mobilised to give critical studies an edge? Is critique running out of steam?
Replies to these questions, in my view, can be found by enriching the critical
studies of educational policy and leadership with ANT. So far, few ANT studies
have examined leaders and leadership and encounters with ELMA have been
occasional (Koyama, 2014; Mulcahy & Perillo, 2010; Perillo, 2008). ANT
is, instead, a relatively popular vocabulary in organisation studies, as I will
show in the next sections. ANT’s position concerning modernity and critique
must be explained, however, to open the space for a fruitful exchange. In a
famous book by Latour (1993), he declared unexpectedly: “We have never
been modern!” In what sense, then, can a vocabulary that argues that “we
have never been modern” reinvigorate the critical vocabulary of the field of
ELMA, which overlaps closely with modernity? I will clarify this “apparent”
paradox in the next section.
“We have never been modern”

The publication of Bruno Latour’s (1993) We Have Never Been Modern was
a significant turning point in the trajectory of this scholar but also the his-
tory of the ANT. While Latour’s trajectory does not necessarily reflect the
positions of everyone who uses the ANT vocabulary, this book enables us to
understand why ANT could be of help in moving away from the modernistic
educational administration, management and leadership literature but, at the
same time, how it is difficult to forget completely modernity thinking.
Latour’s book broadens the ANT perspective and is useful to see how this
conceptual apparatus contributes to the enrichment of our understanding of
the contemporary conditions of our post-industrial societies. The book came
out after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when newly emerging societal needs chal-
lenged the role of science in a democratic society. Environmental issues made
increasingly clear the insufficiency of the policy responses elaborated in the
spaces of the nation-states and led to the definition of a new social horizon,
characterised as “risk society” (Beck, 1992) or as the “postmodern condition”
(Lyotard, 1979), apparently freed from the grand narratives of the philosophy
of the history of twentieth century.
The volume draws attention to how the crisis of modernity is profound
and is related to our self-image as “moderns.” The crisis of modernity has
a cultural aspect and involves the ways that affluent societies, mostly in
Europe and North America, perceive themselves. This claim brings to mind
the classical debate on modernity that is framed by Durkheim and Weber.
To be modern implies to be free from the logic of traditional societies, to
be enlightened: living in a world in which science helps to control nature
and the rules of democracy are the coordinates of the political sphere. Weber
illustrated how modernity was linked to Western rationalism—that is, to a
form of purposive-instrumental rationality that emerged in the long history of
the intellectualisation and rationalisation of the world since the Renaissance.
Being modern, here, meant the capacity to distinguish, on one hand, society
and culture, and, on the other hand, nature: the “values” and the “facts,” the
mind and the matter, the ends and the means.
Latour’s (1993) intention is to explain what was stifling the fabric of moder-
nity, leading to confusion and mixing questions from seemingly separate het-
erogeneous spheres (economics, politics and science). His response invites
us to consider the idea that “modern” stands for taking two different sets of
practices separately: a) the practice of translation, which produces hybrids of
nature and culture, and b) the practice of purification, which creates two onto-
logical zones: the realm of the “humans,” and that of the “non-humans,” or
the separation between nature and culture.
However,
As soon as we direct our attention simultaneously to the work of purifica-

tion and the work of hybridization, we immediately stop being wholly
modern, and our future begins to change. At the same time we stop hav-
ing been modern, because we become retrospectively aware that the two
sets of practices have always already been at work in the historical period
that is ending. Our past begins to change.
(Latour, 1993, p. 11)
In other words, when we stop being modern, it changes our relationship

with the past—that is, with pre-modern societies—and the comparative
anthropology should be modifed, as all those related issues, such as relativ-
ism, domination and syncretism that characterise the “Great Divide” between
Westerners and non-Westerners have to be revised. Latour’s hypothesis is that
the engine of modernity is given by the work of purifcation. It is the ongoing
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row around the island to the other side. Do you suppose we can do
so without fear of being seen?”
“I think our pursuers have given up the hope of finding us, for they
seemed to be going back the way they came. I think we are safe, but
it will not do to take any needless risk.”
“It was a party of Cockburn’s men from Kent Island, I suppose. They
are raiding around in every direction. At St. Michael’s they have not
dared to use any lights, except such as they must have, for months,
and it is the same everywhere about. We live in constant dread of
them.” She shuddered and hid her face in her hands, but in a
moment she looked up. “Mr. Baldwin,” she said, “I have brought you
into great danger which I might have spared you if I had consented
to do as my brother wished. I must seem disloyal, as well as
obstinate and over impulsive.”
“None of those things. You have been brave, and true to your
compassionate nature. As for me, save that you were in great
danger, the experience is one that I might meet at any time. I am not
seriously hurt; a cut or two; no bones broken. I have come off well.
Pray do not distress yourself on my account. My sole concern is for
you.”
“Shall we try to get across now? It must be very late.”
“I think it is, and growing cloudier all the time. Did you say the boat
was this way? Sit still. Please do not make any more effort than you
need. Those little feet have been too sorely tried already.”
The boat was found in its place, and they embarked upon the little
creek, by degrees making their way around the island, and then
across to the opposite shore.
“I trust it is not far, for your sake,” said Mr. Baldwin, seeing how
utterly exhausted the girl was.
“No, it is but a little way.” Yet every step was torture to the already
bruised feet, and tears were running down the girl’s cheeks when at
last they stopped at the door of old Hagar’s little hut.
Mr. Baldwin rapped sharply. “Who dar?” came a startled response.
“It is I, Aunt Hagar; Lettice, Mars Jeems’s Lettice.”
“What yuh doin’ hyar dis time o’ night?”
“Law, chile! Fo’ de Lawd!” came the reply, and in an instant there
was a withdrawal of bolts and bars, and the old woman’s head was
thrust out.
“What yuh doin’ hyar dis time o’ night, honey chile?” she asked,
peering out into the darkness. “Huccome yuh lookin’ up ole Hagar? I
specs yuh in lub,” she chuckled; but when Lettice and her
companion stepped into the cabin and Aunt Hagar had struck a light,
she looked at the two in astonishment. “Law, chile,” she exclaimed,
“yuh look lak ole rag-bag. What got yuh? Mos’ bar’ footy, an’ all yo’
clo’es tattered an’ to’n; an’ who dis?” She peered up into Mr.
Baldwin’s face. “I knows him. He one o’ de Bald’in tribe. Dat a Bald’in
nose. I know dat ef I see it in Jericho. What yuh doin’ wif mah young
miss out in de worl’ dis time o’ night?” she asked suspiciously.
“We were at Uncle Tom’s, and were attacked by a party of Britishers
on our way home,” Lettice told her.
“Some o’ dat mizzible gang from Kent Island, I reckons.”
“Yes, we suppose so. Well, we had a desperate time getting away
from them. Mr. Baldwin fought—oh, how he fought!”
“And you, Miss Hopkins, how well you did your part.”
“It was life or death, and we at last did escape, but we have lost our
horses, and are too footsore and bruised and scared to go farther.”
“Ole Hagar fix yuh up. I has ’intment, yuh knows I has; an’ I has
yarbs; but, fo’ de Lawd, I’ll cunjur dem Britishers, ef dey is a way to
do it, dat I will. Dere now, honey, let me wrop up dem po’ litty footies.
Hm! Hm! dey is stone bruise, an’ dey is scratch, an’ dey is strain an’
sprain, an’ what ain’ dey? But dis cyo’ ’em. Now lemme see what
young marster a-needin’. Hm! Hm! he slash an’ slit; swo’d cut on he
shoulder. Huccome he fight an’ swim an’ row, I dunno, wif all dese
yer slashes, an’ t’ars, an’ all dat. Yuh bofe has sholy been froo de
mill. I say yuh has.” And talking all the time, the old woman managed
to make her visitors really comfortable, as she ministered to them
with deft, experienced fingers.
“Now, Aunt Hagar,” said Mr. Baldwin, when she had put on her last
bandage, “I will leave Miss Lettice in your care, and I will go to her
home and report that she is safe. They will be very anxious.”
“Oh, but you are not fit to go any farther,” Lettice protested.
“Oh, yes, I am. You do not know what a charm Aunt Hagar has put
into these ointments. Your family will be in great distress of mind,
and I think it would be best that I should go and reassure them.”
“Yes, honey, he better go,” said Aunt Hagar, from the corner where
she was busying herself with some mysterious mixture. “Mars
Bald’in, drink dis, honey, hit give yuh stren’th, an’ mek yuh git over
de groun’ lak a rabbit. Jess follow de paf to de spring, den strike off
to de lef’, an’ whenst yuh come to de hayricks by de right side de
road, yuh is jes back o’ Mars William’s barn. Hit a roun’erbout way,
but hit’s better dan crossin’ de water. I’ll look out fo’ Miss Letty. Yuh
tell ’em Aunt Hagar got her, an’ dey satify she all right. An’ tell ’em,”
she went to the door and spoke in a whisper, “tell ’em not to raise a
cry all roun’ de neighborhood dat she out dis-a-way. Dey is folks dat
love to talk, an’ I don’ want de chile’s name to be made free wif, an’
have ’em say she traipsin roun’ de country wif young men all hours
of de night. Yuh hyar me?”
“I agree with you, certainly, Aunt Hagar, and I shall do my part in
keeping the matter quiet. A young lady’s name is too delicate a thing
to be bandied about by those who are merely curious. I will see you
again soon, Aunt Hagar. I haven’t thanked you half as I should for
your kindness.”
Aunt Hagar beamed, and as she reëntered the room and stood over
Lettice, where she sat in a low splint-bottomed chair, she said: “He
blue blood. I knows dat. Some folkses has money but dey hasn’t
nothin’ e’s. He got de name an’ de manners of a gent’man.” She
stroked Lettice’s hair with her withered old hand. “Now, honey,” she
went on, “I gwine give yuh a drink o’ sumpin’ to put yuh to sleep, an’
yuh ain’ gwine wake up no mo’ twel de sun three hours high; an’ I
gwine put a name in dis cup so yuh dreams gwine be sweet an’
pleasant. Yuh is had a bad ’sperience, an’ yuh might have turr’ble
dreams ef yuh didn’t have no chawm ter stop ’em. Drink dis, honey,
hit tas’ es sweet an’ good, an’ won’ hu’t a kitten. I mek yo’ baid up
nice an’ clean, an’ yuh sleep lak a baby.”
“But where will you sleep?” Lettice asked.
“I sleep whar I sleep. Yuh reckon I uses dat baid? I sleeps whar I
sleeps; in dis cheer, on de flo’, anywhar I lak. Yuh don’ reckon I
sleeps in dat baid dese hot nights? No, ma’am, I sleeps whar I
sleeps.” And despite Lettice’s protests she would have her take
possession of the high four-posted bed with its bright patchwork
quilt, and its fresh white sheets; and in a few minutes the exhausted
girl was fast asleep.
She awakened the next morning to hear the patter of rain on the
roof, and to see Aunt Hagar crouching over a fire, giving her
attention to a fine pone browning in the bake kettle. There was an
odor of sizzling bacon, of coffee, and of some herby mess which
Lettice could not identify. She sat up in bed, and called, “Aunt
Hagar.”
The old woman arose with alacrity. “I ’lows hit mos’ time fo’ yuh to
wek up. I has yo’ brekfus mos’ done, an’ yo’ clo’es is dry an’ ready
fo’ yuh. Yo’ stockings is too raggety fo’ yuh to w’ar, an’ yo’ purty frock
ain’ nothin’ but strips an’ strings. Yuh has to w’ar hit though; hit
clean. An’ ’tain’ no matter ’bout de stockin’s, yuh ain’ gwine put yo’
footies to de groun’ fo’ a week; dat I say.”
“But they feel much better; so much. And, oh, Aunt Hagar, you must
have been up very early to have washed and ironed all my things.”
“I gits up when I ready. I nuvver has no rug’lar time fo’ gittin’ up an’
gwine to baid,” she explained; and then she helped Lettice on with
her clothes, after bringing her warm water in a tin basin, and
attending to her wants. Then she made ready the breakfast on a
deal table to which Lettice was assisted, after having been made to
drink a copious draught of herb tea.
“Mek yuh eat hearty, chile. Mek yuh feel nice, an’ keep off de chills,
an’ mek yuh rosy an’ purty. Yuh doan’ want dem pale cheeks when
Mars Bald’in’ aroun’,” coaxingly said Aunt Hagar.
Lettice laughed, and, with a wry face, swallowed the draught, and, to
her surprise, she found herself ready for a hearty breakfast, which
seemed to taste uncommonly good, for Aunt Hagar was a famous
cook and nurse, as she was a noted “conjur woman.”
The girl had hardly finished her meal when “rap-rap” came at the
door, and the latch was lifted to disclose her brother and her sister
Betty, with the carriage, pillows, wraps, and all such paraphernalia.
Sister Betty fell on Lettice’s neck, kissing and compassionating her.
“Oh, you dear child, I was afraid you would be in a raging fever this
morning. Oh, you poor little thing, what a dreadful, dreadful time you
have had! Naughty girl, to run away from your home. Come, William,
pick her up and carry her out to the carriage. It is not raining so hard,
but her poor little tootsie-wootsies are all bound up, and she must be
in a sorry plight, in spite of her brave looks.”
“Aunt Hagar has been so good to me,” Lettice told them. “She has
made a new girl of me. I am in rags, but they are clean ones, thanks
to Aunt Hagar. I feel wonderfully peart this morning, after my woful
adventures. And how is Mr. Baldwin? I judge he reached you safely.”
“Yes, but in rather a sorry plight, for it was raining hard when he
arrived, and the extra effort was none too good for him; but we have
kept him in bed, and we will cosset him, and he will soon be well, I
hope. He has come off worse than you, for he has a high fever, and I
was loath to leave him; but Mammy is a good nurse, and I thought
she could do better for him than I.”
“He is a brave fellow,” William put in. “He made little of his part in
your affair, and much of yours, but his condition shows that he fought
manfully. Ah, little sister, if you had but stayed at home.”
“Now, William, you shall not scold,” Betty interrupted. “The child has
suffered enough, and she did what she thought was right, no doubt.”
“I did hope I could get the papers,” said Lettice, wistfully, “and I
thought the matter would be most easily settled so, and I was afraid
that it would be too late if I waited till morning, so I went, and it was
no use after all.”
“Yet, perhaps it was,” her brother said gravely, “for the papers have
come to light.”
Lettice opened her eyes wide. “And how were they found?”
“There is the mystery. Lutie brought them to me with a marvellous
tale of their being handed to her to be placed in my hands, and she
either pretended or she did not know who brought them. I questioned
her, but she stuttered and stammered, and told about some one in a
great cloak, and whose face she did not see, and she declared she
was so mortal scared that she couldn’t have told who it was, anyhow,
and a lot of stuff from which we could make neither head nor tail. But
the papers are safe, although no one knows but that they have been
copied. I would like to get at the bottom of the matter.”
“Perhaps I can,” replied Lettice, thoughtfully. “At all events, I am glad
they have been returned. And now we will go home.” So she was
bundled into the carriage, and reached home with a thankful heart.
But Aunt Hagar’s predictions came true, for it was a week before she
could put her feet to the ground.
CHAPTER XIII.
Confidences.
The rôle of patient which was enforced upon both Lettice and Mr.
Baldwin was not altogether disagreeable to the pair. A couple of
days was all the time that Mr. Baldwin would consent to remain in
bed, and by that Lettice, too, was downstairs, looking, it is true, very
pale and with blue shadows under her eyes, but quite herself
otherwise. The knowledge of her night’s doings was kept a profound
secret from all but her immediate family, although Aunt Martha and
Rhoda were considered sufficiently discreet to be intrusted with an
account of her adventures.
It was James who told Rhoda about it, when he went over to make
his farewells before going to join Barney’s flotilla, for he declared that
he was in no mood for land service. “We can’t have every Tom, Dick,
and Harry discussing Letty’s doings,” he said. “There are those just
waiting for a chance to call her light and unmaidenly, travelling
around alone in these times; although we, who know her, can impute
it to nothing but pity and bravery. Besides, Cockburn and his men
have such a name, that but to mention the fact of her having fallen
into their hands, would give rise to exaggerated reports.”
Rhoda nodded. “Yes, we who know her and love her would best say
nothing about it. Lettice is a brave girl and a tender-hearted one,
even if she is a bit too impulsive.”
Jamie’s eyes beamed at this praise of his dearly loved sister from
one who was always chary of her compliments; and when Rhoda
expressed her determination to go at once to see Lettice, he gladly
offered to be her escort. “I wish you were well out of here and safe in
Boston,” he said. “With that terrible beast of a Cockburn infesting our
shores, and every man feeling it his duty to be off with the militia, our
homes are illy protected. Your father should not allow you to remain
here.”
Rhoda frowned, and half shut her eyes in a little haughty way that
she had. “My father does what he thinks best. I do not dispute his
judgment. He does not know, or is not willing to believe, the state of
affairs down here.”
Jamie made no response although he thought, “Nothing to his credit
that it is so.”
Lettice greeted Rhoda warmly. “It is good of you to come over to see
this battered-up piece of humanity,” she said. “Am I not a decrepit?”
She thrust out one bandaged foot as she stood holding to a chair.
“Are you then so lame?” Rhoda asked with concern.
“Yes, I am rather used up by sprains and bruises, but it is nothing
serious, after all, and only demands that I keep quiet.”
“Tell me about it,” Rhoda said abruptly, as she motioned Lettice to
her place on the couch. And Lettice gave her a detailed account of
her adventures, ending with, “And it was my very prettiest scarf, the
silk one with many colored stripes that Uncle Tom brought me from
Paris.”
“How can you think of such slight things when it was all so serious?”
Rhoda asked, in a puzzled tone.
Lettice laughed. “Because I am so shallow, I suppose. I remember
being thankful that I had that particular piece of finery, because it
was so strong, and not like some of my others made of a lighter and
more gauzy material. You see how I could let my thoughts run on
dress, even in that desperate hour. I tell you I am only a butterfly.”
“But you are not. You weep like a baby over the smallest thing, when
it is weak and silly to do so, and you prink and coquet and parade
your dress, but at heart you are brave and loyal, and have the
greatest amount of endurance. I cannot make you out.”
“No more can I you. I am a piece of vanity, and when there is
anything to be gained by showing a brave front I can do it well
enough; at other times I simply let myself go, and if I feel like crying I
cry, when there is anybody around to pet me and make much of me,
even if it is only Mammy.” Then she suddenly became grave. “Did
you know that the papers were found? Or rather, they have been
returned.”
Rhoda started. “You don’t mean it!”
“I do.”
“Who returned them?”
“My maid, Lutie.”
“Was she the thief?”
“No, I think,—I am quite positive, she was not. She says they were
given to her to deliver to my brother.”
“By whom?”
“She does not tell. By the way, I promised my brother William that I
would try to fathom the matter. Rhoda, where is Mr. Clinton?”
Rhoda did not answer for a moment; then she said: “You still suspect
him? Do you mean me to infer that you believe it was he who gave
Lutie the papers?”
“I don’t know what to think. I would rather fasten my suspicions on
some one else, for more reasons than one.”
“What reasons?”
“I would rather be sure the papers had not been copied.”
“You believe he would do such a thing as that? I do not. I have more
faith in him than you, Lettice.”
“Yet you do not love him.”
“Have I said I do not?”
“No, but I know it. I know one cannot love two men at the same
time.”
“Lettice, you presume.”
“Do I? I don’t mean to; but—Ah well, Rhoda, we are but girls, and we
are on the lookout for signs that escape others whose thoughts are
not on romances.”
“And you think you have read signs in me? Am I such a telltale,
then?”
“Far from it. You are unusually wary. But Rhoda, do you know that
Jamie leaves us to-day?”
The color mounted slowly to Rhoda’s face, tingeing even her ears
with red.
Lettice leaned over and said mockingly, as she possessed herself of
Rhoda’s hand, “A sign, Rhoda! A sign! What does that blush mean?”
Rhoda bit her lip, but did not raise her eyes.
“Our bonny Jamie,” sighed Lettice. “Ah me, I hope God will spare
him. I hope, O I hope—Oh, Rhoda, what if he should be going, never
to return.”
“Don’t!” cried Rhoda, in a sharp, quick voice. And then she snatched
her hand from Lettice and, covering her face, sobbed in a
convulsive, tearless way.
“Rhoda, dear Rhoda,” cried Lettice. “What a wicked girl I am! I did
not mean to be cruel to you. I should have had more consideration
for your feelings and have kept my fears to myself.” She essayed to
rise, but Rhoda motioned her back. “Come here, then, and sit by me
that I may know that you forgive me,” she begged, and Rhoda came.
Lettice caressed and soothed her so that in a few minutes she had
regained her composure.
“You asked about Robert,” she said. “He has gone to Washington
and vows he will never return. He left his address, should any one
wish to know of his whereabouts.”
“I am glad. I think that is best.”
Rhoda in her turn began to catechize. “Do you love him, Lettice?”
“No, I can say truthfully that I do not. I was beginning to, I think; but
now, I am so racked by doubt and mistrust that I have no room for
any other feeling. I do not want to love him. This cloud would ever be
rising between us. I would grieve to have harm come to him, and yet
—”
“You would denounce him to his enemies?”
“If it would serve my country, yes. I could not tell a lie for him.”
“Then you do not love him.”
“Could you tell an untruth for one you loved?”
Rhoda reflected. “I would not tell an untruth, but I would believe in
him though no one else did, and I would not give up my belief while
there was a shadow of a chance that he was innocent. And, in any
event, I would be very sure before I declared a person guilty who
might be proved innocent.”
“That is why I went to you the other night,” replied Lettice. “And I did
not denounce him before any one but Mr. Baldwin, and that was in
the heat of my surprise and anger.”
“I know that. But we have been over this subject before. He is gone
and will not return. Let us talk of something else. Your Mr. Baldwin,
where is he?”
“My Mr. Baldwin, as you are pleased to call him, is here in the room
across the hall. Would you like to call on him?”
“Not I.”
“He is a brave young gentleman, and good to look at.”
“Ah, that is why you are not sure of your feeling for Robert.”
“No, it is not,” returned Lettice, quickly. “And that brings us back to
the question we were discussing a few minutes ago. Could a girl love
two men at once?”
Rhoda did not answer. She arose and said: “I am staying too long. I
must go back to Aunt Martha. I promised her I would be back soon.
Your brother William has returned to his company?”
“Yes; he was at home but one day and could remain no longer. With
the British such near neighbors, the militia must not be caught
napping. The plantations are suffering for lack of attention, but the
men must fight though the crops fail in consequence. Will you send
Lutie to me, if you see her on your way down? And do come soon
again.”
Rhoda promised and took her leave. In a few minutes Lutie
appeared. She had not shown her usual devotion to her mistress
during the last day or two, and seemed anxious to efface herself, a
proceeding strictly the opposite to her usual one.
“You want me, Miss Letty?” she said as she came in.
“Yes, I do. I don’t want to be left up here all alone. It seems to me,
Lutie, you have a precious lot of work downstairs, for you try to slip
out every chance you get.”
“Miss Rhoda, she hyar,” Lutie began protestingly.
“I know she was here, but she is not now. I never thought you would
neglect your own Miss Letty, Lutie; especially when she is half sick,
and cannot get around without some one’s help. Haven’t I always
been good to you?”
“Yass, miss, yuh has indeed.”
“Then look here; tell me the truth. Now don’t look so scared; I am not
going to have you whipped. You know you never had a whipping in
your life, except from your own mammy. I want you to tell me who
gave you those papers to give to your Marster William.”
Lutie began to sniffle. “’Deed, Miss Letty, I didn’t see him. He have a
cloak over him, an’ he hide his face, an’ he a gre’t big man.”
“With fiery eyes like Napoleon Bonaparte that you’re so afraid of?
Now look here, is it any one I know?”
“Yass, miss.” Lutie spoke in a tremulous voice.
“Was it—now speak the truth—was it—” Lettice looked cautiously
around and lowered her voice—“Mr. Clinton?”
Lutie writhed, and twisted, and looked every way but at her mistress.
“Remember, you’ll be sorry if you don’t tell.”
“Miss Letty, what yuh gwine do ef I don’t tell?” at last Lutie inquired in
desperation.
“What am I going to do? Don’t you know that old Aunt Hagar comes
here every day to see me? You know she is a cunjure woman, she’ll
do anything I ask her. You’d better look out.”
“’Deed an’ ’deed, Miss Letty,” wailed Lutie, dropping on her knees,
and rocking back and forth, “I so skeered.”
“Of the Poly Bonypart man or the cunjure woman? Which?”
“Bofe of ’em. An’ I skeered o’ dat Cockbu’n. Jubal say he mos’
wuss’n Poly Bonypart.”
“Jubal does?”
“Yass’m. Oh, Miss Letty, don’ mek me tell.”
“Humph!” Lettice rested her chin in her hand and thoughtfully
regarded the girl sobbing at her feet. “Lutie,” she said after a pause,
“what did Jubal tell you about Cockburn and his men?”
“He say,” Lutie replied, weeping copiously, “he say ef I tells, ole
Cockbu’n git me an’ mek me dance er breakdown on hot coals; an’
he t’ar out mah white teef an’ give ’em to he men to shoot out o’ dey
guns lak bullets; and he snatch uvver scrap o’ wool off mah haid, fo’
to mek gun wads outen; an’ he brek uvver bone in mah body, an’ de
Britishers rattle ’em when dey play dey chunes ter march by.” Jubal
could display a delightfully vivid imagination when it served his
purpose.
“That certainly would be something terrible,” Lettice commented
gravely. “I don’t wonder you are scared; but you know it would be
nearly as bad if you wasted away,—hungry, and couldn’t eat; thirsty,
and couldn’t drink; and if your teeth were to drop out one by one, and
if your eyes were to roll up into your head and never come down
again; and if those you love wouldn’t love you, and if some one gave
Jubal a charm so he’d hate you. You know what a cunjure woman
can do.”
Lutie burst into loud wails. “Oh, Miss Letty! Spare me, Lawd! Spare
me! I a po’ mizzible sinner. What shall I do? What shall I do? Oh,
Miss Letty, don’ let Aunt Hagar chawm Jubal, please, miss. I die fo’
yuh. I serve yuh han’ an’ foot.”
“There, Lutie, there,” said Lettice, feeling that in her application of
Jubal’s methods she had gone too far, “come here. Sit down there.”
She put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “You want to marry Jubal, I
suppose. I knew he had been philandering about you for some time.
Are you really fond of him?”
Lutie’s wails subsided into a sniffle. “Yass, miss,” she answered
meekly.
“Well, then, I promise you that I will not let any harm come to him or
you through anything you may tell me, if you tell the truth. And,
moreover, I’ll get Aunt Hagar to make you a luck-ball, and I will not
tell a living soul who it was that gave you the papers, as long as
there is any danger coming to either of you from it. But if you don’t
tell me the truth—then—”
Lutie’s sobs were again on the increase. “Oh-h, Miss Letty, I sholy is
hard pressed. I is skeert one way by ole Cockbu’n an’ turrer by de
cunjurin’. I mos’ mo’ skeerter by de cunjurin’.”
“But you won’t tell your mistress, who has always been good and
kind to you, when you know it would save her a great deal of
trouble? You won’t tell unless she threatens to punish you? Ah, Lutie,
think what I might do to make you tell, if I were a hard mistress.”
“Miss Letty, Miss Letty, ’deed, ma’am, I don’t want to do yuh so
mean. Yuh won’t let Jubal come to no ha’m, will yuh, Miss Letty?”
“No, I promised you, so far as I have any voice in it, I will not. Don’t
make me repeat it, you disrespectful girl.”
“Miss Letty, I so bothered in mah haid I fergits mah manners,” said
Lutie, humbly. “I knows a lady lak yuh ain’ gwine tell me no story, an’
when yuh says nobody know, nobody ain’ gwine know. Miss Letty,—
hit were Jubal hisse’f.” And again the girl lapsed into violent weeping,
and the rocking back and forth continued.
Lettice was very quiet for a moment. “There, Lutie,” she then said,
“you needn’t cry any more. You are as safe as can be, and so is
Jubal. I will not tell on him, but I want you to tell me all you know
about it. Did any one give him the papers to give to your Marster
William?”
“No, ma’am, Miss Letty, he peepin’ froo de bushes when yuh puts de
box in de groun’, an’ he say he think dey is gol’ an’ silver derein, an’
he want git me one o’ dem carneely rings, an’ he jes think he tek a
little an’ nobody miss hit, an’ ef dey do, dey’ll think de Britishers done
git hit; den when he open de box an’ fin’ nothin’ but dem papers in
hit, he lay out fur to put hit back agin, but he ain’ had no chanst lak
he mean ter do, an’ so he give hit ter me, an’ say I is ter give hit ter
Mars William an’ do lak he say, an’ I so do; an’ he say ef I tells, de
Britishers is sho’ to come after me, ’cause dey want dem papers.”
“How did he know that?”
“He heahs yuh-alls talkin’ ’bout hit dat night he waitin’ on de gin’ral in
de gre’t hall. Yass, miss, he say all dat.” Lutie was very quiet now,
and only her wet eyes showed recent weeping.
“Very good,” said Lettice. “Of course Jubal ought to be punished. He
has caused more mischief than he knows, and he is not half good
enough for you, Lutie; although, poor ignorant boy, it was a
temptation,” she added, half to herself. “Now dry your eyes, Lutie,
and go get that pink muslin out of the closet. I am going to give that
to you because you told the truth. I’m sorry I haven’t a ‘carneely’ ring,
but there is a string of blue beads in that box; you may have those.”
Lutie fell on her knees and kissed her mistress’s bandaged feet in
her ecstasy at this deliverance from despair and this elevation to
heights of bliss, and in a minute she was bearing off her treasures,
every white tooth gleaming, as she viewed these darling
possessions.
“I am bound to make no explanations,” said Lettice to herself. “What
a complication it is, and how badly I have treated poor Robert. No
wonder he was so hurt and angry and indignant. Alas, if I tell any one
that he is innocent, I will have to prove it, and that I have promised
not to do. I shall have to wait events, I suppose. Brother William is
away, and there is no one else who will press inquiries. Yet, am I not
bound to clear Robert to Mr. Baldwin, and I can do nothing else than
write to Washington to Robert himself. Dear, dear, what a scrape I
am in!”
At this moment Lutie reappeared with the message: “Miss Letty, Miss
Betty say is yuh able to come down to supper? Mr. Bald’in, he
comin’, an’ she say she wisht yuo’d mek yose’f ready, is yuh able.”
“I am able, but some one will have to help me to hobble. Go tell Miss
Betty, and then come back and dress me.” She felt a little flutter of
excitement at again meeting the companion of her late adventures,
and selected her dress with some care. Yet she sighed once or
twice. She had been very unjust to Robert, and of course he could
never forgive her. Yes, it was as he had said; that dream was over.
Nevertheless, she had a little feeling of resentment toward him
because he had not assured her of his innocence. “If he had not
reproached me, but had told me, I would have believed him,” she
told herself. She had been too hasty, she admitted, but like many
other persons, she did not feel willing to exculpate the supposed
offender from all blame and to acknowledge herself in the wrong,
and her feeling of resentment in consequence almost overcame her
regrets.
CHAPTER XIV.
“Sorrow an’ Trouble.”
The two who had lately been companions in misery met each other,
at the supper table, for the first time since the evening of their
perilous experience. “This is but our third meeting,” said Mr. Baldwin,
“and how various the circumstances.”
“There is a mighty big difference between a ball-room, Aunt Hagar’s
cabin, and our present surroundings,” Lettice returned. “We cannot
complain of monotony. How are you, Mr. Baldwin? Mammy tells me
your fever ran high, and no wonder; I have felt like a rag, myself.”
“Thanks to good nursing I am much better, and shall be able to
proceed to Washington to-morrow, I trust.”
“You are not well enough,” Mrs. Betty protested. “We cannot let you
go when you are but half mended.”
“Ah, but there is no word but duty to those who have promised to
serve their country,” replied the young man.
“Yes, but one owes a duty to one’s self as well as to one’s country,”
Betty returned.
“Every man is needed. With so little success on the frontier, reverses
at sea, and this vandal, Cockburn, ready to destroy and pillage along
these shores, it is every man’s duty to be at his post, if he is able to
get there.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Betty sighed. “That is what William says. With
his father and uncle on the frontier, his brother gone to join Barney,
and with the plantations running to waste down here, they all have
no word but duty.”
“And that is right,” Lettice spoke up. “It is to protect their women and
their homes that they go.”
Mr. Baldwin nodded with a pleased smile. “After all that you have
suffered, to hear you say that, Miss Lettice, proves that you are very
loyal.”
“I am the more so that I have suffered. The worse we are treated the
more eager we are for the war to go on.”
“That is beginning to be the prevailing spirit. But I wish I could know
you safe in Baltimore. I think it is very unsafe for ladies to be left
unprotected when the enemy is so near.”
“And such an enemy!” cried Betty. “Then don’t you think you ought to
stay and protect us, Mr. Baldwin?”
He laughed. “You make me choose my words, and put me in the
position of seeming very ungallant. I must go. I cannot do otherwise.”
“Yes, I agree with you,” Lettice gave her opinion, “and if I were a man
I would go too.” And Betty arising from the table, they adjourned to
another room, Lettice being carefully assisted by the young man.
“Each moment I remain is dangerous,” he whispered, “for each
moment it becomes less my desire to leave.” Lettice blushed, and
while Betty went to her baby, they two sat in a corner of the wide hall
and had a long talk. They had not many friends in common, but they
loved their country, and they had struggled with a common foe; then
no wonder they were not long strangers.
“I have never asked you where your home is,” said Lettice, to her
companion. “You do not talk like a Southerner, and yet you are
Tyler’s cousin. I do not seem to distinguish your native place by your
speech.”
“I am from Massachusetts,” he told her, “but I am something of a
cosmopolitan, as every one who follows the sea must be.”
“From Massachusetts? I thought every one in that state was dead
set against the war.”
“Oh, no, not every one. To be sure, New Englanders, as a rule, are
against it; but if you should investigate, you would find many gallant
soldiers and sailors hailing from our part of the country.”

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Educational Leadership Management

and Administration through Actor

Islamic-Based Educational Leadership, Administration

Probability: An Introduction Through Theory and

Emotion Management and Feelings in Teaching and

Textbook of Medical Administration and Leadership Erwin

Educational Leadership and Nancy Fraser 1st Edition

Educational Approaches to Internationalization through

Organizational Behavior and Theory in Healthcare:

Feminist Perspectives on Contemporary Educational

Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration through Actor-Network

Paolo Landri is a Senior Researcher of the Institute of Research on Population

Titles in the series

Educational Leadership and Pierre Bourdieu

Educational Leadership: Theorising Professional Practice

Theorising Identity and Subjectivity in Educational Leadership

Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration through

For more information about this series please visit: www.routledge.com/

ISBN: 978-1-138-60095-9 (hbk)

List of figures viii

1 Introducing actor-network theory 1

2 A way out from the modernistic constitution of educational

3 Symmetry: the entanglement of humans and non-humans 39

4 Translating schools in the calculative worlds of education

5 Stabilising networks and ontological politics 81

6 Near actor-network theory: limits, critiques and new

Annotated bibliography 125

3.1 Giving directions to school: M’s map 48

1 Leadership now encompasses all aspects of “continuous educational

Te readiness of the leadership industry to provide policy and professional

The emergence of the TLP

1 a set of policy prescriptions based on the experiences of consultants work-

Te TLP provides a kind of (largely) Anglocentric IKEA fat-pack of policy

The books series and critical thinking tools

The making of a book is a collective enterprise, even if it is a single-authored

The preceding story is a summary of Bruno Latour’s book called Aramis, or

Fractures in science and technology studies

Emergence and unfolding of actor-network theory

researchers involved in ANT are amateurs of reality. Their theoretical

ANTiES: actor-network education studies

Chapter 1 briefly illustrated the history of ANT by trying to find a con-

“We have never been modern”

As soon as we direct our attention simultaneously to the work of purifica-

In other words, when we stop being modern, it changes our relationship

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