The happy city: An actor-network-theory manifesto

Moving beyond the existing trends of ‘subjectivist’ and ‘critical-historicist’ approaches to cities (the subject and the objective frame), what is offered in this chapter is an argument for a richer urban anthropological practice informed by Actor-Network Theory (ANT) in the form of a manifesto of four points. The four-point manifesto consists of: Follow slowly: Do not rush to explanations! Trace the relations and the dispositions! Capture the Small! and Avoid simplistic comparisons! The chapter concludes that drawing on novelists like Calvino can inspire urban authors and designers and help to produce accounts that trace and measure the pluriverse of urban life without replacing the specific with general. It is therefore critical to reinvent the narrative techniques that help us gain access to the particular, to grasp the unique, and to offer an adequate description on the basis of the series of situations that are accounted for.