Actor-network theory (ANT) evolved from the work of Michel Callon (1991) and Bruno Latour (1992) at the Ecole des Mines in Paris.
Their analysis of a set of negotiations describes the progressive constitution of a network in which both human and non-human actors assume identities according to prevailing strategies of interaction.
Actors' identities and qualities are defined during negotiations between representatives of human and non-human actants. In this perspective, "representation" is understood in its political dimension, as a process of delegation. The most important of these negotiations is "translation," a multifaceted interaction in which actors (1) construct common definitions and meanings, (2) define representativities, and (3) co-opt each other in the pursuit of individual and collective objectives.
In the actor-network theory , both actors and actants share the scene in the reconstruction of the network of interactions leading to the stabilization of the system. But the crucial difference between them is that only actors are able to put actants in circulation in the system.

Actant-Network Theory has its origins in studies of the networks of interdependent social practices that constitute work in science and technology.
The important fact here is not that humans and nonhumans are treated symmetrically but that they are defined relationally as arguments or functors in the network, and not otherwise.
This leads to a relational epistemology which rejects the naive positivist view of objects or actors as existing in themselves prior to any participation in ecosocial and semiotic networks of interactions (including the interactions by which they are observed, named, etc.).
The usual view of dynamical systems assumes that they have a local topology, and so events nearby in space and time are more relevant than those at a distance, leading to neat separation of scales of processes. ANT notes that the topology of networks is in general non-local, and further that semiotic artifacts are often the 'boundary objects' that mediate non-local, scale-breaking interconnections. This leads to a powerful generalization of ecosocial systems theory to include network topologies (and the rarer laminar topologies) and makes possible a general inquiry into scale-respecting vs. scale-breaking dynamics.

Thanks to Thierry Bardini and Jay Lemke

Action Theory is related to Pierre Bourdieu.
Bourdieu shared Weber's view that society, contrary to traditional Marxism, cannot be analyzed simply in terms of economic classes and ideologies. Much of his work concerns the independent role of educational and cultural factors. Instead of analyzing societies in terms of classes, Bourdieu uses the concept of field: a social arena in which people manoeuvre and struggle in pursuit of desirable resources. A field is a system of social positions (e.g. a profession such as the law) structured internally in terms of power relationships (e.g. consider the power differential between judges and lawyers). Different fields can be either autonomous or interrelated (e.g. consider the separation of power between judiciary and legislature)and more complex societies have more fields.

From Wikipedia

Building on the earlier work of Mises and others, Hayek argued that, in centrally-planned economies, an individual or a select group of individuals must determine the distribution of resources, but that these planners will never have enough information to carry out this allocation reliably. The efficient exchange and use of resources, Hayek claimed, can be maintained only through the price mechanism in free markets.
In The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945), Hayek argued that the price mechanism serves to share and synchronize local and personal knowledge, allowing society's members to achieve diverse, complicated ends through a principle of spontaneous self-organization.

Social exchange theory is a social psychological and sociological perspective that explains social change and stability as a process of negotiated exchanges between parties. Social exchange theory posits that all human relationships are formed by the use of a subjective cost-benefit analysis and the comparison of alternatives. For example, when a person perceives the costs of relationship as outweighing the perceived benefits, then the theory predicts that the person will choose to leave the relationship.
The early permutations of Social Exchange Theory stem from Gouldner's (1960) norm of reciprocity, which simply argues that people ought to return benefits given to them in a relationship.

From Wikipedia

The long tail is the colloquial name for a long-known feature of statistical distributions (Zipf, Power laws, Pareto distributions and/or general Lévy distributions ). The feature is also known as "heavy tails," "power-law tails," or "Pareto tails." Such distributions resemble the accompanying graph.

In these distributions a high-frequency or high-amplitude population is followed by a low-frequency or low-amplitude population which gradually "tails off." In many cases the infrequent or low-amplitude events—the long tail, represented here by the yellow portion of the graph—can cumulatively outnumber or outweigh the initial portion of the graph, such that in aggregate they comprise the majority.

Such distributions are surprisingly common. For example in standard English, the word "the" is the most common word and other short words such as "of," "is," and "have" are also quite common. These common words are vastly more common than most other words. For example, about 12% of all words in a given text are "the," while "barracks" occurs in less than 1 out of 60,000 words, but cumulatively, words roughly as rare as "barracks" make up about a third of all text. These rare words are the long tail in English vocabulary.

From Wikipedia

New institutionalism decribes social theory that focuses on developing a sociological view of institutions, the way they interact and the effects of institutions on society. It is significant in that it provides a way of viewing institutions outside of the traditional views of economics, explaining, for example, why so many businesses end up having the same organizational structure (isomorphism) even though they evolved in very different ways, or how institutions shape the behavior of individual members.

From Wikipedia

The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a "sentiment of an invisible omniscience".

From Wikipedia

Political opportunity structure refers to the specific features of a political system (e.g., a country) that can explain the different action repertoires, organizational forms and impacts of social movements, and social movement organizations in that specific country.

From University of Amsterdam

"tipping point" n. In epidemiology, the concept that small changes will have little or no effect on a system until a critical mass is reached. Then a further small change "tips" the system and a large effect is observed.

Gladwell's theory is that those small but crucial changes are driven at first by a few critical people - whom he categorizes as connectors, mavens, and salespeople.

Example: The Omidyar Network group is being created as a kind of clearinghouse for
1) direct action by and with connectors and
2) discussions about what makes connectors effective.

From: Omidyar.net