Material Participation Technology, the Environment and Everyday Publics [Hardcover]

This book develops a fresh perspective on everyday forms of engagement, one that foregrounds the role of objects, technologies and settings in democracy. Examining a range of devices, from smart meters to eco-homes, the book sets out new concepts and methods for analyzing the relations between participation, innovation and the environment.List of Figures Acknowledgements Preface Objects of Participation The (Dis)invention of the Material Public: Returns to American Pragmatism Devising Engagement: Everyday Carbon Accounting and the Cost of Involvement Living Experiments: A 'Coming Out' for the Politics of Things The Ecohome as Multifarious Instrument: Engagement, Innovation, Change Re-distributing Problems of Participation Notes Bibliography Index

[A] rich and stimulating book.'' - Journal of Cultural Economy

Marres' attention to the material conditions of political participation is not a return to materialism but a deep redefinition of each of those terms: why does politics matter and what does it mean to be involved into politics? Before her a pragmatist view of politics and publics remained abstract, without a clear method to follow the objects, pragmata, that give relevance to the creation of the public. Marres' work deeply renews what it is for the study of politics and participation to take material conditions seriously. - Bruno Latour, Professor, Sciences Po, Paris, France

Material Participation is a book about the role of objects in political participation. It is part of what has been called the object turn what Noortje Marres, more delightfully, calls the coming out of things. It is an account of how moral and political phenomena may unfold on the plane of things. It deploys a vocabulary of modality, multi-valence, implication, accomplishment, setting and relevance to make visible the middling work of objects. And in doing so offers us the possibility of taking part in a politics of co-articulation, of producinlÁ