“The environment” is often understood as an object of awareness, but in many sustainability initiatives material settings are also expected to play a more active role, as instruments of awareness. That everyday environments - like the home, a factory, or a public park - may elicit engagement and concern is increasingly appreciated, in programmes of behaviour change, and also more specifically in ‘internet of things’ initiatives. However, efforts to use digital devices to envision material forms of participation also face growing challenges, as attempts at implementation have brought into relief a range of problems including important threats to democracy (surveillance, third-party data ownership, asymmetric value extraction). The question is: can we envision forms of material participation that pass the democracy test? In my talk I will discuss how artists, activists and social researchers have taken on this challenge, not only by proposing alternative, materially sensitive ways of practicing environmental awareness, but also by formulating different answers to the question ‘what counts as democracy?’
Noortje Marres is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodology from September 2015 onwards. She was previously a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths (University of London) where she developed and convened the MA/MSc Digital Sociology and directed the interdisciplinary research Centre for Invention and Social Process (CSISP).
Marres was trained in the sociology and philosophy of science and technology at the University of Amsterdam and the Ecole des Mines in Paris. Her Phd thesis investigated problems of public involvement in contemporary technological societies drawing on pragmatist, object-centred theories of democracy (“No issue, No Public”). Her first book, Material Participation: Technology, the Environment and Everyday Publics (Palgrave, 2012/2015) developed this approach further through an analysis of everyday sustainability practices (carbon accounting, living experiments, showhome displays). She is currently completing her second book on Digital Sociology (Polity, forthcoming).
2013: Marres, Noortje. Why political ontology must be experimentalized, On ecoshowhomes as devices of participation. Social Studies of Science, 43(3), pp. 417-443. [Article]
2012: Marres, Noortje. Material Participation: Technology, the Environment and Everyday Publics. Basingstoke: Palgrave. ISBN 9780230232112 [Book]
2012: Marres, Noortje. The Environmental Teapot and Other Loaded Household Objects: Reconnecting the Politics of Technology, Issues and Things. In: P Harvey, E Casella, G Evans, H Knox, C McLean, E Silva, N Thoburn and K Woodward, eds. Objects and Materials: A Routledge Companion. London and New York: Routledge, na-na. ISBN na [Book Section]
2009: Marres, Noortje. Testing Powers of Engagement: Green Living Experiments, the Ontological Turn and the Undoability of Involvement. European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1), pp. 117-133. ISSN 1368-4310 [Article]
For a full publication list see: http://www.gold.ac.uk/sociology/staff/marres/
