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Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life

Article  in  Space and Polity · August 2012

DOI: 10.1080/13562576.2012.722800

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 Space and Polity

ISSN: 1356-2576 (Print) 1470-1235 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cspp20

Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and

Public Life

Phil Johnstone

To cite this article: Phil Johnstone (2012) Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public
Life, Space and Polity, 16:2, 254-255, DOI: 10.1080/13562576.2012.722800

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254 Book Reviews

collaborators, Pratt is able to bring to the fore an emotional, activist politics of the
everyday spaces of labour migration.

Lucy Jackson # 2012

Aberystwyth University

Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life

B. Braun, and S. Whatmore (Eds), 2010
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press
328 pp. US$75.00 hardback; US$25.00 paperback
ISBN 0816670888 hardback; 0816670895 paperback

This edited collection emerged from a conference convened in 2006 at the Univer-
sity of Oxford, which sought to stimulate new conversations between science and
technology studies (STS) and political theorists—a conversation that for too long
had remained tentative and muted. Indeed, this collection is best thought of as the
beginnings of this important dialogue, or as the authors themselves describe, as a
space for ‘generative tensions’ between the insights of political theory and STS to
emerge.
It can also be viewed as being a continuation of the channel of communication
ignited by Latour and Weibel (2004) in the extensive exhibition-turned-edited col-
lection Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy which (amongst a universe
of ideas) focused attention on the ways in which political and democratic life, and
associated emergent ‘publics’, are ‘sparked’ from material ‘things’ and ‘issues’.
In a similar vein, this collection focuses on the ways in which political life is con-
stituted by the power of things, and where matter is central to the production of
politics, rather than being an addition to pre-formed abstract political motivations,
where politics is limited to speech acts performed through communicative ration-
ality.
The 10 chapters are written by an all-star cast of geographers, political theorists,
philosophers, anthropologists and science and technology researchers which is a
clear indication of the (necessarily) interdisciplinary nature of a meeting between
STS and political theory. The authors include Isabelle Stengers, Jane Bennet,
William Connolly, Andrew Barry, Gay Hawkins, Nigel Thrift, Noortje Marres,
Rosalyn Diprose, Andrew Lakoff, Stephen J. Collier and Lisa Disch. The focal
point varies considerably; thing-power, plastic bags, halos, and metallurgy,
morning-after pills and government ‘preparedness systems’ for large infrastruc-
ture projects, are just some of the varied objects which occupy the pages of this
text.
Indeed, other reviews have focused on this diversity of topic areas and its inter-
disciplinary nature as being a negative aspect, as representing a book lacking
coherence and centrality of argument. Yet this is to misrepresent the aims of the
book. It is not a text seeking to establish an intellectual canon, or indeed to
make conclusions about the relationship between STS and political theory, but
rather it is an exploration of the fruitful intellectual potential which can emerge
when these traditions encounter one another. Thus, as a generative text, where
the aim is to inspire the reader to think differently on the nature of political and
democratic life, particularly in regard to the ways that materiality, objects and
 Book Reviews 255

things play a central constitutive role within the formation of public life, spatial
politics and democratic engagement, this collection is a resounding success.
Of course, its very nature as a generative text, as a launching-off point for a new
intellectual conversation, ensures that much is left to explore. As well as the demo-
cratisation and politicisation of technology which is offered by the insights of STS
and alluded to in this book, the technicalisation or scientificisation of political
institutions could also be further explored. That is the wider political implications
of the ways of thinking associated with certain technological developments and
how they relate to recent discussions on the formation of the ‘post-political’ and
‘post-democratic’ condition within late capitalist political arenas. Many further
directions of inquiry could be mentioned, but it is in the ‘sparking’ of enthusiasm
for such an intellectual journey that the aims of this collection are fulfilled.

Phil Johnstone # 2012

Exeter University

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