Making Microplastics Matter: Classification, Politics and the Lives of Microplastics as Environmental Objects.

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Science and Technology Studies
• Sociology of Science

Background:

• Emerging environmental phenomena present challenges due to scientific uncertainty and public urgency.
• Understanding how these phenomena become governable is crucial for effective environmental management.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate classification as a central process in making microplastics governable.
• To analyze how scientific facts, public concerns, and regulatory actions are composed through classification.

Main Methods:

• Comparative assemblage ethnography across scientific conferences, public debates, and European regulatory processes.
• Tracing the enactment of microplastics as epistemic, public, and regulatory objects.

Main Results:

• Object-centered classifications in science aim to make heterogeneous particles measurable and comparable.
• Labeling in public arenas condenses plurality into recognizable, affectively charged issues.
• Regulatory contexts use source-centered categories to segment the phenomenon into governable parts.

Conclusions:

• Classification under ontological instability enables coordination rather than closure.
• Governance materializes through classificatory infrastructures that stabilize fact, concern, and care.
• Classification acts as a political technology to render environmental objects actionable despite indeterminate knowledge.