Paper short abstract:

How is a something like plastic concentration in waters made into a problem? How was the concept of microplastics established and measured and what does that signify? What is more, how is the STS problematization of how an ecological problem is problematized problematic, too?

Paper long abstract:

The increasing concentration of (micro-)plastics in waters ranks among the most challenging ecological problems. Despite of being ubiquitous, as a problem it is still in the process "of becoming". Although first observations of synthetic polymers in the ocean date back to the 1970s, public awareness began three decades later when first reports of the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch appeared. The story of the garbage patch is an intriguing example of how matter of facts have been transformed into matters of concern and vice versa (de Wolff 2015).

After the concept of microplastics was introduced in 2004, the problem shifted to the scale of measuring concentrations. But what does a high concentration of microplastics in the environment mean? Contrasted to "natural" or "normal" concentrations of plankton and larval fish in the waters or sand on beaches, microplastics have become an uncanny matter that shift between an aesthetic and a hazardous/toxicological problem.

The paper will discuss how from an anthropologist and STS perspective entanglements of anthropogenic materials like plastic and waters can help to reflect the (inter)dependencies of individual bodies and societies with plastics and thus challenge simplistic notions of solution and purification of the natural from the social/cultural. Indeed, the danger seems to be that "siren urgency with which environmental problems are cast as universal/catastrophic" carries with it the implication "that being concerned about how such problems are constructed (...) is a trivial/unaffordable nicety" (Whatmore 2013: 173).