Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research on climate change and energy politics in Manchester, UK to consider the analytical usefulness of the anthropological concept of the person for understanding the means by which science and technology attempt to effect social change.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I revisit the anthropological concept of the person in light of recent writings in science and technology studies (STS) which have worked hard to deconstruct the human-centred nature of agency. Building on ethnographic research on climate change and energy politics in Manchester, UK, I explore how ambivalence about how best to tackle the causes of anthropogenic climate change have come to involve the mobilisation and creation of different kinds of socially active entities, from buildings, to energy meters, to consumer behaviours. Science and technology studies has provided us with a range of theoretical resources to understand the social dimensions of technical and material practices such as these, one of the most useful of which has been the concept of the 'actant'. Yet as human capacities like 'energy behaviour' increasingly come to be identified through the same techniques which have been shown to render non-human entities active participants in processes of social change, the concept of the actant appears to clash with the anthropological concept of the person. With the apparent closure of the gap between the actant and the person in the notion of energy behaviour, I return to some anthropological theories of personhood in order to reconsider the reasons for the appearance of the actor-like qualities of objects and the object-like actions of persons in contemporary environmental politics.