Negotiating salt worlds: causation and material participation

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the role of measurement practices in a public dispute about the impacts of mining in the Netherlands. Drawing on studies of material participation and agential realism, we analyze how measurement practices shape the boundaries of subsurface objects. We detail how these boundaries become relevant for assessing mining impacts and show how this enables and constrains material participation. Simply put, if a process or thing is not measured into being, it cannot participate in negotiations about causality and impact. Our analysis shows that scientific conventions narrowly determined what measurements are credible and, consequently, limited the participation of other objects and processes in negotiations about damage and compensation. This underscores how ontological disagreements about the existence and measurability of subsurface processes affect what claims can be made. We conclude by discussing conditions for pluralist and equitable processes of material participation in measurement practices.