Barry, A; (2015) Thermodynamics, matter, politics. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory , 16 (1) pp. 110-125. 10.1080/1600910X.2015.1032992.

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Abstract

While there is a burgeoning literature on matter in social theory, there has been a surprising lack of interest amongst social theorists in the importance of the concept of energy in natural scientific accounts of matter. In this context, I examine how the work of Isabelle Stengers challenges social theorists to take thermodynamic accounts of energy, in particular, seriously. The paper develops three arguments: firstly, while social theorists have often wanted to add social relations to matter, in doing so they have ignored physical scientists’ own analyses of relations, including thermodynamics; secondly, that thermodynamics offers a different way of theorizing matter-energy than that suggested by vitalist approaches to political ecology; thirdly, that the thermodynamic concept of energy is necessarily linked to the practice and politics of measurement. At the same time, I argue that Stengers’s account of thermodynamics both illuminates her understanding of politics, and points to its limitations.

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