Sustainability and the co-constitution of substances and subjects

This chapter examines the role that materials play in mediating the constitution of moral persons. It draws on ethnographic research among the materials scientists, engineers and designers that make up membership of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM 3 ), a professional body representing the UK materials industry (Wilkes 2013). Rather than focusing on any one material, this research takes a horizontal view across myriad materials to explore the ways in which materials as diverse as PVC, concrete, carbon fi bre, paper and steel jostle for market share and are dynamically and differentially categorized as sustainable or unsustainable. In this chapter I focus on attempts to classify a few of these materials as sustainable and explore how both moral persons and moral materials are constituted in the process. I argue that the production of a sustainable material is intimately connected with the construction of a sustainable producer, and vice versa.