ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the processes through which objectification of carbon dioxide and shale gas co-produces broader sociopolitical orders in terms of the relations between states and publics. The first part of the chapter focuses on the co-production of new categories of workers along a scale of “cleanness”, on which different jobs may be positioned as “clean/green” or “dirty/black” depending on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted based on the work performed by humans and machines together. The existing human and machine constellations at different production sites began to account for a new actor – carbon dioxide. The existence or non-existence of this object, as well as its intensity in production processes, starts to matter when jobs are compared, valued, saved or abandoned. Carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas introduces a new political dimension to the discussion about jobs in Europe. In this chapter, I examine how trade union representatives from Poland negotiated their own presence on a new scale of clean and dirty jobs.
In the second part of the chapter, I analyse how shale gas politics co-produce different publics at different scales, local, regional, national and European, and how within these publics various relations between states and citizens are negotiated. Shale gas as an object was not only constructed and co-produced by experts, administrations and companies; it was also objectified (and sometimes objected to) by local communities in various parts of Poland. Being strongly politicized by the Polish government, shale gas entered public debate in the media and in local conversations in many communities loaded with hopes and fears. As the shale gas development project unfolded in various operations carried out by companies, yet another object became politicized among local inhabitants: post-fracking waste. Its visibility and invisibility, and its association and disassociation with shale gas exploration in Poland, shaped relations of trust and mistrust between Polish citizens and state institutions.
