Blaming pollution from around the corner

Drawing on the ethnography of a network of alternative air pollution measurements, this article examines the way in which micro-sensors are used as grounds for criticism. To understand the conditions under which this criticism is formed, we analyse the articulation between individuals’ or groups’ ordinary sense of justice, and the production of data by micro-sensors. Taking as our starting point the moral attitudes that individuals adopt towards these objects, we identify two forms of criticism: the alert, and the affair. In each of these forms, we analyse how specific links are forged between morality and technology when individuals publicize causal links between sources of pollution and data. We then consider different possible configurations for environmental critique using digital objects.