From Material Participation by Noortje Marres, pg 6:

This field of work finds its starting point in the rejection of the critique of objects that has been dominant in twentieth-century social science: the idea that things, technology and materiality render engagement impossible. This work suggests that this negative critique has lost its plausibility, and proposes what could be called an ‘object turn’ in social, political and cultural research: we must recognize that material entities equally make an important positive contribution to the organization of social, political and moral life in industrialized societies.