From Saying to Recording

Household Practices and the Innovation of the Defunct Chilean National Monitoring Network (ReNaM)

Abstract

Demands for greater sustainability heighten intelligent innovations of digitally monitored houses and cities; however, less explored are the household practices inferred from the records that speak about them, and even less examined are the ways in which these practices are evidenced through those records. This article examines which domestic practices emerge when moving from saying to recording, and how digital monitoring records call for responsible responses from public policy and research. To this end, the article proposes a theoretical-methodological approach that analyzes the statements made by those responsible for an experimental digital infrastructure, identified through a morphosyntactic grammatical procedure in their encounter with material practices of maintaining records of in-home environmental quality monitoring. As a unique initiative in Chile, the now-defunct National Monitoring Network (ReNaM, due to its initials in Spanish) makes it possible to trace how statements from public policy authorities reflect household practices in the city of Coyhaique, and, at the same time, how they account for their contribution to improving the city’s air quality. The results show how the translation from saying to digital recording about household practices substantiates contemporary contributions to responsible innovations in Latin American countries.