What is the relationship between publics, politics and material objects? This paper offers some answers through a focus on one particular controversial object: the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone. It argues for an analytical distinction to better understand how publics are assembled around this object. In this way the paper argues that material objects are not singular but always entangled within particular kinds of public space. This entanglement is not merely the result of different ''social constructions'' or rhetorics. Instead, it is bound up with some very scientific and technical procedures, such as the various ways in which evidence about the effects of drone warfare on civilian populations is collected. A clearer understanding of how objects and publics co-constitute one another will help us develop a better grasp of the ways in which the public is at stake in contemporary political struggles.
