Much of the literature on social exclusion ignores its 'spatial' or 'mobility' related aspects. This paper seeks to rectify this by examining the mobile processes and infrastructures of travel and transport that engender and reinforce social exclusion in contemporary societies. To the extent to which this issue is addressed, it is mainly organized around the notion of 'access' to activities, values and goods. This paper examines this discourse in some detail. It is argued that there are many dimensions of such access, that improving access is a complex matter because of the range of human activities that might need to be 'accessed', that in order to know what is to be accessed the changing nature of travel and communications requires examination, and that some dimensions of access are only revealed through changes in the infrastructure that 'uncover' previously hidden social exclusions. Claims about access and socio-spatial exclusion routinely make assumptions about what it is to participate effectively in society. We turn this question around, also asking how mobilities of different forms constitute societal values and sets of relations, participation in which may become important for social inclusion. This paper draws upon an extensive range of library, desk and field research to deal with crucial issues relating to the nature of a fair, just and mobile society.
In the context of challenging targets for renewable energy generation, this paper draws out social implications of moves towards low carbon energy systems. As renewable energy develops as a heterogeneous category, many potential forms of social relation between 'publics' and technologies are emerging. Utilising perspectives from science and technology studies, we outline five modes in which renewable energy has been implemented in the UK and how these involve different configurations of technology and social organisation. We argue that a multiplicity of roles for 'the public' are implicated across this increasingly complex landscape, cutting across established categories and raising questions of meaning, differentiation, interrelation and access. Policy assumptions and conceptions are questioned, highlighting that dominant characterisations of public roles have been part of a concentration on particular socio-technical pathways to the exclusion of others.Renewable energy is a socially constructed category, covering a diverse and still evolving set of multiple 460
Against the backdrop of the imperatives for actors within the institutional framework of energy socio-technical systems to engage with the public, the aim of this paper is to consider interdependencies between the principles and practice of engagement and the nature of the imagined publics with whom engagement is being undertaken. Based on an analysis of 19 interviews with actors in the renewable energy industry, the paper explores how publics are imagined in the construction of the rationales, functions and mechanisms for public engagement. Three main themes are identified. First, the perceived necessity of engagement -which is not contingent on public responsiveness. Second, engagement is primarily conceptualised in terms of instrumental motives of providing information and addressing public concern. Third, preferences for engagement mechanisms were often a function of the specific characteristics attributed to imagined publics. Implications of this analysis for future engagement around siting renewable energy technologies are considered.
IntroductionFor socially and politically significant technologies, such as those enrolled in sustainability and carbon-reduction objectives, questions of`public' subjectivity are important (Flynn and Bellaby, 2007). Charged with the impetus to achieve rapid sociotechnical change, technology promoters have much to gain by having`the public' on-side rather than resistant to innovation and technology implementation. Conventionally, the need to include`the public' in policy, innovation, and implementation processes has been approached through principles and practices of participation, dialogue, and deliberation (Chilvers, 2008;Fiorino, 1990;Renn et al, 1995). An impressive diversity of participatory mechanisms have accordingly been applied at various stages, from thè downstream' of technology diffusion, to the`upstream' of early experimentation and vision development (
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