Whose and what futures? Navigating the contested coproduction of Thailand’s energy sociotechnical imaginaries

Delina, Laurence L.

doi:10.1016/j.erss.2017.10.045

Cited by 85 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In particular, the so-called energy transitions, which are under way in different countries all around the world, have provided cases for exploring processes of imagining futures (e.g. Cherry et al, 2017; Delina, 2017; Eaton et al, 2014; Engels and Münch, 2015; Korsnes, 2016; Smith and Tidwell, 2016). Surprisingly, future visions of low-carbon mobility transitions have received only little attention so far, even though such mobility transitions also contain interesting examples of future-oriented projects (e.g.…”

Section: State Of Research: Stakeholders’ Visions Of Future Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Responsibility, rationality, and acceptance: How future users of autonomous driving are constructed in stakeholders’ sociotechnical imaginaries

Graf

Sonnberger

2019

Public Underst Sci

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Although autonomous driving is expected to provide a solution for various mobility-related issues, ideas on how the technology will actually unfold are vague. Nevertheless, stakeholders in the field hold expectations about the technology and the future users. With very few exceptions, so far research does not focus on these expectations as social constructions of individuals and publics. In addition, these perceptions play only a minor role in the technology-centered debate. Thus, to bring these perceptions to light and to analyze their implications, we draw on the sociotechnical imaginaries approach to reconstruct stakeholders’ views of future users and publics. We perform a qualitative content analysis and show that imaginaries unfold along the themes of responsibility for the process of driving, rationality in decision-making, and acceptance for emerging technologies. We discuss how the themes relate to each other, what role science plays, and what implications follow from the respective stakeholders’ views.

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Section: State Of Research: Stakeholders’ Visions Of Future Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Responsibility, rationality, and acceptance: How future users of autonomous driving are constructed in stakeholders’ sociotechnical imaginaries

Graf

Sonnberger

2019

Public Underst Sci

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“…This seems to be an expression of the tensions between the current centralised structure of energy politics in the country and the regional struggle for more energy policy autonomy. Moreover these osmotic dynamics between state and national interests seem to be an important issue for future research, as they were highlighted in several recent studies [4,[49][50][51]. While the concept of the incumbent sociotechnical regime is useful for analysing the political context in which the niche is embedded, more differentiated conceptualisations of the regime are needed to understand the multiple interactions with the niche.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Status and future dynamics of decentralised renewable energy niche building processes in Argentina

Schaube

Ortíz

Recalde

2018

Energy Research & Social Science

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“…At the same time, however, an alternative imaginary rooted in civil society questions market expansion, asking about who will benefit from increased energy. It prioritizes ‘sustainable development as a social and environmental project of sustaining lives without hampering the ability of nature to replenish itself’ ( Delina, 2018 : 54). This alternative advocates the decoupling of economic growth from fossil fuel consumption, greater equity in the use of resources, better livelihoods, and decentralized energy solutions, for example, by helping ordinary Thai households to generate electricity through rooftop solar panels ( Delina, 2018 ).…”

Section: Sociotechnical Imaginaries Construing Futures: Analytical Pementioning

confidence: 99%

Sociotechnical imaginaries of low-carbon waste-energy futures: UK techno-market fixes displacing public accountability

Levidow

Raman

2020

Soc Stud Sci

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To implement EU climate policy, the UK’s New Labour government (1997–2010) elaborated an ecomodernist policy framework. It promoted technological innovation to provide low-carbon renewable energy, especially by treating waste as a resource. This framework discursively accommodated rival sociotechnical imaginaries, understood as visions of feasible and desirable futures available through technoscientific development. According to the dominant imaginary, techno-market fixes stimulate low-carbon technologies by making current centralized systems more resource-efficient (as promoted by industry incumbents). According to the alternative eco-localization imaginary, a shift to low-carbon systems should instead localize resource flows, output uses and institutional responsibility (as promoted by civil society groups). The UK government policy framework gained political authority by accommodating both imaginaries. As we show by drawing on three case studies, the realization of both imaginaries depended on institutional changes and material-economic resources of distinctive kinds. In practice, financial incentives drove technological design towards trajectories that favour the dominant sociotechnical imaginary, while marginalizing the eco-localization imaginary and its environmental benefits. The ecomodernist policy framework relegates responsibility to anonymous markets, thus displacing public accountability of the state and industry. These dynamics indicate the need for STS research on how alternative sociotechnical imaginaries mobilize support for their realization, rather than be absorbed into the dominant imaginary.

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Whose and what futures? Navigating the contested coproduction of Thailand’s energy sociotechnical imaginaries

Cited by 85 publications

References 27 publications

Responsibility, rationality, and acceptance: How future users of autonomous driving are constructed in stakeholders’ sociotechnical imaginaries

Responsibility, rationality, and acceptance: How future users of autonomous driving are constructed in stakeholders’ sociotechnical imaginaries

Status and future dynamics of decentralised renewable energy niche building processes in Argentina

Sociotechnical imaginaries of low-carbon waste-energy futures: UK techno-market fixes displacing public accountability

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