Renewable Energy and Sociotechnical Change: Imagined Subjectivities of ‘the Public’ and Their Implications
Renewable Energy and Sociotechnical Change: Imagined Subjectivities of ‘the Public’ and Their Implications
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DOI：
10.1068/a41400
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发表时间：
2010-04
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
G. Walker;Noel Cass;K. Burningham;J. Barnett
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文献类型：
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作者：
G. Walker;Noel Cass;K. Burningham;J. Barnett
“公众”作为政治参与者潜在地卷入了社会技术变革的进程，他们在总体上或在特定的地方和环境中欢迎或抵制技术发展。我们在这篇文章中认为，公众主体性对社会技术变革的潜在影响不仅通过积极参与和抗议的时刻实现，而且还通过技术-产业和政策网络中的行为者想象、赋予代理并为各种目的援引“公众”来实现。作为一个案例研究，我们探讨了想象和预期的公众主体性对英国可再生能源技术发展的意义。我们利用对不同行业和政策参与者的采访，探索公众的想象力是如何从第一手和中介的经验和知识中构建出来的，以及这些想象中的公共主观性可能对发展轨迹和行为者战略和活动产生的影响。我们展示了公众对可再生能源项目开发的潜在但有条件的敌意的共同预期如何被视为塑造了技术的物质形式、其不断演变的空间性以及在获得项目同意方面涉及的公众参与实践。对我们感兴趣的行为者和更广泛的民主实践问题的影响进行了审议。
‘The public’ are potentially implicated in processes of sociotechnical change as political actors who welcome or resist technology development in general, or in particular places and settings. We argue in this paper that the potential influence of public subjectivities on sociotechnical change is realised not only through moments of active participation and protest, but also through ‘the public’ being imagined, given agency, and invoked for various purposes by actors in technical–industrial and policy networks. As a case study we explore the significance of an imagined and anticipated public subjectivity for the development of renewable energy technologies in the UK. We use interviews with a diversity of industry and policy actors to explore how imaginaries of the public are constructed from first-hand and mediated experience and knowledge, and the influence these imagined public subjectivities may have on development trajectories and on actor strategies and activities. We show how the shared expectation of an ever present latent but conditional public hostility to renewable energy project development is seen as shaping the material forms of the technologies, their evolving spatiality, and practices of public engagement involved in obtaining project consent. Implications for the actors we are interested in and for broader questions of democratic practice are considered.