Collaborative Research: Sociotechnical Imaginaries, Infrastructure Publics, and Electricity

该奖项支持东北大学和波多黎各大学社会科学学者之间的合作研究工作。该项目的目标是比较社会技术的概念，这是一种想象的社会秩序形式，以创新技术项目的发展为中心;在这种情况下，感兴趣的项目是波多黎各（美国的一个未合并领土）的电力系统。该项目将随着时间的推移绘制不同的水资源如何被编码在岛上电力的物质和社会轮廓中，并将反映灾难性事件玛丽亚如何为不同的水资源创造机会。这项研究的结果将有助于重要的，不断发展的公众讨论波多黎各的能源未来。传播计划包括将被边缘化的声音纳入主流政治对话，包括协助编写政策简报，以满足利益攸关方在利益攸关方论坛上确定的需求。能力建设活动还将包括东北大学博士生和波多黎各大学本科生之间的合作实地考察，关于电力和基础设施发展的系列研讨会，制定年度东北大学弹性研究金计划，以促进波多黎各和东北大学学者之间的思想交流，以及由波多黎各大学和东北大学教师共同教授的跨学科在线能源正义课程。这个合作研究项目收集了新的数据，这些数据是在玛丽亚飓风之前由NSF资助的Co-PI开发的现有数据集的基础上开发的。该项目的重点是两个核心目标，以调查如何社会技术的电力系统是建立在整个世纪的电力系统在波多黎各和演变，并比较飓风玛丽亚破坏性破坏前后的能源未来的不同愿景。研究小组将采用混合方法，将档案和政策研究与访谈相结合。本研究的结果将提供与决策相关的有影响力的经验见解，并将为基础设施和社会技术转型的社会研究提供理论进展。此外，这些结果有望具有变革潜力，以推进和链接基础设施系统和社会技术转型的文献。他们还将提供一个重要的纠正，以现有的跨学科的社会研究美国电力系统通过扩大其分析透镜，以考虑波多黎各的情况下，他们将阐明如何发展的大容量电力系统（电网）在美国本土的形状，并与电力的轨迹在波多黎各不一致。它还提供了建立灾前比较数据集的独特机会（通过之前NSF支持的工作产生）和电力部门灾后过渡愿景，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识产权进行评估，被认为值得支持。优点和更广泛的影响审查标准。

This award supports a collaborative research effort between social science scholars from Northeastern University and the University of Puerto Rico. The goal of the project is to compare sociotechnical imaginaries, which are imagined forms of social order that center on the development of an innovative technological project; in this case, the project of interest is the electric power system in Puerto Rico (an unincorporated territory of the US). The project will map over time how different imaginaries have been encoded within the material and social outlines of electric power on the island, and it will reflect on how a disastrous event, Hurricane Maria, served to create opportunities for different imaginaries to circulate. The results of this research will contribute to important, evolving public discussions about Puerto Rico's energy future. The dissemination plan includes bringing marginalized voices into the mainstream political conversations including contributing to policy briefs that address needs identified by stakeholders in the stakeholder forum. Capacity-building activities will also include collaborative fieldwork between Northeastern PhD students and undergraduate students at the University of Puerto Rico, a workshop series concerning power and infrastructure development, the development of an annual residential Northeastern Resilience Fellowship program to facilitate the exchange of ideas between scholars in Puerto Rico and Northeastern, and an interdisciplinary on-line energy justice course co-taught by faculty at University of Puerto Rico and Northeastern. This collaborative research project collects new data that serves to build on an existing dataset developed by the Co-PIs previously NSF-funded work prior to Hurricane Maria. The project focuses on two core objectives, to investigate how sociotechnical imaginaries of electric power were built into and evolved with the electric power system in Puerto Rico throughout the 20th century, and to compare different visions of energy futures before and after the devastating disruption of Hurricane Maria. The research team will use a mixed-methods approach that integrates archival and policy research with interviews. The results of this research will provide impactful empirical insights with relevance to decision-making, and it will provide theoretical advances for social studies of infrastructure and sociotechnical transitions. In addition, these results promise to have transformative potential to advance and link the literatures on infrastructure systems and sociotechnical transitions. They will also provide an important corrective to existing interdisciplinary social studies of the U.S. electric power system by expanding its analytic lens to consider the case of Puerto Rico; they will shed light on how the development of the bulk electric power system (the power grid) in the contiguous United States at once shapes and is at odds with the trajectory of electric power in Puerto Rico. It also presents a unique opportunity to build a comparative dataset of pre-disaster (generated through prior NSF-supported work) and post-disaster visions of transitions in the electricity sector, which will enable this project to advance and support a nuanced analysis of how disasters can support infrastructure reordering.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.