Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Renewable energy and sociotechnical change: imagined subjectivities of 'the public' and their implications
AU - Walker, Gordon
AU - Cass, Noel
AU - Burningham, Kate
AU - Barnett, Julie
PY - 2010/4
Y1 - 2010/4
N2 - '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 subjectivitics may have on development trajectories and on actor strategics 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.
AB - '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 subjectivitics may have on development trajectories and on actor strategics 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.
KW - ENVIRONMENTAL RISK
KW - POLICY
KW - GOVERNANCE
KW - UK
KW - PARTICIPATION
KW - TECHNOLOGY
KW - COMMUNITY
KW - POLITICS
KW - ENGAGEMENT
KW - SCIENCE
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77951200562&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1068/a41400
DO - 10.1068/a41400
M3 - Journal article
VL - 42
SP - 931
EP - 947
JO - Environment and Planning A
JF - Environment and Planning A
SN - 0308-518X
IS - 4
ER -