Sociotechnical imaginaries are collectively imagined forms of social life reflected in the design and fulfillment of technological projects. While it is implied that there may be contention around sociotechnical imaginaries, the literature on how that contention is manifested is scant. We use a frame‐analytic approach to demonstrate the potency of collective action frames for making sense of the national imaginaries underpinning siting proposals. As a case study, we use woody biomass bioenergy development in northern Michigan. After briefly outlining the multiple frames that are encompassed in the imaginary of bioenergy development, we focus on the “wood for energy” frame, employing the concept of “frame keys” to demonstrate how national imaginaries are interpreted differently by local and nonlocal actors involved in community sitings of proposed facilities. We find not only that frame keys are essential to how the national imaginary of bioenergy is interpreted, (re)produced, and responded to but also that framing processes are related to social movements that coalesce around competing collective memories of place.

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Incorporating stakeholder engagement into environmental management may help in the pursuit of novel approaches for addressing complex water resource problems. However, evidence about how and under what circumstances stakeholder engagement enables desirable changes remains elusive. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework for studying social and environmental changes possible through stakeholder engagement in water resource management, from inception to outcomes. We synthesize concepts from multiple literatures to provide a framework for tracing linkages from contextual conditions, through engagement process design features, to social learning, community capacity building, and behavioral change at individual, group, and group network levels, and ultimately to environmental change. We discuss opportunities to enhance the framework including through empirical applications to delineate scalar and temporal dimensions of social, behavioral, and environmental changes resulting from stakeholder engagement, and the potential for negative outcomes thus far glossed over in research on change through engagement.

Community and stakeholder engagement is increasingly recognized as essential to science at the nexus of food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) to address complex issues surrounding food and energy production and water provision for society. Yet no comprehensive framework exists for supporting best practices in community and stakeholder engagement for FEWS. A review and meta-synthesis were undertaken of a broad range of existing models, frameworks, and toolkits for community and stakeholder engagement. A framework is proposed that comprises situational awareness of the FEWS place or problem, creation of a suitable culture for engagement, focus on power-sharing in the engagement process, co-ownership, co-generation of knowledge and outcomes, the technical process of integration, the monitoring processes of reflective and reflexive experiences, and formative evaluation. The framework is discussed as a scaffolding for supporting the development and application of best practices in community and stakeholder engagement in ways that are arguably essential for sound FEWS science and sustainable management.

The social science literature on renewable energy technology (RET) development emphasizes how imagined publics who play passive roles in technology systems influence technology design and public engagement. It further documents expert adherence to deficit models for conceptualizing publics' responses to RETs. Building on this literature, this paper examines two related questions that have received little attention. First, how do experts conceptualize publics whose direct participation with technology development, rather than quiescence toward technology development, is framed by experts as mandatory for the RET project's success? Second, given both the prevalence and problematic outcomes of expert and institutional adherence to deficit models, what might an alternative model for conceptualizing publics look like? To address these questions, we draw from a case study of 30-bioenergy experts‖ in the Northeastern U.S. and their imagined landowning publics. Our analysis provides two contributions. First, we develop the concept-obligatory publics‖ to examine expert imaginaries of publics whose direct participation is seen as mandatory for successful RET development. And second, we suggest a-hermeneutic-dialectic‖ approach, which emphasizes the role of dialogue between experts and publics for achieving new and mutually agreed upon understandings, as one possible alternative to public deficit models.