Contested credibility economies of nuclear power in India

Abstract

STS scholars studying anti-nuclear activism in the context of nations in the Global North have observed the critical role of science to mediate relations of domination and resistance. Through a historical examination of anti-nuclear activism in India, this article investigates the instrumentalization of science as a liberal democratic rationality. In doing so, the article shows how elite Indian activists-many of whom are scientists, engineers, journalists and academic professionals-will never be seen as scientifically knowledgeable in nuclear matters, because of their non-state educational pedigrees. If activists cannot hold the state accountable through science, they have attempted to anticipate what other kinds of arguments and modes of contention may gain traction. As such, they have deployed more 'guerilla' tactics grounded in bureaucratic rationalities in the hopes of installing themselves as alternate sources of expertise in India's nuclear landscape.

Suspending democratic (dis)belief: Nonliberal energy polities of solar power in Morocco and Tanzania

“…Sang-Hyun Kim [69] writes about the voluntary consent given to dictatorships to strengthen the state through scientific and technological institution-building and argues that the "engineering state" [70], whether portrayed as democratic or authoritarian, requires "considerable support from below" (82). Haines [23] disaggregates a monolithic and autocratic Indian nuclear state to unearth different credibility economies between the state and its polities in rural versus urban areas. Fan and Chen [71] articulate enunciations of citizenship implicit in citizen science modalities, ignored under liberal-democratic frameworks.…”

“…While "energy polity" [10] is intended to understand "democratic possibilities and impossibilities" it is sketched as a provocation to foreground material assemblages, actors, political strategies and stakes, more than conceptualized as an analytical framework. Rather than develop new terms, we draw on the existing concepts of "sociotechnical imaginary" (STIM) [76] (capturing prevalent futural visions associated with technologies) and "credibility economy" (CE) [23] (informal and institutionalized practices that include knowledge and power politics to generate public credibility) to show how energy polities are being coproduced alongside particular STIMs in Morocco and Tanzania.…”

“…Finally, there is behavior that may be considered downright 'ugly' including electricity theft [18], patronage politics and corruption [19], which might undermine green initiatives [20]. In these latter cases, calls for energy democratization usually mean bolstering liberal democratic norms, such as transparency, accountability, participation [19,21,22], and producing a politics of knowledge [23], instead of a Machiavellian politics of coercive power.…”

“…Instead, the article engages with the sketched concept of 'energy polity,' introduced to understand how different groups and beings are coming together to collectively and democratically manage energy systems [10], but which falls short of having analytical power beyond description. To grapple with how democracy is being both imagined and practiced by energy polities, we look for sociotechnical imaginaries for the former, and credibility economies, which hold energy polities together and render some kinds of politics and values legitimate, but not others, for the latter [23]. Studies show that people in the Global South at national and local levels are governing their energy systems through widely legitimate means that subscribe to domestic imaginaries of independence and sovereignty [24,25].…”

Citizen science and social movements: A case of participatory monitoring of genetically modified crops in Japan

“…CS also involves diverse notions of citizenship and political subjectivities (Irwin, 1995; Leach et al, 2005). While some celebrate CS as the embodiment of ‘scientific citizenship’ (Sternsdorff-Cisterna, 2015), other scholars have highlighted more complex and historically specific dynamics, including neoliberal (Lave, 2012; Ottinger, 2013), gendered (Kimura, 2019), and political-institutional relations (Haines, 2019) that orient CS organizers and participants.…”