Sociotechnical imaginaries of low-carbon waste-energy futures: UK techno-market fixes displacing public accountability

Abstract

To implement EU climate policy, the UK’s New Labour government (1997–2010) elaborated an ecomodernist policy framework. It promoted technological innovation to provide low-carbon renewable energy, especially by treating waste as a resource. This framework discursively accommodated rival sociotechnical imaginaries, understood as visions of feasible and desirable futures available through technoscientific development. According to the dominant imaginary, techno-market fixes stimulate low-carbon technologies by making current centralized systems more resource-efficient (as promoted by industry incumbents). According to the alternative eco-localization imaginary, a shift to low-carbon systems should instead localize resource flows, output uses and institutional responsibility (as promoted by civil society groups). The UK government policy framework gained political authority by accommodating both imaginaries. As we show by drawing on three case studies, the realization of both imaginaries depended on institutional changes and material-economic resources of distinctive kinds. In practice, financial incentives drove technological design towards trajectories that favour the dominant sociotechnical imaginary, while marginalizing the eco-localization imaginary and its environmental benefits. The ecomodernist policy framework relegates responsibility to anonymous markets, thus displacing public accountability of the state and industry. These dynamics indicate the need for STS research on how alternative sociotechnical imaginaries mobilize support for their realization, rather than be absorbed into the dominant imaginary.

The evolution, devolution and distribution of UK Biometric Imaginaries

“…Science and Technology Studies (STS) research has long charted the scientific controversies faced by fingerprint analysis, forensic DNA and facial recognition profiling at various points in their history (see for example Cole 1998 ; Lynch et al 2008 ; Edmond 2011 ). This moreover challenges imaginaries studies which portray the exercise of governmental power as instrumental, immutable and inevitable (Kim 2014 ; Delina 2018 ; Levidow and Raman 2020 ).…”

“…Sociotechnical imaginaries may thus refer to jurisdictionally specific constructions of relations between technology and desired national futures. Related research has examined how governments acquire control over visions for the future (Delina 2018 ; Levidow and Raman 2020 ), and how hierarchies between political elites and publics endure via sociotechnical imaginaries (Smith and Tidwell 2016 ; Smallman 2020 ).…”

Pathways, targets and temporalities: Analysing English agriculture's net zero futures

“…Are discursive and imagined constructions of the future just "empty words" (cf. Levidow and Raman, 2020), which are not integrated into broader social practices (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999: 29)?…”

Analyzing UK’s Biogas from Waste Scheme Through the Lens of Circular Economy

“…Another challenge in the effective utilization of BfW recycle capability in creating a circular economy is the centralized social-technical structure of the UK's energy regime. Levidow and Raman (2020) proposed the eco-localization concept to promote decentralized and distributed BfW systems to increase bioenergy's social-economic benefits by involving local communities and municipalities in resource planning.…”