The everyday lives of energy transitions: Contested sociotechnical imaginaries in the American West

Abstract

This article brings together two growing literatures - on sociotechnical imaginaries in science and technology studies and on resource materialities in anthropology - to explore how two energy-producing communities in the American West understand the moral salience of energy systems and the place of labor within them. Studies of energy sociotechnical imaginaries overwhelmingly focus on the role that state and transnational actors play in shaping perceptions of the 'good society', rather than how these imaginaries inform and are transformed in the lived experience of everyday people. We illuminate the contested dimension of sociotechnical imaginaries and their positioning within structures of power that inform visions of moral behavior and social order. Whereas the role of energy in national imaginaries is grounded almost entirely in the consumption it enables, examining the everyday ethics of people who live and work in Colorado's uranium-rich Western Slope and Wyoming's coal-rich Powder River Basin reveals an insistence that 'good' energy systems also provide opportunities for dignified and well-paid blue-collar work. This imaginary, we argue, remains 'bounded' at a local scale rather than circulating more widely to gain national or international traction. Theorizing this boundedness illustrates not only the contested nature of sociotechnical imaginaries, but also the constraints that material assemblages and sediments of the past place on imagined futures.

Defining sustainability? Insights from a small village in Bosnia and Herzegovina

“…In addition to renewable energy generation, promoting ecotourism (UN 2007) is another force driving sustainable development in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Smajic 2019). This is seen in projects such as the Project for Sustainable Regional Development through Eco-Tourism (IJCA 2009) and Ecotourism in Livanjsko and Surroundings (UNDP 2012).…”

“…Concretely, we use the case of a small village, Martin Brod, in Bosnia and Herzegovina to argue this point. At the state level in Bosnia and Herzegovina, hydropower and ecotourism are put forward as two crucial sustainable development strategies (BiH 2011;Smajic 2019). Both of these strategies have played out in competition with each other in Martin Brod.…”

Mapping diverse visions of energy transitions: co-producing sociotechnical imaginaries

“…Adopting a relational co-productionist perspective Longhurst 2015, 2016;Chilvers and Kearnes 2016), we build on the previous work that emphasises the importance of sociotechnical visions (Berkhout 2006) and sociotechnical imaginaries Kim 2009, 2015) in sociotechnical change. To date, such work has often focused on dominant or hegemonic imaginaries within political cultures, regimes and centres of power, whereas it is an explicit intention of this paper to also map some distributed, diverse, and counter-hegemonic visions (see also Smith and Tidwell 2016). We argue that attention to energy visions is critical for understanding the processes of sociotechnical transformations, not least because whether intentional or not all visions are performative in the sense that they shape and construct actors' present realities and the decisions that they consequently make (Michael 2000).…”

Waste to energy:

“…Though Jasanoff offers insight into dominant narratives, what matters more to the success of energy transitions is their fit with local worldviews. The everyday lives of these imaginaries are open to contestation (Eaton, Gasteyer, and Busch ), even reinterpretation among supportive groups (Smith and Tidwell ). This was certainly the case in Curtis Bay, where technocratic visions of incineration as a form of renewable energy intermingled with a racialized discourse of urban renewal.…”