Transforming Power: Social Science and the Politics of Energy Choices.

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis paper addresses key implications in momentous current global energy choices -both for social science and for society. Energy can be over-used as a lens for viewing social processes. But it is nonetheless of profound importance. Understanding possible 'sustainable energy' transformations requires attention to many tricky issues in social theory: around agency and structure and the interplay of power, contingency and practice. These factors are as much shaping of the knowledges and normativities supposedly driving transformation, as they are shaped by them. So, ideas and hopes about possible pathways for changeas well as notions of 'the transition' itself -can be deeply constituted by incumbent interests. The paper addresses these dynamics by considering contending forms of transformation centring on renewable energy, nuclear power and climate geoengineering. Several challenges are identified for social science. These apply especially where there are aims to help enable more democratic exercise of social agency. They enjoin responsibilities to 'open up' (rather than 'close down'), active political spaces for critical contention over alternative pathways. If due attention is to be given to marginalised interests, then a reflexive view must be taken of transformation. The paper ends with a series of concrete political lessons.

Comparing Nuclear Power Trajectories in Germany and the UK: From 'Regimes' to 'Democracies' in Sociotechnical Transitions and Discontinuities

“…As also discussed under criterion (viii), the balance of public opinion over nuclear power in the UK and Germany is actually rather similar, when compared with the background patterns across European countries more widely. So, it appears that the power and intensity of anti-nuclear movements is not a factor that can fully account on its own, for the German contrast with the UK (Stirling, 2014a).…”

“…This involves attention extending away from narrower policy aspects alone, to also encompass wider political dimensions of regime dynamics and the actions of incumbents and new entrants (Baker, Newell, &Phillips, 2014;Geels, 2014;Hess, 2014;Meadowcroft, 2009;Smink, Hekkert, & Negro, 2013;Stirling, 2014a).…”

“…In these terms, 'democracy' refers not to any formally structured constitutional or procedural end-state (Laclau, 1996), but to a general institutional and discursive capacity to sustain diverse, complex, distributed processes of ongoing struggle (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001;Marcuse, 1969;Smith, 2003). In short 'qualities of democracy' refer to the many kinds of ways in which an encompassing political environment may afford 'access by the least powerful, to capacities for challenging power' (Stirling, 2014a). This may be as true of the power of an incumbent sociotechnical regime like that around nuclear energy, as of any other particular political, economic or infrastructural instance of asymmetrically structured agency.…”

“…In short, this study therefore raises a question as to whether one of the most crucial factors in the success or failure of incumbent-challenger dynamics in large scale sociotechnical transformation like the discontinuation of nuclear power, may actually lie to a neglected extent in the conditions bearing on the general status of 'democratic governance' in the widest of senses -concerning myriad situated kinds of capacities to enable the challenging of multiple forms and dimensions of incumbent power (Stirling, 2014a;.…”

Going Beyond Instrument Interactions: Towards a More Comprehensive Policy Mix Conceptualization for Environmental Technological Change

“…As such, these interactive and continuous reconciliation processes with various feedback loops involve power, agency and politics. Clearly, this is of high relevance in the context of sustainability transitions with their complex and messy policy processes with a plethora of involved actors and their conflicting interests and ideas (Meadowcroft 2009;Stirling 2014). Finally, policy processes are shaped by socio-economic conditions, infrastructure and biophysical conditions, but also by culture and institutions (Sabatier, Weible 2014), and can thus differ significantly across space and time.…”