This chapter examines the competing visions of sociotechnical and spatial order that structure the national controversy over wind energy deployment in France between 2015 and 2022. In recent years, national wind energy policies have elicited controversy, prompting actors to articulate contrasting visions of (un)desirable energy futures crystallizing in competing sociotechnical imaginaries (STIs). Based on the analysis of a corpus of 170 documents from government, industry and civil society actors, the chapter identifies four STIs struggling for traction. It highlights the ambivalent status of wind energy, integrated into a dominant STI of ecological modernization shared by government and industry actors and a more transformative STI propagated by citizen energy actors, faced with contestation on both flanks of the political spectrum by an anti-capitalist STI and a more conservative STI. Each of these STIs is co-constituted with spatial imaginaries, coalescing into divergent visions of (un)desirable socio-spatial orders. Spatial imaginaries are strategic in emphasizing the (un)desirability of wind energy, but also contribute to a deeper contrast between localist STIs rejecting centralization and neoliberalism (anti-capitalist and citizen energy STIs), and centralized visions of socio-spatial order that reproduce existing modes of energy, political and economic organization (dominant STI and conservative STI). The chapter concludes that it is important not to confine the geographical analysis of STIs to the local scale but to interrogate the spatial imaginaries implicated in technological development at the national level to capture how sociotechnical and spatial orders are co-constituted and negotiated.

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Competing Sociotechnical and Spatial Imaginaries: The Controversy Over Wind Energy Deployment in France

  • Zoé Chateau,
  • Patrick Devine-Wright

摘要

This chapter examines the competing visions of sociotechnical and spatial order that structure the national controversy over wind energy deployment in France between 2015 and 2022. In recent years, national wind energy policies have elicited controversy, prompting actors to articulate contrasting visions of (un)desirable energy futures crystallizing in competing sociotechnical imaginaries (STIs). Based on the analysis of a corpus of 170 documents from government, industry and civil society actors, the chapter identifies four STIs struggling for traction. It highlights the ambivalent status of wind energy, integrated into a dominant STI of ecological modernization shared by government and industry actors and a more transformative STI propagated by citizen energy actors, faced with contestation on both flanks of the political spectrum by an anti-capitalist STI and a more conservative STI. Each of these STIs is co-constituted with spatial imaginaries, coalescing into divergent visions of (un)desirable socio-spatial orders. Spatial imaginaries are strategic in emphasizing the (un)desirability of wind energy, but also contribute to a deeper contrast between localist STIs rejecting centralization and neoliberalism (anti-capitalist and citizen energy STIs), and centralized visions of socio-spatial order that reproduce existing modes of energy, political and economic organization (dominant STI and conservative STI). The chapter concludes that it is important not to confine the geographical analysis of STIs to the local scale but to interrogate the spatial imaginaries implicated in technological development at the national level to capture how sociotechnical and spatial orders are co-constituted and negotiated.