The grit in the oyster: using energy biographies to question socio-technical imaginaries of ‘smartness’

ABSTRACT

It has been argued that responsible research and innovation (RRI) requires critique of the ‘worlds’ implicated in the future imaginaries associated with new technologies. Qualitative social science research can aid deliberation on imaginaries by exploring the meanings of technologies within everyday practices, as demonstrated by Yolande Strengers’ work on imaginaries of ‘smartness’. In this paper, we show how a novel combination of narrative interviews and multimodal methods can help explore future imaginaries of smartness through the lens of biographical experiences of socio-technical changes in domestic energy use. In particular, this approach can open up a critical space around socio-technical imaginaries by exploring the investments that individuals have in different forms of engagement with the world. The paper works with a psychosocial conceptual framework that draws on theoretical resources from science and technology studies to explain how valued forms of subjectivity may be conceptualised as emerging out of the ‘friction’ of engagement with the world. Using this framework, we show how biographical narratives of engagement with technologies from the Energy Biographies project can extend into critical deliberation on future imaginaries. The paper demonstrates the value of ‘thick’ data relating to the affective dimensions of subjective experience for RRI.

KEYWORDS:

• Care
• complex subjectivity
• energy
• practice theory
• smart technology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Christopher Groves is a research associate on the Energy Biographies project in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. His research interests include risk, uncertainty, social futures, the ethics of technology and intergenerational ethics.

Karen Henwood is a professor in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University and principal investigator on the Energy Biographies project. A specialist in qualitative research methods, her research areas span the social science of risk (environment and personal lives) and identity studies.

Fiona Shirani is a research associate in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University on the Energy Biographies project. Her interests include qualitative longitudinal methods, time, the significance of imagined futures, and experiences of life transitions, and families and relationships.

Catherine Butler is an advanced research fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of Exeter. Her work examines the processes of social and political transformation associated with climate change, focusing on two major substantive themes – energy and low carbon transitions and flooding and climate adaptation.

Karen Parkhill is a lecturer in human geography in the Environment Department at the University of York. Her research interests span energy geographies and geographies of risk along with risk perception and in particular how publics socially construct and engage with environmental and technocratic risks.

Nick Pidgeon is a professor of environmental psychology and director of the Understanding Risk Research Group within the School of Psychology at Cardiff University. His research covers risk, risk perception, and risk communication with a current focus on public responses to energy technologies, climate change risks, nanotechnologies and climate geoengineering.

Notes

1. Available on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VowfYuhx1-o.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded [grant number RES-628-25-0028] from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).