A critical approach to the social acceptance of renewable energy infrastructures

Renewable energy is too often pursued in a technocratic fashion, where community engagements with energy are depoliticized as consumer choices or hyper-local problems. This wide-ranging, interdisciplinary book offers an important antidote, showing how a critical approach to energy can transform how we understand the social acceptance of renewables. In these chapters, readers will find many ways to think differently about energy, while also discovering why that matters in the struggle for more just energy systems.- Cara New Daggett, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Virginia Tech, USA

This book provides a critical approach to research on the social acceptance of renewable energy infrastructures and on energy transitions in general by questioning prevalent principles and proposing specific research pathways and lines of inquiry that look beyond depoliticised, business-as-usual discourses and research agendas on green growth and sustainability. It brings together authors from different socio-geographical and disciplinary backgrounds within the social sciences to reflect upon, discuss and advance what we propose to be five cornerstones of a critical approach: overcoming individualism and socio-cognitivism; repoliticisations - recognising and articulating power relations; for interdisciplinarity; interventions - praxis and political engagement with research; and overcoming localism and spatial determinism: As such, this book offers academics, students and practitioners alike a comprehensive perspective of what it means to be critical when inquiring into the social acceptance of renewable energy and associated infrastructures.

Susana Batel is an environmental psychologist at the University Institute of Lisbon interested in people's engagement with energy transitions and associated social justice issues. She has published in journals like the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Energy Policy and Energy Research & Social Science, and is co-editor of Papers on Social Representations.

David Rudolph is a human geographer at the Technical University of Denmark with an interest in just, inclusive and equitable low-carbon energy transitions. He has published in journals such as Antipode, Environment and Planning C and Energy Research & Social Science.

Auteur

Susana Batel is an environmental psychologist at the University Institute of Lisbon interested in people's engagement with energy transitions and associated social justice issues. She has published in journals like the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Energy Policy and Energy Research & Social Science, and is co-editor of Papers on Social Representations.

David Rudolph is a human geographer at the Technical University of Denmark with an interest in just, inclusive and equitable low-carbon energy transitions. He has published in journals such as Antipode, Environment and Planning C and Energy Research & Social Science.

Résumé
This book provides a critical approach to research on the social acceptance of renewable energy infrastructures and on energy transitions in general by questioning prevalent principles and proposing specific research pathways and lines of inquiry that look beyond depoliticised, business-as-usual discourses and research agendas on green growth and sustainability. It brings together authors from different socio-geographical and disciplinary backgrounds within the social sciences to reflect upon, discuss and advance what we propose to be five cornerstones of a critical approach: overcoming individualism and socio-cognitivism; repoliticisations recognising and articulating power relations; for interdisciplinarity; interventions praxis and political engagement with research; and overcoming localism and spatial determinism: As such, this book offers academics, students and practitioners alike a comprehensive perspective of what it means to be critical when inquiring into the social acceptance of renewable energy and associated infrastructures.*

Contenu

1. A Critical Approach to the Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy Infrastructures 2. Strategies for Integrating Quantitative Methods into Critical Social Acceptance Research3. Using a Critical Approach to Unpack the Visual-Spatial Impacts of Energy Infrastructures4. Getting Used to It, But ? Rethinking the Elusive U-Curve of Acceptance and Post-ConstructionAssumptions5. Does Renewable Energy Exist? Fossil Fuel+ Technologies and the Search for Renewable Energy6. ANT Perspective on Wind Power Planning and Social AcceptanceA Call for Interdisciplinarity7. Social Acceptance and Interdisciplinarity: Understanding the Constructive Power of Terminology8. Social Acceptance: Beyond Criticism and Critical, a Call for Experimental Ontology9. How to Assess What Society Wants? The Need for a Renewed Social Conflict Research Agenda10. Provincial Polyphasia: Community Energy Generation and the Politics of Sustainability Transition in Alberta, Canada.11. People-Place Bonds, Rhetorical Meaning-Making and Doing Acceptance to a Renewable Energy Infrastructure: Postcolonial Insights from the Global South.12. Energy Justice and Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy Projects in the Global South.13. Contributions, Tensions and Future Avenues: A Discussion