Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes the concept of technoecology for analysing solar energy. Denoting the co-constitution of the ecological & technological, technoecology focuses on how solar power remakes particular milieus and ethos in a double process of dis/articulation that attends to constitutive exclusions.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the 'mattering' of solar energy in terms of new material energy arrangements and matters of concern. In the face of the perceived enrichment of so-called solar barons photovoltaic installations in the Czech Republic have received negative public attention and subsidies have been phased out. Yet observers currently predict a second Czech solar boom. Drawing on feminist technoscience (Haraway, Star, Stengers) and on ethnographic fieldwork around the largest Czech photovoltaic power plant and interviews in households with solar micro-generation, the paper proposes the frame of technoecology for the analysis of solar energy engagements. Technoecology denotes the immanent co-constitution of the ecological and the technological. Focusing on how solar power remakes particular milieus and their constitutive ethos or capacity, technoecology reworks the political semiotics of articulation in terms of a double process of articulation and disarticulation that attends to constitutive exclusions, 'spaces between' and the immanent tensions in solar development. This concerns the non-participation of local Roma communities in the construction and operation of photovoltaics, the polysilicon waste to come as much as pervasive fears that low voltage solar generated electricity interferes with human bodies and local climates. In considering these dis/articulations technoecologically as a part of solar matterings the paper asks what they might mean for realising the promise of photovoltaics to establish energy abundance and socio-environmental justice through horizontal networks of electricity production and consumption.

Paper short abstract:

Jeju, an island and a co-terminus province in Korea, became a place to site wind turbines with a high level of public acceptance. We explicate how the interpretation of community engagement in Jeju enabled the imaginaries of a "good" society that can go along with materiality of wind energy.

Paper long abstract:

Jeju, an island and a co-terminus province in Korea, became a place to site wind turbines with an unusually high level of public acceptance. How did this island become a relatively stable place to site wind turbines? In analyzing the processes for constructing Jeju as a sociotechnical system for wind power, we focus on public acceptance formed through community engagement. It is doubtlessly important to inform, consult, and empower the local public through stages of decision-making to achieve more sustainable renewable energy governance. Yet we ask different questions. How does it become plausible for actors in this particular locality to take interest in community engagement and raise public acceptance of wind energy? Based on interviews, media analyses and policy research, we found that community engagement was combined with the collective memory of socioeconomic deprivation in Jeju. This combination enabled community engagement to matter to local actors—residents, the provincial government, and environmental activists. We also discuss that flexible interpretation of community engagement compatible with local residents' hope for economic development provided a space for the imaginaries of a "good" society in economic, aesthetic and moral senses. Drawing upon Jasanoff's notion of sociotechnical imaginaries we argue that Jeju's people's shared understandings of desirable futures were animated by publicly performed visions of social life attainable through advances in technoscience and its participatory governance. We emphasize that community engagement and acceptance of renewable energy do not have singularly given but multiple and situated ways of mattering configured within contexts.

Paper short abstract:

Nationalist high modernism was the dominant sociotechnical imaginary in Taiwan and obsessed with nuclear power. In the aftermath of a massive flood, what is the possibility of enacting an alternative which attributes energy technology to the feelings, identities and materiality grounded in locality?

Paper long abstract:

Nationalist high modernism is the dominant sociotechnical imaginary in post-war East Asian countries such as South Korea and Taiwan, involving the belief that the modernisation of industry and the deployment of energy technoscience will ensure the autonomy of the nation. However, the imaginary in Taiwan was neither homogeneous nor not confronted by other challenging imaginaries.

Inspired by the concept of 'ethno-epistemic assemblages', I explore the messiness of knowledge-making and sense-making and how a fluid technology like PV can be assembled on the contexts of native feelings, the local history and environment. A short history of Linbian and Jiadong is presented to situate the cases of the programme of 'Cultivating Water and Generating Electricity'; transforming from rice paddy and banana plantation to eel and grass shrimp fishery, and later to the farming of groupers and wax apple planting, local farmers do not just repeat routines on a daily basis but also reassemble farming techniques and the materials at hand. Typhoon Morakot made landfall on Taiwan in 2009, and since then local community has been anxious about the future of local life. The post-reconstruction policy is to transform some key factors in the local ethno-epistemic assemblage (e.g. enrolling a species of seawater grouper and a technology of digitalised pumping plant), instead of simply ordering the current assemblage to dissolve and to build a new one. At the same time, floating PV and PV greenhouse technologies, as an alternative, are assembled with the feelings of making a contribution to the hometown.

Paper short abstract:

In need to 'feed the 9 billion', producing less meat and dairy is still largely overlooked as an alternative to further intensification. This paper explores how boundaries between animal-sourced and vegan food practices are drawn and how they can inform debates on (responsible) productivity.

Paper long abstract:

Today's agriculture in the Global North encourages diets high in animal-protein that depend on the use of fossil fuels. With agricultural policies becoming increasingly aware of the ecological consequences of intensive food production and the undesirability of further deforestation, forms of 'sustainable intensification' based on (bio)technology for doubling agricultural productivity by 2050 are now promoted in view of the rising world population. In need to 'feed the 9 billion', producing less meat and dairy is still largely overlooked as an alternative to further intensification. As keeping animals inevitably goes along with losses of nutritional energy when crops are converted into animal-derived foods, stockfree agriculture holds the possibility of rising productivity requiring neither more land nor further intensification.

Theoretically drawing upon Karen Barad's (2007) relational, posthuman, and new materialist approach to material-discursive practices, this paper explores both animal-sourced and vegan food practices in the context of different foodscapes. Qualitative interviews and website analysis showcase how a 'vegan' supermarket maintains its customer-base by not calling itself 'vegan'; a vegan advocacy network certifies a vegan organic standard of production; a beef farmer converts to vegan organic vegetable growing; a dairy company justifies animal husbandry with the natural suitability of the land. Reading these cases diffractively through another, the paper unravels resonances and dissonances to illustrate what actors are included and excluded in food mattering. By reconfiguring boundaries between animal-sourced and vegan food practices, these case studies inform debates about possible ways to meet 'the universe' halfway in order to materialise nutritional energy responsibly.