Abstract
As part of current energy transitions in the Global North, households have begun adopting renewable energy technologies, such as heat pumps and solar power systems, in significant numbers. These changes give rise to the following question: how are technology and gender configured when new technologies enter everyday life? Based upon ethnographic fieldwork on interactions between households, technologies, and technicians and interviews with sales technicians, installers, and service mechanics, I demonstrate how both stable and fragile variants of renewable energy technologies are enacted during prepurchase consultations and postpurchase installations, respectively. I employ science and technology studies scholarship, feminist ethics, and repair and maintenance studies—captured through the analytical lens of care—to analyze how technicians mobilize and tinker with gendered affection, knowledge, and action in households to effectuate adoption of renewable energy technologies. I clarify how, in this process, openings are created to configure both hegemonic and heterogeneous gender–technology relations. Finally, I advance discussion beyond gender issues by arguing that acknowledging the role of maintainability and the repair of user–technology relations in current energy transitions opens pathways not only for exploring gender in new and exciting ways in relation to technology but technician–user relationships as well.
Highlights
As part of current energy transitions in the Global North, households have begun adopting renewable energy technologies, such as heat pumps and solar power systems, in significant numbers
Faulkner’s call resonates with recent actor–network theory (ANT) studies that examine maintenance and repair work. These studies foreground often-neglected aspects of sociomaterial ordering processes by focusing on material disruptions and the hands-on work needed to maintain order, understood as fragile rather than stable (Denis, Mongili, and Pontille 2016; Denis and Pontille 2020; Crooks 2019; Sormani, Bovet, and Strebel 2019). This focus on material fragility establishes opportunities for new explorations of gender–technology relations as part of the ongoing work of adapting technologies to specific situations and vice versa: work that has been formulated as a “care of things” (Denis and Pontille 2015; see Mol, Moser, and Pols 2010)
Based upon ethnographic fieldwork on (1) interactions among households, technologies, and technicians and (2) interviews with sales technicians, installers, and service mechanics, I demonstrate how both stable and fragile variants of renewable energy technologies are enacted during prepurchase consultations and postpurchase installations, respectively
Summary
As part of current energy transitions in the Global North, households have begun adopting renewable energy technologies, such as heat pumps and solar power systems, in significant numbers. In the emerging field of repair and maintenance studies (Henke 2000; De Laet and Mol 2000; Jackson 2014; Denis and Pontille 2020), processes of adjustment are understood as “deeply inscribed in a logic of care that starts from decay and vulnerability” (Denis, Mongili, and Pontille 2016, 8) This corresponds to what Fisher and Tronto (1990, 35-46), in their foundational work on feminist ethics, describe as taking care of, which implies responsibility for caring activities, time spent, and explicit knowledge of situations. I detail how technicians—safeguarding the everyday infrastructure of usership—employ gendered affection, knowledge, and action with respect to technologies and users, which they progressively acquire with each purchase and installation (see Offenberger and Nentwich 2009)
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