Abstract
Studies of societal engagement with socio-technical change are undergoing a systemic turn. Rather than simply viewing public engagement in science, policy and behavioural change in terms of discrete cases, key social theories in deliberative democracy, practice theory, socio-technical transitions and co-productionist scholarship in science and technology studies (STS) are moving to consider how diverse forms of participation interrelate in wider systems. In this paper we take stock of these advances to develop a conceptual framework for understanding ecologies of participation in socio-technical and democratic systems, grounded in relational co-productionist theory in STS. The framework is illustrated through empirical analysis of a systematic mapping of participation in UK energy system transitions between 2010 and 2015. This provides the first insights into system-wide patternings, diversities and inequalities of energy participation, the significant types of interrelation between practices of public engagement within wider ecologies of participation, and their mutual construction with political cultures and constitutions. The value and implications of adopting an ecologies of participation approach are considered with respect to the theoretical, empirical and practical challenges of understanding and building more inclusive, responsible and just socio-technical (energy) transitions.
Highlights
In this paper we develop a new perspective on ‘participation’ in socio-technical change with specific reference to energy system transitions
The systemic and relational perspective developed in the above sections goes beyond received notions of engagement, revealing wider ecologies of multiple interrelating practices of energy-related participation that are constitutive of, shape, and are shaped by energy systems
Our mapping has documented increasingly ‘decentred’ forms of societal engagement with energy coming into being as the UK energy system enters into a low carbon era characterised by more distributed forms of energy production and demand response
Summary
In this paper we develop a new perspective on ‘participation’ in socio-technical change with specific reference to energy system transitions. Is a ‘systemic turn’ in social and democratic theory relevant to societal engagement with sociotechnical systems This includes recent developments in practice theory [27], deliberative democratic theory [28], and science, and technology studies (STS) [29], which are moving from a case or event-based imaginary of participation to conceive of how multiple practices of participation interrelate as part of wider systems and constitutions. While the focus of this paper is on developing and illustrating a new conceptual framework, we suggest that its systemic and ecological perspective on the diversities, emergence and stabilities of energy participation can enhance energy research and policy understandings of: the dynamics of socio-technical system change; ambiguities and contestations over the framing of energy system transitions; and systemic inequalities of inclusion and exclusion. It has potential to cultivate more robust forms of social intelligence for energy governance that can be more responsive and accountable to continually emerging societal values, knowings and doings
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