Abstract
A prominent concept in current science and technology studies (STS) is Jasanoff and Kim’s ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’: ‘collectively imagined forms of social life and social order reflected in the design and fulfillment of nation-specific scientific and/or technological projects’ (Jasanoff and Kim, 2009: 120). We can see how generative the idea is in the fact that the seven articles published together in this issue, which were submitted and accepted separately, all draw on or have closely connections with the concept. These articles extend the idea of sociotechnical imaginaries in different directions, and apply it to a wide variety of topics. As I and previous editors of Social Studies of Science have done before, I’ve created an unplanned themed issue by gathering these articles together.
Sociotechnical imaginaries are generally future-oriented visions of connected social and technological orders, with more or less determinism built into them. To be analytically useful in STS, these visions need to be stable enough that they are not just read into, but can be seen to have the possibility of shaping terrains of choices, and thereby of actions: They are infrastructures of imagining and planning futures. But, as many of the articles in this issue show, they are also typically contested, changeable, flexible and loose around the edges.
Some of the articles in this issue explore the creation of new sociotechnical imaginaries. Lawrence (2020) traces an ‘imaginative exercise’ across multiple social worlds. The exercise is the uncovering, by non-state actors, of hidden nuclear facilities using publicly available satellite images, building on and promoting ideals of increased transparency in political orders. At the turn of the millennium, privately produced satellite images reconfigured the boundary between the classified and the unclassified, creating new opportunities for intelligence analysis. Focusing on the 2002 publicization and display of the incomplete Natanz processing facility in Iran, Lawrence looks at how actors in the remote sensing business, anti-war NGOs, television news and the International Atomic Energy Agency capitalized on the new opportunities. To do so they adopted a narrative that Natanz was a clandestine plant, which could be uncovered by the new images and new analytic skills. That narrative established the value of the new roles and identities for non-state analysts, and turned out to have enormous effects for specific international relations with Iran that continue today.
Schiølin (2020) looks at the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ or ‘4IR’, a sociotechnical imaginary articulated by a powerful actor, Klaus Schwab, chairman of the World Economic Forum. As its name suggests, the central 4IR claim is that the world is on the verge of a new industrial revolution. This predicted revolution will stem from combinations of developments in such areas as artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology and biotechnology, and will change the nature of work, education and government, demanding anticipatory actions to make optimistic scenarios the most likely ones. Schwab’s platform allows him considerable influence on important actors, and that can be seen in government and corporate actions and stances. Despite the fact that 4IR is clearly being promoted by key individuals and organizations, there is a ‘future essentialism’ in sociotechnical imaginaries like 4IR, which, to the extent that they become part of the imaginative infrastructure, limits democratic options.
This theme of depoliticization runs through a number of these articles. Polleri’s (2020) article is on controversies around nuclear power in post-Fukushima Japan. Polleri locates, in the attention to the nuclear in post-War Japanese history and culture, imaginaries at the root of both acceptance of and opposition to nuclear power. But they are linked with other imaginaries: In particular, for the powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, nuclear power is portrayed as an apolitical necessity for an island with an industrial economy and minimal natural resources. Polleri draws attention to the Ministry’s attempts at ‘post-political’ governance, an effect of Schiølin’s ‘future essentialism’. And because of the Ministry’s dominance, it has the resources to curtail discussion in favour of its imaginary.
Smallman’s (2020) ‘elite’ sociotechnical imaginary among UK policymakers bears some resemblance to views that the Japanese government actors appear to hold. Smallman calls the UK version ‘science to the rescue’. Drawing on a range of interviews with high-level policymakers, she notes that they believe that social and ethical issues are fully separable from science and technology. This allows for clear delimitations of relevant expertise on a given issue, making for many post-political moments. ‘Science to the rescue’ limits public discussion of uncertainties in and options within the relevant science, which can take on an essentialist hue.
Jasanoff and Kim (2009: 123) write that sociotechnical imaginaries ‘are associated with active exercises of state power, such as the selection of development priorities, the allocation of funds, the investment in material infrastructures, and the acceptance or suppression of political dissent’. But because of this, imaginaries are generally contested. In their article in this issue, Levidow and Raman (2020) describe two UK sociotechnical imaginaries of the recovery of energy from waste. One assumes that by establishing markets for waste-to-energy transformations, innovators would create new technologies; this is the ‘techno-market fixes’ imaginary. The other focuses on local flows of waste and energy, keeping recovery plants close to sources of waste; this is the ‘eco-localization’ imaginary. The UK government instituted a program that was officially neutral, but also created an incentive framework that promoted techno-market fixes – its attempt at post-political governance.
There is nothing post-political about air traffic management, the topic of Lawless’s (2020) article in this issue. European air traffic management has been extensively shaped by the idea of the Single European Sky. That idea is of a kind of governed territory, of a monitored, regulated and enforced airspace over a geographical area. However, particular versions of the creation of that territory challenge aspects national sovereignty and alternative transnational ideals. The European Union, nation states both within and near the EU, existing organizations for the regulation and provision of air traffic management, and organized labour all have stakes in whether and exactly how the territory is constructed. The result is that the Single European Sky has been and will be a negotiated imaginary, rather than one developed through time or articulated by a powerful actor.
To close the issue off, the article by Sovacool et al. (2020) is a large-scale synthesis of a number of studies of competing ‘visions’, ‘fantasies’, ‘ideographs’ and ‘cues’ connected with seven possible transitions closely connected with energy production and use: automated vehicles, electric vehicles, smart meters, nuclear power, shale gas, hydrogen fuel, and fossil fuel divestment. Sovacool and co-authors did not set out to catalogue sociotechnical imaginaries of these energy transitions, and their work complements, rather than either developing or challenging work on imaginaries. By looking at various dimensions of future-oriented narratives, they suggest new avenues of research, including avenues that can serve practical aims in promoting certain energy paths. But the article might also indicate that we should be cautious about the imaginaries we see in sociotechnical discussions and actions. It might be read as noting a high level of abstraction of most descriptions of sociotechnical imaginaries, and thus as suggesting questions about how imaginaries we identify actually shape paths and actions.