Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Science And Technology Studies
- All Subjects: Energy Transitions
- Creators: Selin, Cynthia
Description
Transitioning towards low-carbon energy systems requires participation from a diversity of organizations, governments, and actors. Yet it is still unclear who, when, how much, and what types of participation are needed to realize such transformations. I address this gap by analyzing the role of participation in energy transitions using interviews, participant observation, document analyses, and novel visualization approaches deployed in the USA and Mexican contexts. I offer a framework to explore how engagement in energy transitions unfolds over time and deploy the framework to 1) investigate the role of engagement in decreasing the consumption of gas and electricity at municipal and residential levels in 12 US communities during a three-year competition (2014-2017) organized by Georgetown University; and 2) assess the acceptance and longevity of solar projects that grant electricity access to rural and dispersed Indigenous Ralámuli communities in Chihuahua, México. I found that wider and deeper participation does not always secure lower energy consumption in the US case, which highlights the need to tailor participation for specific goals. Results from Ralámuli communities suggest that the benefits of participation reach a limit; that is, when high participation surpassed the budget (in the form of cash/money and time availability) of solar users, participation became detrimental to user satisfaction and technology acceptance. Lastly, the analysis of how participation occurred in solar home systems with longer longevity (more than five years of use) showed that maintenance and operation costs (e.g. battery replacements) are the greatest barriers to longevity, while knowledge and capacity building might be elements driving longer longevity. Recommendations include: (1) offering clear information in the user’s first language about the costs and maintenance of solar systems, (2) seeking ideas from solar users at the early stages of solar programs, and (3) reducing costs through understanding electricity needs and offering collective forms of ownership. My work expands the theoretical understanding of the role of participation in energy transitions and offers practical resources for practitioners and researchers to facilitate a critical reflection on how participation influences desirable outcomes in different contexts, including communities in the global North and South.
ContributorsMorales Guerrero, Jorge (Author) / Karwat, Darshan (Thesis advisor) / Breetz, Hanna (Committee member) / Larson, Kelli (Committee member) / Berbés-Blázquez, Marta (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This research interconnects three case studies to examine survivability as a framework through which to explore historic, current, and future collaborations in the face of existential threats, social-ecological-technical uncertainty, and indeterminate futures. Leveraging archival research, document analysis, and ethnographic field work, this study focuses on artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s mid-20th-century construction of a nuclear fallout shelter, the COVID Tracking Project’s response work in the first year of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and three decades of future-facing scientific research performed at Biosphere 2. These cases demonstrate multidisciplinary collaborations across individual, organizational, and institutional configurations at local, national, and international scales in threat contexts spanning nuclear weapons, pandemics, and increasing climate catastrophe. Within each of the three cases, I examine protagonists’ collaborations within knowledge systems, their navigation of scientific disciplinary boundaries, their acknowledgement and negotiation of credibility and expertise, and how their engagements with these systems impact individual and collective survivability. By combining complex adaptive systems (CAS) framings with Science and Technology Studies concepts, I explore ways in which transformations of hierarchy and epistemological boundaries impact, and particularly increase, social-ecological-technical systems (SETS) survivability. Including notions of who and what systems deem worthy of protection, credibility, expertise and agency, imaginations, and how concepts of systems survivability operate, this work builds a conceptual scaffolding to better understand the dynamic workings of quests for survival in the 21st century.
ContributorsWasserman, Sherri (Author) / Selin, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Richter, Jennifer (Committee member) / Jalbert, Kirk (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
This dissertation explores the megamachine, a prominent metaphor in American humanist and philosopher of technology, Lewis Mumford's Myth of the Machine series. The term refers critically to dynamic, regimented human capacities that drive scientific and technical innovation in society. Mumford's view of the nature of collectives focuses on qualities and patterns that emerge from the behavior of groups, societies, systems, and ecologies. It is my aim to reenergize key concepts about collective capacities drawn from Lewis Mumford's critique of historical and modern sociotechnical arrangements. I investigate the possibility of accessing those capacities through improved design for Technology Assessment (TA), formal practices that engage experts and lay citizens in the evaluation of complex scientific and technical issues.
I analyze the components of Mumford's megamachine and align key concerns in two pivotal works that characterize the impact of collective capacities on society: Bruno Latour's Pasteurization of France (1988) and Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (1962). As I create a model of collective capacities in the sociotechnical according to the parameters of Mumford's megamachine, I rehabilitate two established ideas about the behavior of crowds and about the undue influence of technological systems on human behavior. I depart from Mumford's tactics and those of Canetti and Latour and propose a novel focus for STS on "sociotechnical crowds" as a meaningful unit of social measure. I make clear that Mumford's critique of the sociotechnical status quo still informs the conditions for innovation today.
Using mixed mode qualitative methods in two types of empirical field studies, I then investigate how a focus on the characteristics and components of collective human capacities in sociotechnical systems can affect the design and performance of TA. I propose a new model of TA, Emergent Technology Assessment (ETA), which includes greater public participation and recognizes the interrelationship among experience, affect and the material in mediating the innovation process. The resulting model -- the "soft" megamachine --introduces new strategies to build capacity for responsible innovation in society.
I analyze the components of Mumford's megamachine and align key concerns in two pivotal works that characterize the impact of collective capacities on society: Bruno Latour's Pasteurization of France (1988) and Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (1962). As I create a model of collective capacities in the sociotechnical according to the parameters of Mumford's megamachine, I rehabilitate two established ideas about the behavior of crowds and about the undue influence of technological systems on human behavior. I depart from Mumford's tactics and those of Canetti and Latour and propose a novel focus for STS on "sociotechnical crowds" as a meaningful unit of social measure. I make clear that Mumford's critique of the sociotechnical status quo still informs the conditions for innovation today.
Using mixed mode qualitative methods in two types of empirical field studies, I then investigate how a focus on the characteristics and components of collective human capacities in sociotechnical systems can affect the design and performance of TA. I propose a new model of TA, Emergent Technology Assessment (ETA), which includes greater public participation and recognizes the interrelationship among experience, affect and the material in mediating the innovation process. The resulting model -- the "soft" megamachine --introduces new strategies to build capacity for responsible innovation in society.
ContributorsGano, Gretchen (Author) / Guston, David (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Clark (Thesis advisor) / Selin, Cynthia (Committee member) / Wetmore, Jameson (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014