Books by Christopher Groves
This report presents a synthesis of research and analysis from the Energy Biographies project, ba... more This report presents a synthesis of research and analysis from the Energy Biographies project, based at Cardiff University from 2011-2015.
In an age where issues like climate change and the unintended consequences of technological innov... more In an age where issues like climate change and the unintended consequences of technological innovation are high on the ethical and political agenda, questions about the nature and extent of our responsibilities to future generations have never been more important, yet simultaneously so difficult to answer. This book takes a unique approach to the problem by drawing on diverse traditions of thinking about care (including developmental psychology, phenomenology and feminist ethics) to explore the nature and meaning of our relationship with the future. Demonstrating that many influential perspectives on intergenerational ethics, including positions advanced by John Rawls, Brian Barry, and Ulrich Beck are undermined by problems relating to uncertainty, it shows that an approach based on care ethics can confront the uncertain future successfully and give a viable account of the nature and scope of future-oriented responsibilities.
Papers by Christopher Groves
Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2014
In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the... more In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop
on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important
tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.
Futures, 2019
To understand how the legacy of urban regeneration promised by events like the London 2012 Olympi... more To understand how the legacy of urban regeneration promised by events like the London 2012 Olympics is constructed, the masterplanning process is analysed as an assemblage of heterogeneous elements that construct futures as knowable and actionable objects in the present. Building on recent applications of actor-network theory to planning studies, the value of the concept of ‘anticipatory assemblage’ is demonstrated. The example of London 2012 masterplanning underlines how masterplanning as an anticipatory activity is performed through networks which are formed through the circulation of expectations and visions as networked ‘intermediaries’. Through these intermediaries, ordered processes are set in motion, and requirements for subsequent activities established. Further, it is shown how this use of concepts of anticipatory assemblages can help understand the political significance of masterplanning in the present, which depends on how organised forms of anticipation re-order social and material relationships in the present, including some actors as participants within anticipatory assemblages and excluding others.
Sustainability Science, 2019
Historically, concepts of sustainability have been articulated in response to a perceived crisis ... more Historically, concepts of sustainability have been articulated in response to a perceived crisis within central modernist narratives about progress. As such, they are not just environmental concepts, but ethical and political ones. At the same time, they have often been accused of being too wedded to many of the same assumptions as these central narratives of modernity, and indeed inviting the hubristic mistakes of modernity to be resurrected in the form of pretentions to global stewardship or ‘managing the planet’. I respond to some recent critiques of key conceptual elements encountered within sustainability narratives by articulating an approach to imagining sustainability that draws on D. W. Winnicott’s concept of the ‘holding environment’, and which acknowledges the otherness of the future and of nature, while also affirming responsibilities towards both.
Futures, 2019
To understand how the legacy of urban regeneration promised by events like the London 2012 Olympi... more To understand how the legacy of urban regeneration promised by events like the London 2012 Olympics is constructed, the masterplanning process is analysed as an assemblage of heterogeneous elements that construct futures as knowable and actionable objects in the present. Building on recent applications of actor-network theory to planning studies, the value of the concept of ‘anticipatory assemblage’ is demonstrated. The example of London 2012 masterplanning underlines how masterplanning as an anticipatory activity is performed through networks which are formed through the circulation of expectations and visions as networked ‘intermediaries’. Through these intermediaries, ordered processes are set in motion, and requirements for subsequent activities established. Further, it is shown how this use of concepts of anticipatory assemblages can help understand the political significance of masterplanning in the present, which depends on how organised forms of anticipation re-order social and material relationships in the present, including some actors as participants within anticipatory assemblages and excluding others.
Miller et al. (eds) The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, 4th edition. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017
The practices of science and technology are saturated with expectations, promises, and prospectiv... more The practices of science and technology are saturated with expectations, promises, and prospective claims. What is more, future-oriented representations affect scientific and technological practices and constitute an important reference point for the governance of science and technology. The chapter reviews literature from science and technology studies (STS) and related fields on future-oriented representations and anticipatory practices. The first group of studies is concerned with understanding the performativity, shaping and dynamics of expectations in science and technology building on concrete empirical cases, and largely relates to the sociology of expectations. In a second step, the chapter moves to research which addresses different forms of constructing and relating to the future and how these forms are embedded in broader, historically varying modes of future orientation that characterize cultures and societies, drawing on the sociology of time. Finally, the chapter reviews approaches which turn the analytical understanding of the importance of future-oriented representations in a more interventionist perspective, by highlighting anticipatory practices where the future is intentionally mobilized by STS scholars who seek to intervene in the governance of science and technology.
In recent years, debates about energy justice have become increasingly
prominent. However, the qu... more In recent years, debates about energy justice have become increasingly
prominent. However, the question of what is at stake in claims about energy
justice or injustice is a complex one. Signifying more than simply the fair
distribution of quantities of energy, energy justice also implies issues of
procedural justice (participation) and recognition (acknowledgement of diverse
values constitutive of ways of life). It is argued that this requires an
acknowledgement of why energy use matters in everyday life.
Data from the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University is used to explore
connections between the relational texture of everyday life and the ethical
significance of energy. In particular, embodiment, attachment and narrative are
shown making a significant contribution to the implicit and explicit modes in
which different ways of using energy are evaluated in the course of everyday life.
Using multimodal and biographical qualitative social science allows these
implicit forms of evaluation to become more tangible, along with the
relationships between them. Conceiving of users of energy as subjects with
biographies, with attachments, and as engaged bodily in energy using practices
can open up, it is suggested, different ways of enacting the procedural and
recognition aspects of energy justice.
Journal of Responsible Innovation
Second generation biofuels derived from agricultural lignocellulosic waste represent what is hope... more Second generation biofuels derived from agricultural lignocellulosic waste represent what is hoped to be a significant technological, but also socioeconomic advance beyond the shortcomings of first generation biofuels (chiefly bioethanol). The development of advanced catalytic techniques is a central part of making such technologies viable. However, assessing the potential socioeconomic significance of the socio-technical arrangements necessary to translate such fundamental techniques into mature technologies is also a central part of shaping the development of second generation technologies in a way that both avoids the shortcomings of first generation fuels and ensures that future developments are genuinely responsive to social needs. A pilot project is described in which a deliberative workshop with farmers in Wales is used to explore the potential societal impacts of novel nanocatalysis methods for the production of lignocellulosic biofuels developed by members of the research team. Using risk-and benefit-ranking/issue mapping methodologies, the workshop examined the potential future role of bioeconomies of different scales, in which second generation biofuels play a significant part, in transforming rural communities. Grounded scepticism from workshop participants delineated key socio-technical issues that will be highly consequential for the development of second-generation technologies, thus laying the ground for subsequent planned work on responsible innovation and nanocatalytic methods of biofuel production.
Waste has often been a target of literature and policy promoting pro-environmental behaviour. How... more Waste has often been a target of literature and policy promoting pro-environmental behaviour. However, little attention has been paid to how subjects interpret and construct waste in their daily lives. In this paper we develop a synthesis of practice theory and psycho-social concepts of attachment and transitional space to explore how biographically patterned relationships and attachments to practice shape subjects understandings of resource consumption and disposal. Deploying biographical interview data produced in the [project], we illustrate how tangible, intersubjective and interdependent experiences rub up against cultural and behavioural norms, reshaping the meanings and strategies through which subjects interpret and manage waste.
Anticipation may be seen as structured by images and representations, an approach that has inform... more Anticipation may be seen as structured by images and representations, an approach that has informed recent work in science and technology studies on the sociology of expectations. But anticipation, as a capacity or characteristic, is not solely manifested in the form of representations, even where such representations of the 'not yet' are performative in nature. It also comprises material capacities, technological, biophysical and affective in nature. The politics of anticipation is shaped by how these symbolic and material capacities, and the forms of agency they make possible, are distributed. As anticipation is an environmentally distributed capacity, it is suggested that the politics of anticipation is also an environmental politics. A conceptual framework for analysing anticipation as comprised of environmental capabilities is introduced, and fleshed out using a case study of energy infrastructure planning from the UK. Key elements of this framework include the concepts of anticipatory assemblages and future horizons or 'styles' of anticipation. Working through the case study as an empirical example of a conflict concerning the politics of anticipation and of 'environments', it is demonstrated how the relationships between styles of anticipation are materially constitutive of such conflicts.
Responsible research and innovation (RRI) has affirmed the value of ‘inclusion’ and ‘responsivene... more Responsible research and innovation (RRI) has affirmed the value of ‘inclusion’ and ‘responsiveness’ as institutional virtues necessary to ensure that reflexivity towards the social priorities behind innovation processes is made possible. It is argued that this affirmation links RRI to knowledge politics in other domains (e.g. environmental justice and the politics of development). It is suggested that lessons regarding inclusion and responsiveness can be drawn from these domains, focusing on the ways in which marginalised perspectives on need and vulnerability, once articulated, can help reconstitute the public sphere in which social priorities are defined. Three case studies are used to explore how entanglements of needs, vulnerabilities, identity and agency are vital to understanding the impacts of innovation and change more generally. It is argued that social science methodologies sensitised to such entanglements are necessary to help constitute a space of inclusion and responsiveness characterised, not by assumptions about idealised rational forms of deliberation, but by styles of communication that recognise vulnerability.
Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 2013
ABSTRACT Development of effective participatory mechanisms within infrastructure planning governa... more ABSTRACT Development of effective participatory mechanisms within infrastructure planning governance has been dependent on how far the outputs of participatory processes have an impact upon strategic policy priorities. However, neoliberal modes of governance are characterised by 'recentralisation' within arms-length regulatory bodies and private corporations. Tensions between participatory governance and recentralisation are exemplified by the relationship between energy privatisation and energy infrastructure planning. With this study we examine these tensions using a case study of a critical infrastructure project in the UK, the South Wales Gas Pipeline. Findings confirm arguments in the literature that siting conflicts often centre on policy issues as much as local concerns. The study reveals that the neoliberal recentralisation of some governance functions exacerbates such conflicts. We argue that, although new efforts to secure effective participation in neoliberal regimes are necessary, they will face obstacles in the form of risk-based governance structures, as exemplified by the privatised energy sector.
In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the... more In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘ResponsibleInnovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key
reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.
Journal of Responsible Innovation
In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the... more In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.
It has been argued that social technology assessment requires critique of the ‘worlds’ implicated... more It has been argued that social technology assessment requires critique of the ‘worlds’ implicated in the future imaginaries through which expectations take shape around new technologies. Qualitative social science research can aid deliberation by exploring the meanings of technologies within everyday practices, as is demonstrate by Yolande Strengers’ ethnographic work on everyday energy use and imaginaries of ‘smartness’. In this paper, we show how a novel combination of narrative interviews and multimodal methods can help in exploring future imaginaries through the lens of biographical experiences of socio-technical changes in how energy is used domestically. In particular, this approach can open up a critical space around future socio-technical imaginaries of smartness and convenience by exploring the investments that individuals have in different forms of engagement with the world and the relationship between these forms and particular technologies. Using a psychosocial framework that draws on theoretical resources from science and technology studies, we show how these investments can lead to shifts in the meaning of taken-for granted assumptions about the meaning of concepts like convenience, and how valued forms of subjectivity may be conceptualised as emerging out of the ‘friction’ of engagement with the world.
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Books by Christopher Groves
Papers by Christopher Groves
on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important
tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.
prominent. However, the question of what is at stake in claims about energy
justice or injustice is a complex one. Signifying more than simply the fair
distribution of quantities of energy, energy justice also implies issues of
procedural justice (participation) and recognition (acknowledgement of diverse
values constitutive of ways of life). It is argued that this requires an
acknowledgement of why energy use matters in everyday life.
Data from the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University is used to explore
connections between the relational texture of everyday life and the ethical
significance of energy. In particular, embodiment, attachment and narrative are
shown making a significant contribution to the implicit and explicit modes in
which different ways of using energy are evaluated in the course of everyday life.
Using multimodal and biographical qualitative social science allows these
implicit forms of evaluation to become more tangible, along with the
relationships between them. Conceiving of users of energy as subjects with
biographies, with attachments, and as engaged bodily in energy using practices
can open up, it is suggested, different ways of enacting the procedural and
recognition aspects of energy justice.
reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.
on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important
tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.
prominent. However, the question of what is at stake in claims about energy
justice or injustice is a complex one. Signifying more than simply the fair
distribution of quantities of energy, energy justice also implies issues of
procedural justice (participation) and recognition (acknowledgement of diverse
values constitutive of ways of life). It is argued that this requires an
acknowledgement of why energy use matters in everyday life.
Data from the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University is used to explore
connections between the relational texture of everyday life and the ethical
significance of energy. In particular, embodiment, attachment and narrative are
shown making a significant contribution to the implicit and explicit modes in
which different ways of using energy are evaluated in the course of everyday life.
Using multimodal and biographical qualitative social science allows these
implicit forms of evaluation to become more tangible, along with the
relationships between them. Conceiving of users of energy as subjects with
biographies, with attachments, and as engaged bodily in energy using practices
can open up, it is suggested, different ways of enacting the procedural and
recognition aspects of energy justice.
reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.
Good examples of experimental practices which manifest all these aspects are those involved in explorations of more sustainable ways of living, in which future imaginaries of ‘self-sufficiency’ constitute important symbolic and affective resources – not least insofar as they help constitute the reflexivity of these practices towards ‘mainstream’ ways of living, and towards the meanings, competences and infrastructures that compose them. This paper examines how imaginaries and technology use co-evolve as a result of the performance of experimental, sustainable practices, with the aid of an analysis of narrative interviews undertaken with participants from the Tir-y-Gafel/Lammas low-impact community in West Wales, one of the four communities studied by the Energy Biographies (http://energybiographies.org) project at Cardiff University. Imaginaries of self-sufficiency are shown to be a key element in how participants make sense of an uncertain future. These imaginaries enable reflexivity both towards technology choice and use across a range of practices relating to every aspect of household and communal life, as well as guiding improvisation in response to unforeseen situations. At the same time, technologies – ranging from hydroelectric generators and solar panels to tablet computers, fridges and power tools – introduce reflexivity towards the idea of self-sufficiency itself, leading participants to question core elements of this future imaginary, and in particular, the degree to which it can provide normative guidance in technology choice and use. While imaginaries shape the social use of technologies by stimulating bricolage and improvisation, the dependencies embodied by technologies are shown to gradually emerge, in practice, as factors that can place in question the consistency of imaginaries and induce normative change. It is thus demonstrated that technologies are not just substitutable means towards predefined ends, but may also reshape what are taken to be viable and desirable social purposes.
References
Borup, M., Brown, N., Konrad, K., and Van Lente, H. (2006). “The Sociology of Expectations in Science and Technology.” Technology Analysis and Strategic Management 18: 285–298
Sayer, Andrew. (2011). Why things matter to people : social science, values and ethical life. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Shove, E., Pantzar, M., & Watson, M. (2012). The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and how it Changes. London: SAGE Publications.
References
Engster, Daniel. (2007). The heart of justice: care ethics and political theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Groves, Christopher. (2011). The Political Imaginary of Care: Generic versus Singular Futures. Journal of International Political Theory, 7(2), 165-189. doi: 10.3366/jipt.2011.0013
Jonas, Hans. (1984). The imperative of responsibility : in search of an ethics for the technological age. Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press.
Kittay, E.F. (2013). Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency. London: Taylor & Francis.
Koepsell, David. (2010). On Genies and Bottles: Scientists’ Moral Responsibility and Dangerous Technology R&D. Science and Engineering Ethics, 16(1), 119-133. doi: 10.1007/s11948-009-9158-x
Mol, Annemarie. (2008). The logic of care : health and the problem of patient choice. London ; New York: Routledge.
O'Neill, John. (1993). Ecology, policy and politics. London: Routledge.
Ruddick, S. (1989). Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. New York: Beacon Press.
Tronto, Joan C. (1993). Moral boundaries: a political argument for an ethic of care. New York: Routledge.
However, social science research demonstrates that risk and hazard are not, in and of themselves, the main sources of negative public reaction to new technologies, and particularly in relation to GM. Other sources of public disquiet and distrust about GM have been shown to be much more important, which relate not to the unknown but to the known, to past experience with other technologies. People’s views about new technologies tend to be inflected by their distrust in business organisations, the expectation that technologists and regulators alike have trouble acknowledging areas of persistent uncertainty, and the view that regulation tends to be unable to cope with unpleasant surprises. This paper shows how deliberative public engagement exercises around nanotechnologies in the UK and elsewhere have suggested that the same factors may be in play with regard to public views of nanotechnologies, and may become more significant in the future. It also discusses a recent nanofutures study in the UK with an expert panel confirms that a comparison between GM and nano should be made, but how it is framed should be carefully considered, and the lessons which should be drawn from it may be different to those which governments and companies have drawn from the “conventional wisdom”. Indeed, it provides evidence that supports the view that government and industry associations should vigorously pursue a range of public engagement activities, particularly around potentially controversial applications of the technology, such as certain food uses.