"Plug into Choice"? The Trouble with Common-Sense Participation in a Smart Electric Grid

Bibliographic Data

ID3834945
AuthorsHeather Rosenfeld (Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume29
Issue3
Pages87-108
Publication date2018-07-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCapitalism Nature Socialism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1045-5752 • E-ISSN: 1548-3290
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10455752.2017.1296013
OpenAlexW2592080505
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited38

Smart electric grids add digital technologies to the grid. While some suggest that they offer many environmental and social benefits, others remain critical and call them a neoliberal project. Considering smart grids a boundary object [Star, Susan L., and James R. Griesemer. 1989. “Institutional Ecology, Translations and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39.” Social Studies of Science 19 (3): 387–420], I examine how multiple social groups come together in cooperation and conflict in the installation of one smart grid. In what follows, I first argue that participation is Gramscian common sense (1971), a taken-for-granted good in producing a smart grid. Gramsci points out that common sense can be used to reinforce oppressive ideologies of a hegemonic status quo, but that it also contains “good sense” that can be developed into counter-hegemonic narratives and movements. Second, I argue that in the course of cooperation and conflict, the smart grid indeed becomes more neoliberal, and this occurs through participation. While the utility often seeks or accepts public participation, the meaning of participation gradually becomes limited to individualistic and financially motivated “choice.” In the discussed case, many of the (less neoliberal) social and environmental benefits of the grid and more collectivist forms of participation were precluded. This article offers a grounded examination of a smart grid and a sympathetic critique of common-sense participation

Business · Common sense · Electrical engineering · Grid · Political science · Sense (electronics · Smart grid · Engineering · Law · Mathematics · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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