Eurograd message

                Dear colleagues,

We’re welcoming abstracts to our 4S 2025 open panel (#136) entitled
“Rejecting or discontinuing: Reverberations on the way to renewable technologies”.

The deadline is January 31.

Please submit your abstract at www.4sonline.org/call_for_submissions_seattle.php.

Panel convenors:
Peter Stegmaier & Ewert Aukes (University of Twente)

Panel outline:
STS has long focussed strongly on the development and arrival of new technologies in various social contexts. Increasingly, attention is also being focussed on sustainable technologies that promise to put a stop to climate change. However, STS has also focussed on how new technologies are rejected, denied, or fought against, especially in the tension between use and non-use. This is precisely where this panel comes in. We want to get to know and discuss cases that are characterised by the rejection or discontinuation of sustainable technologies: Shifting the focus to the reverberations on the path to renewable technologies through those practices, strategies, and interests that fight the transition to sustainable forms of economic activity, life, and provision as a threat to traditional approaches.
The uptake and impact of renewable transition policies depends on whether societal actors engage in their implementation and how undesirable policies and technologies can be discontinued. Emergence and implementation of novel socio-technical systems is at the heart of many transition and innovation studies. However, observations of societal actors rejecting the resulting changes or even underlying interpretive frameworks of anthropogenic climate change or shifting societal responsibilities are beginning to pile up. At the same time, studies on discontinuation look at the exit, ban, decline of old, ecologically often unsustainable socio-technical systems. Thus, rejection and discontinuation moves surrounding unstable socio-technical regimes, thereby thwarting or slowing down transitions, cannot be overlooked and deserve deeper academic engagement.
Abstaining from sustainable transitions can take many forms: Homeowners do not switch to renewable energies, car owners reject e-mobility, citizens vote for parties downplaying lifestyle restrictions, farmers do not want to adapt intensive farming practices, etc. It seems that the willingness to change is not as widespread across societies as some portray it to be, either because people don't want to change, they can't imagine it, don't consider change necessary, or don't accept the underlying arguments for such changes as true. These are all empirical questions this special session addresses.
Research, sustainability-oriented politics and activism have focused too much on change on a structural, meso-systemic level, but not on people who do not change their actions and life situations that lead people to abstain from change. As we assume change to be the normal state of societies, stasis becomes all the more intriguing. This includes the creation of static, conserving counter-images; futures are promised that do not require abandoning what is cherished; fake news are spread and horror scenarios of sustainability development are projected. Other people cannot afford to change or fear job losses, and justifiably so. The field is wide and diverse. And an understanding of these complexities is fundamental to addressing them. Resistance to new technology, organisational structures, lifestyles, business models or policies that bring about social change is nothing new (steam engines, computers, the internet and many more). We should not forget to examine current phenomena for historical lines of scepticism towards the new and change.
In this track, we want to invite observations and studies that substantiate attitudes of refusal, strategies of resistance and practices of opting out of transitions. The track invites presentations of full or early-stage research papers leading to a concluding debate.

Best wishes,
Peter Stegmaier & Ewert Aukes



Dr Peter Stegmaier | Assistant Professor
Science, Technology and Policy Studies (STePS) section
Department of Technology, Policy and Society (TPS)
Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences (BMS)
University of Twente, The Netherlands
p.stegmaier@utwente.nl | www.utwente.nl/bms/steps/people/scientific/stegmaier

Recent publications:

  *   Stegmaier, P. (2025). Discontinuation through enforcement of the law: court rulings as leverage for stopping delegitimised practices and technologies (in press). In M. Bourrier (Ed.), SpringerBriefs in Safety Management. Springer (in press).
·         Koretsky, Z., Stegmaier, P., Turnheim, B., & van Lente, H. (Eds.). (2023). Technologies in Decline: Socio-Technical Approaches to Discontinuation and Destabilisation. Routledge. [PDF]
·         Aukes, E., Stegmaier, P., & Schleyer, C. (2022). Guiding the guides: Doing ‘Constructive Innovation Assessment’ as part of innovating forest ecosystem service governance. Ecosystem Services, 58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2022.101482
·         Liersch, C, Stegmaier, P (2022): Keeping the forest above to phase out the coal below: The discursive politics and contested meaning of the Hambach Forest. Energy Research & Social Science, 89, 102537. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2022.102537
·         Loft, L., Schleyer, C., Klingler, M., Kister, J., Zoll, F., Stegmaier, P., Aukes, E., Sorge, S., & Mann, C. (2022). The development of governance innovations for the sustainable provision of forest ecosystem services in Europe: A comparative analysis of four pilot innovation processes. Ecosystem Services, 58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2022.101481
·         Stegmaier, P, Visser, VR, & Kuhlmann, S (2021) The incandescent light bulb phase-out. Exploring patterns of framing the governance of discontinuing a socio-technical regime. Energy, Sustainability and Society, 11, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13705-021-00287-4
·         Kuhlmann, S, Stegnaier, P, Konrad, K (2019): The tentative governance of emerging science and technology—A conceptual introduction, Research Policy, 48/5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2019.01.006
·         Stegmaier, P (2020): Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA): Innovationsmitgestaltung als Prozess gesellschaftlicher Aufklärung und Erwartungsmoderation. In B. Blättel-Mink, I. Schulz-Schaeffer, & A. Windeler (Eds.), Handbuch Innovationsforschung (pp. 1011-1028). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
·         Visscher, K, Stegmaier, P, Damm, A, Hamaker-Taylor, R, Harjanne, A, Giordano, R (2019): Matching supply and demand: A typology of climate services, in Climate Services, 17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cliser.2019.100136
·         Stegmaier, P, Hamaker-Taylor, R, & Jiménez Alonso, E (2020): Reflexive climate service infrastructure relations. Climate Services, 17, 100151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cliser.2020.100151
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