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 explore future imaginaries of smartness 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 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. In this way, we demonstrate the value for of ‘thick’ data relating to the affective dimensions of subjective experience for social technology assessment and responsible research and innovation.

1. Christopher Groves, Karen Henwood, Catherine
Butler, Karen Parkhill, Nick Pidgeon and Fiona Shirani
Energy Biographies Project
(http://energybiographies.org)
School of Social Sciences
Cardiff University, UK
http://cardiff.academia.edu/ChristopherGroves

2. • Demand reduction as key
plank of policy around
energy ‘trilemma’
• Smartness seen as defining
central trajectory of
technological evolution
• Based on particular
understandings of
subjectivity: social change
driven by individual
behaviour change
• An increase in rationality:
‘resource men’ (Strengers)

3. • Do imaginaries of smartness embody viable &
desirable futures?
• Technological-behavioural solutions are
problematic – practices condition/become
entangled with subjectivity (e.g. freezers and
microwaves)1,2
• Critique of imaginaries key to answering questions
of viability & desirability
• Embodies a responsible research and innovation
(RRI) approach
• RRI means reflecting, not on costs vs benefits of
transitions, but the social constitutions3 & ‘worlds’4
implied by socio-technical options
1. Shove, E. and D. Southerton (2000). "Defrosting the Freezer: From Novelty to Convenience: A Narrative of Normalization." Journal of Material Culture 5(3): 301-319.
2. Ozaki, R. and I. Shaw (2014). "Entangled Practices: Governance, Sustainable Technologies, and Energy Consumption." Sociology 48(3): 590-605.
3. Kearnes, M., et al. (2006). "From Bio to Nano: Learning Lessons from the UK Agricultural Biotechnology Controversy." Science as Culture 15(4): 291-307.
4. Macnaghten, P. and B. Szerszynski (2013). "Living the global social experiment: An analysis of public discourse on solar radiation management and its implications for
governance." Global Environmental Change 23(2): 465-474.

4. • RRI approaches tend to emphasise processes of discursive
deliberation – Habermasian technological democracy
• But participatory assessment of viability/desirability requires
approaches that explore lived engagements with technologies1
• Reflexivity towards phenomena not just cognitive; also rooted in
affective, embodied subjectivity2
• Ethnographic work on ‘smartness’ explores practical entanglements in
the lifeworld3
• Energy Biographies adds to this a narrative, biographical approach
which explores the role of engagement with technology in shaping
identity4,5
1. Mol, A. (2008). The logic of care. London. New York, Routledge.
2. Lash, S. and J. Urry (1994). Economies of Signs and Space. London, Sage.
3. Strengers, Y. (2013). Smart Energy Technologies in Everyday Life: Smart Utopia? London, Palgrave Macmillan.
4. Groves, C., et al. (2015). "Energy biographies: narrative genres, lifecourse transitions and practice change." Science, Technology & Human Values. DOI: 10.1177/0162243915609116
5. Groves, C., et al. (2015). "Invested in unsustainability? On the psychosocial patterning of engagement in practices." Environmental Values 24(6).

5. • QL biographical
interviews
▫ Four UK sites: Ely,
Peterston (Cardiff),
Lammas (west Wales),
Royal Free Hospital [RFH]
(London)
▫ 3 longitudinal interviews
(N=74 in first round, N=36
for rounds 2 & 3)
▫ 6 months between
interviews

6. • 2nd and 3rd round interviews
▫ Photographing everyday
energy use with smartphone
▫ Using two films to explore
socio-technical imaginaries of
smartness
 Monsanto’s ‘House of the
Future’ (1957)
 UK Channel 4 ‘Home of the
future’ (2012)

7. • Our analysis of data shows how
energy use is bound up with
attachment, identity and agency1,2
• Practices not just instrumental,
but also constitutive of a sense of
what matters
• Biographical experiences of how
energy is used shape reflection on
future imaginaries and the socio-
technical worlds contained within
them
1. Groves, C., et al. (2015). "Energy biographies: narrative genres, lifecourse transitions and practice change."
Science, Technology & Human Values. DOI: 10.1177/0162243915609116
2. Groves, C., et al. (2015). "Invested in unsustainability? On the psychosocial patterning of engagement in
practices." Environmental Values 24(6).
“Cos we love being outside, we just love that
you can you know go, we were sitting out
there one evening … it was like midnight and
you could have a drink outside still and it’s
so lovely here cos it’s so quiet and everything
so but you wouldn’t have been able to do it
without that […]. So that’s our kind of, we
know it’s really bad but we’re still going to
use it.”
Interviewee ‘Lucy’ (Peterston), on her family’s
patio heaters

8. • Older interviewees: remember
liberating, life-enhancing socio-
technical transitions
• But convenience has also become an
end-in-itself
• Biographical narratives of a thinned1
lifeworld in which attention is
dispersed2
• Films seen as representing/affirming
this world
1. Casey, E. S. (2001). "Between Geography and Philosophy: What Does It Mean to Be in the
Place-World?" Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91(4): 683-693.
2. Stiegler, B. (2010). Taking care of youth and the generations. Stanford, CA, Stanford
University Press.
It’s the best thing in the world that
happened to me, was going from coal
that we had over in Hywel Dda there.
But when I first moved from Cambria
Road to Heol Deva that was a house of,
it was unbelievable, we had central
heating and I was only 10, in all the
rooms, a steel house, wonderful,
wonderful.
(Jeffrey, 60s, Ely)
‘[…]yeah, everything is really easy and
convenient I mean you want the TV on
you hit a button and it’s on and you’ve got
like 500 channels at your fingertips
should you want to watch them and then
you’ve got all your music players and
you’ve got not just one but maybe one in
each room […] and then you’ve got,
you’ve got Wi-Fi and internet and stuff ‘
(Monica, RFH)

9. • Biographical narratives of embodied
engagement in embodied practices
involving ‘focal objects’1
• Associated with valued forms of relational
subjectivity2
• ‘Friction’ as individuating3
“Yeah but I don’t like that. I look
back and I think actually I see for
me how I had no connection with it
[central heating], no connection you
know, whereas when the wood’s
there and you see the fire going you
think maybe I’ll just turn the fire
down cos the pile of wood is
shrinking.”
(Emmanuelle, Lammas)
“I think we were saying about the log fire,
it’s rewarding when you sit back and see
the log fire whereas if you just flick a
switch and it’s there it’s not as rewarding
so who knows you know on how it effects
our happiness in the long run things like
that, don’t know.”
(Sarah, RFH)
“Yeah well that’s, my partner says I’m
obsessed with it because I’m always
off up the woods looking for wood
and things like that, ‘I’m going to
light it tonight’, ‘oh no you’re not are
you?’”
(Robert, Peterston)
1. Borgmann, A. (1993). Crossing the Postmodern Divide. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
2. Groenhout, R. E. (2004). Connected Lives: Human Nature and an Ethics of Care. Lanham, MD,
Rowman & Littlefield.
3. Stiegler, B. (2010). Taking care of youth and the generations. Stanford, CA, Stanford University
Press.

10. • Reflecting on valued forms of
agency and links to
practices/technologies spotlights
values like comfort and
convenience1
• In some cases, leads to a re-
imagining of the meaning of these
values
1. Vannini, P. and J. Taggart (2014). Off the Grid: Re-Assembling Domestic Life. London, Routledge.
• Participants reflected critically
on the films’ imaginaries of
smartness
• Key themes: imposition of
fragility and erosion of agency
“I had no connection with it
[central heating], no connection
you know, whereas when the
wood’s there and you see the fire
going you think maybe I’ll just
turn the fire down cos the pile of
wood is shrinking.”
(Emmanuelle, Lammas)
“[talking about Ch4 film] all the gadgets I mean
that was you know similar to the bloody
[Monsanto] house you know you’re hungry and
the electricity is down and you can’t, you know
you can’t have a shower because you can’t turn on
the tap (Vanessa, Lammas)”
(Vanessa, Lammas)
“I still think it sort of dumbs us down as a kind
of society and replaces our you know ingenuity
and our thinking, free thinking with controlled
you know thinking and you know
computerisation of everything”
(Dennis, RFH)

11. • This reflexivity is aesthetic, embodied, relational
• Indicates value of multimodal-narrative-
biographical approach for RRI
• This elicits biographical reflections on
embodied engagements with technologies,
productive for critical examination of
imaginaries
• Opens paths for extending deliberative
approaches beyond ‘Habermasian technological
democracy’

12. http://energybiographies.org
Other team Members:
Professor Karen Henwood, Professor Nick Pidgeon
& Dr Fiona Shirani (Cardiff),
Dr Karen Parkhill (now York)
Dr Catherine Butler (now Exeter)