Situating social practices in community energy projects. Three case studies about the contextuality of renewable energy production.

Abstract

The author analyses the social embeddedness of renewable energy production and challenges tendencies in the existing literature to homogenize community energy projects. Energy production instead is analyzed as an outcome of complex situations within which dynamic negotiation processes unfold. By combining Theodore Schatzki s practice-theoretical approach with Adele Clarke s situational analysis the focus is shifted from practices as stabilized and routinized forms of human behavior onto their dynamic and negotiated character.