Brokers of Futures: A Study of Poland’s Shale Gas as a Technoscientific Promise

Seminar on The Politics of Epistemic Vulnerability in The Nuclear Age ( Chaire Sciences Po-CERI & USPC)

The construction of futures has become a common activity in the functioning and management of a vast number of the economy’s subsectors: agencies, both public and private, governmental and non-governmental, increasingly resort to the expertise of modellers and scenario makers to anticipate what aspects of the future they deem relevant to their activities will look like. However, anticipating is only one of the aims: even more important is the ability to build futures, possibly have the power to monopolize this ability, and ultimately acquire enough credibility to impose them. In the case study I propose in this paper – shale gas in Poland – the construction of futures is closely linked to the concepts of technoscientific promise and sociotechnical imaginary. In both cases I show that nationally centred narratives and the promise of larger energy autonomy, together with the ability of mastering modelling instruments, have acquired these visions of the future a performative power, enabling their proponents to mobilise people and means to their materialisation, and contextually leading to the dismissal of alternative solutions.

With :

Roberto Cantoni, Sciences Po-CERI

Discussant: Pierre-Benoit Joly, INRA-IFRIS

Academic coordinator : Benoît Pélopidas (Sciences Po-CERI)

Séminaire en français et en anglais