Article ID: CBB183913124

The Making of Power Shortage: The Sociotechnical Imaginary of Nationalist High Modernism and Its Pragmatic Rationality in Electricity Planning in Taiwan (September 2018)

unapi

High modernism, the dominant sociotechnical imagination in postwar Taiwan, manifested in tacit answers to the questions of what a better society would look like and the most pragmatic and viable approach to make the particular dreamed-of future become reality. This article explores the exclusion of alternative energy futures brought about by a high modernist imaginary. This imaginary underlies a strategy of emphasizing shortage at present and prosperity in the future—as long as the current shortage is solved in a reliable way. Focusing on the contention over energy supply between 2011 and 2015, this article provides an analysis of how power shortages are presented in discursive ambiguity, how the claimed crisis over the electricity shortage moves to the center of public debate via the institutional practices of power rationing, and how its public authority is established through collective witness. Renewable energy is continually represented as an “immature” and “unviable” technology when it comes to satisfying the nation’s need, through particular routinized practices in the calculation of “reserve margins” in electricity planning and the collective witnessing of (limited) operating reserves. We argue that both of these come with their own assumptions and political implications and therefore invite scrutiny.

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Authors & Contributors
Tidwell, Abraham S.D.
Smith, Jessica M.
Sovacool, Benjamin K.
Jasanoff, Sheila
Noam Bergman
Maxime Polleri
Concepts
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Imaginaries
Sociotechnical systems
Technology and politics
Energy resources and technologies
Renewable Energy Sources
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
20th century, late
Places
Great Britain
United States
Europe
Columbia River
Western states (U.S.)
Singapore
Institutions
Google
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT
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