Eric Brandstedt and Georgia de Leeuw will present a draft version of an article from their research project on competing understandings of fairness in the transition to a fossil free future. For a copy of the paper, contact lena.halldenius@mrs.lu.se. The authors will introduce.

This article examines how justice claims surrounding wind and nuclear power are embedded within broader ideological and sociotechnical imaginaries in Sweden. Drawing on discourse theory and the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, the study analyses how competing understandings of fairness, legitimacy and societal development shape public attitudes towards energy technologies. The empirical material consists of semi-structured interviews with rural residents in the Swedish municipality of Falköping, where local support for wind power coexists with opposition to uranium mining. Through interpretive discourse analysis, the article identifies contrasting story-lines linking support for wind power to scepticism towards nuclear energy and uranium mining, while support for nuclear power tends to cluster with opposition to wind energy and alternative conceptions of justice and societal progress. The study argues that energy conflicts cannot be understood solely in terms of perceived risks and benefits, but must also be analysed as struggles over competing moral-political worldviews and visions of legitimate societal futures.

Find out more about Eric Brandstedt here and Georgia de Leeuw here.