An Agonistic Approach to Technological Conflict
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An Agonistic Approach to Technological Conflict Eugen Octav Popa 1
& Vincent
Blok 1 & Renate Wesselink 2
Received: 20 July 2020 / Accepted: 23 September 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Traditional approaches to conflict are oriented towards establishing (or re-establishing) consensus, either in the form of a resolution of the conflict or in the form of an ‘agree-todisagree’ standstill between the stakeholders. In this paper, we criticize these traditional approaches, each for specific reasons, and we propose and develop the agonistic approach to conflict. Based on Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democratic theory, the agonistic approach to conflict is more welcoming of dissensus, replacing discussion stoppers with discussion starters and replacing standstills with contestation. We illustrate such replacements and develop this approach, we analyse technological conflicts in a concrete R&D setting: the global hydrogen economy. From this context, we focus on the conflict between the proponents of blue hydrogen (drawn from fossil fuels) and those of green hydrogen (created through electrolysis). We conclude by highlighting the advantage of the agonistic approach but also drawing attention to its own specific risk, namely, antagonism. Keywords Conflict . Agonism . Consensus . Hydrogen economy . Chantal Mouffe
1 Introduction Technological conflict, by which we mean explicit or implicit disagreement between stakeholders regarding the development or use of a certain technology, is ubiquitous in
* Eugen Octav Popa [email protected] Vincent Blok [email protected] Renate Wesselink [email protected]
1
Department of Communication, Philosophy and Technology, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, Netherlands
2
Department of Education and Learning Sciences, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, Netherlands
E. Popa et al.
the history of technology (Frey 2019). Whether the conflict occurs between the proponents and the opponents of a technology, as in the case of public and political resistance to new designs, between the proponents of a technology and the proponents of an alternative technology, as in the case of competing designs, disagreement seems to accompany (technological) innovation in a most natural way. The question of how to deal with technological conflict is therefore of chief concern to the stakeholders involved. Recent calls for responsible research and innovation might make the question of how to deal with conflict even more urgent. For responsible research and innovation implies the participation of stakeholders from different sectors such as academia, industry, civil society and policy (Stilgoe et al. 2013; van den Hoven et al. 2014). These stakeholders will bring different worldviews and different ‘institutional logics’ to the proverbial round table (Thornton et al. 2012). Diversity might thus breed even more (or more intense) conflicts. In the case of technological hazards scholars speak of the ‘problem of many hands’ (Poel et al. 2015), i.e. the inability to a
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