Sociologies (Oct 2020)
Faire de la recherche collaborative : quelle sociologie dans le cadre d’un living lab ?
Abstract
The rise in global energy needs and the fight against climate change require the redefinition of the energy model around the issue of sobriety and the production of renewable energies. This article proposes to question the implementation of transition actions in France at the local level (Burgundy and Normandy) by looking at the case of hydrogen as an energy vector with a strong potential for decentralization and even citizen appropriation. We draw on experiences of "democratization" of energy through the living lab approach, which involves the active participation of different audiences around hydrogen, and which makes researchers actors committed to the approach participants like others. Halfway through the process, it appears that this original approach is encountering obstacles in reconciling its technical premises and the collaborative ethics of "doing" with which it is most often associated: hydrogen does not appear to be a "convivial" energy. Consequently, the question of the advent of a technical democracy through transition experiments is (at least momentarily) postponed in favor of the realization of projects whose playful dimension should eventually open up ethical and political questions that question researchers in the social sciences and humanities as well: should they work on transition or for transition?
