Mapping Controversies over a Potential Turn to Quality in Chinese Wind Power

The thesis inquires into dynamics and controversies of constructing a market for wind power in China. Inquiring into what the thesis dubs a quality crisis in Chinese wind power after years of high growth rates, and into a potential turn to quality, the thesis traces such current ambiguous winds of change with point of departure in the notion of global innovation networks (GINs). Thus, it looks into how international collaborations on critical components, such as software programmes, play a critical role in the qualification of wind power as a ‘sustainable’ renewable energy source. However, with a structural rather than micro-relational or processual lens, the existing GIN literature is claimed to be ill-equipped to grasp the genesis, dynamics, and agency of GINs. To fill this gap, the thesis develops a situational, constructivist framework based in Science and Technology Studies, which renders a processual and relational understanding of GINs as part and parcel of market construction. It does this by initially ‘looking away’ from the original metaphor of GINs, with the result of effectively reconceptualising it. This is done by illustrating the dynamics and the agency of GIN genesis through a mapping of controversies over issues of Intellectual Property Rights, standardisation, money, and cost and price calculations, entangled in a Chinese ‘system problem’ of stateowned actors and a Chinese experimental pragmatism of market construction, which has had unintended effects. Tracing one potential GIN taking shape around a critical component, the thesis also contributes to the GIN literature through a new methodological approach. Illustrating the potentially disruptive dynamics of GIN construction, and how the emerging GIN around software programmes possesses disruptive agency in regard to the framing of the emerging Chinese wind power market, the thesis sheds light on some of the socio-material work needed to construct and maintain GINs and the markets it co-constitutes and is co-constituted by, as well as the negotiated roles, identities, and positions of actors in a developmental context of China. The thesis coins the seemingly particular Chinese mode of market construction within wind power a fragmented and experimental ‘pragmatics of (green) market construction’, with its agile responses to emerging issues. Last, to overcome the dualism between structural and processual accounts, the thesis draws on the pragmatist notion of figuration (Elias, 1978). After demonstrating a potential figurational change reflected in the ongoing turn to quality, the thesis also considers the implications that the inquiry has for other related literatures, hereunder proposing a new research agenda for New Economic Sociology to understand market and GIN construction in a developmental context, which holds a promise for inquiring into China’s self- and other-disruptive, yet potentially path-creating modes of development and upgrading

Introducing the lens of markets-in-the-making to transition studies:The case of the Danish wind power market agencement

This paper contributes to a renewed understanding of markets in transition studies by focusing on how unknown things must be ‘framed’ and pacified in order to be attributed some ‘value’ that makes them ‘matter’. We empirically analyze the making of a market agencement for wind power deployment in Denmark. Using an analytical framework of framing and pacifying, we trace three entangled ‘domains of action’ associated with the employment of (a) sociopolitical devices to enable the discursive valuation of wind power, (b) economic devices to develop price-setting models for investors, and (c) technical devices to facilitate grid integration, thereby framing wind power as socio-politically, economically, and techno-scientifically ‘valuable’, respectively. This market agencement has consistently produced concerns (i.e., overflows) requiring constant re-framing. We discuss how the lens of markets-in-the-making can contribute to transition studies. By showing how the domains of action entangle and ‘overflow’ onto each other, this study demonstrates that the relational lens of socio-technical agencements can help shed additional light on the dynamics and agency of markets in transition.</p

Introduction DASTS 2022 special issue

This STS Encounters special issue is a collection of articles that has been developed from conference papers presented at the bi-yearly Danish Association for Science and Technology studies (DASTS) conference in 2022. The conference was held at the Department of Digital Design and Information studies, Aarhus University and hosted by the STS center at Aarhus University on June 2-3. 2022. The theme of the conference was: 'Living with Ruptures: Repair, Maintenance, and (Re)Construction'.&nbsp

Tackling Chinese Upgrading Through Experimentalism and Pragmatism: The Case of China’s Wind Turbine Industry

This paper examines the development of China’s wind turbine industry, shedding light on the Chinese mode of disruptive industrial upgrading through policy pragmatism and fragmented, experimental governance. Based on a historical analysis of China’s wind turbine industry, the paper highlights three distinct phases, which are all marked by their own inbuilt and potentially self-disruptive impasses and associated crises. In turn, these impasses have forced the Chinese government into radical and flexible interventions, which have spurred on Chinese companies to creatively find new ways to develop and upgrade. The paper illustrates the transformation of Sino–foreign relations by China’s non-linear upgrading approach, particularly during the Chinese wind power industry’s quality crisis, and its development model. It also discusses the implications this examination of China’s approach has for the literatures on China, upgrading, and catch-up. Finally, the paper calls on future studies to enquire further into China’s distinct mode of industrial upgrading and its embeddedness in China’s institutional context

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