Ross Wallace's research while affiliated with ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and other places

To understand social issues and practices such as those related to climate change and technological change that are clearly future-oriented-collectively experienced events that are "not yet"-and co-constructed by different actors, we need nuanced conceptualizations of how people think about, negotiate and co-create futures that allow us to understand not only what people (can) think and do about future-related issues but also how that happens, what for and with which implications. However, so far, one of the key theoretical approaches that has conceptualised how people make meaning in situations of change and uncertainty the socio-psychological social representations theory (SRT)-has not often engaged with the future or with different forms of temporality. By contrast, the French pragmatic sociology of engagements and critique (PS) has engaged with these notions, conceptualising them in relation to materiality and a plurality of moral orientations-two dimensions often seen as key to how collective futures are made and imagined. To offer a more nuanced and systematic conceptualization of how people represent the future and with what consequences, this paper will present, compare and synthesise SRT and PS, as a first step towards This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

This report seeks to provide a reflection on the research completed within the network by combining the accumulated knowledge of the MISTRAL network on key social acceptance variables and key papers addressing them, providing a ‘travel guide’ to social acceptance research for those embarking on research on social dimensions of renewable energy and the energy transition. In the last section of this report, you can also find research conducted by the MISTRAL-ITN Early Stage Researchers. This acts as a guide for a range of key concepts commonly used in research on the special acceptance of renewable energy.