The EU’s competing sociotechnical imaginaries of defence, innovation and industry

Organised by

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• Department of Political and Social Sciences
• GGP: Global Governance Programme

Martins and Mawdsley (2021) argued that from the 1960s onward, the EU gradually developed a sociotechnical imaginary around defence technology and innovation that eventually materialised in the European Defence Fund (EDF). While responding to fears about defence technological gaps with the US was one driver, it was a vision shaped by decades of comparative peace and security. Since the inauguration of the EDF, the renewed Russian invasion of Ukraine and the realities of inter-state war on the European continent have challenged this vision of the future. While Thierry Breton and other predominantly French actors have tried to adjust the vision of the EDF to what he calls a war economy, other alternatives have emerged and challenged this view. Sismondo (2020) suggests that to be analytically useful in STS, sociotechnical imaginaries need to have stability, but that, in reality, many are contested and flexible. What happens when competing sociotechnical imaginaries collide at a time when urgent decisions need to be taken that could reshape the future? The paper examines the contestation process and asks whether the sociotechnical imaginary retains analytical utility in moments of intense contestation.