Social Acceptance: Beyond Criticism and Critical, a Call for Experimental Ontology

This chapter looks back at our own research practice about the social acceptance of renewable energy technologies (RET) and reflects on the articulation between our practice and the way in which we conceptualize social acceptance. We do so based on our own work about French onshore wind power development over the past fifteen years. We examine the factors that influenced the course of our research work, we retrospectively distinguish between three ways in which we have addressed acceptance issues, and discuss this evolution in relation with the academic field of social acceptance of RET. This allows us to reflect on the dynamics of this academic field and to conclude that a different relation and engagement of social science researchers with the fieldwork is called for.