Le pouvoir constitutif des controverses vu à travers le cas du complexe de liquéfaction gazière Énergie Saguenay : les pratiques de définition du gaz naturel
Like many large industrial projects, Énergie Saguenay has generated its share of controversy. Indeed, from 2014 to today, various groups of social actors have publicly shared their conceptions of the project. They defined it in their own way, agreeing on some points and disagreeing on others. My general research objective is therefore to describe the dispute process specific to Énergie Saguenay in its rhetorical characteristics and its own effects. To account for this objective, I will mobilize three scientific literatures. First, the literature on socio-technical controversies has allowed me to conceive how on the one hand, networks of social actors are formed and evolve during a controversy and on the other, how controversies create a space for learning and expression. Second, I was inspired by problematization, the first stage of the translation model (Callon, 1986), to identify the obligatory points of passage (OPP) of the Énergie Saguenay controversy, i.e., these main issues to which the various groups of social actors must agree to seal alliances. Finally, I appealed to the theory of definition arguments put forward by Schiappa (2003) and Zarefsky (1997) to define what category of controversy Énergie Saguenay fits into and how the specific definitions of a phenomenon (in particular gas as a transition energy) participate in the formulation of OPP. Overall, my research helps capture the ways in which defining practices help us understand how, at the rhetorical level, OPPs are created in controversy. More specifically, by analyzing the briefs submitted to the BAPE by the actors who make up the social groups who had participated in the controversy, my study puts forward the different definition practices that contributed to the conceptions of natural gas that currently exist in Québec, as so many OPPs allow the actors to align or oppose each other throughout the controversy.
Énergie Saguenay GNL Québec Socio-technical controversies Definition practices transaction model public debate Liquefied natural gas and rhetorical analysis