Sociotechnical imaginaries (STIs) are widely used in the ERSS literature, but their origins in the field of science and technology studies (STS), and the implications of their migration into ERSS, are not well theorized or thoroughly appreciated. We take as our starting point that the STI concept is an offshoot of co-production, the simultaneous production of natural and social order. We resituate STIs in relation to that origin story within co-productionist STS to enhance its analytic power in relation to energy research. We parse STIs along three dimensions of co-productionist analysis: integration, symmetry, and reflexivity. We then contrast the analytic purchase offered by STIs, grounded in co-production, with another popular STS approach, actor-network theory (ANT), by looking at two exemplary cases of the energy transition in the global South.

Through these case studies, centering on the introduction of solar power in Senegal and India, we argue that a better theorized invocation of STIs, as mechanisms of co-production, can detect aspects of sociotechnical transitions that remain obscure unless they are illuminated through the meaning-making dimension of STIs. We use STIs to show that in global transitions to sustainability the discourse of renewable energy has privileged the transition’s material and technological dimensions over its cultural and sociopolitical ones. In particular, the STI lens brings to light alternative visions of sustainable lives based on ideas and practices of renewal that long predated the arrival of solar power, and are at risk of dying in the new political economy of renewables.

社会技术想象 (STI) 在 ERSS 文献中被广泛使用，但它们在科学和技术研究 (STS) 领域的起源，以及它们迁移到 ERSS 的影响，没有得到很好的理论化或彻底的理解。我们的出发点是 STI 概念是共同生产的分支，是自然和社会秩序的同时生产。我们将 STI 与合作制作 STS 中的原始故事相关联，以增强其与能源研究相关的分析能力。我们沿着共同生产主义分析的三个维度解析 STI：整合、对称和反身性. 然后，我们通过观察全球南方能源转型的两个典型案例，将基于联合制作的 STI 提供的分析购买与另一种流行的 STS 方法——行动者网络理论 (ANT) 进行对比。

通过这些案例研究，以在塞内加尔和印度引入太阳能为中心，我们认为，更好地将 STI 调用作为共同生产的机制，可以检测到社会技术转型的各个方面，除非通过意义阐明它们，否则这些方面仍然模糊不清。 - STI 的制作维度。我们使用 STI 来表明，在向可持续发展的全球转型中，可再生能源的话语优先于转型的物质和技术层面，而不是其文化和社会政治层面。特别是，STI 镜头揭示了基于更新思想和实践的可持续生活的替代愿景，这些想法和实践早于太阳能的到来，并且在可再生能源的新政治经济中面临消亡的风险。