The emergence of energy communities entails the development of alternative energy systems, where consumers become active participants in the complex networks of material and semiotic actors. This paper looks at how local sociotechnical imaginaries are performed on island of Gotland, in Sweden. Grounded in Science, technology and society studies and co-production theory, this study provides a framework analysis of a set of documents and an interview, through the identification of conflicting visions, or sociotechnical imaginaries, of energy transition locally. The Swedish energy system is adapting slowly to the changing environment, and conflicts have emerged between national and local imaginaries. Here, the literature fails to provide satisfying arguments around political processes leading to the creation of alternative visions of energy futures. This study shows how normative orientations shape and are shaped by each other, and how alternative visions of progress often fail to be actualized and performed as long as they exist in combination with dominant visions. The two imaginaries, on one side the dominant, on the other the radical, fail to come to terms with each other because of the structural inadequacy of a system dominated by a political rationality which is unaware of itself.

Ein Gespenst geht um in der Welt: Das Gespenst der Ideologie. Nach den diversen diskursiven Verschiebungen der vergangenen Jahre liest man diese altehrwürdige Vokabel wieder öfter: Sei es als Stigmawort für die Position des politischen Gegners, als Fachausdruck in politischen Leitartikeln oder allenthalben als Füllwort oder Floskel. Gleichzeitig erfuhr das epistemologisch orientierte Konzept Ideologie in der englischsprachigen Forschung eine ungeahnte Renaissance und reifte somit zu einem mächtigen Analyseinstrument für (politische) Weltanschauungen und alltägliche Überzeugungen heran. Das Promotionsprojekt unternahm den Versuch, eine Neubegründung des Terminus für die Linguistik zu wagen. Der Ideologiebegriff wird durch tiefenhistorische theoretische Reflexion und angewandte sprachanalytische Modellierung für eine kulturwissenschaftliche interessierte Forschung operationalisiert, um eine neuartige Methode für die qualitative und quantitative Untersuchung von Weltanschauungen bereitzustellen. Dabei wird ein selbstentwickeltes Verfahren angewandt, das die Fallstricke der bisherigen linguistischen Arbeiten zum Ideologiebegriff zu vermeiden sucht. Zu den untersuchten Sinnkontinenten gehört ein großes Korpus anarchistischer Texte, stilprägende Texte des Maoismus, das Gesamtwerk von Rosa Luxemburg, die rechtsextreme Online-Enzyklopädie Metapedia sowie der Katechismus der Katholischen Kirche. Erstmals erprobt für die Sprachwissenschaft wurde das Verfahren der diffraktiven Lektüre nach Karen Barad, wenn Textausschnitte verschiedener Herkunft durch_einander gelesen wurden, so konnten verblüffende und unvorhersehbare Ergebnisse erzielt werden. / A specter is haunting the world: the specter of ideology. After various discursive shifts in recent years, this venerable term is once again being used more frequently—whether as a stigmatizing label for the position of a political opponent, as a technical term in political editorials, or often as filler or cliché. At the same time, the epistemologically oriented concept of ideology has experienced an unexpected renaissance in English-language research, maturing into a powerful analytical tool for understanding (political) worldviews and everyday beliefs. This doctoral project attempted to propose a redefinition of the term for linguistics. The concept of ideology is operationalized through a deeply historical theoretical reflection and applied linguistic modeling for research with a cultural studies focus, aiming to provide a novel method for the qualitative and quantitative investigation of worldviews. In doing so, a self-developed approach is employed, seeking to avoid the pitfalls of previous linguistic work on the concept of ideology. Among the examined “continents of meaning” is a large corpus of anarchist texts, formative texts of Maoism, the complete works of Rosa Luxemburg, the far-right online encyclopedia Metapedia, as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. For the first time in linguistics, the method of diffractive reading, as proposed by Karen Barad, was tested. When excerpts from texts of various origins were read through each other, surprising and unpredictable results were achieved.