Public engagement in zero-emission futures: a matter of care

This article explores how care as an analytical lens reframes understandings of public engagement in climate-mitigation research. The analysis draws on three living labs conducted in a technology-led research center dedicated to developing sustainable, zero-emission neighborhoods. The three living labs represented extreme variations in how the public received them and their proposals: rejection, passive disinterest, or enthusiastic acceptance. From an instrumental perspective, these outcomes are typically labeled as success or failure. We mobilize care as an analytical lens to move beyond this binary. The analysis demonstrates how care draws attention to relational attachments, ethical obligations, and ongoing responsiveness, allowing us to reinterpret the events and outcomes in these living labs. Rather than viewing disengagement and rejection as the result of misunderstandings, lack of knowledge, or unwillingness, a care lens shows how they can be understood as neglect or absence of relational attachments and ethical obligations. Similarly, acceptance is not merely a function of the merits of the proposed solution. Instead, it is viewed as situated alignment with existing care practices. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates how a care lens expands the scope of responsiveness, allowing responses that are not aimed at fixing problems to be understood as productive forces. Our findings indicate that approaching public engagement with a care orientation helps to produce new understandings of how such activities can contribute to climate-mitigation efforts.