The test of social acceptability, or the conflictual composition of the collective

Sometimes contested and poorly theorized, the notion of social acceptability nevertheless tends to impose itself in various sectors of activity. This article makes the bet that it may be relevant to keep it and to use it as a “boundary expression” allowing to communicate with many actors. But this concession is redoubled by an ambition of theoretical consolidation which must integrate a concern of symmetrization of the load of acceptability of a project: this one cannot rest only on a recalcitrant society to educate and to convince, it must also put back in play the design of the project. The article is based on the analysis of spatialized conflicts around environmental utilities. It is at the crossroads of the STS and pragmatist approaches: this conceptual framework is chosen because it allows the study of the composition of a collective (the social world extended to its constitutive materiality) without presupposing any asymmetry between social and technical negotiations. The test of acceptability concerns more precisely the problematic compatibility between two sets that the conflict renders temporarily indeterminate: a socio-technical device on the one hand, one or several concerned groups on the other. The article interprets this test of acceptability as a civic regulation of a technical project, completing the basic regulation of which it is normally the object. Finally, it extends the use of this notion with an operational perspective, by proposing a possible third-party guarantor to pilot this test and to draw lessons democratically from it.