Constituting the space for decision making - Conflicting calculations in a dispute over fuel choice at a local heating plant

The paper focuses on the role of economic calculations in a dispute over the use of an alternative fuel at a heating plant. Our emphasis is on the spatial effects of the calculations: on the interplay between distanciated, standardised knowledge and local interpretations. Our conclusion is that the calculations were not only passive resources for argumentation but became performative during the public dispute over the heating plant. They affected the socio-material decision-making situation by homogenising and centralising heterogeneous elements and constituting relations between them in a novel way. The performance of the calculations affected the spatial formation of the object of decision making in the way that was not in the control of the human actors. The heating plant case helps to understand the intricate nature of governing economic activities: how calculations, as technologies of governing, connect to and reshape existing socio-material relationships.