“Strategies that are rational at the level of the individual can lead to unintended consequences or suboptimal outcomes at group or society level, thereby creating solidarity and inequality problems”

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I would also add, strategies that are rational at local level can lead to unintended consequences at national or international level, thereby creating territorial based solidarity and inequality problems. Well, I am right now thinking in my abstract for the nex midterm conference of the European Sociological Association research network “energy and society”:

Since the oil crisis and continuing until the mid-eighties, many projects to exploit natural resources on a large scale were carried out in the United States and Europe. Due to the demographic and economic boom, the phenomenon became known as energy boomtown, having received the attention of many sociologists up to date, but mainly from the American environmental sociologist William Freudenburg. His legacy is now essential to understand the social impact of large scale energy projects, but also suggests how regional factors play a crucial role in the configuration of energy national strategies. By mean a case study, this paper aims to test and further develop the William Freudenburg theory on the addictive character of the economies that someday harboured a large scale energy project, that is, boomtowns. After having performed seventeen semi-structure interviews, the discourse analysis reveals the existence of both political and trade union forces that struggle to keep the old power plant opened while hoping to live a new boom effect by attracting new large scale projects. The formers know about the electoral benefits and the latter would have more difficult its action in a more dispersed labor market. Results suggest that the implementation of energy transition national strategies is also subjected to the influence power of certain local and regional forces on the central government.

Both solidarity and inequality problems are solved as far as there exist concessions from individuals by mean the creation of norms, a important dimension of social capital.