The wind-farm developer: a new green expertise connecting métier and profession

The environmental protection debate is rising, involving both public opinion and the political sphere. Indeed there is widespread awareness of the need for a sustainable reconfiguration of the connections between economy, environment and society.1 Ecological Modernization is one of the main theoretical frameworks hammering out new green scenarios. However, to this day, sustainable reconfiguration looks like a fragmented and diversified process of social innovation. This is due to the fact that innovation emerges in specific and situated contexts, as the result of a continuous process of networking between different actors involved in an unstable negotiating process. Similarly, new sustainable configurations imply a process of co-evolution of complex socio-technical systems allowing the emergence of new functionalities, enhanced by institutions and organizations, as well as social practices. The research here presented shares with other sociological analyses a focus on economic action in eco-sustainable markets (Osti 2008).3 Indeed markets are more and more influenced by environmental regulations, as in the case of green certifications and the related standards. Sometimes companies have made their economic action “sustainable” because it was a source of social prestige and an element of competitiveness. However, the process of embedding environmental issues in the productive system is redefining the economic context, albeit timidly. This article presents a particular dynamics of innovation (related to new dynamics of professionalisation), in a specific sector of the green economy (wind farms). This sector is characterized by an important diffusion of plants and a significant impact on the labour market, in particular with the rising of new expert workers and paths of professionalisation.