When the Time Never Comes : Temporal Mobilization and Temporal Tensions in a Nascent Solar Energy Field

Studies show how actors successfully engage with temporal mobilization, understood here as purposeful attempts to harmonize temporal perceptions across different field communities, to foster cross-community engagement with rising issues. These studies predominantly focus on established fields where organizations are prone to adopt similar rhythms and timeframes for action. Less is known about how temporal tensions emerge and develop between communities over temporal mobilization attempts and how they influence mobilization processes. We address this through a four-decade qualitative investigation of temporal mobilization in a nascent solar energy field. Our findings show how temporal mobilization polarizes asynchrony in community engagement, based on the “imprinting” of early temporal mobilization attempts and the emergence of conflicting perceptions of the nature of progress in the field among communities. We present a process model that explicates how asynchrony recurs and polarizes as an unintended inter-community dynamic, resulting in repeated breakdowns in the mobilization process.