A tale of ‘fat cats’ and ‘stupid activists’: contested values, governance and reflexivity in the brno railway station controversy

ABSTRACT

The article explores one of the biggest controversies over sustainability in modern Czech history, a protracted conflict over whether the Brno railway station should be re-built in a new location. By examining the language of the interaction between a ‘modernizing discourse’ and a ‘sustainability discourse’, the article highlights reflexivity as analytic enterprise that bares the governance dimension of policy conflicts. The reflexive analysis focuses on how actors justify their positions, how they distinguish themselves from their opponents and how they express trust in their own group. It reveals that both discourses are not only related to the re-location issue per se, but that they entail contested notions of legitimate knowledge and modes of governance. Since such power contest is common in sustainability controversies, the reflexive analysis suggests a novel analytical agenda for addressing policy conflicts in sustainability issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Brno railway station
• Czech Republic
• discourse
• French discourse linguistics
• participation
• reflexivity

Acknowledgements

The fieldwork research has been supported by the Laboratoire d'Economie des Transports at Ecole Nationale des Travaux Publiques de l'Etat, Université de Lyon. I would like to thank Matěj Hollan for providing me access to the actors of Railway Station in the Centre and Petr Duchoň for enabling me to get access to public officials at Brno town hall. In order to avoid partiality of the paper none of them have had access to the results of my research yet. I am very grateful to Peter Feindt and Sabine Weiland for their valuable comments and discussions that have accompanied the production of this paper. I am also grateful to Graham Walker, Thomas König, Margo Huxley, Matthias Delori and Philippe Zittoun for their comments.

Data

Quoted Policy Documents

Cityplan. (2007). Comparative multi-criterion analysis of conceptions to renovate railway in Brno, Cityplan s.r.o (Technical University Prague). Retrieved October 2011, from http://www.europointbrno.cz/index.php?nav01=6299&nav02=8067&nav03=8089&nav04=9883

ČTK. (2007). Přesun nádraží v Brně je zřejmě definitivní; souhlasí i ČSSD, Press release of the Czech Press Agency, 7 September 2007.

DG Environment. (2012). Organisation chart of the Directorate General for the Environment. Retrieved January 2012, from http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/environment/directory.htm

EURICUR. (1997). ‘The high-Speed rail: servicing the planning and development of Europe's metropolitan cities, comparative study of strategies for accommodating the high-speed train in urban environments’. Summary report of EURICUR, European Institute for Comparative Urban Research, Erasmus University Rotterdam, May 1997.

European Commission. (2011). Guidelines of the EU structural fund and cohesion fund. Retrieved April 2011, from http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docoffic/official/regulation/newregl0713_enhtm

Ministry of Transport. (2006). Minutes of the meeting between the European Commission and Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Finances and Department of the Administration of Railway Transport, 20 September 2006.

RSC. (2013). Coalition Railway Station in the Centre. Retrieved June 2013, from http://www.nadrazivcentru.cz/index.php

Strategy Office. (2006). ‘Strategy for Brno’, policy documents of the Brno town hall's Strategy Office, December 2006.

Strategy Office. (2009). ‘Brno builds a new city’ (2009), ‘10 reasons for re-building the railway station’ policy documents of the Brno town hall's Strategy Office.

Quoted Newspaper Articles

Issues of the national daily and weekly newspaper as well as the local press published from 2003 through June 2010 were analysed for this project.

Jaký je vlastně názor většiny? Rovnost, 18 October 2004

Přestavba ŽUB, Haló Brno, XI/10, 2004, p. 14.

Radnice zneužívají ‘svoje’ média ve velkém, Reflex, 16/15, 2005, p. 18.

Referendový večerník. Vydáno občanskou koalicí Nádraží v centru, 3 October 2004.

ROVNOST. Zvláštní vydání k referendu o přesunu nádraží. 10 October 2004.

V Brně se konalo největší referendum, Haló Brno, roč. XI., č. 10, 2004, s. 1.

Zelení stavbu nezdržují, to zpackaná výběrová řízení, MF Dnes, 22 July 2006.