A Tale of ‘Fat Cats’ and ‘Stupid Activists’: Contested Values, Governance and Reflexivity in the Brno Railway Station Controversy

Anna Durnová
Additional contact information
Anna Durnová: LET - Laboratoire d'économie des transports - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - ENTPE - École Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'État - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut für Politikwissenschaft (Department for Political Science) - Universität Wien = University of Vienna

Post-Print from HAL

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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 2013, pp.1-17. ⟨10.1080/1523908X.2013.829749⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01365388

DOI: 10.1080/1523908X.2013.829749

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().