Speaker
Description
The research for this contribution was prompted by the following question. If the management of public transport relies on technical knowledge, does it deserve to be called technocratic? For the tekhne, I draw on Thorsten Veblen's theoretical justification of the difference between engineers and financiers. For the kratos, I attract the anarchist critique of authority. This contribution argues that the epistemic superiority of a particular knowledge lies in the procedures of bureaucratically organised knowledge production. Empirical observations from the reopening of the trolleybus system in Prague show that the decision-making process was influenced by more than a century of tradition in building and maintaining transport systems and was supported by the available procedures. In addition, this contribution aims to draw attention to the need not only to dream of desirable futures, but to see how they can be realised under conditions of procedurally imposed power.
Biography
Egor Muleev is a PhD candidate and research associate at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography. Before moving to Germany in 2020, he worked as a researcher at the Institute of Transport Economics and Transport Policy Studies. He started his career in the field of transport and mobilities studies in 2011 and has been involved in various research projects since then. He holds an MA in Sociology.
