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moreICCS WPS 14 Railways and Trains. A Set of Relations
Author/Speaker｜Céline Belledent
Publication Date｜2019-12
Abstract
Behind train journeys and their contemplative representations of the movement in literature and cinema, a set of relations affecting the space and the people travelling, seems a field worthy of interest for social sciences to grasp some social transformations in their movements. This article focuses on the regional train line in between Saint-Étienne and Lyon. This particular line is one of the busiest in France outside Ile-de-France. It is also historically the first line opened to transport goods (metal, coal, wood…) in 1832. This article deals with a diachronic and synchronic approach. It envisions how railways have been, in the 19th and 20th century, a colossal project to “implement progress and development” all over the colonial empire and the French metropolis. Do this past still influences the railways policies? This means of transportation is, from its starts until now, entangled between apparently contradictory governmentalities as public service and private profits. Beyond these institutional structures and the concept of “mobility” developed in the early 21st century how daily transportation habits are reconfigured by urban development and globalization. Some observations made in the stations on the regional line, will help to envision the diversity of interactions, travelling modes and the different heterotopias in which one travels – the ones prescribed by the station settings, the ones resulting from securitarian policies, the ones driven by personal motto. This work is a work in progress which intend to map socially a modern technic in its social developments, the power and the affects it distributes, produces and reproduces.