PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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company Deutsche Bahn is now offering car sharing and bike rental services as part of its
company profile. 26
According to transport sociologists, another distinguishing feature of reflexive
automobility is that, in late modernity, the so-called “modern mobility paradigm” is
supposedly shaped by an increasing number of players. Beckmann (2001:51ff), for
example, argues that the exceptional power vested in the automotive industry and the
government to equip the populace with automobiles and to provide a pertaining
“modern”, i.e. functionally segregated and car-dominated transport system, is a thing of
the past. Instead of the two “big players,” industry and government(al planners), the
stage is now crowded with a host of additional “collective actors,” such as citizens’ and
environmental groups (e.g. Friends of the Earth - FOE, Greenpeace, European Federation
for Transport & Environment - T&E), rail associations (e.g. Community of European
Railways – CER), car and bicycle clubs (European Cyclists Federation - ECF), road and
industry lobby groups (European Road Federation, European Round Table of
Industrialists), as well as research institutes and think tanks (Centre for European Policy
Studies - CEPS). Interestingly, making a similar point as Mol (2000), Beckmann notes
the loss of radical voices within the environmental movement.
The network of actors within automobility also becomes denser and more tightly
woven. It is the collaboration between the former “enemies” that reforms the network.
Nowadays, car-manufacturers are working closely together with (ex-)grass-rootmovements
such as car sharing clubs. The old animosity … seems to be over. The
transformation of alternative clubs into established transport actors gains additional
impetus with the professionalisation of their services. [p.52]. 27
26
See http://www.bahn.de/konzern/holding/db_rent/dbag_call_a_bike.shtml and http://www.bahn.de/
konzern/ holding/db_rent/dbag_carsharing.shtml.
27 Beckmann links this phenomenon back to Beck’s overarching theory of reflexive modernization by
identifying the rise of these new institutions and organizations as an example of what Beck calls “the
disintegration of institutional power” which is in turn part of the “subpoliticization of late modern
societies”. Subpolitics is defined by Beck as a direct(er) form of politicking by means of “ad hoc
individual participation in political decisions, by-passing the institutions of representative opinion-