Nationell kraft och lokal motkraft : En diskursanalys av konflikten kring SwePol Link

Sammanfattning: Facility siting conflicts are increasing in our society. This is a study of a HVDC-link between Blekinge, Sweden and Slupsk, Poland called The SwePol Link. This link has transferred electricity between the two electricity systems since the year 2000 and the decision making process can be described as a struggle between conflicting interests. The aim of this study is to investigate where in the decision making process conflicting interests become visible, and how the actors involved have acted and argued in order to try to influence the process to benefit their respective causes. This aim is further developed through a discourse analysis of the variety of arguments, ideas and conceptions that in different situations of the process construct patterns and statements. The purpose of the discourse analysis is to identify and categorize patterns and statements that are expressed in three chosen practices; the concession practice, the court practice and the practice concerning the debate articles and editorials published in Blekinge Läns Tidning during the period 1996-2000. This practice is referred to as the mass media practice in the study. It is clear that the conflict deepens and that the system-builders and critical actors (including Blekinge Läns Tidning) started to distrust each other and their respective ways of acting during the process. Both supporters and critics used scientific and juridical enrolments in order to try to strengthen their positions in the conflict. Both scientifically and juridically formulated arguments were central patterns in the discourse. This was also the case with technically formulated arguments. These patterns of arguments were mainly expressed through academics, or experts, for or against the system and might thereby be looked upon as rather exclusive ways of arguing in the practices. One exception from this was, for example, when fishers argued against different scientific results on the basis of their experiences. This was, however, not a very successful way of criticizing scientific results. The study shows that there, for example, were conflicts around the meaning of a sustainable energy system, where a central system-builder pattern meets a peripheral systemcritical pattern and both sides held themselves as arguing for a sustainable energy system. Another result of the study is that the discourse varied depending on which practice it was expressed in. It became clear that holistic perspectives regarding a sustainable energy system or the landscape as such became peripheral in all of the “formal” practices, where the decisions regarding the system took place. These types of holistic patterns were mainly articulated in other practices like the mass media.