In search of the language of legitimation: framing the value of contested city objects in Nizhny Novgorod

The paper inspired by the ‘cultural turn’ in social movement studies seeks to comprehend the role of value orientations and discursive practices in grassroots activism, and analyzes the logics and rhetorical tools that urban activists and their opponents use to legitimize their positions in conflicts around city objects. It also studies how conflict participants construct (or reject and dismiss) the value of these contested objects. L. Boltanski’s and L. Thévenot’s pragmatic sociology and, in particular, their classification of ‘orders of worth’ serves as the theoretical framework of the research. Empirically, the paper focuses on two cases from Nizhny Novgorod where the urbanites attempted to protect city parks: Avtozavodskiy park of culture and recreation, and park ‘Switzerland’. A characteristic feature of the cases is that both parks are not only public greenspaces, but also formally recognized cultural heritage sites, which makes it possible to expect a wide-ranging repertoire of legitimation tools both from the proponents and the opponents of the transformations of these city territories. Relying on a collection of semi-structured interviews with conflict participants as well as publications in social media and regional news outlets, the author applies SKAD to reveal how the actors articulated the value of parks (or the lack of such), and what orders of worth they resorted to in their narratives. The analysis reveals the shaping of the discursive repertoires of justification specific for different parties to urban conflicts, and demonstrates the controversial role of the green worth in these repertoires.