The Cultures of Alternative Mobilities presents a series of ethnographic studies, focusing on the local cultures of mobilities and immobilities, emphasizing the everyday sense of contingency and heterogeneity that accompanies them. Compensating for the excess of theory and criticism based on the notion of 'hypermobilities', this book sheds light on the nuanced differences and idiosyncrasies of mobility, with a view to rediscovering meanings and lifestyles marked by movement and immobility. Original, empirical and global case studies are presented by an international team of scholars, exploring the complex, negotiated and contingent nature of the social worlds of movement. By avoiding sweeping generalizations on the deeply connected and readily mobile nature of society as a whole, this volume sheds light on the diversity of mobility modes in an accessible and interdisciplinary form that will be of key interest, to sociologists, geographers and scholars of human mobility, communication and culture.
Over the past ten to fifteen years there has emerged an increasing concern with mobility in the social sciences and humanities. In Mobility, Space and Culture, Peter Merriman provides an important and timely contribution to the mobilities turn in the social sciences, encouraging academics to rethink the relationship between movement, embodied practices, space and place. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon theoretical and empirical work from across the social sciences and humanities to provide a critical evaluation of the relationship between 'mobility' and 'place'/'site', reformulating places as in process, open, and dynamic spatial formations. Merriman draws upon post-structuralist writings on space, practice and society to demonstrate how movement is not simply practised or experienced in relation to space and time, but gives rise to rhythms, forces, atmospheres, affects and materialities which are often more crucial to embodied apprehensions of events than sensibilities of spatiality and temporality. He draws upon detailed empirical research on experiences of, and social reactions to, driving in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain to trace how the motor-car became associated with sensations of movement-space and enmeshed with debates about embodiment, health, visuality, gender and politics. The book will be essential reading for undergraduates and postgraduates studying mobility in sociology, geography, cultural studies, politics, transport studies, and history.
ÔFor a thorough and thoughtful perspective on what it will take to de-carbonize cities of the future, this book is a must-read. Technology alone, we are told, will not create the post-carbon city. As important is coming to grips with a complex web of cultural, institutional, financial, and social factors that powerfully shape mobility choices, now and in the future. A balanced, holistic approach that reveals how the many elements of contemporary transport systems work together offers the best hope for achieving more sustainable, less carbon-intensive mobility futures.Õ Ð Robert Cervero, University of California, Berkeley, US ÔThis is not just another book about transport and climate change. It sensibly places transport within the much broader concept of mobility and explores all aspects of travel behaviour, of people and goods, and the infrastructure needs to serve these, leading to a balanced set of policy proposals. This volume, compiled by an internationally eminent team of researchers, is essential reading for all those wanting a balanced and objective analysis of this critical topic.Õ Ð Roger Vickerman, University of Kent, UK ÔA unique assemblage of papers by top international experts that together cover every aspect of the transport-mobility-environment relationship Ð todayÕs central issue for transport planners worldwide.Õ Ð Sir Peter Hall, University College London (UCL), UK The transport sector has been singularly unsuccessful in becoming low carbon and less resource intensive. This book takes an innovative and holistic social, cultural and behavioural perspective, as well as covering the more conventional economic and technological dimensions, to provide a more complete understanding of the mobility and transport system and its progress towards high carbon mobility. The book uses this platform to explore the means to achieve low carbon mobility through outlining alternative pathways, through an investigation of theories of change, and through alternative visions of the low carbon transport city. The bookÕs core message is that the complexity of the mobility and transport system should not encourage inaction, but strong and immediate action. In addition to implementing a wide range of policy measures, the book argues for a fundamental change in ÔthinkingÕ when it comes to transport policy, governance and analysis approaches, before low carbon mobility becomes a reality. Bringing together the latest thinking on transport, mobility and the environment, this book will appeal to researchers and students interested in sustainability issues and sustainable transport and transport related areas in particular, including policy makers as well as a more general professional audience.
Looking at health and health care in a new way, this book examines health risks and benefits as encountered 'on the move' rather than focusing on the risks and benefits incurred at fixed locations. The provision and utilization of health care is also investigated, as produced/delivered and consumed/accessed in mobile settings. Engaging with the contemporary concern with 'mobilities' this book covers many forms of movement and flow, including movements of people, disease, information and health care. The issues and problems which are considered - whether re-emerging infections, displaced persons, or the 'risks' of globalised travel - are of current and ongoing concern. Drawing on three main disciplines, geography, sociology, and epidemiology, author Tony Gatrell makes strong connections between these areas of inquiry, drawing on (for example) social theorising, geographical concepts, and epidemiological methods and data. The book will be of interest to the growing number of geographers working on the geography of health, along with social scientists involved in the mobilities 'turn'. More broadly, as issues of global public health that invariably involve the movements of people, goods, viruses and information continue to hit the headlines, the book is both timely and of policy relevance.
This book investigates how practices of community carsharing are influencing everyday mobility. It argues that hegemonic practices of automobility are reconfigured through practices of community carsharing, thereby challenging capitalist mobilities in the realm of everyday life. Through a detailed empirical study of practices of community carsharing and its practitioners in the rural regions around Munich, Germany, this book reveals how the practice contributes to the emergence of alternative automobile practices, meanings, identities and subjectivities. It also explores the embedding of automobility into its ecological context, the connection of function and community in practices of community carsharing and the changing of ownership relations through a process of commoning mobility. This reconfiguration of everyday practices of automobility takes place through processes of everyday resistance, re-embedding and commoning, and ultimately results in the emergence of an alternative mobility culture, thereby facilitating the dissemination of an alternative common sense of community carsharing. This book on community carsharing provides a valuable insight into carsharing in rural settings and exemplifies how carsharing specifically, and sharing mobilities in general, can contribute to a social–ecological mobility transition. The work will be of particular interest to scholars and practitioners working in mobility studies and mobilities.
Over the last two decades, the conceptualisation and empirical analysis of mobilities of people, objects and symbols has become an important strand of social science. Yet, the increasing importance of mobilities in all parts of the social does not only happen as observable practices in the material world but also takes place against the background of changing discourses, scientific theories and conceptualisations and knowledge. Within the formation of these mobilities discourses, the social sciences constitute a relevant actor. Focussing on mobility as an object of knowledge from a Foucauldian perspective rather than a given entity within the historical contingency of movement, this book asks: How do discourses and ideologies structure the normative substance, social meanings, and the lived reality of mobilities? What are the real world effects of/on the will and the ability to be mobile? And, how do these lived realities, in turn, invigorate or interfere with certain discourses and ideologies of mobility?
Being mobile in today's world is influenced by many aspects including transnational ties, increased ease of access to transport, growing accessibility to technology, knowledge and information and changing socio-cultural outlooks and values. These factors can all engender a (re)formation of our everyday life and moving - as and for lifestyle - has, in many ways, become both easier and much more complex. This book highlights the crossroads between concepts of lifestyle and the growing body of work on 'mobilities'. The study of lifestyle offers a lens through which to study the kinds of moorings, dwellings, repetitions and routines around which mobilities become socially, culturally and politically meaningful. Bringing together scholars from geography, sociology, tourism, history and beyond, the authors illustrate the breadth and richness of mobilities research through the concept of lifestyle. Organised into four sections, the book begins by dealing with aspects of bodily performance through lifestyle mobility. Section two then looks at how we can use mobile methods within social research, whilst section three explores issues surrounding ideas of mobility, immobility and belonging. Finally, section four draws together a number of chapters that focus on the complexities of identity within mobility. Often drawing on ethnographic research, contributors all share one common feature: they are at the forefront of research into lifestyle mobilities.
The 21st century seems to be on the move, perhaps even more so than the last. With cheap travel, and more than two billion cars projected worldwide for 2030. And yet, all this mobility is happening incredibly unevenly, at different paces and intensities, with varying impacts and consequences to the extent that life on the move might be actually quite difficult to sustain environmentally, socially and ethically. As a result 'mobility' has become a keyword of the social sciences; delineating a new domain of concepts, approaches, methodologies and techniques which seek to understand the character and quality of these trends. This Handbook explores and critically evaluates the debates, approaches, controversies and methodologies, inherent to this rapidly expanding discipline. It brings together leading specialists from range of backgrounds and geographical regions to provide an authoritative and comprehensive overview of this field, conveying cutting edge research in an accessible way whilst giving detailed grounding in the evolution of past debates on mobilities. It illustrates disciplinary trends and pathways, from migration studies and transport history to communications research, featuring methodological innovations and developments and conceptual histories - from feminist theory to tourist studies. It explores the dominant figures of mobility, from children to soldiers and the mobility impaired; the disparate materialities of mobility such as flows of water and waste to the vectors of viruses; key infrastructures such as logistics systems to the informal services of megacity slums, and the important mobility events around which our world turns; from going on vacation to the commute, to the catastrophic disruption of mobility systems. The text is forward-thinking, projecting the future of mobilities as they might be lived, transformed and studied, and possibly, brought to an end. International in focus, the book transcends disciplinary and national boundaries to explore mobilities as they are understood from different perspectives, different fields, countries and standpoints. This is an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in mobility across disciplinary boundaries and areas of study.
This unique book considers COVID-19 as one pandemic amongst many, forming an episodic era of ebbing and flowing crises: the Virocene. Investigating COVID-19 in the context of the phenomenology of the crisis, it offers critical exploration of key theses in the study of mobility and futures, travel and citizenship. Through thought-provoking and insightful analysis Rodanthi Tzanelli suggests that COVID-19, and any highly infectious virus that follows, evolves into the new self-governing principle of various forms of movement, acting as an ontological magnet: as mobilities become reshaped by remote technologies, the very order of reality changes.
