Mobilities in Remote Places

Since the launch of this journal ten years ago, the field of mobilities research has developed at a rapid pace. In this editorial introduction we explore how this development has been curated, how the field has evolved, and what maturation might mean for mobilities research. After reviewing how early editorials encouraged particular trajectories of development within mobilities research, we introduce the paper in this special issue, which build upon and re-shape key discussions that have emerged in the last decade. Drawing out issues of power, interdisciplinarity, social processes and futures, the papers raise important questions about not only how understandings of mobilities are changing, but also how the field of mobilities research is itself on the move. Taking up these themes, we examine how understanding mobilities research as a field, following Bourdieu (1984), contributes to considerations of the potential for future struggles, fragmentation, and sub-disciplines. We argue that the open nature and strategic diversity of the mobilities field has fed the successes of the past decade, and therefore needs to remain a priority in the future – with a careful balance curated between convergence around key themes and the exploration of varied ‘internal goods’ (MacIntyre 1985) which remain an important source of inspiration and creative potential within the field.

2017

Th e mobilities framework off ers a particularly informative and potent paradigm through which to draw together interdisciplinary scholarship about the present world. In this introduction-and indeed, derived from a symposia on mobilities in a dangerous world-we explore the dynamics of contemporary mobilities through a critical focus on "dangerous" spaces and places. We discuss the potential of a sustained dialogue between mobilities studies and our focus on risk, adversity, and perceptions of danger. Although disasters link to four of the articles, ideas are expanded to draw on the multiple scales of risk and danger in everyday life within and across an array of international contexts. In this special issue, dynamic mobilities are facilitated by ships, skateboards, buildings, art, and cities; they are also encountered in darkness, in light, and through bodies as well as physical and imagined movements.

2018

This book review focuses on guidebook handbook of mobilities.

Introducing Human Geographies, 2013

Introducing Human Geographies is a comprehensive, stimulating and innovative introduction to human geography. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to build upon the success of the acclaimed first edition. Now in full colour and with sixteen new chapters, discussion points and glossary definitions in the margin, it is even more accessible.

2013

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2015

This paper explores discrepancies between the founding assumptions of mobile and ubiquitous computing in the western world, and the starkly different experiences of mobility and infrastructure to be found in many postcolonial environments. Based on a field study of forced mobility and technology use among populations displaced by the Hatirjheel waterfront development project in Dhaka, Bangladesh, we make two basic arguments. First, we point to the partial nature of assumptions around mobility that frame the imagination of mainstream HCI research, and argue that different and heretofore residual experiences of mobility must also be accounted for in post-colonial and other marginal computing environments. Second, we document four forms of infrastructural experiencedispossession, reconstitution, collaboration, and repairthat characterize real-world engagements with infrastructure in such settings. We conclude with implications for HCI research and design, and reflections on how HCI researchers might better account for such experiences in their work.

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2011

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 accessib...

Proceedings from the Annual Transport Conference at Aalborg University

project aims to contribute to the field of sustain mobility in rural areas. Where rural areas traditionally have been embossed by an individual car-based automobility, this project focus to investigate how the city of Lihme can transform into a more sustainable mobility future. By using the 'Motility' framework by (Kaufmann, Bergman, & Joye, 2004), and including the citizens from Lihme through a survey, it has enabled this project to research Lihme within the science of 'Mobilities Turn'. This science evolves mobility, as something more than just going from A to B compared to more conventional way of approach the science of mobility, that focuses more upon the physical structures.This project is designed in a both qualitative and quantitative research style, as it uses a survey as the main methodological approach, where the respondents were allowed to elaborate on their reasoning and mobil-ity behavior. Furthermore, the project is done using the hermeneutic philosoph...

Methodologies of mobility: Ethnography and experiment , 2017

2020

Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systems - DIS '08, 2008

Mobile technologies are deployed into diverse social, cultural, political and geographic settings, and incorporated into diverse forms of personal and collective mobility. We present an ethnography of transnational Thai retirees and their uses of mobile technology, highlighting forms of mobility that are spatially, temporally, and infrastructurally anchored, and concepts of the house as a kinship network that may be globally distributed. We conclude in pointing out several ways in which our observations and analysis can influence design.