Flying lessons: exploring the social and cultural geographies of global air travel

Abstract

Geographic perspectives on civil aviation have traditionally been situated within the conceptual landscapes and languages of a transport geography in which quantitative methodologies have been to the fore. While such perspectives have shed light on the increasingly complex morphology of global air routes, this article argues such approaches tend to downplay crucial questions concerning the social production and consumption of airspace. Drawing on ideas from the newly-emergent 'mobilities' paradigm, we use this article to fl ag up some alternative geographies of air travel, arguing that socially-and culturally-infl ected perspectives can usefully reveal the iniquitous imprints of global air travel at a variety of spatial scales. We hence conclude that there is much to be gained by adopting such perspectives, and argue that work on the social dimensions of air travel is vital in a discipline where air transport is routinely described as an enabler of globalization, yet is often treated as an abstract, and oddly disembodied, space of fl ows.

The Software-Simulated Airworld: Anticipatory Code and Affective Aeromobilities

“…Adey, Budd and Hubbard (2007) subsequently identified a paucity of geographic research into the social, cultural and politically inflected dimensions of global air travel and noted that the mundane technical, operational, and logistical infrastructures supporting global aeromobility have been inadequately charted.…”

“…One body of research has started to reflect on the implications of contemporary forms of airport security and surveillance to suggest they are leading to new and increased forms of social coercion and control (Lyon 2003;Salter 2004;, while another has begun to explore aviation's destructive potential and military applications (see also Adey 2008 Stephen Graham's (2004) focus on the targeting of infrastructure by aerial warfare resonates with our own interest in the 'sunk' and invisible mediating infrastructures of software and code within the global aviation system. While the vast steel and glass monoliths of the airport system have been targeted by the contemporary ethnographer and scholar of international politics, much of the mundane processes that work to maintain the air transport system, from the screening of baggage to the production of flightplans, remain resolutely hidden and unexplored (see Fuller and Harley (2004), for an exception).…”

A Fiasco of Volcanic Proportions? Eyjafjallajökull and the Closure of European Airspace

“…An awareness of the inherent 'riskiness' of air travel is apparent in much of the emerging literature on 'aeromobility' (on which see Adey et al 2007;Adey 2010), with recent discussions identifying the threat posed by terrorism, human failings, and emerging infectious diseases. This paper has sought to build on these literatures by suggesting how a natural geological process, or 'act of God', rendered otherwise highly sophisticated aircraft impotent and called into question the illusion of human technological achievement and infallibility.…”

On being aeromobile: airline passengers and the affective experiences of flight

“…By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the ready-availability of airline route data (particularly on the Internet) enabled scholars including John Bowen (2002); Guillame Burghouwt and colleagues Hakfoort, 2001: Burghouwt et al, 2003), Matthew Zook andStanley Brunn (2005, 2006), and Ben Derudder and Frank Witlox Witlox 2005a, 2005b) to depict evolving airline networks in increasingly innovative ways at a variety of spatial scales. However, it is only within the last few years that the rich sociality of air travel has begun to be recognised (see Adey et al, 2007). In particular, research by Ken Parker (2002), Tim Cresswell (2006, and Peter Adey (2006Adey ( , 2008Adey ( , 2010 into the mundane but often 'hidden' routines of airport workers, airline staff, asylum seekers, and aircraft enthusiasts, has been instrumental in exposing the social diversity of air travel and has provided a valuable platform from which new empirical analyses of passenger aviation can be advanced.…”