From spatial turn to mobilities turn

Abstract

This article reflects on the contributions of the late John Urry to sociology and to its spatial turn especially by developing the new mobilities paradigm. The proposition of this monograph issue of Current Sociology is that space has not yet been appropriately incorporated into sociology. But although partially true, Urry argued that this misses the significance of ‘the mobilities turn’ that swept through and incorporated the spatial turn within sociology but also within other disciplines. Tracing the spatial turn back to the 1980s, the article describes how the new mobilities paradigm grew out of and extended emerging theorizations of space. It argues that Urry’s work advanced a sociology of space though his focus on mobile spatializations and relational space. This included the distribution of agency between people, places, and material assemblages of connectivity; a broader shift in the spatial imagination of mobilities towards ‘non-representational’ social theory; the emergence of new methodologies that were more eclectic, experimental, creative, and linked to arts, design, and public policy; and lastly a renewed interest in geo-ecologies, the political economy of resource flows, and the global mobilities of energy, capital, and material objects as constitutive of spatial complexity. The new mobilities paradigm furthered the spatial turn in social sciences in many crucial ways, and John Urry’s body of work on mobilities and its influence on countless adjacent research areas have spread that spatial thinking far and wide.

Mobilité et apprentissages informels des étudiants : quelles traces ?

“…En DDL, elle a longtemps été mobilisée plutôt pour évoquer un public et un contexte qu'en tant que concept apportant à la discipline, alors qu'à nos yeux, elle demande à être rattachée à une conceptualisation de l'apprentissage. En effet, la mobilité, entendue comme une manière de comprendre et de vivre le monde (Adey, 2010), est aujourd'hui centrale pour la constitution de la vie sociale (Sheller & Urry, 2006 ;Sheller, 2017 ;Cresswell, 2006 ;Kaufmann, 2002). Nous envisageons ainsi la mobilité comme une cinétique sociale (Cresswell, 2006) : les mouvements des êtres humains sont socialement structurés par des conventions, des institutions, des valeurs qui proviennent de la société.…”

“Mobile (nomadic) cultures” and the politics of mobility: Insights from Indigenous Australia

“…In part, this proliferation reflects the dramatic escalation in the speed and scale of mobilities over the past three decades as a result of major technological advancements and increased global interconnectedness (Merriman et al., ). Work within the mobilities literature includes analyses of corporeal mobilities and travel, but extends beyond this remit to also consider the movement of objects, as well as imaginative, communicative and virtual travel (Sheller, ; Sheller & Urry, ).…”

Producing the natural: Mobilities and the managed aesthetics of nature

“…Importantly, these aesthetics are produced materially while they are established discursively. Aesthetic nature is emplaced through various forms of “mobility.” Articulated in recent scholarship by geographers and sociologists such as John Urry (Sheller & Urry, ; Urry, ), Mimi Sheller (, , ), and Timothy Cresswell (, ), the still‐burgeoning, interdisciplinary literature on “mobilities” posits an understanding of place as constructed through motion, rather than a static conception where social processes occur in fixed space. For Cresswell (, p. 3), “movement” is to mobility as abstract, undifferentiated “space” is to social, meaningful “place.” In other words, mobility is “socially produced movement.” John Urry () writes of five basic types of mobility for the purposes of analysis: corporeal (the movement of bodies), mobility of objects, imaginative mobility, virtual mobility, and communicative mobility.…”

“…Aesthetic nature is emplaced through various forms of "mobility." Articulated in recent scholarship by geographers and sociologists such as John Urry (Sheller & Urry, 2006;Urry, 2007), Mimi Sheller (2014Sheller ( , 2016Sheller ( , 2017, and Timothy Cresswell (2006Cresswell ( , 2010, the still-burgeoning, interdisciplinary literature on "mobilities" posits an understanding of place as constructed through motion, rather than a static conception where social processes occur in fixed space. For Cresswell (2006, p. 3), "movement" is to mobility as abstract, undifferentiated "space" is to social, meaningful "place."…”