Mobility intersections: social research, social futures

Abstract

This special issue seeks to deepen conversations at the intersections between mobilities research and a number of adjacent fields. Contributions explore how mobilities research has emerged and travelled along with a range of approaches concerned with the lived production of socio-material orders, such as science and technology studies, non-representational and feminist theory, critical and speculative design, and cosmopolitanism, to name but a few, while also intersecting with many applied fields, such as transport planning and policy, disability studies, or disaster response. The field of mobilities research has grown by connecting different epistemological frames, and offering new post-disciplinary approaches to complex interconnected phenomena. In pausing to reflect on these mobility intersections, we suggest that mobilities research is integral to a broader project of transforming the social sciences that is currently underway

From spatial turn to mobilities turn

“…However, the mobilities paradigm departs from this earlier tradition in part because of its far more transdisciplinary emphasis on cultural mobilities, meaning, representation, affect, and embodied social practices as much as the large-scale political and economic geographies that were the focus of the spatial turn. This means that it has found intersections with many other disciplines and a wide range of epistemological approaches (Büscher et al, 2016).…”

Inclusion by live streaming? Contested meanings of well-being: movement and non-movement of space, place and body

“…In this article, we have studied how the ideological discourses and practical actions that aimto increase well-being through art-based approaches can be understood from the perspectives of mobilities and immobilities (Urry 2000(Urry , 2007Büscher, Sheller, and Tyfield 2016;Sheller and Urry 2016). In the case analysed, real-time access in the form of live-streaming resulted in complex relational dynamics between individuals and institutions.…”

Movilidad urbana y personas mayores en Santiago de Chile: el valor de integrar métodos de análisis, un estudio en el barrio San Eugenio

“…Debido a su naturaleza agregada, las evaluaciones de accesibilidad no logran considerar de manera eficaz características, necesidades y preferencias de distintos grupos (una excepción es Steiniger, Fuentes, Villegas, Ardiles, Rojas y Poorazizi, 2017), mientras que los tradicionales instrumentos de la planificación de transporte (por ejemplo, las Encuestas Origen-Destino y Análisis Costos-Beneficios) reiteran un enfoque en la planificación de la movilidad basada en la demanda más que en la necesidad de quienes habitan un territorio (Martens, 2006). A pesar de varios llamados para investigar y planificar la movilidad con distintas metodologías (Büscher, Sheller & Tyfield, 2016;Pucci & Vecchio, 2019;Sheller & Urry, 2006), todavía es difícil superar las barreras disciplinarias y la misma planificación del transporte sigue basándose en el conocimiento cuantitativo originado por áreas de ingeniería y economía (Schwanen, 2018).…”