Traces of a Mobile Field: Ten Years of Mobilities Research

Abstract

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 papers in this special issue, which build upon and reshape 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.

Why Marx Was a Bad Driver: Alienation to Sensuality in the Anthropology of Automobility

“…The Mobilities Paradigm's roots (or "routes" (Clifford, 1997)) were disciplinarily diverse (Faulconbridge & Hui, 2016). In general, early contributions from most key participating disciplines, especially Sociology and Cultural Geography, were "constructive".…”

Re‐working mobilities: Emergent geographies of employment‐related mobility

“…In our review of recent literature that applies a mobility lens to the study of work and work‐related phenomena—especially but not exclusively within geography or the NMP—we find that it offers a kind of “critical phenomenology” (Desjarlais, ) of the geography of work: it illuminates the spatial and temporal connections between everyday lifeworlds of work and “interrelated social, discursive, and political forces” (p. 369) that condition and are conditioned by those lifeworlds. In other words, starting with mobility as the thing to be understood (rather than merely “as a constituent of larger social processes”; Faulconbridge & Hui, , p. 3) helps us to build a geography of work and employment as lived in context and as experienced in increasingly complex spatio‐temporal arrangements interlaced with changing forms of power and inequality (Hislop & Axtell, ; Kelly, ). This is what we dub re‐working mobilities .…”

“…The new mobilities paradigm (sometimes called the new mobility studies or the mobility turn) asserts that while people have always been “on the move,” what is different about the late 20th and early 21st centuries is the centrality of mobilities of all kinds and scales to political, economic, and social life (Cresswell, ; Hannam, Sheller, & Urry, ). John Urry (), a sociologist and one of the key figures in the development of the NMP, went so far as to posit that mobility now defines what we take to be “the social” (see also Adey, ; Faulconbridge & Hui, ). While mobility research was by no means new to geography, what Urry and colleagues in geography and sociology kickstarted just over a decade ago was a revised way of comprehending and “curating” research on mobility (Faulconbridge & Hui, , p. 3).…”

“…John Urry (), a sociologist and one of the key figures in the development of the NMP, went so far as to posit that mobility now defines what we take to be “the social” (see also Adey, ; Faulconbridge & Hui, ). While mobility research was by no means new to geography, what Urry and colleagues in geography and sociology kickstarted just over a decade ago was a revised way of comprehending and “curating” research on mobility (Faulconbridge & Hui, , p. 3). Now a key term in geography , the interdisciplinary mobilities field is wide and diverse.…”

Understanding the positioning of “the electric vehicle consumer”: variations in interdisciplinary discourses and their implications for sustainable mobility systems

“…Yet it also sets up particular challenges. As Faulconbridge and Hui (2016) discuss, some of these challenges relate to the production of knowledge itself, and how academics within the field interact around shared themes or approaches. Challenges also exist in terms of how particular concepts and approaches might be brought together, the extent to which they provide coherent or competing analyses of social dynamics, and the consequences of acting on the basis of these analyses.…”