Meanings Of Mobility

Things travel around the globe: they are shipped as mass consumer goods, or transported as souvenirs or gifts. There are infinite ways for things to be mobile, not only in the era of globalisation but since the beginning of time, as the earliest traces of long distance trading show. This book investigates the mobility of things from archaeological and anthropological perspectives. Material Objects are characterised by temporal continuity, embodying a prior existence with lingering effects. Yet the material continuity disguises the transformations they may undergo, which only become evident upon closer examination. Objects are in perpetual flux, leaving visible traces of their age, usage, and previous life. While travelling through time, objects also circulate through space, and their spatial mobility alters their meaning and use with respect to new cultural horizons. As objects transform through time and space, so does the value attributed to them. Mapping out itineraries of value in the realm of the material, allows us to grasp the nature of a given social formation through the shape and meaning taken on by its valued 'stuff'. It also provides insights into the nature of materiality, through the value ascribed to objects at a given point in time and space. This edited volume brings together studies of material culture, materiality and value, with regard to the mobility of objects, with the aim of tracing the ways in which societies constitute their valued objects and how the realm of the material reflects upon society.

As everything from immigration, airport security and road tolling become headline news, the need to understand mobility has never been more pertinent. Yet ‘mobility’ remains remarkably elusive in summary and definition. This introductory text makes ‘mobility’ tangible by explaining the key theories and writings that surround it. This book traces out the concept of mobility as a key idea within the discipline of geography as well as subject areas from the wider arts and social sciences. The text takes an interdisciplinary approach to draw upon key writers and thinkers that have contributed to the topic. In analyzing these, it develops an understanding of mobility as a relationship through which the world is lived and understood. Mobility is organized around themed chapters discussing – 'Meanings', 'Politics', 'Practices' and 'Mediations', and the book identifies the evolution of mobility and its implications for theoretical debate. These include the way we think about travel and embodiment, to regarding issues such as power, feminism and post-colonialism. Important contemporary case-studies are showcased in boxes. Examples range from the mobility politics evident in the evacuation of the flooding of New Orleans, xenophobia in Southern Africa, motoring in India, to the new social relationships emerging from the mobile phone. The methodological quandaries mobility demands are addressed through highlighted boxes discussing both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Arguing for a more relational notion of the term, the book understands mobility as a keystone to the examination of issues from migration, war and transportation; from communications and politics to disability rights and security. Key concept and case-study boxes, further readings, and central issue discussions allow students to grasp the central importance of ‘mobility’ to social, cultural, political, economic and everyday terrains. The text also assists scholars of Geography, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Planning, and Political Science to understand and engage with this evasive concept.

Over the past twenty years, elite colleges and universities enacted policies that reshaped the racial and class composition of their campuses, and over the past decade, Latinos’ college attendance notably increased. While discussions on educational mobility often focus on its perceived benefits – that it will ultimately lead to social and economic mobility – less attention is paid to the process of “making it” and the challenges low-income youth experience when navigating these elite spaces. In Meanings of Mobility, sociologist Leah C. Schmalzbauer explores the experiences of low-income Latino youth attending highly selective, elite colleges. To better understand these experiences, Schmalzbauer draws on interviews with 60 low-income Latino youth who graduated or were set to graduate from Amherst College, one of the most selective private colleges in the United States. The vast majority of these students were the first in their immigrant families to go to college in the U.S. She finds that while most of the students believed attending Amherst provided them with previously unimaginable opportunities, adjusting to life on campus came with significant challenges. Many of the students Schmalzbauer spoke with had difficulties adapting to the cultural norms at Amherst as well as with relating to their non-Latino, non-low-income peers. The challenges these students faced were not limited to life on campus. As they attempted to adapt to Amherst, many felt distanced from the family and friends they left behind who could not understand the new challenges they faced. The students credit their elite education for access to extraordinary educational and employment opportunities. However, their experiences while in college and afterward reveal that the relationship between educational and social mobility is much more complicated and less secure than popular conversations about the “American Dream” suggest. Many students found that their educational attainment was not enough to erase the core challenges of growing up in a marginalized immigrant family: many were still poor, faced racism, and those who were undocumented or had undocumented family members still feared deportation. Schmalzbeauer suggests ways elite colleges can better support low-income Latino students and lower the emotional price of educational mobility, including the creation of immigration offices on campus to provide programming and support for undocumented students and their families. She recommends educating staff to better understand the centrality of family for these students and the challenges they face, as well as educating more privileged students about inequality and the life experiences of their marginalized peers. Meanings of Mobility provides compelling insights into the difficulties faced by low-income Latinos pursuing educational and social mobility in America’s elite institutions.

Bringing together the leading authors currently working at the intersection of social science and transport science, this volume provides a companion to the well-established and extensive international Transport and Society series. Each chapter, and the volume as a whole, offers closer and richer consideration of the issues, practices and structures of multiple mobilities which shape the current world but which have typically been overlooked or minimised. What this approach seeks to do is not only draw attention to many new areas of research and investigation relating to mobile lives, but also to point to new theories and methods by which such lives have to be researched and examined. Such new theories and methods are relevant both to rethinking 'transport' studies as such but are also recasting 'societal' studies as 'transport' so that it comes out of the ghetto and enters mainstream social science.

Scholars from various disciplines have used key concepts to grasp mobilities, but as of yet, a working vocabulary of these has not been fully developed. Given this context and inspired in part by Raymond Williams’ Keywords (1976), this edited volume presents contributions that critically analyze mobility-related keywords: capital, cosmopolitanism, freedom, gender, immobility, infrastructure, motility, and regime. Each chapter provides an historical context, a critical analysis of how the keyword has been used in relation to mobility, and a conclusion that proposes future usage or research.

"The book has two aims. First, it demonstrates the common ground between the fast-growing fields of environmental history and mobility studies in terms of subject matter, theoretical approaches, and methodology. Second, it shows how mobility--the movements of people, things, and ideas, as well as their associated cultural meanings--has been a key factor in shaping Canadians' perceptions of and interactions with their country. Approaching the burgeoning field of environmental history in Canada through the lens of mobility reveals some of the distinctive ways in which Canadians have come to terms with the country's climate and landscape. The collection seeks to accomplish these aims with a broad scope: a series of case studies that span Canada's diverse regions, from the closing of the age of sail in the late nineteenth century to post-World War II automobile culture. Chapters examine a wide range of topics, from the impact of seasonal climactic conditions on different transportation modes, to the environmental consequences of building mobility corridors and pathways, and the relationship between changing forms of mobility with tourism and other recreational activities. The contributors employ a number of methodologies, including the use of traditional archival sources (correspondence, government reports, business ledgers, publicity materials) as well as historical geographic information systems (HGIS), qualitative and quantitative analysis, and critical theory."--

This book investigates how practices of community carsharing are influencing everyday mobility. It argues that hegemonic practices of automobility are reconfigured through practices of community carsharing, thereby challenging capitalist mobilities in the realm of everyday life. Through a detailed empirical study of practices of community carsharing and its practitioners in the rural regions around Munich, Germany, this book reveals how the practice contributes to the emergence of alternative automobile practices, meanings, identities and subjectivities. It also explores the embedding of automobility into its ecological context, the connection of function and community in practices of community carsharing and the changing of ownership relations through a process of commoning mobility. This reconfiguration of everyday practices of automobility takes place through processes of everyday resistance, re-embedding and commoning, and ultimately results in the emergence of an alternative mobility culture, thereby facilitating the dissemination of an alternative common sense of community carsharing. This book on community carsharing provides a valuable insight into carsharing in rural settings and exemplifies how carsharing specifically, and sharing mobilities in general, can contribute to a social–ecological mobility transition. The work will be of particular interest to scholars and practitioners working in mobility studies and mobilities.

The contemporary urban experience is defined by flow and structured by circulating people, objects, and energy. Geographers have long provided key insights into transportation systems. But today, concerns for social justice and sustainability motivate new, critical approaches to mobilities. Reimagining the city prompts an important question: How best to rethink urban geographies of transport and mobility? This original book explores connections – in theory and practice – between transport geographies and "new mobilities" in the production of urban space. It provides a broad introduction to intersecting perspectives of urban geography, transport geography, and mobilities studies on urban "places of flows." Diverse, international, and leading-edge contributions reinterpret everyday intersections as nodes, urban corridors as links, cities and regions as networks, and the discourses and imaginaries that frame the politics and experiences of mobility. The chapters illuminate nearly all aspects of urban transport, from street regulation and roadway planning, intended and "subversive" practices of car and truck drivers, planning and promotion of mass transit investments, and the restructuring of freight and logistics networks. Together these offer a unique and important contribution for social scientists, planners, and others interested in the politics of the city on the move.