Methodologies Of Mobility

Research into mobility is an exciting challenge for the social sciences that raises novel social, cultural, spatial and ethical questions. At the heart of these empirical and theoretical complexities lies the question of methodology: how can we best capture and understand a planet in flux? Methodologies of Mobility speaks beyond disciplinary boundaries to the methodological challenges and possibilities of engaging with a world on the move. With scholars continuing to face different forms and scales of mobility, this volume strategically traces innovative ways of designing, applying and reflecting on both established and cutting-edge methodologies of mobility.

In the twenty-first century, more than ever, everything and everybody seems to be on the move. Global flows of people, goods, food, money, information, services and media images are forming an intensely mobile background to everyday life. Social scientists, too, are on the move, seeking new analytical purchase on these important aspects of the social world by trying to move with, and to be moved by, the fleeting, distributed, multiple, non-causal, sensory, emotional and kinaesthetic. Mobile Methods addresses the challenges and opportunities of researching mobile phenomena. Drawing on extensive interdisciplinary discussion, the book brings together a collection of cutting-edge methodological innovations and original research reports to examine some important implications of the mobilities turn for the processes of ‘research’, and the realm of the empirical. Through analysis that addresses questions such as ‘how are social relationships and social institutions made in and through mobility?’, and ‘how do people experience mobility in twenty-first century world cities?', the authors mobilize sociological analysis, bringing new insights and opening up new opportunities for engagement with contemporary challenges. This book is a key text for undergraduate and postgraduate students of disciplines including Human Geography, Social Policy, Sociology and Research Methods.

"This multiple-volume publication advances the emergent field of mobile computing offering research on approaches, observations and models pertaining to mobile devices and wireless communications from over 400 leading researchers"--Provided by publisher.

"This book explores the latest empirical research and best real-world practices for preventing, weathering, and recovering from disasters such as earthquakes or tsunamis to nuclear disasters and cyber terrorism"--Provided by publisher.

Mobility aims to take the pulse of this enormously expanded and energetic field. It explores the breadth of the disciplinary areas mobility studies now encompass, examining the diverse conceptual and methodological approaches wielded within the field, and explores the utility of mobility to illuminate a cornucopia of mobile lives: from the mass movements of individuals within global processes such as migration and tourism, to homelessness and war; from the entangled relations caught up in the movement of disease, people and aid across borders, to the inability of someone to cross over a road. The new edition explores the more sustained elaboration of mobility studies within a wide variety of disciplinary approaches and subject matters. It echoes the growing internationalization of mobility research, reflected in diverse case studies from the Global South, South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and so far under-represented perspectives from China, Australasia, post-socialist Eastern Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere. The book also features an additional chapter on mobility studies, to survey and explore the diverse quality of the field, and methodologies, in order to reflect the growing diversity of methodological approaches to mobilities, from walk-alongs and critical cartography to the mobile arts. The book offers an accessible reading of the way mobility has been tackled and understood, neatly exploring and summarizing a topic that has exploded into different variations and nuances. The text allows scholars and students alike to grasp the central importance of ‘mobility’ to social, cultural, political, economic and everyday terrains by providing accessible writings on key authors within key ideas and case study boxes, suggested further readings and summaries, while at the same time making a significant contribution to scholarly writings and debates.

Developments in technologies have evolved in a much wider use of technology throughout science, government, and business; resulting in the expansion of geographic information systems. GIS is the academic study and practice of presenting geographical data through a system designed to capture, store, analyze, and manage geographic information. Geographic Information Systems: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a collection of knowledge on the latest advancements and research of geographic information systems. This book aims to be useful for academics and practitioners involved in geographical data.

This collection investigates the relationship between mobilities and social justice to develop the concept of mobility justice. Two introductory chapters outline how social justice concepts can strengthen analyses of mobility as socially structured movement in particular fields of power, what new justice-related questions arise by considering uneven mobilities through a social justice frame, and what a ‘mobile ontology’ contributes to understandings of justice in relation to 21st century social relations. In 15 subsequent chapters authors analyze the material infrastructures that configure mobilities and co-constitute injustice, the justice implications of ‘more-than-human’ movements of food and animals, and mobility-related injustices produced in relation to institutional acts of governance and through micro-scale embodied relations of race, gender, class and sexuality that shape the uneven freedom of human bodily movements. The volume brings numerous scales, types and facets of mobility into conversation with multiple approaches to social justice, to theorize mobility justice and reimagine social justice as a mobile concept appropriate for analyzing the effects and ethics of contemporary life.

The ‘mobile turn’ in human geography, sociology and cultural studies has resulted in a hitherto unparalleled focus on the critical role that mobility plays in conserving and regenerating society and culture. In this instance, ‘mobility’ refers not just to the physical movement of goods and peoples, ideas and symbols; it can also be analytically applied to the technologies used to facilitate their movement. One such technology is education, which has yet to fall the under the purview of the mobility lens – something that this collection endeavours to redress. Its contributing authors, drawn from Canada, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, explore salient issues relating to education and mobility. These include studies of the career implications for academics of moving across borders; the impact of university study on prison populations; policy mobility and the charter school movement; affect theory and policy development in Canada; educational advertising on Sydney trains and stations; and the employment mobile approaches to track policy development and implementation. One notable feature of the mobility turn is the willingness of its adoptees to explore innovative research methods. Variously demonstrating the efficacy and cogency of autoethnography, affect theory, textual ethnography and human geography for a mobility-empowered education analytics, this collection is no exception. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Education.