Mobilities

in contemporary societies increasing wealth is attended by increasing mobility, and increasing mobility increases priviledge. 

mobility distinctions are also deeply gendered- men and women have diff experiences of rootlessness & fixity including the hardships or forced movement & the privileges of free movement
mobility through space is clearly affected by physical ability most of te world's population slive in built environments that are designed unrealistically for a physically unimpaired population. - everyone on crtuches or in a wheelchair, dealing with the infirmities of age are seriously disadvantaged in day-to-day mobility 

a parent maneuvering a baby carriage through the contemporary city will encounter limitations and same obstacles. 
the design of public spaces, facilities and transportation clearly favours the most phyiscally fit, nonchildbearing segment of the population- exclusion 

exclusion - feminist geographer Veira Chouinard who uses a motorized wheelchair spoke of how she is unable to access her office independtly despite the campus maps saying this area is wheelchair accessible- msg that presence of disabled colleagues and students not important

economic status important in determining who gets around and how they do

Transportation choices reflect class & income differences

wealthier people move through space easier - wealthy people fly- poor people bus.

"Upward mobility" - as personal income increases choices of transportation expand

more effort, time, thought and commitment for a person in poverty to get around 

the difficulties of mobility that accompany poverty make it hard to get out of the poverty cycle. 

Women constitute the largest proportion of all people in poverty

mobility may be framed as a poverty issue- a woman's issue

low incomes restrict women's mobility in all societies and especially in societies that depend on private transportation. 

•Look at what it means when Geographers talk about ‘mobilities’

•Explore why the ‘mobilities turn’ has been helpful for Geographers (and how it could be helpful for you too!) what is meant by the mobilities turn 

•Focus on two main approaches to mobilities within Geography:

–The power and politics of mobilities - looking at the way mobilities are practiced and experienced

•The practice (or experience) of mobilities

–The relationship between mobilities and place - through a case study on tourism

•Focus on tourism

•Show you how a focus on mobilities can enable you to develop a new, more sophisticated and geographical understanding of the world around you. •Get you using ideas from the ‘mobilities turn’ as tools to help you develop this understanding. •re think how you feel about space and place  use tools to help you develop geogrpahical understanding 
give examples- help cement this build confidence to think like a geograper and ask itnresting questions about the word around you pioneering women and cumberland sausage.

•Sociologists John Urry & Mimi Sheller but also Geographers – Tim Cresswell and Peter Adey •Idea that “the social world is constituted by  mobilities of people and objects, flows of  information and materials, all entangled together” (Adey  p.791) •Focus on geographies of movement and flow. it's called a mobilities turn because it means this is a new approach which is so transformative in the way that geographers are thinking about things, it is it's own era- new category of experience.  think about movements and flows of people, flows of information- before geographers werent thinking abot movement  concept became crucial to how geographers understand the world- landmark way of thinking  John Urry 2002 associated most closely with the mobilities turn   core meaning of the mobilities paradigm is that the social world is made up of mobility, flows of objects, materials, people- looking at geography as movement and flow.

•What sorts of movements and flows might geographers be interested in?

movements of people- human trafficiking, tourism, migration- refugees & asylum seekers

flows of info- advertising 

flows of images associated with tourism 

traffic and travel- transportation

flows of electricity- information, iPad, social networking - some more virtual than others

virtual flows of information part of this genre too. 

•Exploratory use of mobile phone technology to assess the impact of traffic related air pollution on children on the journey to school.

- can map where air pollution is worst and how much exposure children get to pollution on their school journey -multi-methods way of understanding impact of children's mobile lives on their journey to school  •Children, flood and urban resilience - storyboards- move out of homes, live in caravan - children have to be chooled in different place, diffeent bus or cycle journey to school - interviewed and storyboards links  •The tourist g(r)aze:  Understanding place and identity though holiday food and drink- how this links to people's identities and their sense of place, do people want to eat loal food or go to mcdonalds

A fantastic source of research papers, ideas, inspiration, events and the ‘Mobilties’ journal. Well worth reading and exploring for dissertation ideas •http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/centres/cemore/

•Mobilities are integral to everyday life (e.g. work and family)- mobilities are a crucial part of everyday life  •“They are both socially constructed – shaped by social relations of various sorts – and socially constitutive – shaping our social worlds” (Adey p794)  essentially mobilities shape society but they are also in turn shaped by it- circular thing  railways one of the factors that formed identity in Britain- railways developed and connections opened up natural- people began to see themselves as British.  The railways also transformed time- different cities had diferent times- when the railways came and they joined up different cities - this led to the standardisation of time.  transformed people's ideas about holidays and leisure time- the railway network shaped society and as people got used to using the railway they were used to being mobile- car made it possibly for people to be mobile whenever they like. over time the railway enabled the car to take over our social lives, family relationships wouldnt be the same without flows of people, flows of objects and flows of information   

the smartphone ability it gives us to have conservations with friends simultaneously- shaped society what it means to have social relationships with people-
more apps developed to help people become connected
- this has woven the smartphone closer to our lives- co-evolution fo society and mbility, made the smartphone inegral to our lives. 

memes people tagging each other in photos- friendship 
- emoticons - facebook reactions - emotional geographies 

•Focus on two main approaches to mobilities within Geography: –The power and politics of mobilities •The practice (or experience) of mobilities –The relationship between mobilities and place

“Mobilities involve the production and distribution of power” (Creswell 2010)

idea that mobilities inevitably aren't equal in the distribution of power - inequality and social justice link into this strongly. 

Ways in which mobilities have power 

How?  1. Through the ways in which mobilities are represented -- CEO his mobility is encouraged, moves easily through time and space. on the other hand, the homeless person who has a mobile life because he has no fixed abode - forced to have a mobile life - people don't want him there, see his presence as threatening- forced to be mobile. his mobility is represented differently, he is represented as problematic. 

Migrants and the media in nineteenth-century Liverpool - looking at how migrants are represented in the media, Irish migrants stigmatised unwelcome, their movement viewed as problematic- how particular groups can be stigmatised with their mobilities represented in negative ways

“Mobilities involve the production and distribution of power” (Creswell 2010)

How?

2. Through the way in which mobilities are practiced and experienced

-Mobilities are also embodied… Which is to say they are experienced differently by different people in particular places Mobilities involving people are always being done by someone-

exactly the same journey can be experienced differently by a man or woman, peope from different ethnic classes, age groups

•Poulton-le-Fylde: genteel market town by day, but it’s another story at night… - toxwn experienced differenty be different people at different times weekends thriving nightlife- lots of people. Older people wouldn't go out at night, worried and scared about the fact it was a rowdy place at night didn't feel safe gooing out at night. Younger person might find Poulton different during the day- boring

Feministis and mobilities- crusading for aviation in the 1920s- questioned what it meant to be a woman 

“Mobilities involve the production and distribution of power” (Creswell 2010)

How?

3.Through the way in which priorities are given to some mobilities over others

https://vimeo.com/72980283 - priortities get given to some form of mobilities over others e.g. space users- cyclists and car drivers - cyclists being vulnerable in space- mobilities research opens the doors to different geographical methods beyond questionnaires. 

There is a lot of academic research on this topic as well 

“Mobilities involve the production and distribution of power” (Creswell 2010)

So, things to look out for are:

•How do mobilities differ?  •How are these differences structured by – and how do they feed into – wider forms of social difference, such as class, race, gender and physical impairment? and how are the influences structured by or perhaps contradicting wider forms of sical difference- mobilities can act in a way that reinforces these differences of levels them out .

How does a focus on mobilities affect our understanding of place?

•Spaces of mobility as ‘non-places’ ? (Augé 1995) - places like motrway servie stations, airports are non-places transient, people pass through these places quickly, no one has any sense of belonging towards these places. this idea most people disagree with now becasuse through the mobilities paradigm we understand that places aren't static , places are made up of flows of people, so places are actually made by mobilities  •Places as bounded? Or as confluences of flows, made by mobilities? How a focus on mobilitis affects our understanding of place 

•1998 Adam Millard-Ball (Edinburgh University) - Gentrification in Stockholm: Social change, tenure change and residential mobility in a mixed economy •Places make – and are made by – mobilities, which leads us on to… mobility and how that ffected a place- concept that places make and are made by mobilities. Case study: tourist mobilities  •Tourism is a major form of mobility in the modern world
•Geographers study: –the imaginative geographies associated with tourism from the media, advertising, we hace images about what the place will be like- in collective minds there is an image of a place which happens before tourism takes place.
–The changes to the social spaces and places that result from tourism –the practice of tourism has big impacts on different spaces and places Tourist mobilities make and remake spaces and places- literally. 

•Urry’s ‘tourist gaze’ – a socially organized way of looking at different scenes and landscapes that are out of the ordinary Tourists will look at tourist landscapes in a particular way, something that is different out of the ordinary - looking for particular things because we have imaginative things and expectations of what a place is like.  •Tourists look for particular things – their imaginations of places are important because they form expectations that structure their experiences on holidays •What sorts of things might a tourist look for on a visit to the Lake District? already before anyone has travelled anywhere we're starting to structure our activities 
Lake District- what would tourists look for, green hills, big lakes, quaint villages, food- Cumberland sausage •Food, place and authenticity: local food and the sustainable tourism experience. region that has ideas about particular food associated with it- Cumberland is now being protected- can't call any other sausage a cumberland sausage unless it is made in Cumbria. Sims, R. 05/2009 In: Journal of Sustainable Tourism. 17, 3, p. 321-336. 16 p.

•These can be both positive and negative… Food can be identified with a particular place- tourist mobilities - shark fin soup bad - jobs for local people - can also make a place dependent
- support cultura and heritage  - locals develop new skills, languages - help to regenerate areas - regeneration  BAD 
gentrification- original residents can't afford to live here
The image trap - can be excluding for people who don't associate themselves with this image. 
Damaging space and environment- case of megatourism  Tourist bubble- tourists don't integrate or expect another culture to accommodate their food needs- change a place to become like home 

•Show you how a focus on mobilities can enable you to develop a new, more sophisticated and geographical understanding of the world around you.

•Get you using ideas from the ‘mobilities turn’ as tools to help you develop this understanding.

•So the key take-home message is that mobilities are varied and this variation is not neutral – they are shaped by, and shaping, forms of power and privilege

Mobilities not innate, socially constructed

Tourist mobilities remake spaces and places

Tourists escape 'need 4 break' - take a break

Brochures and guidebooks promote exploration 'cultural other'

Desire to tour shaped imaginative geog

Tourism shapes thinking about the world & experience

Tropical Island economy relies on tourism, yet environmentally damaging

Tourism infiltrates places, marginalising them

Touring geographies contribute shrinking/growing cities - influence political, cultural, natural boundaries due toabiliy to shift mass mobilities

Commonplace summer migration - Europeans to Meditteranean 

Transforming geography of this basin and coasts- whilst making regions dependent on tourism economic survival