1st Edition

The Mobilities Paradigm Discourses and Ideologies

    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    Over the last two decades, the conceptualisation and empirical analysis of mobilities of people, objects and symbols has become an important strand of social science. Yet, the increasing importance of mobilities in all parts of the social does not only happen as observable practices in the material world but also takes place against the background of changing discourses, scientific theories and conceptualisations and knowledge. Within the formation of these mobilities discourses, the social sciences constitute a relevant actor. Focussing on mobility as an object of knowledge from a Foucauldian perspective rather than a given entity within the historical contingency of movement, this book asks: How do discourses and ideologies structure the normative substance, social meanings, and the lived reality of mobilities? What are the real world effects of/on the will and the ability to be mobile? And, how do these lived realities, in turn, invigorate or interfere with certain discourses and ideologies of mobility?

    Discourses and Ideologies of Mobility – An Introduction

    (Marcel Endres, Katharina Manderscheid and Christophe Mincke)

    Part A: MOBILITY AND NORMATIVITY

    1. From Mobility to its Ideology: when Mobility becomes an Imperative

    (Christophe Mincke)

    2. Identity Construction and Mobility in Pilgrims’ and Travelers’ Writings: Contemporary Reports about the Way of St. James and the Hippie Trail

    (Frank Neubert)

    3. Instrumentalising the ‘Mobility Argument’: Discursive Patterns in the Romanian Media

    (Camelia Beciu and Mirela Lazar)

    4. The Discursive Accomplishment of Rationalities in the Automobility Regime

    (Laura Bang Lindegaard)

    Part B: MOBILE SUBJECTS

    5. Who does the move? Affirmation or de-construction of the solitary mobile subject

    (Katharina Manderscheid)

    6. Passengers without Havens? Discourses on the Hypermobile Subject and Self-Conceptions of Frequent Travellers

    (Marcel Endres)

    7. ‘Inappropriate’ Europeans. On Fear, Space, and Roma Mobility

    (Birgitta Frello)

    Part C: MOBILISED INFRASTRUCTURES

    8. For the power, against the power: the political discourses of high-speed rail in Europe, the United States and China

    (Ander Audikana and Zenhua Chen)

    9. Small Technologies and Big Systems

    (Thomas Birtchnell and John Urry)

    10. From the Urban Planning Discourse to a Circulation Dispositif - An Epistemological Approach to the Mobility Turn

    (Pauline Wolff)

    Biography

    Marcel Endres is a PhD Candidate at Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany.

    Katharina Manderscheid is Lecturer at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland.

    Christophe Mincke is Operational Head Criminology at the National Institute for Forensic Sciences and Criminology and Professor at the Saint-Louis University in Brussels, Belgium.

    'An in-depth examination of how discourse constitutes mobilities is long overdue, and this book fills that gap in mobilities scholarship in an evocative and convincing manner. It is a must-read for scholars and students seeking to understand the power of movement and circulation across space and time.’

    Tim Schwanen, University of Oxford, UK

    'Marcel Endres, Katharina Manderscheid and Christophe Mincke’s book tackles the ideological dimension of mobility - far too often overlooked - with great finesse. It is an essential contribution to current debates in the social sciences on the role and importance of mobility in social relations.’

    Vincent Kaufmann, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland