Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities 1788115457, 9781788115452

Table of contents :
Front Matter
Copyright
Contents
List of contributors
Introduction to the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities
Part I: Motivations
1 Mobility justice
2 Mobilities and values
3 Mobilities and (un)sustainability
4 Researching the mobile risk society
5 Mobilities and social futures
Part II: Methods
6 openAnalogInput(BODY): investigating data mobilities through critical making
7 How to use time-geographic travel diaries in mobility research
8 Applying multiple and multi-scalar methods to mobilities hub research
9 Drone mobilities and auto-technography
10 Logbooks of mobilities
11 Sensory imagination as mobile method: sonic place-making on forest roads
12 Campervan ethnographies: mobile experiments and methodological manoeuvres
13 Mobility orientations
Part III: Applications
14 Mobility behaviour change programmes in France: contexts of emergence, governance, goals and impacts
15 Investigating mobilities with literary methods
16 Vital mobilities
17 Tracing human mobilities through mobile phones
18 MoVE: mobile virtual ethnography
19 Mixed mobile methods for a mobile practice: inclusive research on pilgrimage mobilities
20 Mobile visual methods
21 Fostering discursive mobilities in sustainable mobility policymaking
22 Mobilities policies: exploring momentums as urban tipping points in practice
23 The transformation of mobility: AI, robotics and automatization
24 Researching transnational family life in a mobile era
25 Family mobilities
26 Supply chains and the mobilities of cargo
Part IV: Reflections
27 Seeing into the future of mobility: the contestable value of expert knowledge and Delphi as futures methods
28 Airports as a mobile method
29 Run riot! On mobilities, life, and death (of civilisation), and the reveries of running artfully
30 Creative arts practice in mobilities
31 Simulation and preserved mobility spaces
32 Resonance of mobilities
33 Phronesis (and its potentially central contribution to mobilities research in the twenty-first century)
34 Methods of mobilities design research
35 Critical mobilities – mobilities as critique?
36 Embodied ethnography in mobilities research
37 Synaesthesia and the mobile city
38 How to dismantle a bus: planetary mobilities as method
Index

Citation preview

HANDBOOK OF RESEARCH METHODS AND APPLICATIONS FOR MOBILITIES

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HANDBOOKS OF RESEARCH METHODS AND APPLICATIONS Series Editor: Mark Casson, University of Reading, UK The objective of this series is to provide definitive overviews of research methods in important fields of social science, including economics, business, finance and policy studies. The aim is to produce prestigious high quality works of lasting significance. Each Handbook consists of original contributions by leading authorities, selected by an editor who is a recognised leader in the field. The emphasis is on the practical application of research methods to both quantitative and qualitative evidence. The Handbooks will assist practising researchers in generating robust research findings that policy-makers can use with confidence. While the Handbooks will engage with general issues of research methodology, their primary focus will be on the practical issues concerned with identifying and using suitable sources of data or evidence, and interpreting source material using best-practice techniques. They will review the main theories that have been used in applied research, or could be used for such research. While reference may be made to conceptual issues and to abstract theories in the course of such reviews, the emphasis will be firmly on real-world applications. Titles in the series include: Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Environmental Studies Edited by Matthias Ruth Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Social Capital Edited by Yaojun Li Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Transport Economics and Policy Edited by Chris Nash Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Heterodox Economics Edited by Frederic S. Lee and Bruce Cronin Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Happiness and Quality of Life Edited by Luigino Bruni and Pier Luigi Porta Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Political Science Edited by Hans Keman and Jaap J. Woldendorp Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Experimental Economics Edited by Arthur Schram and Aljaž Ule Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Comparative Policy Analysis Edited by B. Guy Peters and Guillaume Fontaine Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities Edited by Monika Büscher, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Sven Kesselring and Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen

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Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities

Edited by

Monika Büscher Lancaster University, UK

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen Aalborg University, Denmark

Sven Kesselring Nürtingen-Geislingen University, Germany

Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen Aalborg University, Denmark

HANDBOOKS OF RESEARCH METHODS AND APPLICATIONS

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

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© Monika Büscher, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Sven Kesselring and Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2020940500 This book is available electronically in the Social and Political Science subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781788115469

ISBN 978 1 78811 545 2 (cased) ISBN 978 1 78811 546 9 (eBook) Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

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Contents List of contributorsix I ntroduction to the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities Monika Büscher, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Sven Kesselring and Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen

1

PART I  MOTIVATIONS  1 Mobility justice Mimi Sheller

11

 2 Mobilities and values Malene Freudendal-Pedersen

21

 3 Mobilities and (un)sustainability Dennis Zuev and Luca Nitschke

28

 4 Researching the mobile risk society Sven Kesselring

38

 5 Mobilities and social futures Monika Büscher

50

PART II  METHODS  6  openAnalogInput(BODY): investigating data mobilities through critical making63 Fernanda da Costa Portugal Duarte  7 How to use time-geographic travel diaries in mobility research Malin Henriksson and Jessica Berg

74

 8 Applying multiple and multi-scalar methods to mobilities hub research Gunvor Riber Larsen

84

 9 Drone mobilities and auto-technography Julia M. Hildebrand

92

10 Logbooks of mobilities Larissa Schindler

102

11 Sensory imagination as mobile method: sonic place-making on forest roads Helena Krobath

111

v

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vi  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities 12  Campervan ethnographies: mobile experiments and methodological manoeuvres125 Sharon Wilson 13 Mobility orientations Konrad Götz and Georg Sunderer

137

PART III  APPLICATIONS 14  Mobility behaviour change programmes in France: contexts of emergence, governance, goals and impacts Marie Huyghe, Ghislain Bourg and Anaïs Rocci

151

15 Investigating mobilities with literary methods Anita Perkins

162

16 Vital mobilities Stephanie Sodero and Richard Rackham

172

17 Tracing human mobilities through mobile phones Siiri Silm, Olle Järv and Anu Masso

182

18 MoVE: mobile virtual ethnography Jennie Germann Molz

193

19  Mixed mobile methods for a mobile practice: inclusive research on pilgrimage mobilities Avril Maddrell

202

20 Mobile visual methods Phillip Vannini and Martin Trandberg Jensen

212

21 Fostering discursive mobilities in sustainable mobility policymaking Chelsea Tschoerner-Budde

221

22  Mobilities policies: exploring momentums as urban tipping points in practice231 Nina Moesby Bennetsen and Katrine Hartmann-Petersen 23 The transformation of mobility: AI, robotics and automatization Anthony Elliott and Ross Boyd

241

24 Researching transnational family life in a mobile era Earvin Charles Cabalquinto

251

25 Family mobilities Lesley Murray

263

26 Supply chains and the mobilities of cargo Thomas Birtchnell and Tillmann Böhme

272

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Contents  vii PART IV  REFLECTIONS 27  Seeing into the future of mobility: the contestable value of expert knowledge and Delphi as futures methods Alexander Paulsson, Fabio Hirschhorn and Claus Hedegaard Sørensen 28 Airports as a mobile method Claus Lassen 29  Run riot! On mobilities, life, and death (of civilisation), and the reveries of running artfully Kai Syng Tan

282 292

303

30 Creative arts practice in mobilities Kaya Barry

315

31 Simulation and preserved mobility spaces Lewis Charles Smith

325

32 Resonance of mobilities Samuel Thulin

335

33  Phronesis (and its potentially central contribution to mobilities research in the twenty-first century) David Tyfield

345

34 Methods of mobilities design research Ole B. Jensen, Andrea Victoria Hernandez Bueno, Shelley Smith and Cecilie Breinholm Christensen

354

35 Critical mobilities – mobilities as critique? Katharina Manderscheid

365

36 Embodied ethnography in mobilities research Maja de Neergaard and Hanne Louise Jensen

374

37 Synaesthesia and the mobile city Rodanthi Tzanelli

382

38 How to dismantle a bus: planetary mobilities as method Bronislaw Szerszynski

398

Index411

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Contributors Kaya Barry is a geographer and artist who investigates the intersections of mobility, creativity, tourism and migration. She is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Australia. Nina Moesby Bennetsen is a PhD Fellow at Roskilde University, Denmark. She has a background in transdisciplinary urban studies. Nina is former municipal project leader of mobilities planning and sustainability. She is currently part of an advisory committee for the implementation of a future light rail project in Gladsaxe, Denmark. Jessica Berg is a researcher at the Swedish national road and transport research institute. Her expert area is primarily accessibility, mobility and travel behaviour, and especially in relation to vulnerable groups, public transport and mobility as a service (MaaS). Jessica is a trained public health scientist with a PhD in ageing and later life. Thomas Birtchnell is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography and Sustainable Communities, the University of Wollongong, Australia. His books are Indovation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 3D Printing for Development in the Global South (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) co-authored with William Hoyle, and A New Industrial Future? (2016, Routledge), co-authored with John Urry. Tillmann Böhme is a supply chain management expert in the Faculty of Business at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Dr Böhme (MBA) is a collaborative multi-­ disciplinary field researcher. He has conducted applied research to a vast range of industry in Australia, New Zealand, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany. Ghislain Bourg has a PhD in psychology and is a consultant at Auxilia, a consultancy office. He works on behavioural change (commitment, social representation and norms) applied to sustainable practices such as mobility and energy savings. Ross Boyd is a Researcher at the Hawke EU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at the University of South Australia. He is currently exploring the transformative impacts of AI on work/employment, automated mobilities, I4.0 and elder care. With Robert Holton he is developing a social theoretical approach to intelligent social machines. Andrea Victoria Hernandez Bueno is an architect and urban designer, and is currently a PhD student at Aalborg University, Denmark, in the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology. She is interested in the democratization of urban spaces by improving urban mobilities and public spaces through design. Monika Büscher is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, UK. She is an Associate Director in the Centre for Mobilities Research and an Associate at the Institute for Social Futures. Her research explores the digital dimension of contemporary ‘mobile lives’ with a focus on information technology ethics and risk governance.

ix

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x  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Earvin Charles Cabalquinto is a Lecturer in Communication at Deakin University, Australia. He is also a member of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation. He was a Visiting Research at the Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) at Lancaster University in June 2019. His research expertise lies at the intersections of mobilities, migration and digital media. Cecilie Breinholm Christensen holds an MA in architecture, a minor in psychology and is currently doing a PhD on mobilities design, studying mobile embodied situations in Copenhagen metro as they are staged by its physical setting. She is affiliated with the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark. Fernanda da Costa Portugal Duarte is a digital media scholar, maker and Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Her research draws from approaches to media and cultural studies, design and media arts to investigate ways of becoming, making and knowing through and with media technologies. Anthony Elliott is Dean of External Engagement, Research Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Hawke EU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at the University of South Australia. He is author and editor of some 40 books in social theory and modern sociology, most recently The Culture of AI. Malene Freudendal-Pedersen is Professor in Urban Planning at Aalborg University, Denmark and has an interdisciplinary background linking sociology, geography, urban planning and the sociology of technology. She is co-organizing the International Cosmobilities Network, co-founder and co-editor of the Journal Applied Mobilities and the book series Networked Urban Mobilities, both at Routledge. Jennie Germann Molz is a sociologist at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, where she teaches courses on social theory, travel and tourism, global citizenship and emotion, and conducts research on questions of identity, belonging and ethics in the context of mobile togetherness. Konrad Götz studied sociology and political science in Heidelberg, Germany. He subsequently gained his doctorate from the University of Frankfurt am Main with a dissertation on leisure mobility. He has been with the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE) in Frankfurt am Main as a social research scientist since 1995. His main field of interest is social-empirical research on sustainable mobility. Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen is Research Assistant at Aalborg University, Denmark and holds a Master of Science (MSc) in planning studies and geography from Roskilde University. His fields of interest include urban studies, everyday mobilities, social mobilization, and social movements. Katrine Hartmann-Petersen is Associate Professor in Planning and Mobilities at Roskilde University, Denmark. She has a transdisciplinary background investigating interconnectedness between everyday life, urban planning and mobilities. She is a former special adviser in municipal planning departments dealing with mobilities planning in practice. She is also a member of the Cosmobilities Network taskforce.

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Contributors  xi Malin Henriksson, PhD, is a Senior Researcher at the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute. Her research concerns transport and power and qualitative approaches to mobility research. Recent projects include transport poverty in excluded neighborhoods and the governance of new mobility services. Julia M. Hildebrand is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Eckerd College, USA. Her work bridges media studies and mobilities research and has been published in journals such as Media, Culture, & Society, Mobilities and Transfers. She earned her PhD at Drexel University. Fabio Hirschhorn is a post-doctoral researcher at Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. His research focuses on the governance and policymaking of urban mobility systems. Prior to this, Fabio worked with urban transport projects with the World Bank in Washington, DC and also as a corporate lawyer in São Paulo. Marie Huyghe has a PhD in town planning and is a freelance consultant. She works on the individual mobility practices in rural areas, and analyses the impact of different tools (nudges, marketing programmes) in terms of behaviour change. Olle Järv is an Academy Research Fellow at the Digital Geography Lab, University of Helsinki, Finland. With a background in human geography and regional planning, his research interests focus broadly on human mobilities and their extraction from big data to understand social processes and phenomena – cross-border interactions, transnationalism, segregation, socio-spatial inequality and urban accessibility. Hanne Louise Jensen is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research interests are in the fields of ­mobility,  everyday life and the social production of place. Currently she is engaged in research on positive social networks in ghettoes and bridges and leisure mobility on the Limfjord. Ole B. Jensen is Professor of Urban Theory at the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark. He is deputy director and co-founder of the Centre for Mobilities and Urban Studies (C-MUS). He is author of numerous books and articles on mobilities, urban studies, and mobilities design. Sven Kesselring is a sociologist. He is Professor in Sustainable Mobilities at NürtingenGeislingen University (HfWU), Germany, co-editor of the ‘Networked Urban Mobilities’ book series (Routledge) and editor of the journal Applied Mobilities. His main research areas are sustainable mobilities, the transformation of automobilities and the social theory of the mobile risk society. Helena Krobath studies spatial narratives and colonial resource imaginaries in British Columbia, Canada. Helena presents public soundwalks, composes electroacoustic art, and collaborates with community arts projects. She co-hosts the Soundscape Show on Vancouver Co-op Radio (CFRO). Gunvor Riber Larsen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture and Media Technology at Aalborg University, Denmark. Her current research is focused on aeromobilities and airport studies. Other research interests include the challenges of being

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xii  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities mobile in rural areas with little or no public transport service provision, and the role of distance in international tourist travel. Claus Lassen is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre of Mobility and Urban Studies (C-MUS) at Aalborg University, Denmark. His research analyses changing social relations in the light of international air travel, and he has published a number of articles and book chapters on business travel, aeromobilities and airports. Avril Maddrell is Professor of Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Reading, UK. She is Co-Editor of Social and Cultural Geography, and author/co-author/ co-editor of numerous books, including Sacred Mobilities (Ashgate, 2015), Christian Pilgrimage, Landscape and Heritage (Routledge 2015), Contemporary Encounters in Gender and Religion (Palgrave 2017) and Deathscapes (Ashgate, 2010). Katharina Manderscheid is Professor for Sociology in the Department of Socioeconomics at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her work focuses on spatial mobility and the future of automobility, personal mobility in cities, conduct of life and sustainability, social inequality and social science research methods. Anu Masso is an Associate Professor of Big Data in Social Sciences at Tallinn University of Technology and Senior Researcher in Data Studies at University of Tartu, Estonia. Her research focuses on the theory of social transformations, spatial mobility and social  ­datafication. She is known for her work on social science methods and methodologies. Lesley Murray is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Brighton, UK, whose research interests centre on urban mobilities. She has published extensively in this field, including on gendered and generational mobilities, the intersections between mobile and visual methods and urban mobile spaces. Maja de Neergaard is Assistant Professor at the Danish Building Research Institute, Aalborg University Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research interests are urban theory, urban and regional planning, dwelling practices, cultural and material studies. In both  research and teaching Maja has worked with ethnographic and experimental methods. Luca Nitschke is PhD Fellow and member of the mobil.LAB Doctoral Research Group of the Hans-Böckler-Foundation at the Technical University Munich and NürtingenGeislingen University, Germany. He researches the relationship between mobilities and society in non-commercial sharing arrangements. He studied environmental sciences and environmental studies in Bielefeld, Barcelona, Aveiro, Aalborg and New York. Alexander Paulsson, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Economics and Management at Lund University, Sweden. He is currently doing research on the policy and governance of automated vehicles as well as the marketization of public transport. Together with Claus Hedegaard Sørensen, he is the editor of Shaping Smart Mobility Futures, due to be published in 2020. Anita Perkins is an independent researcher and writer based in Wellington, New Zealand, with a PhD in German from the University of Otago. Her 2016 monograph ‘Travel

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Contributors  xiii Texts and Moving Cultures: German Literature and the Mobilities Turn’ brings together mobilities studies with the cultural analysis of German literature and film. Richard Rackham has over a decade of experience as Assistant Director, Governance and Resilience for NHS Blood and Transplant. His responsibilities include coordinating EU Exit and responding to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Anaïs Rocci is a PhD sociologist, specialist in the analysis of behavioural changes towards more sustainable practices and specifically on Travel Behaviour Change programmes. She recently joined ADEME (The French Environment and Energy Management Agency) after working in research and then in a consultancy and research office. Larissa Schindler is Professor of Methods of Empirical Research at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. In her research, she focuses on mobilities, sports, bodies and qualitative research methods. She is currently conducting an ethnographic study ‘Air travel: on the embodied accomplishment of technically augmented mobility’, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Mimi Sheller is Professor of Sociology, founding Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University, USA, founding co-editor of Mobilities, Associate Editor of Transfers, and past President of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility. Her most recent book is Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes (Verso, 2018). Siiri Silm is a Senior Researcher in Human Geography and acting head of the Mobility Lab, University of Tartu, Estonia. Her fields of research include human spatial-temporal behaviour, urban spaces, social networks, segregation (ethnic, age-related) and crossborder mobility. She has participated since 2004 in developing mobile phone-based methodology and conducting research. Lewis Charles Smith is an AHRC PhD student at the University of Essex, UK. His current research examines the role of the British Overseas Airways Corporation in subverting perceptions of British national decline. He is particularly interested in modern British history, particularly twentieth-century industry, gender, advertising and the digital humanities. Shelley Smith, architect, urbanist, PhD, is an independent researcher, lecturer and writer. Her work focuses on the discovery and expression – through words, photos and film – of the potential for sensorial experience in contemporary urbanity. In addition, she develops workshops and methods for mapping, cataloguing and communicating this. Stephanie Sodero is a Canadian Banting Postdoctoral Researcher in Medical Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research focuses on how climate change disrupts vital mobilities, such as blood supply chains, that impact life chances. Claus Hedegaard Sørensen, PhD, is Research Leader at the Swedish Knowledge Centre for Public Transport (K2) and Senior Researcher at the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI). His research is focusing on transport governance and transport planning in relation to sustainability and smart mobility. Georg Sunderer studied sociology at the universities of Trier, Germany and Galway, Ireland. He has been working for ISOE as a research associate since 2010, focusing on

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xiv  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities mobility and urban spaces. His special areas of interest are the acceptance of sustainable mobility offerings, ethical consumption and social-ecological transformations. Bronislaw Szerszynski is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, UK. His research crosses the social and natural sciences, arts and humanities in order to situate the changing relationship between humans, environment and technology in the longer perspective of human and planetary history. Kai Syng Tan is Senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Art, Visiting Artist at Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, King’s College London, UK and Trustee for Music in Detention. Her work is distinct for its ‘eclectic style and cheeky attitude’ (Sydney Morning Herald), ‘radical interdisciplinarity’ (geographer Alan Latham) and ‘positive atmosphere’ (Guardian). Samuel Thulin is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of mobilities research, communication and media studies, sound studies, and critical disability studies. Thulin has a PhD in communication from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Martin Trandberg Jensen is an Associate Professor in Tourism and Mobility at the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University, Denmark. His research involves, and often combines, the sociology of mobilities, human geography and cultural studies. Chelsea Tschoerner-Budde is a consultant in the Ministry of Transport for the State of Hessen, Germany. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Freiburg. Her research integrates interpretive policy studies and mobilities research and aims to develop the knowledge and tools needed to form sustainable policies in the transport sector. David Tyfield is a Reader in Environmental Innovation and Sociology at the Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC), Lancaster University, UK. He is Executive Director of the Joint Institute for the Environment (JIE), Guangzhou and Co-Director of Lancaster’s Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) and is a co-editor of the journal Mobilities. Rodanthi Tzanelli is Associate Professor of Cultural Sociology at Leeds and Visiting Independent Scholar at CE.MO.RE., Lancaster, UK. Her interests span social theory and cultural studies, with an emphasis on intersections of tourism/migration mobilities and technology. She is author of 12 books, including Cinematic Tourist Mobilities and the Plight of Development: On Atmospheres, Affects and Environments (2018). Phillip Vannini is a Professor in the School of Communication & Culture at Royal Roads University, Canada. He is author/editor of 15 books, including Off the Grid and Ferry Tales. He is also a producer/director of films such as Life off Grid, Low & Slow, and A Time for Making. Sharon Wilson is a Senior Lecturer and researcher interested in tourism mobilities, cultural geographies and art. Adopting interdisciplinary research approaches to the study of social phenomena, she adopts experimental methodologies that seek to understand human mobility in imaginative and embodied ways. She is also the founder of the MFRN (Mobilities Futures Research Network).

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Contributors  xv Dennis Zuev is an Assistant Professor at City University of Macau, Macau SAR and Associate Researcher at CIES-ISCTE, IUL and Instituto Oriente, UL, Portugal. He conducts research in sustainable tourism, urban mobilities, Chinese studies and visual sociology. He is the author of Urban Mobility in Modern China: The Growth of the E-bike (Palgrave, 2018).

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Introduction to the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities

Monika Büscher, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Sven Kesselring and Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen

The growing field of mobilities research focuses on the flows and movements of people, artefacts, capital, information and signs on different social and geographical scales. Scholars in mobilities research are working on the physical movement of people and goods, digitalised (social) relations and communication between individuals, groups, organisations and institutions, the experience and embodiment of space in motion and dwelling, and many other subjects. Mobilities research examines the systems and practices of mobilities from different theoretical, epistemological and methodological perspectives, but with a common ontology of mobilities as the constitutive element of societies, politics and economies (Urry 2000; Sheller and Urry 2016; Sheller 2017; Jensen et al. 2019). This Handbook reflects the variety and diversity of the field in respect of research methods and applications for mobilities research, while also illuminating the multiple dimensions of mobilities, from transport to tourism, cargo to information as well as physical, virtual and imaginative mobilities. In these contexts, the motivation to make methods mobile springs from a deep appreciation of how ‘the reality is movement’ (Bergson 1911, p. 302). The new mobility paradigm (Sheller and Urry 2006) not only broadened the perspective by including social and cultural practices in the study of mobilities, but also added a new epistemological, creative, normative, public dimension to doing research. Mobile methods provide new insights by mobilising an analytical approach to the constitutive role of (im)mobilities (Büscher et al. 2010; Fincham et al. 2010). This may literally mobilise researchers in ethnographic go-alongs, as many of the authors in this Handbook describe (for example, Wilson, Chapter 12 in this volume), or metaphorically mobilise research by self-tracking (Duarte, Chapter 6 in this volume), following the mobile positioning of mobile phones (Silm et al., Chapter 17 in this volume) or through cultural analysis (Perkins, Chapter 15 in this volume), and it may mobilise research subjects in planning (Bennetsen and Hartmann-Petersen, Chapter 22 in this volume) or through phronesis (Tyfield, Chapter 33 in this volume). Mobilising research means employing the understanding of how research objects, subjects field sites and collaborators are mobile and in movement rather than geographically fixed or static. With the mobilities paradigm, interdisciplinary research and qualitative methods have come to the fore, compared with earlier traditions of mobility and transportation research (see, for example, Yago 1983; Vannini 2015). Researchers and research users engage with mobile methods, to investigate the emergent nature of reality and the way in which social and material phenomena are socially constructed and made durable in and through the intra-actions of many human and non-human agencies (Barad 2007). Currently, not only the subject of investigations but also many research collectives are on the move, bringing mobile, inventive, live methods and methodologies into different contexts, from health care to aeromobilities, tourism to urban development, and many 1

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2  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities more. This occurs by creatively engaging with the dynamics of complex systems, processes of becoming and emergence, and multi-scalar interconnections between microbial, human, animal, technological and planetary agencies. The field of mobilities research is broad in its interest, tracing social mobility, political movement, and transformations of time and space, opening up new avenues for transdisciplinary research co-creation. It is often about defining new ways of creating the infrastructure for more richly informed applications of research and collaborations, and ways of staying with the troubles of contemporary challenges (Le Dantec and DiSalvo 2013; Haraway 2016). All this builds the background for the interdisciplinary content of the Handbook. The perspective applied here is broad and deep, and the contributions of this Handbook each focus on specific aspects of the field. In so doing, each chapter highlights how interconnected and spread out the mobilities turn in social science has become during the past 20 years. The Handbook gathers and introduces a broad range of creative and explorative methods and methodologies in the field of mobilities research and its varied applications. The focus is on introducing different research approaches to broaden our understanding of global mobilities challenges in the contemporary (and future) world, ranging from lowcarbon mobility system transitions, to the increase of digitalisation in questions of ethics, philosophy and (ontological) security and risk. The call for interdisciplinary research is widely significant for facing current and future mobilities challenges. The research gathered in this Handbook introduces the reader to ways of mobilising – conceptually, theoretically, conceptually and practically – both quantitative approaches (such as selftracking and artificial intelligence, or AI) and qualitative methods (such as technography and participative observation). It will serve as a resource for researchers and research users in different disciplines and contexts, as it brings together key contributions on qualitative and quantitative research (and its multi-method combinations) and research on co-creation methods within the mobilities paradigm. Through the Handbook the capacities of methods and applications for mobilities research will be presented and synergy will be developed from the methodological creativity and impact, its breadth and depth within the growing field of interdisciplinary mobilities research. The Handbook has chapters from a broad range of methods and applications, with a specific reflexive focus on the analytical purchase enabled and the practical import of applying research in the world. It is divided into four parts (‘Motivations’, ‘Methods’, ‘Applications’ and ‘Reflections’), which we briefly introduce next.

PART I  MOTIVATIONS Part I focuses on the impetus for research, and traces the driving factors such as concerns with sustainability, inequality, social justice, social mobility, activism, transformations of time and space, and many more. The contributions open up new avenues for transdisciplinary research co-creation on these questions: ●● ●●

What are the urgent questions and burning issues that drive the individual research and motivate the scientists? How does this relate to new and emerging research agendas, traditions and perhaps schools that mobilities research is shaping currently?

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Introduction  3 The authors in this part reflect individually on the ‘why?’ of their own research. The chapters give an insight into the reasons behind their research and their ways of selecting topics, deciding on priorities, and so on. However, they also show the worries behind the research, the ethical and sometimes moral reflections that lead to a specific research agenda and, in consequence, to a specific selection and application of methods and methodologies. In her opening chapter to the Handbook, Mimi Sheller gives an insight into the range of mobility injustices and different levels of studying mobilities. Mobility injustices do not only have an urban scale. They also have a national, a transnational and a planetary dimension, and this chapter describes the emergence of applied mobilities research that seeks to contribute to more sustainable, and just, policies and planning. In addition, it offers an overview of mobile methods, focusing on two different sub-fields of mobilities: cycling research, and migration and border studies. In the following chapter Malene Freudendal-Pedersen explores and discusses the role of values when we are motivated to do something, with a discussion point being the climate crisis. By reflecting on two prominent figures in the climate debate, Al Gore and Greta Thunberg, the chapter explains how paying attention to everyday life mobilities plays a key role in understanding values as a driving force to do something. Staying with the discussion of sustainability, Dennis Zuev and Luca Nitschke describe the concept of sustainability, and reflect on some of the paradoxes and contradictions of contemporary mobilities and mobilities research in particular. The chapter supports a critical engagement with mobilities and provides an overview of fields where mobility research should pay more attention to sustainability and environmental consequences in general. Sven Kesselring focuses on the relationships between mobility research and the current state of the mobile risk society. In particular, he raises the question of how to deal with the massive time constraints climate change puts on societies, organisations, institutions and the individual. This contribution addresses the current transformative process of the system of automobility and the questions of technological fixes and technocentric policy and planning approaches. He puts centre stage the question of whether mobilities research has the time and the right methods to deal with the challenges and necessities of climate change. By methodologically mobilising the concept of social futures, Monika Büscher demonstrates how we might leverage the deep understanding of the contingent, emergent character of socio-technical, socio-material orders that the new mobilities paradigm enables. Her stories from the 2017 Lancaster Mobile Utopia Experiment explore how we might change the systemic dynamics that create precarity as the condition of our times, connecting attempts to find new ways of sensing this precarity and working with it to create visions of a good life, and contesting what good life might be possible and what ‘good’ might mean, and for whom.

PART II  METHODS Part II focuses on the objects of research and how to create new knowledge about them. It illustrates mobile and multi-method approaches within mobilities research, and presents a

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4  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities range of methods to gain empirical insights, and collect and measure data on mobilities. This ranges from quantitative, technology-based tracking to qualitative ethnographical approaches. The part puts at the centre of its attention the question: what methods are applicable to deepen our understanding of mobile worlds? Chapters in this part primarily focus on the how of doing research, the concrete application and the handling of connected to specific applications and methods. Starting this part, Fernanda da Costa Portugal Duarte examines the dynamics of data mobilities and their implications for self-tracking. In her chapter Duarte explores the self-tracking technology Truth or Dare (ToD), and how it turns the biological body into a site of physiological data, and demonstrates how critical making can be applied as a method to investigate protocols of data mobilities. The following chapter, by Malin Henriksson and Jessica Berg, introduces timegeography travel diaries. They show them as a useful and rich method to study everyday life. By the use of recorded travel activity data researchers can understand and analyse how individuals carrying out and orchestrate travels, include places, structure times, manage meetings with people, and embody experiences, atmospheres and emotions. The chapter provides knowledge on how, when, where and why travel diaries should be used in mobility research, and describes how to design and use time-geographical travel diaries throughout a research process. On the basis of the research project ‘Airport City Futures’, Gunvor Riber Larsen presents a triangulatory design of qualitative and quantitative methods and describes the often troublesome venture of performing an analytical reduction of complex realities in practising mobilities. Staying in the air, Julia M. Hildebrand examines auto-drone technography as a creative and self-reflective mobile method, with the focus on the example of drone-logs; the juxtaposing of sky video with ground audio. The chapter argues that the distant and detached perspective of a drone can complement mobile methods practically and metaphorically. The use of logging method can be studied in Larissa Schindler’s contribution on different versions of logbooks (pre-existing logbooks and solicited logbooks). Her chapter resents logbooks as mobile and explains how logbooks contribute to a profound (multimethod) research design, following the questions: what are logbooks? How can they contribute to our understanding of mobile worlds? Helena Krobath examines creative methods for exploring relations between space, sensing and knowledge that co-construct place. These sense-based methods focus on listening through personal situative and conceptual frames and embodied practices. Krobath describes how she assembles a situated account of driving in the backwoods of Mission, British Columbia, Canada, iterating emplaced exercises with documentary research and theoretical framing. Through this, she explores features of the road that have come to seem fixed or elemental. Following the auto-ethnographic practice of driving, Sharon Wilson examines methodological approaches used in a fieldwork of Volkswagen (VW) campervan mobilities, focusing on the phenomena of tourism. Through the chapter, Wilson seeks to contribute to the creative methodological practices by examining their applications in an autoethnographic study of driving on the British motorway. Actor network theory (ANT) is used to unpack the VW campervan travel as a mobilisation of many things. In concluding this part, Konrad Götz and Georg Sunderer explore mobility orienta-

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Introduction  5 tions, a concept derived from transdisciplinary sustainability research on mobility. Mobility orientations indicate the motivation behind, and the meaning of, mobility and is used to gather information for measures to decouple mobility from automobility. The chapter presents adjacent research and refers to other examples and applications.

PART III  APPLICATIONS Part III focuses on presenting various applied mobile methods in mobilities research and how mobile and live methods creatively address the fact that ‘the mobile flies forever before the pursuit of science’ to intervene in the world (Bergson 1920, p. 317). The part presents different ways of infrastructuring for more richly informed applications of research. A key question is, what are the new learnings when applying mobilities research to the lived world? The chapters in this section are primarily focusing on for whom and with whom mobilities research is undertaken. Opening this part, Marie Huyghe, Ghislain Bourg and Anaïs Rocci study individual (mobilities) behaviours focusing on the changes in mobility habits encouraged through travel behaviour change programmes. As an important field of mobility in order to reduce our environmental impact, the chapter focusing on voluntary travel behaviour change programmes (VTBC) in France, and through a comparative analysis it provides insight into the trends arising from these operations. In the following chapter Anita Perkins describes how to apply a mobilities framework for cultural studies of literature. By presenting a multi-layered, three-step analysis approach that attempts to take a cross-sectional view of the context within which the text was produced, the author illustrates this analytical approach. To show how it can bring a fresh perspective to the writer’s textual representations of mobile experience, Perkins analyses Graeme Simsion’s book The Rosie Project, where an autistic university professor sets out in search of love. From an analysis of literature to the analysis of crisis, Stephanie Sodero and Richard Rackham explain the concept of vital mobilities, the movements of goods, people and information that impact life chances in the context of crisis. By extending Adey’s (2010) work on emergency mobilities, vital mobilities is presented as a concept to analyse the context of everyday circulations and their disruption in response to crisis events. Focusing on blood (mobilities) as a literally life-sustaining example of vital mobilities, the chapter discusses two different and disruptive events: the Manchester bombing (2017) and the Filton flood (2012). In the following chapter, Siiri Silm, Olle Järv and Anu Masso explore the different use and inherent potentials of mobile positioning, which is defined as tracing the location of a mobile phone through time and physical space. As they state in the chapter, more than 5 billion people in the world have a mobile phone, and they explain why mobile phones provide a unique opportunity to study human mobility. The chapter focuses on mobile positioning, respectively passive, active and smart-phone based positioning, as a productive approach to examine the spatio-temporal mobility of people and population dynamics. For another look into the field of mobile ethnography, Jennie Germann Molz demonstrates how mobile virtual ethnography (MoVE) enables research at the intersections

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6  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities of embodied mobility and mediated interactions among long-term travellers. Mobile virtual ethnography is a methodological approach that adapts traditional ethnographic techniques to the study of the interplay between travellers online and on-the-road mobility practices, and Molz uses her own field studies to describe the application of MoVE. Continuing the application of methods to study mobile life, Avril Maddrell explores mobile practices of pilgrimage journeys using mobilities concepts, and mobile methodologies. The exploring of pilgrimage journeys is described as a dynamic embodied process and experience, whether focused on visits to shrines or on pilgrimage routes. The chapter focuses on examining mobile methods of analysing postcards and photo diaries, for an interdisciplinary case study of a pilgrimage project. In the following chapter Phillip Vannini and Martin Trandberg Jensen examine the value of visual methods and their specific applications and challenges (both quantitatively and qualitatively). They reflect on different forms of visual (video and photography) and art-based approaches (painting, mapping, and so on) to examine the reflexivity and performativity of visual research. Chelsea Tschoerner-Budde explains and discusses the strength of discourse analysis in relation to identifying and enhancing understanding of barriers and opportunities in shifting mobility policies. Her chapter introduces the application of a discourse analytical approach as a concrete tool for promoting sustainable mobility, illustrated through a case study of sustainable mobility policy-making in the German city Munich. By introducing examples from planning practices in mobilities projects, for example, the Danish light rail project SMIL, Nina Moesby Bennetsen and Katrine Hartmann-Petersen explain the valuable learnings from investigating the links between dynamics in everyday life and the mobilities planning processes. They argue how it offers an understanding of how new mobilities policies can create urban tipping points for innovation in strategic work with mobilities policies in practice. With the use of examples of planning practices, the chapter emphasises how mobilities planning can gain from new ways of organising planning processes, based on knowledge that is taken for granted. Rapid innovations in smart technologies have a wide impact on contemporary and future mobilities. Anthony Elliott and Ross Boyd examine the profound impact of artificial intelligence (AI), advanced robotics and accelerating automation, arguing that fast innovation of smart technology requires a rethinking of mobilities research. To examine this impact, they explore what they refer to as mobilities 3.0, the interconnections among intelligent machines and digitalised subjects which are on the move and AI in relation to military systems. Digitalisation has a profound impact on the convergence (annihilation) of space through time, and connectedness is no longer a matter of physical distance. Exploring personal time–space compression and distanciation, Earvin Charles Cabalquinto examines practices of maintaining long-distance relationships enabled through digital communication technologies. Critical application of a range of methods allows him to study how expatriate Filipino workers stay in touch with their left-behind loved ones, and unpacks and articulates these families’ lives on the move. Continuing in the research on mobile family relations, Lesley Murray explores families as key sites of social relations for understanding mobilities. Murray takes a critical mobile perspective on what defines families and highlights a range of mobilities research methodologies and methods applied to family, to contribute to an understanding of family mobilities and of mobilities through family.

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Introduction  7 Concluding this part, Thomas Birtchnell and Tillmann Böhme introduce a brief history of cargo. As they state, cargo has a significant influence on what makes societies and economics in the twenty-first century. In the chapter they explore the overlap between mobilities research and these fields grounded in business and supply chain management, to present an ontological shift that this intersection between paradigms shapes.

PART IV  REFLECTIONS The final part returns to some of the above questions and reflects upon the bigger picture of methods and methodologies of mobilities research and its varied applications. Aiming to understand and perhaps change mobilities futures, reflections on the impact and use of specific foci is essential for a mobile, live methodology and epistemology. Based on the questions ‘what are the gains and losses in specific methods and applications for mobilities research?’ and ‘what futures are envisioned and enacted?’, the chapters in this part are primarily focusing on what we are doing when engaged in mobilities research. Opening this part, Alexander Paulsson, Fabio Hirschhorn and Claus Hedegaard Sørensen examine how mobilities studies can be further connected to futures studies, by introducing the Delphi method. The Delphi method represents a method of future studies and is characterised by asking experts through controlled iteration processes. The chapter explores the method and how it is applied in two mobility-orientated cases, and emphasises the importance for mobilities studies to learn from methods in futures studies. Claus Lassen takes us back to the airport as a key site for mobilities research. He reflects upon, and addresses, different methodological and applied dimensions of airport research. An airport provides the opportunity to study several issues related to mobilities, and Lassen explores which challenges researchers face in studying airports. Outlining approaches, techniques and tactics that can be used in order to overcome these challenges, he suggests two ideal type approaches for future airport studies: the trust approach and guerrilla approach. Literally running with mobilities research, Kai Syng Tan sets out to explain and explore how the concept and practice of running can allow insight into the mobile constitution of reality. She asks, in what ways could ‘running art-fully’ spark flights of thought for us to study ourselves? The chapter is divided into ten runs (sections) in which Tan unfolds ways to extend current understanding and practice in how mobilities research entangles with art and running. Following the interest for creative methods in mobilities research, Kaya Barry introduces creative arts practices and explores the intersections of creative arts and mobilities research, to highlight the capacity of creative methods for studying mobile lives. As a method for mobilities research, creative arts practice is presented as a process in which experience, sensation and the embodied doing of research comes to the fore. Reflections on methods and applications of mobilities research vary greatly, from studies of airports and creative arts to the study of video games, as presented in the next chapter. Lewis Charles Smith seeks to understand how the video-game genre of simulators can be used to preserve past, present and future mobility subjects, objects and scapes. The chapter aims to build a case for using simulation as a way of preserving and archiving contemporary and past mobilities, ready for education, research or development. It

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8  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities approaches this by exploring on one of the most popular simulators, Train Simulator 2019, a game which translates the experience of train driving. Samuel Thulin’s chapter introduces resonance as a mobile phenomenon and as a way of approaching mobilities research, starting by exploring how resonance has been conceptualised. Resonance is defined as amplification and damping of specific frequencies of oscillation through vibratory interaction. The chapter explains how resonance contributes to mobilities research by paying attention to how vibrations travel between various bodies and materials, and beyond the realm of physics. David Tyfield introduces phronesis, situated strategic-ethical wisdom, and argues how a methodological realignment of mobilities and phronesis plays an important role in learning to do complex system government well. The chapter gives an inside view of the methodological paradigm shift that phronesis enacts, in ways of thinking and of doing research. A special focus is on how each of the terms of its definition – situated, strategic, ethical and wisdom – are necessary elements for cultivation of the new relations to knowledge. In their chapter Ole B. Jensen, Andrea Victoria Hernandez Bueno, Shelley Smith and Cecilie Breinholm Christensen apply design thinking and interventions as a method. They look at mobile situations on two different sites, an airport and a metro, and illustrate their methods of this situational research analysis from the outside (observations, camera tracking, and so on) and from the inside (eye-tracking, interviews, and so on). The chapter contributes another exploration of how mobilities is more than movement from A to B. As part of the mobility turn, critical mobilities research has comes to the fore. In her chapter, Katharina Manderscheid explores two central understandings of doing critical mobilities research; (1) mobilities as critique (constitutes a general critique of traditional social research) and (2) critique of mobilities (moves the focus onto the power/knowledge aspect of mobilities), and she reflects on what they imply in relation to methods and methodologies. With their ethnographical work in mobilities research, Maja de Neergaard and Hanne Louise Jensen engage with embodied ethnography, focusing on the affective, sensory and emotional modalities of human mobile practice. The chapter reflects on ethnographical research that involves moving with the phenomenon of study, what the authors c­ onceptualise as embodied mobile ethnographies. From this research, they discuss how the body plays different roles and the gains this methodological development has accomplished. Rodanthi Tzanelli examines urban mobilities with the use of technology, by discussing synaesthesia (research epistemologies for urban environments) and performative synaesthetics, the embodied methodological means for such research. Focusing on describing the significance of encapsulating affective and pre-cognitive apprehensions of the fieldworld, Tzanelli demonstrates (performative) synaesthetics in practice by taking us for a drive (walk) in the Greek town Thessaloniki. As the concluding chapter of the part as well as the Handbook, Bronislaw Szerszynski takes us on an explorative geophilosophical bus tour for a story of the Earth. By analysing the mobile entity of a bus from departure to arrival, Szerszynski demonstrates how planetary mobilities can work as a method. On this bus tour, the chapter outlines several questions that can help analyse mobile entities and the way they are situated in the systems of the Earth.

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Introduction  9

REFERENCES Barad, K. (2007), Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bergson, H. (1911), Creative Evolution, London: Macmillan. Bergson, H. and H.W. Carr (eds) (1920), Mind-Energy: Lectures & Essays, London: Macmillan. Büscher, M., J. Urry and K. Witchger (2010), Mobile Methods, Abingdon: Routledge. Fincham, B., M. McGuinness and L. Murray (eds) (2010), Mobile Methodologies, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Haraway, D.J. (2016), Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Jensen, O.B., S. Kesselring and M. Sheller (eds) (2019), Mobilities and Complexities, London: Routledge. Le Dantec, C.A. and C. DiSalvo (2013), ‘Infrastructuring and the formation of publics in participatory design’, Social Studies of Science, 43 (2), 241–64, doi:10.1177/0306312712471581. Sheller, M. (2017), ‘From spatial turn to mobilities turn’, Current Sociology, 65 (4), 623–39, doi:10.1177/001​ 1392117697463. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2006), ‘The new mobilities paradigm’, Environment and Planning A, 38 (2), 207–26. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2016), ‘Mobilizing the new mobilities paradigm’, Applied Mobilities, 1 (1), 10–25, doi: 10.1080/23800127.2016.1151216. Urry, J. (2000), Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities of the Twenty-First Century, London: Routledge. Vannini, P. (2015), ‘Mobile cultures: from the sociology of transportation to the study of mobilities’, in O.B. Jensen (ed.), Mobilities, London: Routledge, pp. 75–88. Yago, G. (1983), ‘The sociology of transportation’, Annual Review of Sociology, 9 (1), 171–90.

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PART I MOTIVATIONS

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1.  Mobility justice Mimi Sheller

INTRODUCTION From its beginning the field of mobilities research has been motivated by concerns around social justice, social change and social futures. The first conference organized by the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University in 2004 was titled ‘Alternative Mobility Futures’ and the last monograph published by the late John Urry was titled What is the Future? (Urry 2016). So the problem of future trajectories, transformations and transitions have always been prominent motivations. Within that broad scope, however, there are many different ways in which scholars, who range across many disciplines and specialties, have shaped their questions and focused their research. Some mobilities research arose at the intersection of urban sociology, transport studies and transition theory, and was concerned initially with the problem of automobility and questions concerning how to understand (and possibly accelerate) low-carbon transitions. By the turn of the millennium, it was evident that global warming was driving climate change and that a big part of the problem was the degree to which fossil fuel and automobile dependency were built into our urban and suburban environments. Engineers were promoting technical solutions such as renewable energy and more efficient vehicles, economists were pushing market solutions such as carbon pricing and road pricing, and businesses were selling consumer-product solutions such as electric vehicles or new disruptive mobility services. Yet it became increasingly clear to social scientists that there were complex social and cultural processes that interfered with the expected uptake of green solutionism. The decarbonization of our energy systems and transportation systems was progressing too slowly, there were huge backlashes and resistance to it from carbon capital, and the dominant system of automobility was continuing to spread rapidly around the world. It seemed increasingly urgent to bring in richer cultural and social understandings of the co-construction of complex socio-technical systems, including imagining transportation as more than a matter of simply moving people and things across space. In my own case, after initially thinking about the problematic yet often ignored ways in which automobility shaped cities, in collaboration with John Urry (Sheller and Urry 2000), I began to explore the emotional and affective dimensions of car cultures and automobile dependence, and especially their social and spatial embedding in the everyday lives of families (Sheller 2004), which was in part a reaction against the usual transport models that assume a rational, individual and efficiency-maximizing consumer. Even traffic engineers and transport modelers were beginning to recognize that they needed more complex models of human users, while the emerging designers of mobility as a service in the on-demand and peer-to-peer economy were deeply interested in what motivated different transport choices. For environmentalists interested in sustainability transitions, it seemed crucial in the first decade of the twenty-first century to better understand why 11

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12  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities unsustainable forms of automobility were continuing to persist in the first-adoption countries, and rapidly taking off and spreading to new adoption countries. However, there were other types of questions that were equally important in the emergence of the field. There had been robust discussion since the 1990s about more globallevel processes of mobility conceived in terms of cultural flows and scapes (Appadurai 1996), nomadology and traveling theory (Clifford 1997), cross-border circulation of people and goods, and globalization. In contrast to dominant views of an increasingly flat earth, as Thomas Friedman (2005) summed it up, in which all things were mobile and mobility was accelerating, sociologists, geographers, transnational feminists and postcolonial theorists were articulating a critical historical view of the ways in which diverse mobilities and immobilities were imbued with power (Kaplan 1996; Kaplan and Grewal 1994). Geographer Tim Cresswell was involved with some of the early formulation of this critical perspective. He describes how he organized an event on mobilities in 1999 in which: The immediate inspirations for me were figures such as James Clifford, Manuel Castells, Gilles Deleuze, Caren Kaplan, and Rosi Braidotti. At the same time the conference addressed the increase in attention being paid to actual empirical cases of mobility – of migrants, tourists, the homeless and the exiled. We wondered if the two were related. (Cresswell 2018, p. 11; see also Cresswell 2006)

As these two trajectories came together in my own work, I became increasingly interested in linking together the problems of sustainability transitions in relation to automobility, transportation and urban infrastructure, with the problems of social justice, global inequalities, postcolonial and decolonial theory, and questions of power and the politics of mobility.

MOBILITIES AS A PROBLEM OF JUSTICE In reflections in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the 2010 earthquake that shook Haiti, I became ever more convinced that understanding deeper histories and spatial formations of what I termed uneven mobilities – divided by race, class, gender, sexuality, ability and nationality – were crucial to understanding the limits of contemporary sustainability transitions. In a brief essay, ‘Creating sustainable mobility and mobility justice’ I began to articulate the need for a ‘twin transition toward environmentally sustainable mobility and mobility justice’ (Sheller 2011a, p. 114). I argued that the concept of mobility justice can highlight the structurally distributed class, racial, gendered, and other inequalities in the potential for mobility. ‘A full transition away from the currently dominant automobility system,’ I argued, ‘will only take place when we simultaneously address the issues of social inequality that underpin the un-sustainability of the current system, and begin to promote mobility justice as integral to sustainability’ (Sheller 2011a, p. 114). This vision has shaped my subsequent work, and especially my book Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes (Sheller 2018), which seeks to bring this message to a wider public audience. It is very easy for anyone to understand how mobility injustices begin with their own embodied experiences of everyday life. When a person living with disabilities, or a pregnant

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Mobility justice  13 mother or an elderly person is unable to access basic needs and activities because of the way transportation systems, streets and buildings have been designed to be inaccessible to all, there is obviously an injustice of accessibility. When a young woman, or a Black teenager, or a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) couple are unable to walk down the street or board public transportation without being harassed, there is an injustice of social exclusion which occurs through a restriction on their mobility. When a child, or a college student, or an underpaid bicycle-delivery person cannot ride safely in the streets without the likelihood of being hit by a careless car driver, there is an injustice of social protection that distributes the harms of automobility upon the most vulnerable. These are the types of personal mobility injustices that social research concerned with transport justice has brought to light and has sought to measure and define. The field of transportation justice seeks to identify the causes, effects and transformation of these personal mobility injustices. However, we can also think of mobility injustices more broadly, from a spatial justice perspective, which goes beyond an individual’s particular embodied experiences and, even, beyond issues of accessibility. When a city and its surrounding suburbs are built in a way that makes most people living in them automobile dependent, there is an injustice for those without automobiles and for those affected by the air pollution, traffic and potential crashes created by excessive automobile dependency. When an urban redevelopment project puts a multi-lane highway through a working-class neighborhood, dividing it in half and obliterating homes and businesses, or when a new light-rail line bypasses poorer areas and brings the service only to the better off, there is an injustice enacted in spatial organization. When a rural community is left without transport services, and cannot access healthcare, education or Internet connections, because they have all been concentrated in cities, there is another kind of infrastructural mobility injustice. These are problems not just of accessibility of existing infrastructure, but of the ways in which easier access for some makes life harder for others when the built environment is designed to exclude some people and create hierarchies of benefits and unequal distribution of harms. Mobility injustices, however, do not stop at the urban scale. They also have a national, a transnational and, even, a planetary dimension. When a nation builds a fence on its borders, and implements regulations and controls of movement that lead some potential entrants to meet their death at sea or in the desert, there is a mobility injustice, especially if we still believe in a human right to mobility. When a multinational corporation extracts resources from a poor country, and ships them overseas with little benefit and many environmental harms to the people and ecology of that country, there is a mobility injustice expressed through the movements of resources, energy and logistics systems that empower some places to the detriment of others. Also, when high-consumers of energy, transport and globally circulated resources pump excessive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, leading to catastrophic global climate change, there is a mobility injustice in terms of the mobility of high-emitters harming the right to life of those who have not created the problem. Hence, mobility justice is not only personal or infrastructural, but also linked to national scale issues of migrant justice and transnational scale issues of climate justice. Thus mobilities research extends beyond the problems of transport justice, automobility, or urban infrastructure. It is a much bigger field, that examines the complex relational (im) mobilities of people, goods, data and representations through both physical and virtual

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14  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities domains, at multiple scales, and within contested territorial and infrastructural configurations that geographer Doreen Massey (1993) referred to as ‘power-geometry’. There is always a politics of (im)mobilities. Indeed, it could be argued that uneven mobilities are fundamental to political identities and the making of differential political subjects. Political mobilization against mobility injustices often generates political protests, sometimes instigates collective social movements and, occasionally, generates enough public mobilization to bring about social change. Short of revolution, this type of change might take the more gradual form of new policies and legislation, but it could also come in the form of new technological or design solutions, or new ways of building, engineering, socially organizing and regulating mobility systems. Applied mobilities research has begun to engage with these movements by seeking innovative ways to generate social action, stimulate new design thinking, spread public awareness or support new forms of social organization.

MOBILITY JUSTICE AS A DRIVER OF RESEARCH Mobilities research is often driven by a desire to contribute to better understanding the causes and effects of these complex problems, as well as the hope of finding appropriate solutions. Thus we can think of applied mobilities research as contributing to policy and regulation, planning and design, or innovation in systems and processes. What types of research methods would facilitate such a research program? We can find mobilities research addressed to each of the dimensions or scales described above and therefore requiring diverse methods to deal with the problem at hand. Researchers often specialize in one area of research, using particular methods, and addressing mobility justice either from the perspective of individuals, social interactions or macro-level systems. In relation to personal embodied issues of mobility injustice, the preferred methods often occur at the micro scale of individual bodily experiences or interpersonal social interaction, understood from a social interactionist or phenomenological perspective. Researchers seeking to understand embodied experiences of uneven and differential mobilities try to imagine themselves in the shoes (or on the wheels) of their informants, to understand how they move through the world and what they experience as they do so. This has involved methods such as interviews on the move, participant observation during travel, ethnography across mobile sites and sites of mobility, and collection of records such as space-time diaries, Global Positioning System (GPS) tracks, or drawings of subjective maps and routes. These observations and ethnographic methods might involve video, sound recording, autoethnography, or some combination of all three. The questions driving these research methods are often concerned with how different individuals or groups practice movement, how they experience spaces of movement, and how they interact with and make judgements about particular assemblages of equipment, spatial affordances and infrastructure. In contrast to economic or behavioral approaches to individual mode choice in studies of transportation, these research methods create a much richer array of qualitative data. As we move to questions about the urban, suburban and rural scale, however, other methods may be needed to gather data about aspects such as land-use patterns, transport planning and urban policy. Here the driving questions would concern how we became so automobile dependent, how racial segregation and ethnic enclaves have been shaped by

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Mobility justice  15 transport systems and policies, and how more empowered groups have created spatiotemporal patterns in their own favor while marginalizing the needs of the less powerful. These types of questions might call for historical archival research, interviews with decision makers, scanning of policy documents and shadowing of planners, policymakers or engineers to better understand how decisions have been made that shape uneven spaces and differential mobilities. A specific conflict or decision might be the subject of investigation, such as the history of a social movement that sought to challenge highway building, plans for public transit investments, and other mobility injustices. Or, in a more applied orientation, these types of meso-level research questions might lead to participatory workshops or other activities that seek to intervene in these processes as they are occurring and redirect them in more reflexive or creative ways. In contrast to traditional transport planning or urban planning approaches, driven by experts offering solutions, these mobilities research methods generate more complexity, greater critical purchase and, sometimes, open-ended participation and innovation, as well as critiques of limited forms of shallow stakeholder consultation. At the national and transnational scale, we have further dimensions of mobility research questions and methods. At this macro level, questions of interest might concern: the experiences of migrants crossing borders and of workers who secure those borders; or the social and technical construction of border zones, data systems and policing methods; or the rules governing transnational corporations and the international legal systems in place for regulation of corporate malfeasance around resources extraction and migrant labor abuses. Mobilities research can contribute to addressing mobility injustices at this scale too. This calls for more macro-level approaches to analyzing social structures, regulatory frameworks, transnational policy mobilities and complex interlocking systems. What we might term macro-mobilities research focuses on identifying and describing the infrastructures, networks and flows of inter-state systems and global economies. This type of research might also draw on comparative and historical methods that identify typologies, turning points or changes in systems over time. Finally, the planetary scale calls for research that examines the social dimensions of climate change, transformation of energy systems, such as fossil fuel dependence or the emergence of renewables, and the study of alternatives, such as off-grid living, slow mobilities or, more generally, decarbonization. This also indicates attention to global processes including relations between the Global North and the Global South, and colonial histories and postcolonial critique. My own early work, Consuming the Caribbean (Sheller 2003), for example, examined the interlocking mobilities of labor, bodies, capital, nature and representations that shaped the Atlantic world, drawing on historical comparative methods, visual and textual analysis, and postcolonial theory. This, too, is a study in mobility justice, though it has little to do with transportation, fossil fuels or automobility. It concerns the deeper dimension of mobility injustices that inform the shape of the contemporary world and its distribution of inequities.

LEARNING FROM RESEARCH EXAMPLES What I term the scalar fluency of mobilities research allows for a multi-pronged approach to the problem of sustainability transitions, drawing on divergent perspectives and

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16  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities methods, but applying them to a common concern with mobility justice and how it might be advanced. In this section I illustrate how two particular sub-fields within mobilities research seek to apply the lessons of the mobilities paradigm by combining methods that focus on micro-level embodied practices, meso-level urban assemblages and complex macro-historical processes. First, I focus on the sub-field of cycling research, and then the sub-field of migration and border studies, as they are both interpreted through the tools of mobilities research. Cycling Research Overcoming automobile dependence by providing better cycling infrastructure and promoting greater access to it has been linked to issues of transport justice, racial justice, gender justice and climate justice. Yet in many cities the rate of bicycle commuting remains stubbornly below 5 per cent of commuters, remains lower for women than for men, and remains suspect when new infrastructure is often seen as benefiting gentrification rather than being accessible to all classes and races. In view of these problems, the efforts to expand cycling in existing automobile-dependent cities has become a central and thriving area of mobilities research. Traditionally, policymakers, planners, designers and engineers usually focus on individual behavior change and immediate solutions, such as street design, building bike lanes or pricing parking. In contrast, a mobilities research perspective adds more dimensions to the analysis, different methods and a more sophisticated theoretical framing. As Nick Scott argues in his book, Assembling Moral Mobilities, there is a ‘need for social scientists to historicize and unpack the dynamic, interwoven complexities of society and technology facing the expansion of cycling in the city built for driving’ (Scott 2020, p. 7). Unlike cycling research from a behavioral change or public health perspective, which reinforces the idea that interventions should focus on changing individual behavior, cycling scholarship, drawing on the new mobilities paradigm, seeks to show how individual cycling practices are embedded in complex assemblages situated within the constraints of a dominant system of automobility. ‘Through a mobilities lens, cycling does not appear as the isolated product of a personal, healthful choice,’ argues Scott, ‘but rather as a distinctive, self-propelled system of travel continually developing in concert with wider mobility norms, infrastructures and policies (Walks 2014; Furness 2010; Mapes 2009)’ (Scott 2020, p. 9). On the one hand, cycling is an embodied practice, which can be best studied through its doing. Researchers have therefore sought to show how cycling animates sensuous intensities (Spinney 2006) and attunes affective capacities (Larsen 2014), while building embodied cycling capabilities (Aldred 2012) within markedly different cultural and infrastructural contexts (Horton et al. 2007). Indeed, cycling can be imagined as a form of ‘inhabiting infrastructure’ (Larsen and Funk 2018). We could make similar observations about the study of embodied practices of walking (Büscher et al. 2010), wheeling (Parent 2016), running (Edensor and Larsen 2017) or, even more so, activities such as waiting (Bissell 2007), which have also each been the subject of mobilities research. That is, this is not specific to research on cycling, but pertains to a way of theorizing how people, vehicles, infrastructures and urban space interact and co-constitute differential mobile subjects and spaces (including non-urban, suburban and rural places).

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Mobility justice  17 These micro-level experiential accounts of cycling, however, are also joined by more meso-level historical perspectives on the ‘wider, political changes in cities, technology and society that push back against the social injustice of neoliberal car capitalism’ (Scott 2020, p. 8). This includes an unabashed critique of neoliberal automobility and the types of unjust spaces it shapes, including unequal cyclescapes (for example, Furness 2010; Scott 2012; Stehlin 2019; Gopakumar 2020). Analysis of the possible openings for post-automobility transitions, as well as the closures and self-defense of the fossil-fuel system, might also call for a macro-level perspective on the histories of colonialism, carbon capitalism and military dominance that inform contemporary global systems of automobility, car-dependent urban forms and land use, freight-transport logistics and uneven resource distribution (Sheller 2011b). Cycling research is about far more than getting more people to ride bikes, and this implies the need for multiple methods and approaches to these complex problems. Migration Mobilities A different area of concern for mobility justice is the study of migration and borders. Urgent political questions concerning migration, refugees, asylum and the granting of citizenship to undocumented migrants have driven researchers to re-think approaches to borders and migration in relation to more complex (im)mobilities, sometimes theorized as mobility regimes. If cycling studies have expanded from immediate embodied experience toward more expansive meso-level and macro-level research questions and methods, then we might say migration studies has moved in the opposite direction: extending beyond the typical macro-level analysis of international migration found in the field of migration studies, inward towards the micro-level embodied experience of border crossing and the meso-level infrastructures of border zones and migration controls, as well as the complex entanglements of all of these scales of (im)mobilities. At the micro level, we find renewed attention given to the experience of migration as a mixture of mobilities and immobilities, and as a combination of practices, performances and passages. Jorgen Ole Baerenholdt theorizes ‘governmobility’ as a form of governmentality in which self-regulation of mobility becomes internalized within mobile subjects, but may also serve as a point of resistance. He emphasizes that ‘borders must be studied along with the practices of resistance, with people’s tactics and strategies in coping with, transcending, ignoring, overcoming, using and not least building borders. As such borders are made not the least by way of the various passages crossing them’ (Baerenholdt 2013, p. 31). At the meso-level, the border itself is imagined as a mobile technology (Vukov and Sheller 2013) through which bordering practices are performed (Sassen 2013). The ‘state border is not simply a borderline’, Sassen (2013, p. 30) writes. ‘It is a mix of regimes with variable contents and geographic and institutional locations’, including different flows of capital, information, professionals, undocumented migrants and smuggled goods (Sassen 2013, p. 30). This calls for mixed methods of research tracking various kinds of movements across borders, and the mobility regimes governing those movements, whether licit or illicit. Studies of such mobilities are as concerned with detention and detainment. Alison Mountz et al. argue that ‘We find paradoxical issues of containment and mobility, as well as bordering and exclusion built into national and transnational landscapes of

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18  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities detention . . . Detention functions as part of a rationale to regulate mobility through technologies of exclusion rather than to end mobility altogether’ (Mountz et al. 2012, p. 524, original emphasis); and so there emerges ‘a principle of managed mobilities, mobilizing and immobilizing populations, dislocating and relocating peoples’ (Stoler 2011, n.p.), forming a type of global metabolism of mobilizations and demobilizations. These managed mobilities have become increasingly controversial as the human right to mobility is increasingly infringed, and mobilities research has an important part to play in re-imagining social protection beyond national bordering (Raithelhuber et al. 2018). These innovative perspectives on border mobilities and mobile migrants are also generating entirely new research areas, such as the study of reproductive mobilities. Reproductive mobilities are concerned with the ‘seemingly incessant movement of people as reproductive actors (both legal and rogue), commodities in reproductive markets, reproductive technologies, and entire “repro-assemblages” across international borders, and their regulation, securitization, and lack thereof’ (Frohlick et al. 2019, p. 97). Human reproduction currently involves multiple mobilities, from the transnational mobilities of frozen eggs, sperm, surrogates, laboratory technicians, intended parents and doctors involved in artificial reproduction, to the travel of birth tourists to foreign countries to gain citizenship for their children. Complex spatial and temporal mobilities are involved in practices such as transnational artificial reproductive technologies, border-crossing for giving birth or seeking abortion, midwifery in contested spaces such as reservations and borderlands, and reproductive labor in situations of refugee or migrant interdiction, detention and deportation (Speier et al. 2020). Power relations and questions of mobility justice shape how these reproductive mobilities are determined, how they are imagined, how they are narrated and who controls the technological practices, legal regulation, embodied performances, representations and stories of human reproduction.

CONCLUSION In summary, I argue that debates over sustainable urbanism, transport justice and urban accessibility must also be placed in the context of wider transnational mobility regimes, including borders, refuge and migration. Low-carbon transitions away from the dominant system of automobility are just one of the issues driving mobilities research. In addition, mobilities research helps us to see the wider systems of (im)mobilities in which transportation is situated. Unequal global mobility regimes, for example, also include the carbon-intensive use of air travel, the logistics of shipping and the law of the sea, and the right to cross-border mobility of refugees and migrants. These are all situated within longer histories of colonialism, imperial legacies and uneven global development. Thus mobilities research can widen the aperture to macro-level research questions, as well as zooming in on micro-level questions, and these each call for different research methods. These developments in mobilities research, especially those with a motivating concern for mobility justice, pose several great challenges. First, how can we integrate these differing perspectives and styles of doing research, at the micro, meso and macro scales? Each scale not only requires different research methods that produce heterogeneous types of data, but each relies on entirely different methodological conceptions of the link between theory and research, the purposes of research, the formulation of questions and

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Mobility justice  19 the ­legitimation of arguments. We need to move beyond the notion of mixed methods research simply involving a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, toward a notion of mobile methods which shift around according to the question at hand. Secondly, how can we communicate the complex findings to wider audiences? If we wish to influence policy, planning, design, social movements and politics, then our research needs to step outside the purely academic conversation in which teaching, research and publishing often take place. There has been a growing emphasis, within some universities, on experiential learning and civic engagement among students, and a demand for broader impacts of work among faculty. Applied mobilities research can contribute to these projects, yet it should not simply be instrumentalized to achieve external ends. Finally, we must again return to the questions with which we started, what is the future and how can we reach alternative mobility futures? While these questions already motivated mobilities research in the face of growing climate instability, the global mobility disruption and economic chaos caused by the COVID-19 pandemic make these questions even more urgent. In a world of quarantine, social distancing, and market instabilities we will need even more critical mobility perspectives and innovative applied research to find any kind of footing for sustainable human futures.

REFERENCES Aldred, R. (2012), ‘Governing transport from welfare state to hollow state: the case of cycling in the UK’, Transport Policy, 23 (September), 95–102. Appadurai, A. (1996), Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Baerenholdt, J. (2013), ‘Governmobility: the powers of mobility’, Mobilities, 8 (1), 20–34. Bissell, D. (2007), ‘Animating suspension: waiting for mobilities’, Mobilities, 2 (2), 277–98. Büscher, M., J. Urry and K. Witchger (2010), Mobile Methods, London and New York: Routledge. Clifford, J. (1997), Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cresswell, T. (2006), On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World, London: Routledge. Cresswell, T. (2018), ‘Encountering John Urry: a fragment of an autobiography in theory’, in O.B. Jensen, S. Kesselring and M. Sheller (eds), Mobilities and Complexities, London: Routledge, pp. 7–12. Edensor, T. and J. Larsen (2017), ‘Rhythmanalysing marathon running: “A drama of rhythms”’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, December, doi:10.1177/0308518X17746407. Friedman, T.L. (2005), The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, New York: Ferrar, Strauss and Giroux. Frohlick, S., K. Lozanski, A. Speier and M. Sheller (2019), ‘Ideas in motion: mobilities meet reproductive vibes . . .’, Transfers: Journal of Mobility Studies, 9 (1), 95–102. Furness, Z. (2010), One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Gopakumar, G. (2020), Installing Automobility: Emerging Politics of Mobility and Streets in Indian Cities, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Horton, D., P. Rosen and P. Cox (eds) (2007), Cycling and Society, Aldershot: Ashgate. Kaplan, C. (1996), Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kaplan, C. and I. Grewal (eds) (1994), Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Larsen, J. (2014), ‘(Auto)Ethnography and cycling’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 17 (1), 59–71. Larsen, J. and O. Funk (2018), ‘Inhabiting infrastructures. The case of cycling in Copenhagen’, in M. FreudendahlPedersen, K. Hartmann-Petersen and E.L.P. Fjalland (eds), Experiencing Networked Urban Mobilities: Practices, Flows, Methods, New York: Routledge, pp. 129–34.

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20  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Mapes, J. (2009), Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities, Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press. Massey, D. (1993), ‘Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place’, in J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson and L. Tickner (eds), Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change, London: Routledge, pp. 59–69. Mountz, A., K. Coddington, R.T. Catania and J. Loyd, (2012), ‘Conceptualizing detention: mobility, containment, bordering and exclusion’, Progress in Human Geography, 37 (4), 522–41. Parent, L. (2016), ‘The wheeling interview: mobile methods and disability,’ Mobilities, 11 (4), 521–32. Raithelhuber, E., N. Sharma and W. Schröer (2018), ‘The intersection of social protection and mobilities: a move towards a ‘Practical Utopia’ research agenda,’ Mobilities, 13 (5), 685–701, doi:10.1080/17450101.201 8.1468592. Sassen, S. (2013), ‘When territory deborders territoriality,’ Territory, Politics, Governance, 1 (1), 21–45. Scott, N. (2012), ‘How car drivers took the streets: critical planning moments of automobility’, In P. Vannini, L. Budd, O. B. Jensen, C. Fisker and P. Jiron (eds), Technologies of Mobility in the Americas, New York: Peter Lang, pp. 79–98. Scott, N. (2020), Assembling Moral Mobilities, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Sheller, M. (2003), Consuming the Caribbean. London and New York: Routledge. Sheller, M. (2004), ‘Automotive emotions: feeling the car’, Theory, Culture and Society, 21 (4–5), 221–42. Sheller, M. (2011a), ‘Creating sustainable mobility and mobility justice’, in C. Gay, S. Landriève and A. Kovalevsky (eds), Mobile / Immobile: Quels choix, quels droits pour 2030? (Mobile/Immobile: What Choices, What Rights for 2030?), Paris: Forum des Vies Mobiles, pp. 113–23. Sheller, M. (2011b), ‘The emergence of new cultures of mobility: stability, openings, and prospects’, in G. Dudley, F. Geels, R. Kemp (eds), Automobility in Transition? A Socio-Technical Analysis of Sustainable Transport, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 180–202. Sheller, M. (2018), Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes, London: Verso. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2000), ‘The city and the car’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24 (4), 737–57. Speier, A., K. Lozanski and S. Frohlick (2020), ‘Reproductive mobilities’, introduction to a special issue on reproductive mobilities, Mobilities, 15 (2), 107–19. Spinney, J. (2006), ‘A place of sense: a kinaesthetic ethnography of cyclists on Mont Ventoux’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 24 (5), 709–32. Stehlin, J.G. (2019), Cyclescapes of the Unequal City: Bicycle Infrastructure and Uneven Development, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Stoler, A. (2011), ‘Colony’, Political Concepts, accessed 3 April 2020 at http://www.politicalconcepts.org/issue1/ colony/. Urry, J. (2016), What is the Future?, Cambridge: Polity Press. Vukov, T. and M. Sheller (2013), ‘Border work: surveillant assemblages, virtual fences, and tactical countermedia’, Social Semiotics, 23 (2), 225–41. Walks, A. (ed.) (2014), The Urban Political Economy of Automobility: Driving Cities, Driving Inequalities, Driving Politics, Abingdon: Routledge.

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2.  Mobilities and values

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen

Once again climate change is being discussed on the international, as well as national, political stage. Mobilities plays an important role, where both the physical and the virtual mobilities account for a large part of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions causing climate change. Thinking about future mobilities also needs to involve thinking about sustainable mobilities, how to create new ways of living and new systems of mobilities that do less damage. In 2007, Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts ‘to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change’ (Nobel Prize 2007). The basis for this nomination was the film An Inconvenient Truth, made by Al Gore, which shows how the planet is affected by climate change. Currently, it is a young Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, who started skipping school on Fridays to protest about the climate, who has become a leading figure of environmental activism. There is quite a big difference between these two figures, and they serve as a brilliant example of how different values come into play and thus become significant for initiating change. In a mobile risk society, the response to climate change is becoming a responsibility for the reflexive individual, something that has to happen within everyday life practices (Kesselring 2008; Freudendal-Pedersen 2014b). These two figures identify a need for having something or someone to support, someone who makes activism a common responsibility. It still highlights the responsibility, but relieves the individual feeling of guilt. Al Gore’s film has been criticized though, for removing politics from the climate agenda, making apocalyptic claims and thus annihilating critical debates about the root causes producing the problems. With Greta Thunberg, the criticism has been more focused on her age, her lack of knowledge and the pressure she is under as an international figure. In both cases, these criticisms have to be taken seriously. However, in relation to the arguments I present in this chapter, these figures have played an important role in bringing the issue into everyday consciousness. It is not uncommon that discussions and discourses on climate change carry an intended guilt. In this chapter, I discuss the role of values when we are motivated to do something. This something can be directed towards academic understanding; it can also be directed towards changing and engaging in activism. Either way, my argument is that values are an important driving force in doing so.

VALUES IN EVERYDAY LIFE, AND THUS SCIENCE Living with risks is a constant component of a reflexive, time-pressured, everyday life, where we need to make a large number of choices (Giddens 1991; Beck 1992): choices about what food we eat (is it more important that I eat organic or locally produced food?); choices about the modes of mobilities we use (is it better that I drive my kid to school rather than run the risk of her being run over by a car if she goes on her own?). I could 21

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22  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities continue, but these choices are everywhere and our values are constantly at play when we make them. We make these choices based on our life politics and expert knowledge, and form our opinions based on the experts we sympathize with and we feel are trustworthy (Giddens 1991). Consequently, we are aware of the provisional in the knowledge we choose to believe in, and this constant reassessment and negotiation builds an increased sense of risk (Beck 1992; Beck et al. 1994). All this causes basic insecurity about the truth of new knowledge. We cannot know for certain that new knowledge will not be revised. We know what we should do more than what might, or would most likely, be the best for ourselves and the environment, but the complex and time-pressured everyday life demands other forms of behaviour than ‘the right one’ when there is so much knowledge that needs to be integrated when making decisions. However, this also means living with ambivalence, which is one of the main characteristics of the late-modern society (Bauman 1991). Through the modern project of ordering and handling through mutually excluding possibilities, society has become more fragmented. ‘People turn multifunctional because of the fragmentation of functions, and words turn polymeric because of the fragmentation of meaning’ (Bauman 1991, p. 13). More stories about the same phenomenon can always be told and, as a result, late-modern social life means living with ambivalences and without guarantees. These dilemmas are always present in our academic work; we handle them through referring to others, whose academic work we find trustworthy and that we can morally align ourselves with. Stop and think for a second; how often is it that you read an academic work that almost makes you angry? In my case, it is often when practices in everyday life are simplified into economically rational decisions. This clashes with my emphasis on values, my moral belief that we have to take emotions and irrationalities seriously if we wish to change practices. It clashes with my ontology. To get back to Al Gore and Greta Thunberg, you can say that what they do is that they, as Bauman (1995) argues, re-establish the individual as a moral actor. In a mobile risk society, it is difficult to maintain one collected societal ethics with rules for correct behaviour, and this means that the responsibility for action and choosing what is morally correct falls back on the individual. Thereby, individuals are forced to relate to moral issues emerging in everyday life, where most actions are conducted by routine (Giddens 1991; Bauman 1995). Bauman (1995) writes about two types of moral: conformity-moral, where the individual is responsible in relation to expressed conventions or institutional rules, and responsibility-moral, where the individual is responsible to someone or something based on a personal commitment. Al Gore and Greta Thunberg create a common platform for the responsibility-moral – a community with whom we can act together. It might be a guilt-based platform, but it is infused with so many other positive values of response-ability (Freudendal-Pedersen 2014b; Haraway 2016; Fjalland 2019). Ambivalence can result in paralysis if it cannot be dealt with via routines. This is part of why everyday life mobilities are so hard to change. However, ambivalences do not necessarily have to mean paralysis; Becker-Schmidt (1999) discusses how ambivalences create social learning. Focusing on women’s everyday lives, she describes two types of ambivalence, ambivalence-tolerance and ambivalence-defend, as a way to describe how to learn to live with ambivalences and defend yourself against them. Some ambivalence we learn to live with and navigate, others we ignore or evade. The climate change c­ ommunity

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Mobilities and values  23 is a way of handling the ambivalences, assuming that things can get better, not understood as contradictions that can be dissolved, but that the individual can handle ambivalences better when he or she recognizes them (Becker-Schmidt 1999). This way of understanding ambivalences is constructive and hopeful when it indicates a way out; a way in which the ambivalences are not only paralysing parts of late modern everyday life – accepting and navigating – but a place for learning and evolving. We need to share responsibilities of what we have learned to consider as being those within the individual sphere (FreudendalPedersen 2014b).

MOBILITIES RESEARCH AND VALUES Within mobilities research it is difficult not to meet apocalyptic visions of our future producing guilt. When Urry (2007), in his book Mobilities, names his final chapter ‘Systems and dark futures’ with a section entitled ‘Cars, climates and catastrophes’, he is touching upon the strain automobility puts on the physical environment. Here he says about the car that this ‘four person steel bodied and petroleum powered one ton car’ belongs in ‘museums where visitors (if there is still such visitor attractions and physical travel to them) will gawp at this technological dinosaur’ (Urry 2007, p. 279). This is based on the grasp automobility has upon humankind through locked-in institutional processes that leave no other hope. Twelve years later this has not changed; though, there is hope that there are small changes in how space for, and perceptions of, different modes of mobilities is changing. Even if car ownership in Copenhagen is on the rise, new planning concepts are rolled out. Still on a small scale, but nevertheless the major difference in these new concepts, is the allocation of street scapes for cars, busses, cyclists and pedestrians. It is no longer taken for granted that the car has dominance over the streets. The selling point for these new streets is not climate change but city living. Instead of selling the idea with negative values of guilt, the focus is on the positive values of community and city life. It is difficult to change mobility practices, especially with the institutionalization of the car over the past 100 years, but there is a strong longing for communities in which climate change can be handled (Freudendal-Pedersen 2015b). In my work, you can say that guilt-producing ambivalences are part of what makes the structural stories (Freudendal-Pedersen 2009, 2015a). However, in making the empirical work, there are many more positive values of hope, happiness, engagement, and so on that show up. In this way, structural stories are needed in a time when so much focus is on creating your own version of the good life, while pursuing freedom and happiness. There is no space for guilt. However, the climate community can challenge the structural story and make positive values a starting point for new stories that can create new communities of action. Al Gore and Greta Thunberg are influencing politics, and we, as mobilities researchers, get an entry to relate critically to certain politics as black boxes excluding essential societal processes. During the past 100 years, the car has been seen as the main provider of freedom and flexibility (Conley and McLaren 2012). With the climate change community having a loud, strong voice, the possibilities for changing cities to places where mobility as a service (MaaS), including a value of sharing, becomes a new given (Kamargianni et al. 2016; Freudendal-Pedersen and Kesselring 2018). The modern project of ethics seeks to

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24  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities ground moral choices in universally, rationally accessible principles and, by doing so, to relieve the individual of ambivalence – the ambivalence of freedom (Bauman 1995). We now have the freedom to define and create the good life in our own way, without traditions forcing specific communities with specific rules on us. The problem with this freedom is that it places a heavy burden of responsibility on the individual (Beck 1992), creating more insecurity and ambivalence because we are alone with the responsibility of our actions (Bauman 1988). With MaaS there is a place where flexibility and freedom can be distributed in a different way. Much of my empirical work on everyday life mobilities has been interviews followed by focus groups with the same people. The focus groups are a forum for social learning where structural stories are negotiated and questioned, and most often show a need for creating a common ‘us’ in the group. This happened as a result of the willingness of the interviewed to enter the space for different stories created by my role as the person questioning the structural stories. It made the participants lower their defences and play with the idea of different and new values and ideas of everyday life mobilities. I also ran several workshops with planners, politicians, artists and researchers, and these also opened up a space where the longing for dealing with the consequences of present mobility systems was possible (Freudendal-Pedersen and Kesselring 2016; FreudendalPedersen et al. 2017). Creating this space for unfolding additional ways of explaining and understanding mobilities opened up access to all the hopes, dreams and wishes to create more sustainable futures.

SUB-POLITICS AND STORYTELLING We have to design our own lifestyle and, through this, show what type of person we are and the values we hold. This means living with everyday ambivalences combined with traditions’ low impact on decision-making and the always apparent reflexivity. As a consequence, we create life politics as a politics through which we reflexively make choices based on the abundance of information and experiences that build up through late-modern lives, and thus create a lifestyle. Life politics provide us with ontological security, a place from where decisions about rights and wrongs can be made. It is through life politics we make connections between earlier experiences and future actions through which life obtains continuity (Giddens 1991). This means that we have a politic for our own life. These ethical and moral questions of everyday life are handled through sub-politics (Beck 1997). The values behind Al Gore’s and Greta Thunberg’s need to act are drivers of these subpolitics, and they do it because they do not rely on traditional political forums as guarantors for security. As a consequence of this, a politicizing of earlier non-political areas, such as everyday life, has developed. Sub-politics is not necessarily organized but it is a radical element of our actions; we are not necessarily aware when we act sub-politically. Whereas life politics is the politics of lifestyles focusing on choices and moral questions for the individual, sub-politics are concerned with the area in which societal consensus is created around different subjects and the subsequent impact. The concept of sub-polices opens up the possibility for action in the interplay between individuals’ choices of action (life politics) and more established (sub-)political institutions where consensus, giving more space for action, is embedded within the culture. That is, Beck’s (1992) concept of

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Mobilities and values  25 risk opens up the possibility of placing responsibility on the community instead of letting it rest on the individual. Sub-politics are dependent on storytelling to engage people. The argumentative turn in planning (Fischer and Forester 1993) focuses on how storytelling shapes how planning, politics and research unfold. Storytelling helps us understand the city and its mobilities and how it is produced, and future planning strategies are decided through good storytelling. Stories also shape the way we live and understand the world, and offer insight into how we understand and communicate our experiences, the values that guide our actions, and how to respond to climate crisis (Freudendal-Pedersen 2014a; Gibson et al. 2015; Freudendal-Pedersen and Kesselring 2016; Fjalland 2019). In this way the argumentative turn in planning is a way of not only recognizing that values exist, but also taking them seriously and integrating them into research. Storytelling shows ‘what counts and matters, and whose stories are told, and how and why. Regarding this, a question of representation, of storytelling, is therefore of significance because the way our stories are composed reflects realities’ (Fjalland 2019, p. 6). Understanding, understanding and changing, or understanding, changing and activism are based on values embedded in the stories we tell, or are told. We present them as stories and the way we present them are grounded in our ontology and epistemology, that is, grounded in our values.

FUTURE UTOPIAS AND VALUES Strong communities where the climate crisis is handled is one of the modern day’s utopias. Discussions about community have a long tradition (Tonnies 1957; Bauman 2001); discussions which, to a large extent, are accusing mobility of being an important factor in the erosion of communities, for instance, through urban sprawl. When Putnam (2000) examined communities in the USA, what sparked his investigation was that ‘more than 80 percent (of Americans) said there should be more emphasis on community, even if that put more demand on individuals’ (Putnam 2000, p. 25). He finishes his book by saying: Let us act to ensure that by 2010 Americans will spend less time travelling and more time connecting with our neighbours than we do today, that we will live in more integrated and pedestrian-friendly areas, and that the design of our communities and the availability of public space will encourage more casual socializing with friends and neighbours. (Putnam 2000, p. 408)

My guess is that the utopia Putnam presents comes from his own ontology, but also because he was listening to the values, hopes and dreams that arise when doing his fieldwork. The values are present, but as Baumann (2005) says in Liquid Life, they are utopias without a driving force because of the fragmentation of late-modern lives and processes making individuals and artefacts into objects of consumption. ‘Liquid life means constant self-scrutiny, self-critique and self-censure. Liquid life feeds on the self’s dissatisfaction with itself’ (Bauman 2005, pp. 10–11) – a life that creates dissatisfaction and thereby leaves no room left for common utopias. The way Baumann (2005) considers ambivalence is overwhelmed with its inherent state of paralysis, not as something with possibilities for creating social learning. This also, almost predictably, brings forward the claim that ‘the advent of liquid modern society spelled the demise of utopias centred on society and more generally of the idea of the “good society”’ (Bauman 2005, p. 11). It

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26  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities is the critique of how modern society has shaped us into individuals, with no room for utopian visions and the community that shapes these visions. As individuals, we are too occupied with creating our own individualized picture, and reality, of the type of life we wish to inhabit – a life which focuses on unlimited freedom and possibilities to buy whatever we desire. Reading the introduction to Liquid Life, or listening to apocalyptic tales or presentations about the doomed future, where the environment takes over and lets us pay for the mistakes we were not able to correct in time, always makes me think of the old song by Sting, ‘Russians’. This song is from a time when the cold war was still a burning issue. In the song he is singing about the threat from nuclear weapons and the possibilities of an atomic war – the big threat hanging over our heads 20 years ago. One line is ‘I hope the Russians love their children too’. This is the same values that Greta Thunberg is touching upon in her response to the climate crisis. In many ways, Baumann has been right in his diagnoses. I wonder how many of you remembered that Al Gore and the IPCC got the Nobel Peace Prize? It could be the case that Greta Thunberg is all but forgotten in a year’s time. The negative outlook could be that nothing will happen during the next ten years and then we get a new Al Gore or Greta Thunberg. One aspect that is significantly different between the two is the latter’s focus on values. She is not talking in numbers only, but also about our values, and the moral ‘how dare you’ has become a very emotional and value-infused statement from her. With this, she touches on the insecurity of how it can look: ‘we feel, guess, suspect what needs to be done. But we cannot know the shape or form it will eventually take. We can be pretty sure, though, that the shape will not be familiar. It will be different from everything we’ve got used to’ (Bauman 2005, p. 153). When undertaking empirical work on everyday life mobilities, I often asked my interviewees to describe the perfect life. The answers were almost the same: community, security and stability. Some years ago I presented a seminar on urban utopias, where I said that everybody was almost alike in what they wanted. That caused a lot of reactions from urban scholars protesting that people were all alike – their research recognized a great many differences. I am not neglecting differences decided by factors such as class, gender, education and location, but I believe that values and dreams of everyday life are alike. The danger in using values, dreams and utopias, when shaping our futures, is in shaking the fragile irrationalities that makes everyday life work. However, the real danger is that these values, dreams and utopias disappear; that we forget how to play and live beyond the frames already existing.

CONCLUDING REMARKS With the climate crisis we are facing, it is easy to become discouraged. It is easy to lose hope that we can change this while there is still time, that we will react in time to savour all that we cherish. However, this is exactly my point. We do cherish the spaces and the communities we are connected to. I will not argue against the possibility that there might be a mobile elite of people changing places whenever they feel like it, not caring if something gets worn out when they will only find new territories. This is not realistic though, as Beck (1992) points out in his book, Risk Society, when he talks about the boomerang effect. Whoever or wherever you are, the climate crisis has global effects which will eventually reach you.

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Mobilities and values  27 For most people, there are wishes and dreams of a better world, a world they know they have a responsibility to create and change because ‘they love their children too’.

REFERENCES Bauman, Z. (1988), Freedom, Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Bauman, Z. (1991), Modernity and Ambivalence, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (1995), Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality, Oxford: Blackwell. Bauman, Z. (2001), Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2005), Liquid Life, Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U. (1992), Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage. Beck, U. (1997), The Reinvention of Politics: Rethinking Modernity in the Global Social Order, Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U., A. Giddens and S. Lash (1994), Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Becker-Schmidt, R. (1999), in K. Illeris (ed.), Læring – aktuellæringsteori I spændingsfeltetmellem Piaget, Freud og Marx (Learning – Current Theory of Learning in the Tension Field between Piaget, Freud and Marx), Roskilde: Roskilde University Press. Conley, J. and A.T. McLaren (2012), Car Troubles: Critical Studies of Automobility and Auto-Mobility, Farnham: Ashgate. Fischer, F. and J. Forester (eds) (1993), The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books. Fjalland, E.L.P. (2018), ‘A Carrier bag story of (waste) food, hens and the sharing economy.’ Applied Mobilities 3 (1), 34–50, doi:10.1080/23800127.2018.1435439. Fjalland, E.L.P. (2019), Rebellious Waste and Food: Searching for Reparative Futures within Urban–Rural Landscapes, Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde University. Freudendal-Pedersen, M. (2009), Mobility in Daily Life: Between Freedom and Unfreedom, Farnham: Ashgate. Freudendal-Pedersen, M. (2014a), ‘Ethics and responsibilities’, in P. Adey, D. Bissel, K. Hannam, P. Merriman, and M. Sheller (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 143–53. Freudendal-Pedersen, M. (2014b), ‘Searching for ethics and responsibilities of everyday life mobilities’, Sociologica, 8 (1), 1–23, doi:10.2383/77045. Freudendal-Pedersen, M. (2015a), ‘Cyclists as part of the city’s organism – structural stories on cycling in Copenhagen’, City & Society, 27 (1), 30–50. Freudendal-Pedersen, M. (2015b), ‘Whose commons are mobilities spaces? The case of Copenhagen’s cyclists’, ACME, 14 (2), 598–621. Freudendal-Pedersen, M. and S. Kesselring (2016), ‘Mobilities, futures and the city. Repositioning discourses – changing perspectives – rethinking policies’, Mobilities, 11 (4), 573–84. Freudendal-Pedersen, M. and S. Kesselring. (2018), ‘Sharing mobilities’, Applied Mobilities, 3 (1), special issue, 1–7. Freudendal-Pedersen, M., K. Hartmann-Petersen, A.A. Kjærulff and Lise Drewes Nielsen (2017), ‘Interactive environmental planning: creating utopias and storylines within a mobilities planning project’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 60 (6), 941–58, doi:10.1080/09640568.2016.1189817. Gibson, K., D.B. Rose and R. Fincher (eds) (2015), Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene, New York: punctum books. Giddens, A. (1991), Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Haraway, D. (2016), Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Chicago, IL: Chicago Manual Press. Kamargianni, M., W. Li, M. Matyas and A. Schäfer (2016), ‘A critical review of new mobility services for urban transport,’ Transportation Research Procedia, 14 (December), 3294–303, doi:10.1016/j.trpro.2016.05.277. Kesselring, S. (2008), ‘The mobile risk society’, in S. Kesselring, V. Kaufmann and C. Weert (eds), Tracing Mobilities, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 77–104. Nobel Prize (2007), ‘The Nobel Peace Prize for 2007,’ accessed 7 March 2020 at https://www.nobelprize.org/ prizes/peace/2007/summary/. Putnam, R.D. (2000), Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon & Schuster. Tonnies, F. (1957), Community and Society, Mineola, NY: Courier Dover. Urry, J. (2007), Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press.

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3.  Mobilities and (un)sustainability Dennis Zuev and Luca Nitschke

INTRODUCTION The idea of sustainability is not new, as it has been practised by the indigenous people living in natural surroundings, the hunters and fishermen, gatherers and farmers (Martinez-Alier 2002). The laws of the harmony with nature meant we had to hunt and fish as much as we needed for the individual, family and community. Carlowitz, in the seventeenth century, suggested the idea of cutting as much timber as could possibly be regenerated (Grober 2010). However, traditional understanding of sustainability had already been undermined by overhunting and over-extraction since the era of geographic discoveries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The logic of greed has made several species extinct all over the world: whaling and seal hunting for fat and skins, as well as trapping, made some of the species almost extinct; for example, sables in Siberia were nearly exterminated in the seventeenth century owing to industrial-scale hunting for the precious fur and its global value (Agarkova 2009). Sustained economic growth has been on the agenda in most of the developed and emerging economies, which in terms of environmental impact are the largest contributors to the environmental crisis. However, it should be noted from the outset that to understand the complexity of sustainability it is useful to detach oneself from carbon-emission centrism and to view mobilities and sustainability more broadly by considering issues related to damaging extracting industries, water use and water pollution, production of waste, non-natural agricultural production, overfishing, overproduction and increasing hyper-consumption of some products, such as meat (Rockström et al. 2009; Hansen 2018). For us, the human history of natural destruction is the main motivation for undertaking research on how this unsustainable way of life can be changed to sustainable. Thinking in terms of the mobilities paradigm, with its focus on the relational nature of the human and non-human world, offers a fruitful starting point in this endeavour. In addition, we intend to inspire mobility researchers to think beyond, often technologically deterministic, utopias and fast spatial fixes (Spinney 2016) to urban mobility problems, and critically position emerging and evolving forms of mobility within a broader context of deformations and new inequalities caused by global capitalist urbanism.

SUSTAINABILITY: PARADOXES AND FOOTPRINTS With the digital acceleration and increase of physical movements, the world is overheating (Eriksen 2016) and humanity is experiencing multiple crises: financial, environmental, social, cultural and informational (Naess and Price 2016). People are leaving increasingly more carbon and digital footprints and extractive scars after themselves, and the current geological epoch is widely acknowledged as the Anthropocene. The ecological crises, 28

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Mobilities and (un)sustainability  29 often portrayed as global warming, has started to alarm some segments of the human population around the globe, many of whom are affected more than others by natural disasters and effects of fast economic growth. Sustainable development has become ‘the central challenge of our times’ (Wheeler 2002, p. 110). The modern notion of sustainability originated in the Brundtland report (WCED 1987), and it involved the idea of sustainable development. Having been criticized for strong anthropocentrism, more eco-centric perspectives have been proposed (Hall 2012). Sustainable development is thus a development that would consider the forthcoming generations of people but also the need for recognition, that ‘the capacity of the environment to improve living conditions for people is limited’ (Hall 2012, p. 123). Sustainability constitutes of three aspects: environmental, economic and social, the so named triple bottom line model by Elkington (1999). In some cases (for example, tourism), it is relevant to add another dimension of sustainability – a cultural dimension – and often an aesthetic sustainability dimension is added in relation to the urban environment. The four pillars – social, environmental, economic and cultural – are difficult to separate when a holistic sustainability assessment of an industry or an entity is to be undertaken. The interests of involved stakeholders often overlap and create tensions that hinder transitions to more sustainable production and consumption. Sustainability transitions are not limited to the domain of industries and large entities; transitions to sustainability occur when people and households are empowered in such a way that they themselves shape sustainability in their own environments (Loorbach 2007). Spaargaren (2003) suggests, that sustainable or green lifestyles are composed of segments, which may vary considerably among themselves in relation to the contribution they make to the net environmental impact of the lifestyle of the individual human agent. Indeed, the paradoxes regarding ‘sustainable lifestyles’ arise across different domains of consumption. For instance, the Nordic countries of Iceland and Norway are known for their emphasis on clean energy production and decarbonization of urban transport but at the same time have the highest per capita consumption of electronic devices and production of e-waste (World Atlas 2017). This indicates that the high standards of living and disposable income allow people to upgrade their technology more frequently and to consume more. Thus, while consciously decarbonizing urban transport or other domains of everyday life they still have a significant imbalance in maintaining green lifestyles. Besides, in some Nordic nations the oil reserve fund and benefits from the hydrocarbon extraction benefit the generous Nordic welfare system. The same social benefits redistribution applies to the rich Gulf States, where only the indigenous population has tremendous benefits originating from the oil sales. However, the same type of wealth stemming from mineral resources is not necessarily the case of improved social welfare in the African, Latin American or European and Asian countries. In the case of e-waste mentioned above, it is especially clear how the local wealth largely depends on environmental and social deprivation in other areas. Substantially, there appears to be an imbalance between the different aspects of sustainability. All too often, the economic sustainability (of companies) is traded against ecological sustainability (for example, the exploitation of shale gas in Northern Canada and resource extraction in national parks) or social sustainability (for instance, acceleration of work life and growing income inequality). The existing power relations in favour of economic sustainability are in conflict with arguments for environmental and social protection. Therefore, the triad of

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30  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities sustainability itself, or preferably the commensurability of economic sustainability with ecological and social sustainability within a capitalist state, should be questioned (Naess 2016). James O’Connor (1988, p. 14) describes this as the second contradiction inherent within the capitalist mode of production: ‘the contradiction between capitalist production relations (and productive forces) and the conditions of capitalist production, or “capitalist relations and forces of social reproduction”’.

UNSUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION AND UNSUSTAINABLE SUPPLY CHAINS Currently, the production of many consumer products, including cars and electronics, is based on largely unsustainable supply chains, where conflict minerals and hydrocarbons are needed for assembling and powering the digital and electric mobilities, often hailed as the technological fixes solving the problems of urban gridlock and pollution. For instance, electric vehicles have been presented as iconic signifiers of sustainable urban mobility in some countries, such as China. They are seen as one of the pathways in making a transition to more sustainable urban mobility, but they have several issues undermining their low-carbon status: the source of energy that provides electricity to charging them and the battery, which after its life-time needs to be recycled and may thus contribute to increasing volumes of electronic waste (Tyfield et al. 2014). The same two issues apply to another innovation that is becoming more widespread on the streets of European cities as a popular mode of trendy mobility, e-bikes and e-scooters. The supply chain for the battery itself is complex and largely unsustainable, with components such as cobalt being imported from conflict-torn countries in Africa and manually extracted by impoverished population in areas controlled by militias (Tsurukawa et al. 2011). Only very recently has the need for sustainability of supply chains in battery production been officially acknowledged (European Commission 2018). Although lithium needed for mass production of batteries is not a critical raw material, it does not make the extraction process more sustainable, as large amounts of water are needed in extracting areas such as Salar de Uyuni in north Chile, where aquifers are already over-exploited (Sherwood 2018). Rare-earth metals, a finite resource, and their use for fuel-cell vehicles is another non-alternative way of development for e-mobility. Thus, the whole imaginary of a frictionless, low-emission digital future is based on the growing extraction of precious and rare-earth metals and other finite resources. This extraction has large environmental impacts and often involves inhuman conditions. Most importantly, the supply of available deposits is anything but guaranteed or secured in a world full of local violent conflict and global instability. Therefore, a digital utopia for one part of the global population (generally the Global North) means violent conflict and inhuman working conditions as well as environmental degradation for another part of the global population (all too often the Global South) (Sheller 2018). All these elements and materials, including steel, aluminium and plastics, need to be shipped across oceans to the assembly line from which the vehicles are later shipped to customers. Meanwhile, global automotive giants are staging a race in providing digital and electric mobility of the future, which has little to do with steady sustainability and largely is enveloped in neoliberal economics of growth and competition.

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Mobilities and (un)sustainability  31 Cars and other consumer products are increasingly produced in one part of the world, shipped to another country and then redistributed to their final destination of consumption. More than 80 per cent of world trade tonnage is carried by seagoing vessels, with maritime transport a core part of most supply chains, and rail and road mainly used for hinterland transport and to and from ports (Lindstad et al. 2012). Seafaring ships, apart from being main vehicles for international trade, are an extremely carbon-intensive transportation using heavy fuels, where one ship usage is equivalent to that of several thousand diesel cars (Olmer et al. 2017). The wish of many consumers to eat non-seasonal fruit means the logistics all over the world follows the demand of the consumers instead of the natural rhythms of fruit growth. Finally, our curiosity for space exploration and space travel will also probably mean the extinction of helium, which is used to pump fuel into the rockets; but let’s get back to earth. In summary, the objectives of sustainable and clean cities often meant that pollution had to be offshored to less developed regions (as in China, where manufacturing has been relocated to Western provinces away from the large, affluent cities of the eastern coast) (Urry 2014). Currently, digital waste (waste electrical and electronic equipment, WEEE) constitutes the fastest growing waste stream in the industrialized world (Laha 2014). Close to 42 million metric tonnes of e-waste were generated in 2014, and this figure continues to rise, with around 80 per cent of the total global amount of e-waste ending up in Asia, of which around 90 per cent is shipped to China (UNODC 2013, p. 105). Hazardous waste trade is a growing multibillion-dollar industry, which to a great extent remains hidden owing to its offshored, secretive, illegal and informal (home-based) nature, where waste was often shipped back to China in empty container ships which had transported diverse consumer goods to North America or Europe. The studies of the e-waste trade demonstrate that international e-waste flows are a more complex story than just about developed countries offshoring the e-waste recycling in developing countries (Lepawsky and McNabb 2010).

UNSUSTAINABLE SHARING Sharing has always existed as a basis for human and social relations, however, with the arrival of the Internet and sharing-economy hype, many communities learned to share a diverse number of products, space and time (McLaren and Agyemann 2015). Some of these activities were initially non-commercial, driven by alternative lifestyle goals, and cultural exchange being incorporated in the freeware movement (Zuev 2011, 2013). The true altruistic and non-commercial sharing with a warm glow (Andreoni 1990) has been substituted by the ideology of generating income streams for and by micro-entrepreneurs (AirBnB 2017). The disrupting digital platforms, challenged and changed existing value networks, undermining the traditional accommodation industry and established taxi businesses, the latter being a particular employment sector for urban low-wage classes and migrants, and allowed little job security for those employed in the gig economy (Oskam and Boswijk 2016). AirBnB proliferation has led to gentrification, displacement and an increase in longterm housing rentals in many big cities (Wachsmuth and Weisler 2018) as short-term renting via AirBnB has become a new job, and economic benefits were more tangible than those provided by non-commercial hospitality platforms (Zuev 2011).

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32  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities BlaBlaCar is another instance of a digital platform which promoted ride-sharing, but casual carpooling practices have existed in the USA (and many other countries) and have been promoted without any digital platform assistance (Shaheen et al. 2016). However, hitchhiking as a non-commercial way of ride-sharing is a practice that is largely extinct or fossilized (Shove and Pantzar 2006) in developed Europe, and is now the resort of fringe youth cultures where hitchhiking constituted a part of the nomadic youth lifestyle (Zuev 2008). Sharing (mobilities) within the capitalist mode of production is caught between neoliberal co-option for further accumulation with a mobility fix, individualization and an increase in social inequality and the emancipatory potential for social and cultural change through fostering inclusion and undermining private ownership relationships while reducing environmental impact (Martin 2015).The concrete actualization will be uneven and depends on the political, cultural, social and organizational local context, and will be decided in a kinopolitical1 power struggle between actors and interests on various scales. Owing to the dominance of economic power in the politics of most countries, succumbing to sharing under capitalist accumulation is the more likely outcome, further contributing to the growth of various mobilities and, therefore, to growth of their negative impacts on society and the environment. Generally, practices of unsustainable mobility are deeply ingrained into everyday life and its material manifestations, making them highly path dependent and difficult to change (Sheller 2018). The marginal decrease of private car-use in some Western countries (infas 2018) is not even close to reaching an ecologically sustainable level, and is far from compensating the rapidly increasing car travel and ownership in other countries such as China (Zuev 2018b). The technological developments in the automobile industry promising a sustainable car future (via e-mobility and autonomous driving) largely rely on an expanded extraction of already-rare resources, therefore putting into doubt their ability to resolve the unsustainability of the car-system through the widely advertised promise of increased efficiency. On the contrary, a necessary discussion on sufficiency, and therefore the reduction of private car-travel on a large scale, is almost absent from politics, industry and the media (Brand and Wissen 2017). In addition to the environmental impacts of growing individual automobility, there are significant social impacts. In the 1970s, Andre Gorz (2009) attested to the antisocial and dividing nature of the car significantly contributing to individualization of the citizen (Brand and Wissen 2017) and a still dominant car-dependency along lines of class, gender, age and ethnicity. Increasing commuting distances and time taken have had a large impact on happiness, general health and the erosion of local communities (Sandow 2014) and the development of rural communities into mere sleeping cities. However, it is not only physical mobilities that become increasingly unsustainable. The physicality of digital mobilities has also been questioned by scholars and activists (see Joana Moll projects CO2GLE, defooooooooorest etc.; Moll n.d.). It is estimated, that every Google search leads to the emission of 0.2 g of carbon dioxide (CO2) and the turn towards total digitalization, connection and growth in data centres across the globe will create up to 3.5 per cent of global emissions by 2020 – surpassing aviation and shipping (Guardian 2017). Specifically, according to the findings by Belkhir and Elmeligi (2018), the footprint of smartphones alone would surpass the individual contribution of desktops, laptops and displays by 2020, with smartphones becoming the most damaging devices to

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Mobilities and (un)sustainability  33 the environment. Further, the CO2 emissions from mining the four biggest cryptocurrencies are estimated at 3–15 million tonnes between January 2016 and June 2018. The energy consumption for generating US$1 in cryptocurrencies surpasses the energy requirements of copper, gold, platinum and rare-earth oxides (Krause and Tolaymat 2018). With the proclaimed connection of everything through the Internet of things in smart cities, this trend is unlikely to be reversed in the near future. In addition, with the electricity required for the millions of electric vehicles that are meant to roam the world’s streets in the foreseeable future, the provision of clean energy from renewable energy sources becomes a significant challenge as it requires the large-scale extraction of precious, rareearth and other metals. Therefore, although digital information might become, or already be, a ubiquitous and free resource, its underlying material basis, computers, laptops, smartphones, smart vehicles, cables and sensors for smart infrastructure, wind turbines, solar cells, and so on, will continue to rely on scarce and contested resources whose extraction has significant environmental impacts. Also, far less is known about the social effects of a growing digitalization. On the one hand, it bears the potential for enabling large efficiency gains in many spheres of production, infrastructure and daily life. On the other, in a hyperconsumption-driven economy, shopping online can be an essential measure to avoiding journeys and thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but no studies exist yet in examination of the impact on the environment in terms of plastic and cardboard used in packaging, as even small items often come with disproportionate package formats. Growing digitalization, especially in the post-COVID-19 world, also carries the potential of increased control and surveillance or dataveillance (Van Dijck 2014) by states, employers and/or other individuals, which leads to further individualization and flexibilization of everyday life, having significant psychological and social effects (stigmatization, exclusion and youth suicide).

SOME SUGGESTIONS AND (NOT VERY) BLEAK FUTURES Sustainability, due to the complex interweaving of engaged stakeholders, actors and capital interests, will be a very long conflictual fight (Burns 2013). While large entities such as the aviation industry may be the hardest elements to transition, sustainability starts at the individual level, specifically at the level of changing social practices in diverse domains of consumption (Spaargaren 2003). While the awareness is growing, the activists are vocal and educational campaigns are used for pumping money into making citizens aware of their carbon footprint and waste impact, the spirit of capitalist production is a current too strong to swim against. The gap between attitudes towards sustainability and actual practices is large, and even those who are committed to decreasing impact on environment often find it hard to change their habits of travelling and consumption (Barr et al. 2010). Sustainability transitions in different sociotechnical domains (manufacturing, construction, transportation and utilities provision) will be uneven in effecting different aspects of human activity and geographic locations (Hansen and Coenen 2015). Where it is not possible to reduce internal combustion engine (ICE) car travel, such as in emerging economies, it can be mitigated by a shift to e-mobility, the use of biofuels and the promotion of car-sharing. Indeed, car mobility can be significantly reduced and easily phased out in human-orientated cities,

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34  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities and currently there is a European Union (EU) plan to phase out cars from cities by 2050 (Nieuwenhuijsen and Khreis 2016). Planning for transportation and infrastructure development therefore needs to urgently take into account this gap between the attitudes towards sustainability and actual practices, especially with the rapid urbanization in Asia and Africa, where population growth provides another challenge in tackling stabilizing emissions. Developed public transport and cycle-friendly urban planning make the city scale more manageable and public space more liveable. Indeed, planning and redevelopment of industrialized cities into walking cities and public space sharing is a positive trend, but still has a long way to go, with the growing middle classes in emerging economies being all too happy to travel by car. Without government intervention transition towards sustainable travel is almost impossible and there are no game-changing innovations for the reduction of long-haul air travel (Cohen et al. 2014). A significant shift in psychology relating to long-haul travel is needed to move towards travelling less and travelling less far away for short periods of time. A plethora of initiatives and social movement organizations have been promoting the vision of decarbonizing transport through reduction of air travel and substituting this travel by train within the EU (Stay Grounded n.d.). Digital technologies are changing the nature of work-related mobility, and hypermobility is already being examined as a damaging feature to social and individual health (Cohen and Goessling 2015). While teleconferencing and virtual meetings (Lindeblad et al. 2016), Skype and Zoom meetings or drone-technology facilitate less travelling, and make remote monitoring and communication less costly and more environmentally friendly, these are coming at the price of reducing human labour involved, with yet still our computers being mostly powered by coal (Gabrys 2015). There are several solutions to the problem of increasing Internet traffic and smartphone use: less frequent purchase of a new device and specific environmental design of digital services, ability to avoid wasteful digital downloads, heavy file transfers and unnecessarily high resolution of videos. The growing volume of waste – urban, industrial, extractive, food, electronic and space (including Elon Musk’s roadster) – is going to be one of the major problems to face in the near future for the countries both in the Global North and Global South. Enforcement of import bans on waste in Asian countries, with China leading, is a positive move as developed countries will be incentivized to develop better recycling and extracting facilities instead of simply shipping it abroad or, in the characteristic not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) fashion, just across their national border. At the same time, even the wasteprocessing industry has to be considered carefully from the viewpoint of sustainability, as it often employs precarious migrant workers, and mere enlargement of the recycling facilities does not mean the waste is recycled according to the principles of circular economy (Zuev 2018b). All the above issues create the feeling that radical change is necessary, not only within civil society, where new radical activist groups such as Extinction Rebellion are gaining momentum, but also among scientists (Scientists4Future), including ourselves. The state of the world creates a strong motivation to put (social) scientific knowledge production at the service of a transition towards less environmental and social impact on our lifestyles. Mobilities research offers the particular advantage that it is based on a relational ontology, emphasizing the connectedness of diverse issues, explicitly critiquing the reductionism to economic issues inherent in current political debates. Mobility justice as an interlinked

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Mobilities and (un)sustainability  35 multi-scalar concept, rooted in the mobilities paradigm, in particular enables researchers and society to analyse and understand the deep interconnectedness between social and environmental aspects of life (see Chapter 1 in this volume).

NOTE 1. Kinopolitics – politics of movement.

REFERENCES Agarkova, E. (2009), ‘Preserving the symbol of Siberia, moving on: Sobol’ and the Barguzinsky Zapovednik’, ICWA Letters, EA 13, Russia, July, 1–8. AirBnB (2017), ‘Advancing sustainable tourism through home sharing’, report, accessed 20 March 2020 at https://s3.amazonaws.com/airbnbcitizenmedia/2017/11/Advancing_Sustainable_Tourism_Through_Home_ Sharing_171128.pdf. Andreoni, J. (1990), ‘Impure altruism and donations to public goods: a theory of warm-glow giving’, Economic Journal, 100 (401), 464–77. Barr, S., G. Shaw, T. Coles and J. Prillwitz (2010), ‘“A holiday is a holiday”: practicing sustainability, home and away’, Journal of Transport Geography, 18 (3), 474–81. Belkhir, L. and A. Elmeligi (2018), ‘Assessing ICT global emissions footprint: trends to 2040 & ­recommendations’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 177 (March), 448–63. Brand, U. and M. Wissen (2017), Imperiale Lebensweise (Imperial lifestyle) Munich: Oekom Verlag. Burns, T.R. (2013), ‘Sustainable development’, Sociopedia.isa, accessed 5 October 2018 at http://www.sagepub. net/isa/resources/pdf/SustainableDevelopment.pdf. Cohen, S.A. and S. Goessling (2015), ‘A darker side of hypermobility’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 47 (8), 166–1679. Cohen, S.A., J.E.S. Higham, P. Peeters and S. Gössling (2014), ‘Why tourism mobility behaviours must change’, in S.A. Cohen, J.E.S. Higham, S. Gossling and P. Peeters (eds), Understanding and Governing Sustainable Tourism Mobility. Psychological and Behavioural Approaches, London: Routledge, pp. 1–12. Elkington, J. (1999), Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business, new edn, Oxford: Capstone. Eriksen, T.H. (2016), Overheating: An Anthropology of Accelerated Change, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. European Commission (2018), ‘Report on raw materials for battery applications’, Commission Staff Working Document, SWD(2018) 245/2 final, Brussels, 22 November. Gabrys, J. (2015), ‘Powering the digital: from energy ecologies to electronic environmentalism’, in R. Maxwell, J. Raundalen and N.L. Vestberg (eds), Media and the Ecological Crisis, New York: Routledge, pp. 3–18. Gorz, A. (2009), ‘Die gesellschaftliche Ideologie des Autos’ (‘The ideology of the car’), in A. Gorz, Auswege Aus Dem Kapitalismus – Beiträge Zur Politischen Ökologie, Zurich: Rotpunktverlag, pp. 52–64. Grober, U. (2010), Die Entdeckung der Nachhaltigkeit: Kulturgeschichte eines Begriffs (The Discovery of Sustainability), Munich: Antje Kunstmann. Guardian (2017), ‘“Tsunami of data” could consume one fifth of global electricity by 2025’ Guardian, 11 December, accessed 20 October 2018 at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/11/tsuna​mi-ofda​ta-could-consume-fifth-global-electricity-by-2025. Hall, M.S. (2012), ‘Sustainable mega-events: beyond the myth of balanced approaches to mega-event sustainability’, Event Management, 16 (2), 119–31. Hansen, A. (2018), ‘Meat consumption and capitalist development: the meatification of food provision and practice in Vietnam’, Geoforum, 93 (July), 57–68. Hansen, T. and L. Coenen (2015), ‘The geography of sustainability transitions: review, synthesis and reflections on an emergent research field’, Environmental Innovation and Sociotechnical Transition, 17 (December), 92–109. Institute for Applied Social Sciences (infas) (2018), ‘Mobilität in Deutschland – Kurzreport’ (‘Mobility in Germany – short report’), Bonn, accessed 3 April 2020 at http://www.mobilitaet-in-deutschland.de/pdf/in​ fas_Mobilitaet_in_Deutschland_2017_Kurzreport.pdf. Krause, M.J. and T. Tolaymat (2018), ‘Quantification of energy and carbon costs for mining cryptocurrencies’, Nature Sustainability, 1 (814), 711–18.

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36  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Laha, S. (2014), ‘Informality in e-waste processing: an analysis of the Indian experience’, Competition and Change, 18 (3), 309–26. Lepawsky, J. and C. McNabb (2010), ‘Mapping international flows of electronic waste’, Canadian Geographer, 54 (2), 177–95. Lindeblad, P.A., Y. Voytenko, O. Mont and P. Arnfalk (2016), ‘Organisational effects of virtual meetings’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 123 (1), 113–23. Lindstad, H., B.E. Asbjørnslett and J.T. Pedersen (2012), ‘Green maritime logistics and sustainability’, in D.-W. Song and P.M. Panayides (eds), Maritime Logistics: Contemporary Issues, London: Emerald, pp. 227–44. Loorbach, D. (2007), ‘Governance for sustainability’, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 3 (2), 1–4 Martin, C.J. (2015), ‘The sharing economy: a pathway to sustainability or a new nightmarish form of neoliberalism?’, Ecological Economics, 121, 149–59. Martinez-Alier, J. (2002), The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar. McLaren, D. and J. Agyemann (2015), Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities, Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press. Moll, J. (n.d.), CO2GLE, accessed 10 September 2019 at http://www.janavirgin.com/CO2/CO2GLE_about.html Naess, P. (2016), ‘The illusion of green capitalism’, in P. Naess and L. Price (eds), Crisis System: A Critical Realist and Environmental Critique of Economics and the Economy, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 173–91. Naess, P. and L. Price (eds) (2016), Crisis System: A Critical Realist and Environmental Critique of Economics and the Economy, London and New York: Routledge. Nieuwenhuijsen, M.J. and H. Khreis (2016), ‘Car free cities: pathway to healthy urban living’, Environment International, 94 (September), 251–62. O’Connor, J. (1988), ‘Capitalism, nature, socialism: a theoretical introduction’, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 1 (1), 11–38. Olmer, N., B. Comer, B. Roy, X. Mao and D. Rutherford (2017), ‘Greenhouse gas emissions from global shipping, 2013–2015’, International Council on Clean Transportation, Washington, DC, October. Oskam, J. and A. Boswijk (2016), ‘Airbnb: the future of networked hospitality businesses’, Journal of Tourism Futures, 2 (1), 22–42. Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, Å. Persson, F.S. Chapin, E, Lambin, et al. (2009), ‘A safe operating space for humanity’, Nature, 461 (24), 472–75. Sandow, E. (2014), ‘Til work do us part: the social fallacy of long-distance commuting’, Urban Studies, 51 (3), 526–43. Shaheen, S.A., N.D. Chan and T. Gaynor (2016), ‘Casual carpooling in the San Francisco Bay Area: understanding user characteristics, behaviors, and motivations’, Transport Policy, 51 (October), 165–73. Sheller, M. (2018), Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes, New York: Verso. Sherwood, D. (2018), ‘In Chilean desert, global thirst for lithium is fueling a “water war”’, Reuters, accessed 12 October 2018 at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-lithium-water/in-chilean-desert-global-thirst-forlith​ium-is-fueling-a-water-war-idUSKCN1LE16T. Shove, E. and M. Pantzar (2006), ‘Fossilization’, Ethnologia Europaea. Journal of European Ethnology, 35 (1–2), 59–63. Spaargaren, G. (2003), ‘Sustainable consumption: a theoretical and environmental policy perspective’, Society & Natural Resources: An International Journal, 16 (8), 687–701. Spinney, J. (2016), ‘Fixing mobility in the neoliberal city: cycling policy and practice in London as a mode of political–economic and biopolitical governance’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 106 (2), 450–58. Stay Grounded (n.d.), accessed 12 September 2019 at https://stay-grounded.org/about/. Tsurukawa, N., S. Prakash and A. Manhart (2011), ‘Social impacts of artisanal cobalt mining in Katanga, Democratic Republic of Congo’, Öko-Institut e.V., Freiburg, November. Tyfield, D., D. Zuev, P. Li and J. Urry (2014), ‘Low carbon innovation in Chinese urban mobility: prospects, politics and practices’, STEPS Working Paper No. 71, STEPS Centre, Brighton. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) (2013), ‘Transnational organized crime in East Asia and the Pacific. A threat assessment’, accessed 12 October 2018 at https://www.unodc.org/documents/south​ eastasiaandpacific//Publications/2013/TOCTA_EAP_web.pdf. Urry, J. (2014), Offshoring, Cambridge: Polity Press. Van Dijck, J. (2014), ‘Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: big data between scientific paradigm and ­ideology’, Surveillance & Society, 12 (2), 197–208. Wachsmuth, D. and A. Weisler (2018), ‘AirBnB and the rent gap: gentrification through the sharing economy’, Environment and Planning A. Economy and Society, 50 (6), 1147–70. Wheeler, S.M. (2002), ‘Constructing sustainable development/safeguarding our common future: rethinking sustainable development’, Journal of the American Planning Association, 68 (1), 110–11.

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Mobilities and (un)sustainability  37 World Atlas (2017), ‘Highest E-waste generating nations in the world’, accessed 5 October 2018 at https://www. worldatlas.com/articles/highest-e-waste-generating-nations-in-the-world.html. World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (1987), Our Common Future, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zuev, D. (2008), ‘The practice of free-traveling: young people coping with access in post-soviet Russia’, Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 16 (1), 5–26. Zuev, D. (2011), ‘Couchsurfing as a spatial practice: accessing and producing xenotopos’, Hospitality and Society, 1 (3), 227–44. Zuev, D (2013), ‘Couchsurfing along the Trans-Siberian Railway and beyond: cosmopolitan learning through hospitality in Siberia’, Sibirica, 12 (1), 56–82. Zuev, D. (2018a), Urban Mobility in Modern China. The Growth of the E-Bike, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Zuev, D. (2018b), ‘Digital afterlife (eco) civilizational politics of the site and the sight of e-waste in China’, Anthropology Today, 34 (6), 11–15.

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4.  Researching the mobile risk society Sven Kesselring

A few days before I sat down for this text I met Danish architect Jan Gehl, the author of the book Cities for People (Gehl 2010) for an interview.1 We had a long conversation over coffee in his office in Copenhagen. Mainly, we focused on the future of urban mobilities but gradually he unfolded his philosophy of how to put the human scale center stage in urban planning, architecture and the urgently needed transformation of the autocentered city. In the 1980s, Gehl became famous with his ideas about the urban design of humanistic environments. He still demands an architecture that meets the needs of people instead of pursuing the very common (mis)understanding that people and communities would adapt to almost everything they are confronted with. Instead of building cities and architecture that is possible – specifically, technologically possible – his work has been a lifelong commitment to what I would call the subject-orientated and, intentionally, biased approach in urban planning and architecture. At some point in this interview I asked him the crucial question: ‘What do you think we need to teach our students to make them capable of dealing with the challenges of a world increasingly pressured from climate change?’ This was a bit unfair. Not even a sociologist of the standing of Niklas Luhmann had been able to give a serious answer to this question in an interview. However, it did not take Jan Gehl very long to process the answer: ‘Methods! We need to help them to internalize and embody how to read and understand the city and its social lives’ (interview with the author). It is the ‘life between buildings’, so the title of one of his books (Gehl 2011), that needs to be in the focus, not the buildings themselves. It is the research methods – and this comprises a very wide and inclusive definition of what methods are – that enable us as researchers, planners, designers, architects, journalists, as all sorts of curious people to decode, decipher and understand the world around us. Only then, as individuals, institutions, companies, organizations and, even, nation states, when we are ready to, and capable of, listening and watch carefully and systematically in and to the logics and rationalities of everyday lives, are we able to develop sustainable environments, technologies, socio-material structures and systems. Currently, when everybody talks about the sustainability of transport systems, new business models in transport, mobility as a service (MaaS), and so on, again the question to be asked is, ‘Will mobility be shaped merely by what is technologically possible, and profitable, or by what people need and what is able to contribute to sustainable and livable cities?’

IN A STATE OF EMERGENCY: THE QUESTION OF SUSTAINABLE MOBILITIES ‘How dare we?’ in young climate activist Greta Thunberg’s words. How dare we spend our energy and time on sophisticated, often small-scale and meticulous methods, perhaps even non-representative qualitative methods? All this just to understand people’s needs, wishes, 38

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Researching the mobile risk society  39 desires, their rational or perhaps irrational, counterproductive, highly consumptive and, in consequence, probably unsustainable practices and behaviors? Why not leave this to market research that does it anyway and target the really big questions of the future of mobility – the steady increases in transport, that is, the rising CO2 emissions by cars, airplanes and so on, and the seemingly infinite hunger of modern societies for energy? Counter-question: ‘Do we have an alternative, actually?’ In 2017, the German member organization of Friends of the Earth (BUND), initiated a report entitled ‘Mobile Baden-Württemberg. Transformative pathways towards sustainable mobility’ (Baden-Württemberg Stiftung 2017). The federal state of BadenWürttemberg is located in the German southwest, adjacent to Switzerland, Austria and France. With 11 million inhabitants, it is Germany’s third largest federal state and Stuttgart its regional capital. The cradle of the modern automobile lies here. Berta Benz, business partner and wife to Karl Benz, was the first person able to see the social meaning and potential of the vehicle constructed by her husband, patented in 1865. BadenWürttemberg now hosts leading car producers Daimler, Porsche and Audi and a variety of global suppliers such as Bosch and Mahle together with a wide range of small and medium-scale manufacturing industries that hold leading positions in producing for, and maintaining, the worldwide ‘“system” of automobility’ (Urry 2004). It is easy to imagine that the current transitions and upheavals in automobility and the question of what will be the future of motorized individual transport are at the top of regional political agendas. In Baden-Württemberg alone, conservative estimates expect a decrease of between 11 and 35 percent of employees directly connected to the production of the combustion engine, whereas approximately 3.3 percent of new jobs may be created for electric drivetrains. The ‘Mobile Baden-Württemberg’ report had a seriously political message and it helps to approach the question raised above, ‘Do we have an alternative?’ or more precisely: ‘Do we have an alternative to take into account how people live, how they organize their everyday and working lives, and what constitutes their routines, their beliefs and the socio-cultural foundations of what they consider to be normal, necessary, convenient and comfortable?’ I am not claiming this has not been the case previously. Market research and sociological research of mobility behavior and of people’s strategies and routines for managing everyday lives, tasks and constraints as employees, mothers and fathers, children, friends, politically and culturally active citizens, communities, neighborhoods and so on have been subject to highly sophisticated investigation and study. However, the predominant reading and understanding of what it means to live individualized and increasingly cosmopolitan lives coincided with the seriously unsustainable lifestyle of ‘automobilism’ (Burkart 1994; see also Sachs 1992) and increased time-space compression in general. Nevertheless, taking into account that leading experts in climate change research now ring the alarm and see the tipping point of the climate system as closer than ever before, as almost upon us, all modern intellectual and scientific capacity has been put into steering and a­ ccelerating the juggernaut on an apocalyptic course: In our view, the evidence . . . suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute . . .. We argue that the intervention time left to prevent tipping could already have shrunk towards zero, whereas the reaction time to achieve net zero emissions is 30 years at best. Hence we might already have lost control of whether tipping happens. A saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping – and hence the risk posed – could still be under our control to some extent. The stability and resilience of our

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40  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities planet is in peril. International action – not just words – must reflect this. (Lenton et al. 2019, p. 595)

Against this background, the ‘Mobiles Baden-Württemberg’ report can be read in many ways: as a microscopic study of a key region of the system of automobility that sheds light on industrial, labor, innovation and technology policies with some global impact and relevance for the pace, orientations, successes and failures of one of the iconic industries of the first and maybe also the second modernity (in Ulrich Beck’s terminology of risk society theory). Methodologically, the study is of interest because it thinks through three possible scenarios of how different socio-technological prioritizations pre-structure the social, economic and ecological sustainability of mobility in a region which is meant to be essential for the sustainability of mobility and transport. Last but not least, it is the attempt to consider some of the entry points for sustainability policies which target the regional scale as the one with the most direct influence and take on sustainable development and where action can reflect upon the ‘climate emergency’ (Lenton et al. 2019, p. 592). Since we do not have the space for detailed elaborations here, I focus on the scenarios and the lessons learned from them. Three scenarios are presented. departing from the following general premises: they are all aiming at almost complete reductions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, that is, through ambitious technological developments and innovations towards decarbonized productions and transport (electric mobility, innovative logistics and post-carbon fuels); and automated vehicles become a standard in all public and private forms of transport. 1. New individual mobility: in this scenario the car remains the dominant mode of transport and iconic technology for conspicuous consumption. Electric mobility contributes to cleaner and more efficient urban quality of life and increases the livability of places. The organizing rationale behind this scenario and the policies within it is, being privately and comfortably on the road. Automation increases comfort and convenience in transport, and through individually owned automated cars. Freight transport and air traffic are increasing. 2. New services: here, new innovative mobility concepts, new business models and the sharing of vehicles become predominant. A diversified supply of access to different forms of mobility gains the market and intermodality between public and private forms of mobility are the mainstream role model. Private car fleets are decreasing, especially in cities, and the shares of public transport and bicycles increase. Rural areas become connected through intermodal mobility chains and in the countryside new specifically tailored services arise. In general, automated vehicles become the standard. In total, the growth in freight transport and air traffic slows down. 3. New mobility culture: this scenario is built on people traveling significantly shorter distances and using highly flexible public transport systems. Public transport comprehensively provides ride-sharing services with different vehicle sizes, many of them automatized; individual (automatized) car transport and ownership play a minor role; road and parking spaces become public spaces and can be used for cultural and social activities and for non-motorized transport. Neighborhoods become almost completely free of cars and people use all sorts of non-motorized and low-energy modes of transport. The demand for regional and long-lasting products increases and with it comes a trend reversal in the growth of freight and air traffic.

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Researching the mobile risk society  41 The reason why I am presenting this here is that the first two scenarios refer to the predominant discursive storylines on the future of mobility: transformations in drivetrains and new services. Both conceive the changes in mobility systems mainly as a project of technological modernization and increased efficiency. This discussion has a longstanding tradition in sustainability studies as well as in mechanical engineering, and is still key to all sorts of policies to increase the sustainability of energy-based systems (Weizsäcker et al. 1997; Weizsäcker and Wijkman 2018): The use of digital technologies in order to economise the mobility sector, making it more efficient and intermodal, cannot be stopped. It is the fundamental paradox that it was the private automobile – originally – that generated a degree of individualisation and pluralisation that is now continued and accelerated by digital media. There is no going back. As long as our democracies are organised according to market capitalist principles, national policy-makers will always resort to considering societal integration as an essential element of economic prosperity allowing for individual lifestyles. The automobile with its combustion engine was only the first-generation appliance. Its broad success, however, has forced us to consider alternatives and re-interpret the product with the help of digital technologies. From a sociological perspective, the fixation with safeguarding the current product paradigm will, sooner or later, have to give way to a new generation of transportation. (Canzler and Knie 2016, p. 65)

Without a doubt, this summarizes the main strategic orientation necessary for the sustainable development of mobility and transport within modern capitalist societies and market economies. However, with the third scenario, the report puts another topic on the agenda, which shows significant similarities to the local sustainability scenario developed by Dennis and Urry (2009). Figure 4.1 has been taken from the report. It shows the sustainability impacts of all three scenarios and their potentials to meet the sustainability development goals of the United Nations (UN) and all countries that signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, namely, to keep global warming below 2 degrees. Only the dimensions with the light-grey buttons approximately meet the goals. Scenarios 1 (mainly technological efficiency) and 2 (technological and organizational efficiency) must fail. Technology and the reorganization of mobility and transport based on new services and artificial intelligence and smart digital technologies would not be sufficient. What have to come into play are what many authors term a new mobility culture, and a significantly different societal and economic relationship and definition of growth and wealth, and – as a fundamental social change – economy and social life based on significantly less distances traveled. Throughout the text this lesson seems dry and apodictic, somehow covering up its social explosivity (Beck 1988): ‘The scenario “new mobility culture” implies that significant changes in mobility practice include sufficiency approaches as elements of lived everyday practice’ (Baden-Württemberg Stiftung 2017, p. 124). That is, the ‘Green New Deal’ (Rifkin 2019) with its focus on technological and organizational modernization is essential; but it can only be one side of the coin. Without significant changes in the mobility cultures of everyday life, business and logistics, sustainability in mobility and transport cannot be achieved. It is almost a commonplace and a (not so) simple calculation, that the speed of change necessary to reach the United Nation’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) can only be met, if fewer kilometers, less energy and less CO2 are traveled, consumed and emitted (see Figure 4.2). Higher efficiency in transport needs the sufficiency of mobility systems and the

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42  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Indicator

New individual mobility (NIM)

New services (NDL)

New mobility culture (NMK)

GHG emissions Energy consumption Environmental

Consumption of electricity Consumption of non-energetic resources Land use Emissions of air pollutants Noise emissions Traffic performance (public transport)

Economic

Modal split in freight transport Employment rate mobility industry Turnover mobility industry Mobility costs

Social

Movement/active mobility Mix of different utilizations Accessibility Quality of lingering in public space Source:  Baden-Württemberg Stiftung (2017, p. 239).

Figure 4.1  Sustainability impacts of the three scenarios organization of everyday life as a backbone, comparable to the role of public transport as the scaffold and framework for flexible, individualized, customized and connected mobility services. As a consequence, putting too many high hopes on the technological fix of the Green New Deal leads to a situation of human-made risks, uncontrollable and catastrophic in its outcome. Avoiding this can only mean saying farewell to old routines and to the form of (auto-)mobility as we know it, as we take it for granted and consider it as being normal. The responsibility to orchestrate this major task and the cultural change connected to it cannot be shifted and become a burden to the individual alone. Instead, it is the duality of structure and action (Giddens 1984) that constitutes societies, and both individuals and institutions are part of shaping social change. Nevertheless, discussions on sustainable

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Researching the mobile risk society  43 CO2 mitigation curves: 1.5ºC

Since such steep mitigation is impossible, the only way to achieve this budget is with very large ‘negative’ emission: pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Constant emissions for nine years will use up the remaining carbon budget

40 Gt CO2 30

Starting mitigation in 2019 will require monumental mitigation rates

20

10

Starting mitigation in 2000 would have required a mitigation rate of about 4%/yr

For a >66% chance of staying below 1.5ºC. Remaining budget: 420 GtCO2 Mitigation curves after Raupach et al. 2014.

0 1980

2000

2020

2040

2060

2080

2100

@robbie_andrew • Data: GCP • Emission budget from IPCC SR1.5 Source:  Robbie Andrew/Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. With friendly permission granted by the author.

Figure 4.2  S  peed of change necessary to reach the United Nation’s 17 sustainable development goals development and ecological modernizations often have a tendency to individualize collective problems and to pretend that mobility behavior is a matter of individual choice – even if individuals increasingly travel within large-scale technological systems (think of the automatized mobilities in a future smart city, the current traffic control systems at work and public transport in general). Leading journalist Bernd Ulrich, editor in chief of Die ZEIT, the major weekly newspaper in Germany, addresses this problem in his latest book, Everything Will Be Different. The Ecological Age (German original: Alles wird anders. Das Zeitalter der Ökologie). There he writes: Just imagine if the welfare state were to be as weakly developed as the ecological state. How heavy social inequalities and the needs of poorer people would weigh on the conscience of those who own more . . .. It may not sound nice but it is nevertheless right: democratic politics means to relieve the individual’s social and ecological muscles – at least partially. Politics are facing the challenge to let the right thing become structural and command the necessary. As long as we can still fly to Rome for 30 euros we needed to be ascetic heroes to give up on it. And heroism is something for minorities. (Ulrich 2019, p. 199)2

Picking up on Greta Thunberg’s words, how dare we spend precious time on developing methods and methodologies for better and even more fine-grained research? My motivation for writing this book was the awareness that the techno-organizational

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44  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities t­ransformations of mobilities ahead of us, and the upheavals, turmoil and conflicts coming with it, need a more sophisticated understanding of the social world and the social embeddedness of mobility and transport. When we agreed to start this book project, my personal motivation was clear and unambiguous. First, the three of us finally found the opportunity to work closer together. Monika Büscher, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen and I had known each other for decades and we were happy to bring Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen on board. We had collaborated on conferences, workshops and some smaller events and publications, and we enjoyed them. Every now and then we shared ideas over a drink, an experience that was inspiring, enriching and as joyful as good scholarship and friendship can be. This project is also the product of an excellent social situation. I don’t think it is the only way of managing a project like this, but some of the academic and organizational challenges that arise on a complex journey like this become so much easier when you enjoy the company throughout the travel. Another reason why I liked the idea of this book was that the decision came at a time when we had just started a new Master’s program in sustainable mobilities at my university. We were missing a comprehensive, timely and fitting compendium for educating students in (mobile) methods and from an interdisciplinary mobilities background. Edward Elgar Publishing offered us the opportunity to develop the urgently needed teaching materials for an education which is moving students into new, uncharted territories at a time when mobility systems, the automobile system in particular, and the whole complex of sustainable mobility are in a penetrating and inevitable structural transformation. The time has come for ‘pioneering mobilities’ again, also methodologically.3 However, beyond these immediate reasons to take on a big project like this and to work on consolidating the methodological tool box in mobilities research, there are motivations which are less obvious and more theory driven by nature. They strongly emerge from the two epistemological traditions I grew up with, and into, academically: the theory of reflexive modernization or risk society theory (Beck 1992; Beck et al. 2003) and the mobilities turn in social science (Urry 2000, 2007).

THE MOBILE RISK SOCIETY: CONGRUENCIES OF NEW MOBILITIES PARADIGM AND THEORY OF REFLEXIVE MODERNIZATION ‘[M]obility is a general principle of modernity. We cannot imagine a modern life without movement, motility and mobility’ (Kesselring 2008, p. 80). When we wrote this in a book on mobility and modernity (Bonß and Kesselring 1999) we did not foresee the massive and often confusing discussions, debates and critique it would generate. We discussed the mobilization of modern societies as one of the driving forces in the modernization of modern capitalist societies. Mobilization goes hand in hand with the steady increase of reflexivity throughout more than 150 years of modern developments. Also, if I write ‘reflexivity’, I do not mean ‘reflection’, the increase in societal capacity to reflect and come to rational decisions. In line with Ulrich Beck, the author of Risk Society (1992), reflexivity refers to the observation that the fundamental dynamics of the second modernity do not come from failures but from quite the opposite: the enormous, historically unparalleled successes and power of modern systems and their subsystems.

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Researching the mobile risk society  45 Reflexivity refers to the dominance of unintended side-effects (Beck 1992) of modern societies’ incredibly strong power to exploit nature – human as well as non-human – to straighten out one-best-way solutions for problems and to invent large-scale technological systems as well as social and psychological techniques of how to use and subjugate human and non-human capacities, skills, psyches and resources in general (Giedion 1948; Dijksterhuis 1969). The mobilities perspective is not the only epistemology, nor the only possible approach to analyzing, investigating, understanding and elaborating the consequences of the comprehensive transformations that modern societies are undergoing, and where their systems and subsystems are moving into a highly efficient social formation which seems to forget the creative part of self-destruction and turns into a dystopia. The mobilities paradigm has been able to show what John Urry formulated in 2000, that is: ‘how the development of various “networks and flows” undermines endogenous social structures which have generally been taken within sociological discourse to possess the powers to reproduce themselves’ (Urry 2000, p. 1). Looking at Figure 4.2, Robbie Andrews’s visualization of climate-driven time constraints, the power to reproduce disappears sometimes behind the focus on the technological fixes of new mobility systems and others. The mobilization of modernity, or as I prefer with an obvious Beckian twist, the ‘mobile risk society’ (Kesselring 2008, 2019), has proved to be not only a general principle, but also a transformative process and power opening up new spaces, new connectivities and global connections into the ‘Global Age’ (Albrow 1996) with socio-, ethno- and techno-scapes encompassing and interlinking the world city network of capitalist power centers but also rural areas and quite remote places on the globe (Vannini 2009). While Urry emphasized the socially undermining and eroding character of the physically and digitally materialized network society, it was an almost painfully nagging question to Beck to understand the rise of the social formation beyond the erosion of the social world that we knew as the modern world. Already in 1986, the year of the German publication of Risk Society and, by coincidence, also of the nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl, Beck coined the term ‘second modernity’. Years ahead of his cosmopolitan turn in the early 2000s, Beck saw ‘another modernity’ on the rise: a modernity at the interface of a cosmopolitan emancipation towards a world (risk) society and the dark side where nationalism, protectionism, xenophobia, antidemocratic and anti-environmentalist thinking might gain the upper hand. His 2002 foreword to the German version of Power in the Global Age (Beck 2005) reads like a prophetic dystopian analysis of the posttruth era of Trump-, Johnson-, Salvini- or Orban-like current nationalistic politics.The German title emphasized the ambivalent and highly contested nature of second-modern democracy: Power and Counter-Power in the Global Age. Nevertheless, Beck never lost his highly functional and productive optimism and capacity to identify so far unseen room for maneuver for cosmopolitan politics, aiming for equality, justice, sustainability and – sorry for the naïve wording – a better world. While Beck chose an against-all-odds scientific publication strategy, Urry, went for the opposite. Since the early 2000s the new mobilities paradigm had been criticized for supposedly fetishizing mobility. It has been accused of being part of a neoliberal discourse on globalization. As a consequence, Urry focused on the negative side-effects and selfdestructive consequences of the mobilization of modern societies. Announced in 2000

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46  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities in ‘Sociology beyond societies’, the 2014 book Offshoring elaborated the undermining character of ‘various “post-national” systems of contemporary mobility’ (Urry 2014, p. 9): The emergence and sedimentation of [offshore] worlds is reshaping the contours of contemporary societies, reforming patterns of power, undermining notions of responsibility, threatening the conditions for democracy and transforming how societies are ‘energized’. Offshoring is bringing into being shadowy sets of relations of work, finance, pleasure, waste, energy and security. (Urry 2014, p. vi)

By so doing, Urry’s post-disciplinary sociology literally excavated the processes, the power structures and mobility regimes behind the surface of nation-state structures, borders and legal regimes: These systems include container-based cargo shipping; extensive aeromobility; the countless virtual worlds; car and lorry traffic; electronic money transfer systems; taxation, legal and financial expertise enabling particular national systems of regulation to be evaded; and proliferating ‘mobile lives’ engendered through frequent legal and illegal movement across borders. Each such systems entails a combination of mobilities and immobilities. Central to most systems are de-localised virtual environments enabling information, money, trades, images, connections and objects to move digitally as well as physically, often along routeways in the shadows. (Urry 2014, p. 9)

In line with Beck, the characteristics of second modernity consist in that the social, political and cultural structures we see, follow and accept as normal, increasingly become dominated by unseen, unwanted, unavoidable and unintended side effects generated by modern systems, technologies, decisions and political institutions. The concept of the mobile risk society captures the transformations of modern societies into a social formation where mobilities, risks, uncertainties and insecurities predominate on each societal level – from the body to the globe. Multiple mobilities cut through historically grown social structures and embedded traditional and post-traditional cultures. Furthermore, the digitalization, virtualization and the increasing pervasiveness of artificial intelligence and automation in almost every sphere of life and every place in the world might go beyond the dichotomy of first and second modernity or, as Bauman puts it, heavy and light capitalism. Beck’s high hope was – and in this he never gave up being a modernist theorist – that another modernity might come along with another societal rationality that is able to tackle, integrate and manage the risks, uncertainties and insecurities of a technological age that is threatening the fundaments of human existence as a whole.

INSTEAD OF CONCLUSIONS Many consider the 1987 UN Brundtland report ‘Our common future’ as the initiation of another great transformation of modern societies. The first transformation, famously analyzed by Karl Polanyi (1944), changed the social fundaments by implementing and embodying the principles of capitalist production, exploitation and consumption. The second transformation is about sustainable development and the reinvention of a

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Researching the mobile risk society  47 ­ odernity beyond self-destruction and (self-)exploitation. It is about digging up new m potentials and capacities, and developing new skills for long-lasting societal and environmental benefits, and global justice instead of short-term and short-sighted economic successes. For Uwe Schneidewind, the current director of the German Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, the great transformation: describes a massive ecological, technological, institutional and cultural process of upheaval at the beginning of the 21st century. This process is not a faceless systemic dynamic, but rather initiated and structured by humans. And by that it is also fundamentally subject to being formed and shaped. To understand the compass of this and to identify the points of departure, many actors and a specific (transformative) literacy are needed. To date, it lacks the capacity to understand the dimensions of the process in their interactions and the artifice to transform this new comprehension into policies for sustainable development. (Schneidewind 2018, p. 11)4

This is a different grammar, but in principle it is what Beck meant when he wrote that a different rationality comes along with a different, reflexive modernity. In his last book Beck expressed it this way: we live in a world that is not just changing, it is metamorphosing. Change implies that some things change but other things remain the same . . .. Metamorphosis implies a much more radical transformation in which the old certainties of modern society are falling away and something quite new is emerging. To grasp this metamorphosis of the world it is necessary to explore the new beginnings, to focus on what is emerging from the old and seek to grasp future structures and norms in the turmoil of the present. (Beck 2016, p. 3)

For Beck modern risks, such as nuclear power, genetics or climate change, have been human-made, consequence of decisions not uncontrollable systemic processes. This is what distinguishes the mobile risk society from a world of dangers. Climate is not a natural disaster or an unavoidable catastrophe that strikes humankind. It is the consequence of the world as we made, built and designed it. Against the backdrop of climate politics and the 2019 UN Climate Change Conference COP25 in Madrid, it seems that, with eyes wide open and against reliable scientific evidence, the world procrastinates again and denies the necessity to transform policies and to make sustainability happen. Sustainable mobility as it has been coined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development is ‘mobility that meets the needs of society to move freely, gain access, communicate, trade and establish relationships without sacrificing other essential human or ecological requirements today or in the future’ (Nicholson 2004, p. 131). Methods, reliable, specifically developed, designed and tailored methodologies, the skills to analyze, decipher, decode and understand the individual, organizational, institutional and systemic capacities for change and transformation, are essential for reinventing the transformative powers and dynamics needed in the current situation. Reaching sustainable mobility is only one, albeit essential, part of the work that has to be done. Regaining the social, economic and ecological capacities to develop long-lasting, innovative and sustainable forms of moving around, community, production and consumption is the challenge of the twenty-first century.

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48  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities

NOTES 1. The interview was conducted together with Malene Freudendal-Pedersen and appeared in Applied Mobilities, vol. 4, no. 1. 2. Translation by the author. 3. This refers to Kesselring (2006). 4. Translation from German by the author.

REFERENCES Albrow, M. (1996), The Global Age, Cambridge: Polity Press. Baden-Württemberg Stiftung (2017), ‘Mobiles Baden-Württemberg: Wege der Transformation zu einer nachhaltigen Mobilität’ (‘Mobile Baden-Württemberg: transformative pathways towards sustainable mobility’), final report, Tübingen: Francke, Bertelsmann, Baden-Württemberg Stiftung and Fraunhofer-Verlag. Beck, U. (1988), Gegengifte: Die organisierte Unverantwortlichkeit (Antidotes: Organized Irresponsibility), Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Beck, U. (1992), Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage. Beck, U. (2002), Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter. Neue weltpolitische Ökonomie (Power in the Global Age: A New Global Political Economy), Frankfurt am Main: suhrkamp. Beck, U. (2005), Power in the Global Age: A New Global Political Economy, Cambridge: Polity. Beck, U. (2016), The Metamorphosis of the World: How Climate Change is Transforming our Concept of the World, Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U., W. Bonß and C. Lau (2003), ‘The theory of reflexive modernization: problematic, hypotheses and research programme’, Theory, Culture & Society, 20 (2), 1–34. Bonß, W. and S. Kesselring (1999), ‘Mobilität und Moderne: Zur gesellschaftstheoretischen Verortung des Mobilitätsbegriffes’, in C. Tully (ed.), Erziehung zur Mobilität. Jugendliche in der automobilen Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, pp. 39–66. Brundtland, G.H. (1987), Our Common Future, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burkart, G. (1994), ‘Individuelle Mobilität und soziale Integration: Zur Soziologie des Automobilismus’ (‘Individual mobility and social integration. On the sociology of automobilism’), Soziale Welt, 2, pp. 216–41. Canzler, W. and A. Knie (2016), ‘Mobility in the age of digital modernity: why the private car is losing its significance, intermodal transport is winning and why digitalisation is the key’, Applied Mobilities, 1 (1), 56–67. doi:10.1080/23800127.2016.1147781. Dennis, K. and J. Urry (2009), After the Car, Cambridge: Polity Press. Dijksterhuis, E.J. (1969), The Mechanization of the World Picture, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gehl, J. (2010), Cities for People, Washington, DC, Covelo and London: Island Press. Gehl, J. (2011), Life between Buildings: Using Public Space, Washington, DC: Island Press Giddens, A. (1984), The Constitution of Society: Introduction of the Theory of Structuration, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Giedion, S. (1948), Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History, New York: Oxford University Press. Kesselring, S. (2006), ‘Pioneering mobilities: new patterns of movement and motility in a mobile world’, Environment and Planning A, 38 (2), 269–79. Kesselring, S. (2008), ‘The mobile risk society’, in W. Canzler, V. Kaufmann and S. Kesselring (eds), Tracing Mobilities: Towards a Cosmopolitan Perspective, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 77–102. Kesselring, S. (2019), ‘Reflexive Mobilitäten’ (‘Reflexive mobilities’), in H. Pelizäus and L. Nieder (eds), Das Risiko – Gedanken übers und ins Ungewisse: Interdisziplinäre Aushandlungen des Risikophänomens im Lichte der Reflexiven Moderne. Eine Festschrift für Wolfgang Bonß, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, pp. 165–204. Lenton, T.M., J. Rockström, O. Gaffney, S. Rahmstorf, K. Richardson, W. Steffen, et al. (2019), ‘Climate tipping points – too risky to bet against: the growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions’, Nature Communications, 575 (November), 592–5, doi:10.1038/ d41586-019-03595-0. Nicholson, C. (2004), ‘Mobility 2030: meeting the challenges to sustainability: the sustainable mobility project; full report 2004. (Dedicated to making a difference)’, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Conches-Geneva. Polanyi, K. (1944), The Great Transformation, New York: Farrar & Rinehart.

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Researching the mobile risk society  49 Raupach, M.R., S.J. Davis, G.P. Peters, R.M. Andrew, J.G. Canadell, P. Ciais, et al. (2014), ‘Sharing a quota on cumulative carbon emissions’, Nature Climate Change, 4 (10), 873–9, doi:10.1038/nclimate2384. Rifkin, J. (2019), The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth, New York: St. Martin’s Press. Sachs, W. (1992), For Love of the Automobile: Looking Back into the History of our Desires, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Schneidewind, U. (2018), Die große Transformation: Eine Einführung in die Kunst gesellschaftlichen Wandels (The Great Transformation. An Introduction to the Art of Social Change), Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch. Ulrich, B. (2019), Alles wird anders: Das Zeitalter der Ökologie (Everything Will Be Different: The Age of Ecology), Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Urry, J. (2000), Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities of the Twenty-First Century, London: Routledge. Urry, J. (2004), ‘The “system” of automobility’, Theory, Culture & Society, 21 (4–5), 25–39. Urry, J. (2007), Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press. Urry, J. (2014), Offshoring, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Vannini, P. (2009), ‘The cultures of alternative mobilities’, in P. Vannini (ed.), The Cultures of Alternative Mobilities: Routes Less Travelled, Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 1–20. Weizsäcker, E.U. von and A. Wijkman (eds) (2018), Come On! Capitalism, Short-Termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet: A Report to the Club of Rome, New York: Springer. Weizsäcker, E.U. von, A. Lovins and L.H. Lovins (1997), Factor Four: Doubling Wealth – Halving Resource Use: The New Report to the Club of Rome, London: Earthscan.

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5.  Mobilities and social futures Monika Büscher

The science is in. Anthropogenic global heating and climate disruption have reached crisis point. In a 2019 declaration signed by 11 000 climate scientists in 153 countries, a collection of alarming earth system ‘vital signs’, such as rapid sea level rise and extreme weather document the magnitude of this crisis and ‘urgent need for action’ (Ripple et al. 2019, p. 8). Biologists show that it is not just a climate emergency, but that we are ‘on course for ecological Armageddon’ (Carrington 2017, p. 1; Hallman et al. 2017), with 1 million species in danger of extinction (IPBES 2019). The World Bank predicts internal displacement of 143 million people by 2050 ‘unless concerted climate and development action is taken’ (Rigaud et al. 2018, p. xxi), raising the spectre of intensified humanitarian crises and wars, and yet, the same year’s United Nations (UN) Environment Programme Emissions Gap Report (UNEP 2019) finds that the world is doing nowhere near enough to respond. Indeed, greenhouse gas emissions are rising and the Executive Director of UNEP warns that ‘even if all unconditional Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement are implemented, we are still on course for a 3.2°C temperature rise’ (UNEP 2019, p. xiii). We know that the consequences for humanity would be catastrophic (IPCC 2018). A massive and rapid transformation of societies worldwide is needed by 2030, but the human and social sciences are involved, too. Such a transformation is unprecedented. Analyses of previous examples show that the collapse of societies is more likely, often occurring at the height of sophistication, within sight of the cause of destruction (Diamond 2005; Urry 2016). Historical and social science studies show that a critical reason for societies’ inertia is that people are locked into destructive practices. These days, destructive practices are automobility, aeromobility, and capitalist economic and cultural systems (Urry 2004; Jackson 2016). Individual citizens have limited capacity to choose a different way of life. The ABC of transition theories, which all too often posit that education or nudging can effect a change of A, individuals’ attitudes, which translates into B, behaviour change, and ultimately C, change in the system, is wrong (Shove 2010). Its tenacious hold on engineering and policy-makers’ imaginaries cannot make it right. Indeed, the depth of systemic lock-in and the stubborn demand for social acceptance of narrow technological fixes (electric vehicles), policy interventions (carbon taxes) and behaviour change, delay action towards systemic and structural change (UNEP 2019). Does this make transformation impossible? No. We have done it before, only in what we now know to be the wrong direction. The very process of societal transformation that has brought life on earth to this edge of extinction was a great transformation. Polanyi’s seminal analysis of the rise of market liberalism in his book The Great Transformation (Polanyi 1944 [2001]), charts the monumentally destructive systemic and structural change of society, a wholesale change of ideology, everyday life and human values. He observed that ‘the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural 50

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Mobilities and social futures  51 substance of society’ (Polanyi 1944 [2001], p. 3). However, while for Polanyi utopia was only destructive, contemporary social science has discovered the critical leverage that lies in utopia. Indeed, H.G. Wells made it central to sociology when he said ‘the creation of Utopia – and their exhaustive criticism – is the proper and distinctive method of sociology’ (Wells 1906, cited in Levitas 2013, p. xi). Levitas calls for utopia as method for the imaginative reconstitution of society. I suggest that to back away from the edge of extinction, humanity needs another great transformation, and that this is possible. The last great transformation has been catastrophically destructive, but it can teach us how to transform. Transformational societal change, was, and perhaps needs to be, multi-scalar, from the geopolitical to the everyday, ideological, practical, affective and collective; that is, epistemological, ontological, ethical and political. The new field of social futures ­studies – interdisciplinary future-forming research on how social and societal dynamics shape human pasts, presents and futures interdependently (Urry 2016) – is where this line of affirmative critique (Braidotti 2016) is gathering momentum. In this chapter, I methodologically mobilise the concept of social futures. The new mobilities paradigm (Sheller and Urry 2006) has enabled a deep understanding of the contingent, emergent character of social, socio-technical and socio-material orders that entangle nature and culture. These orders are made in relational dynamics and politics of immobilities. They are shaped in the mobilities, blocked movement and immobilities of people, goods, resources, objects, information, infrastructures and moorings. Insights into the systemic complexity of mobility systems, the differential distribution of mobility capital (Kaufman et al. 2004) and their implications for mobility justice (Sheller 2018) have prompted development of mobile methods and a unique experimental, creative, transdisciplinary and collaborative approach to applied research (Büscher et al. 2010). A tour of the Mobile Utopia Experiment1 that I curated in Lancaster, UK, in 2017 illustrates mobile methods, and applications of a mobilised social futures approach, and leads into a discussion on opportunities for this approach. I argue that by mobilising social futures, we can gather momentum for the massive, rapid, systemic transformation that is necessary to move away from the edge of extinction.

THE MOBILE UTOPIA EXPERIMENT Utopia as method can be mobilised by focusing analytical attention on the­ (im)mobilities of social systems to support pre-figurative mobility practices, that is, practices that anticipate and enact futures. In its archaeological mode, utopia as method unearths ideas and assumptions of social institutions embedded in current societies and visions of the future, it assembles a synthesis of the types of society envisaged from these fragments, and provides an analysis of the intended and unintended consequences. Utopia as ontology digs deeper, questioning what it does and what it should mean to be human in these current and future societies. In its third move, utopia as architectural method pursues the imaginative reconstitution of society in light of archaeological and ontological critique. Levitas sees these three moments of utopia as method as an iterative and ongoing process, accompanying societal change. Her intention for utopia as method is categorically not to generate a perfect utopian blueprint of an ideal society. Instead, the intention is to generate a methodology that allows societies to better understand how

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52  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities systemic change in social institutions, everyday practices, ideologies and values can enable the lived production and a better realisation of the inseparability of economy, politics, science, technology, environment and society. To mobilise social futures, a group of artists, designers and social scientists at Lancaster University conceived the Mobile Utopia Experiment. We commissioned 12 artistic interventions to be developed in Lancaster, in the context of the 2017 international Mobile Utopia Conference at Lancaster University. We requested strong-minded acts of imagination to sidestep collapse in the Anthropocene, Capitalocene (Tsing 2015) and multi-species ‘Chthulucene’ (Haraway 2016). The hypothesis was that these artistic aesthetic practices have the power to mobilise and transport participants into different futures, or pockets of alternative future worlds. Artistic practices can ‘extricate the sensible from its ordinary connections and [show its] . . . heterogeneous power, the power of a form of thought that has become foreign to itself’ (Rancière 2004, p. 23). The experiments demanded suspension of disbelief, and an openness to sensing and making sensible alternatives. They all involved experimentation in everyday life and engagement with citizens versed in everyday practice. This, we hoped, would allow art, social innovation and play to interact and take effect beyond the art world. Reflective, playful, critical and experimental practice in the realm of the everyday can catalyse a politics of aesthetics and enable more response-able participation. This is important at a time when society has become the laboratory (Krohn and Weyer 1989), and too often a laboratory for technocratic solutions that are ill-matched to the complexity of our problems, where we all are – wittingly and unwittingly – guinea pigs, as well as experimental designers and practitioners. The Mobile Utopia Experiment picks up ideas of response-ability, developed in feminist theory (Haraway 2010), to expand understanding of people’s capacity to experimentally respond to crises (see also Weick 1988). Harnessing art and the creative energy of play, experimentation and innovation in everyday life also draws on sociological theories and methodologies of collective experimentation (Felt and Wynne 2007), public experiment (Marres 2009), experimentality (Szerszynski et al 2008) and Dewey’s (1927) experimental method in politics. In dialogue with many, I curated a collection of mobile utopia experiments with 11 individual experiments drawn together in the twelfth: ‘Synthopia’, which is an experiment in its own right, but also an integrative methodology. The Mobile Utopia Experiment asks, with Tsing (2015), ‘What if the time was ripe for sensing precarity?’ in three different ways. The first, archaeological and ontological, vein of questioning focuses on the sensory dimension. ‘Dance your vehicle: become sensicle’ (Dörte Weig, Figure 5.1), for example, is an invitation to probe the interaction order of traffic and the way in which it is negotiated in and through social and material practices and embodied conduct. Working with dance and movement as a mobile mode of inquiry, the participants used props and cardboard-box body extension to (re-)discover embodied knowledge and the delicate complexity of traffic interactions. Dancers became vehicles able to reflect on their own skills of movement, their technological augmentations, but also the (in)capabilities of automated vehicles, satellites, drones, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and other technological interventions in visions of smart-city traffic. As calls for sustainability all too often translate into technological fixes in smart cities, the improvised choreographies probed theories of the human body as a sensory vehicle (or sensicle) or as a thinking-feeling-sensing component of socio-technically augmented sensory assemblages,

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Mobilities and social futures  53

Source:  Photograph by the author.

Figure 5.1  ‘Dance your vehicle: become sensicle’ – dancers inhabit/enact different vehicle types combining human and machine perceptual techniques. The experiment enabled critical engagement with smart-city visions of how autonomous vehicles and connected traffic might clash with human practices of negotiating interaction orders of traffic through eye contact and other symbolic and embodied moves. ‘DataDrift’ (Louise Mullagh) extends this exploration of the malleable phenomenology of the more-than-human sensorium into the landscape, observing the narrowing of our wayfinding senses in the appropriation of digital navigation tools. All too often, nose to screen, eyes on blue dots, mind set on arrival, we miss much of the spaces and places we move through. We have lost our capacity to get lost. ‘DataDrift’ made participants experiment with wayfinding and location data by putting the wrong map in their hands, guiding them with stories, and inviting us to actively generate meaningful data and meaningful journeys. ‘NowHere: futures of collaboration’ (Monika Büscher, Joe Deville and James Faulconbridge) experimented with co-presence and the ways in which we may transpose at least some of our physical travel to carbon dioxide (CO2) reduced virtual travel. It prompted considerations of questions about how we make trust, intimacy and sociability in these interactions (Figure 5.2). Bridging between the home, the café, the workplace, conferences, events or, even, public space, where we meet remote others, is not easy. It requires extra work to engage and

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54  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities

Source:  Photograph by the author.

Figure 5.2  ‘NowHere: futures of collaboration’ – taking a walk with a remote participant on a Double™ in-between conference sessions c­ ollaborate with others through the use of telepresence tools (from Skype to Facetime to the mobile Double™ or telepresence robots). The experiment explored how digital extensions and transpositions of human senses such as comobility (Southern 2012), addressability, awhereness and remembering forward (Thrift 2008), transform these social interactions and practices of communication. From McLuhan’s (1964) the medium is the message, to actor network theory, analysis has shown how the appropriation of technologies is transformative of what it means to be human (Ruppert et al. 2013). These experiments enabled experiences of how human–machine augmentations for mobility are transformative for a broad range of people. Discussions in ‘Synthopia’ showed that people experienced the disembodiment, and the malleability of what it means to interact at a distance as both disconcerting and hopeful (Figure 5.5). A second vein of sensing precarity focuses on actively making sense of new or complex phenomena through experimentation. The ‘Marshrutka video quest’ (Andrey Kuznetsov, Figure 5.3) introduced a mode of shared transport used in Russia and unfamiliar to many travellers in the West. Marshrutka are passenger vans that are privately owned. They are flexible in their routes and stops, and the fares they charge. The social interactions in making this shared mode of transport work are intricate, which can make catching a

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Mobilities and social futures  55

Source:  Photograph by the author.

Figure 5.3  T  he ‘Marshrutka video quest’ – how to recognise a marshrutka and request a ride? marshrutka a difficult task for the uninitiated. The video quest allows travellers to experiment with various strategies and to discover a potentially pre-figurative analogue and socially rich version of on-demand public transport that – if diesel vans could be replaced by greener alternatives – could augment sustainable public transport. ‘Autopoeisioning: the ETA game’ (Paula Bialski and Pedro Campos) was based on a dialogue between an ethnographer and a software developer, both interested in how people and machines calculate estimated time of arrival (ETA). By inviting people to walk predefined routes, to calculate and re-calculate their ETA as they encounter disruptions, such as traffic jams, a scenic landscape or having a row with their partner, the experiment probes ways of, and frictions between, calculated and lived times, duration, movement and space in human and machinic ways. ‘Parking in utopia’ (Nicola Spurling) uncovers the shocking amount of space societies give to immobile vehicles – with the average vehicle parked more than 90 per cent of the time (Spurling 2019). Through mapping experiments, participants were encouraged to dig into archaeological treasures covered by parking lots, trace historical land-use boundaries and imagine alternative uses of all that space. The experiment questions the unintended consequences of immobility. ‘Drone-topia?’ (Stephanie Sodero) took off to play with aeromobilities, focusing on the potential of using drones in the increasingly normalised state of emergency and disaster response for a very serious life-sustaining form of vital mobility. Transporting blood transfusions during times of transport infrastructure disruption or to leapfrog infrastructural bottlenecks has become a real possibility with drones. Making sense of systemic change in vital mobility systems through the imaginative construction of an alternative drone blood-transport service in the Lancaster area, the experiment revealed unexpected opportunities, as well as frictions (Sodero 2020). Turning inwards, and into the human body, ‘The most secret nano-chemistry experiment’ (Duncan Campbell, Jim Gerken and Monika Büscher) posited the existence of potent nano-chemical medicines that can produce controllable

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56  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities physical and psychosomatic effects, ranging from precisely located pain relief to stimulation of particular areas of the brain. The experiment sought to make the utopian and dystopian futuristic potential of nano-technology concrete, personal and practical, by developing a business case for a particular nano-chemical technology, thereby transporting participants into a future and disclosing unintended consequences of their decisions. ‘From the perspective of art it follows that the systems must be changed’ (Beuys 1978, quoted in Zumdick 2013, p. 96). The third form of sensing precarity through mobilising utopias as an experimental method sought to explore systemic change and give new meanings to social mobility futures. If ignorance, surprise, uncertainty, performativity and unintended consequences are the defining condition of our lives (Gross 2010; Tsing 2015), how can we know and design futures? We shape them with every move we make, but we have far less choice over our moves than individualist ideologies suggest. The ‘Designing mobile futures’ experiment (Stephanie Sodero, Ole B. Jensen, Ditte Bendix Lanng and Monika Büscher) approached this question from a designerly perspective. Building on a workshop with practitioners and policy-makers involved in the vital mobility systems of blood transfusion and transplant supply chains, the participants sought dialogue with publics interested or invested in these vital mobilities. ‘isITethical?’ (Monika Büscher and Male Lujan Escalante) playfully probed another, more immaterial form of vital mobilities: personal data in disaster response and risk management. By observing how the exceptional circumstances of security threats and disasters may make data sharing seem a necessary and positive possibility, the isITethical board game translates ethical dilemmas into opportunities for playful exploration and dialogue between citizen, civil liberty, emergency response and data governance perspectives. The game embeds desires for more information sharing into ethical, legal and social considerations of human rights and freedoms, and challenges players to design data and data-sharing infrastructures with more careful attention to civil liberties (Figure 5.4). The ‘Drift Economy’ (Bronislaw Szerszynski and Sasha Engelman) demonstrated how mobilising social futures allows analysis and experiment to range across the multiple scales of social futures. By experimenting with ways in which drift could become a transformative practice and concept for the transport of people and goods, alternative economic and societal systems become temporarily inhabitable (Szerszynski 2018). The experiments in this cluster explored how systemic change might be made possible in alternative institutional constellations of future societies, sensitising participants to the complex dynamics, opportunities and unintended consequences of differently mobile utopia. These 11 experiments come together as the Mobile Utopia Experiment – a creative pre-enactment of a mobile utopia made concrete and personal in Lancaster, a mediumsize university town, in which over 100 people participated. The aim was to create and temporarily critically inhabit pockets of utopian social futures through mobilising utopia as method, unearthing assumptions about social institutions and values of mobility systems, contesting what it means to be human and non-human in these alternative experimental future mobility systems, and to create, explore and contest better futures. The 11 individual experiments envisage how people, objects, ideas and resources will travel in a near-ish future of 2051, and realise pockets of alternative, utopian/dystopian future everyday realities through collective experimentation and public engagement. Eleven individual experiments explored different dimensions of everyday life in this fictitious

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Mobilities and social futures  57

Source:  Photograph by the author.

Figure 5.4  T  he isITethical? board game – playing with ethical dilemmas in information sharing in disaster response future of 2051, observing and amplifying existing social innovation that prefigure futures, exploring how one person’s utopia may be another’s dystopia, and how those futures are made now, as well as from our engagement with our pasts. ‘Synthopia’ (Serena Pollastri, Adrian Gradinar and Monika Büscher) was the twelfth experiment, designed to facilitate this archaeological, ontological and architectural synthesis by inviting participants to create ‘timecapsules from the future’ with everyday utopian objects collected in the future and annotated with their commentary. Participants were also invited to connect the different pockets of futures made inhabitable by the 11 other experiments and to draw out key characteristics and values (Figure 5.5). Solidarity, precarity and stubbornness were among the most frequently mentioned keyword responses to the mobility futures enacted in the Mobile Utopia Experiment, together with courage. Privacy, disembodiment and hope make up another cluster. These keywords provide a snapshot of the mood at the time of the conference. Participants were also encouraged to question connections, contradictions and conflicts, as well as resonances and synergies between the different futures and practices by connecting the different mobile utopia experiments (top right-hand corner of Figure 5.5). Here, shared commitment to drift between ‘DataDrift’ and the ‘Drift Economy’ sit alongside synergies that arise from engagement with the transformative momentum of technology shared between many of the experiments. In terms of conflicts, ‘The most secret nano-chemistry experiment’ was seen to clash with ‘Designing mobile futures’, suggesting unease with intrusive, perhaps too personally and biologically transformative visions of futures, especially when motivated by commercial business case interests.

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58  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities

Source:  Photograph by the author.

Figure 5.5  ‘Synthopia’ – an exploration of synergies and conflicts, impressions and insights from the Mobile Utopia Experiment

CONCLUSION The concept of social futures recognises that the future is now, made in the actions and inactions of those alive now (Urry 2016), and it responds to the pressing need to address an accelerating climate, ecologica and humanitarian triple crisis (Sheller 2018). The concept also captures that futures are a core social phenomenon for sociology, arguably the most important phenomenon currently. A broad array of non-representational approaches such as the mobilities paradigm show how human (in)action and sense-making shape pasts, presents and futures. It does so in intra-action with material agency (Barad 2007), and the concept of social futures captures the inherent sociality of the Anthropocene. It also brings a normative social commitment to shaping better futures through collaborative future-forming research. Yet, it is a perplexing, tautological term. It may be that all futures in the Anthropocene are social futures, and there is no future on earth that is not shaped by human action; but that renders the concept slippery. Similar to mobilities, social futures is an excessive concept. Anything could be the object of social futures research, and anything might be seen to contribute to the construction of, and be shaped by, the dynamics of social futures, both utopian and dystopian. The concept has almost boundless scalar fluency (see Chapter 1 in this volume), where concerns can range from nano-particles to the drift of airflows in the stratosphere. For some, this analytical free-roaming is maladapted to the complex challenges humanity must address. However, an analytical orientation to social futures allows us to explore in new ways how the personal, societal and planetary pasts, presents and futures are connected. By mobilising it, the uncertainties, inequalities, unintended consequences and relational politics of social future-making become visible and amenable to analysis. Building on this conventional sociological critique, the relational politics of social futures

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Mobilities and social futures  59 also become amenable to a form of critique that is affirmatively and creatively ‘geared to creating possible futures, by mobilizing resources and visions that have been left untapped and by actualizing them in daily practices of interconnection with others’ (Braidotti 2016, p. 2). Mobilising social futures concepts and methods shows that sociological critique should not stop at pointing out wrongs and explaining dysfunctional dynamics; it must also be used for the imaginative construction, evaluation and contestation of alternatives, in an iterative cycle. At a time when millions of people are mobilising to protest both for and against action that addresses climate disruption and ecological Armageddon, mobilising social futures conceptually and methodologically can help find a new footing based on fault lines in the relational politics of future-making in our societies. At the time of writing, a global uprising of young people, supported by activists in the Xtinction Rebellion movement, and new and long-time environmental campaigners in more than 183 countries, are out on the streets demanding climate action. Individual countries are seeing thousands protest against climate action policies. The Yellow Vest movement in France, the Finns party in Finland, and communities in Canada dependent on investment by fossil-fuel extraction companies that fund their schools, hospitals and public services, are finding themselves concerned about environmental destruction but threatened in a more short-term existential struggle. In Iran, the withdrawal of state subsidies for fuel has caused violent clashes, a glimpse, perhaps, of a collapse in fossil-fuel based economic models. As people can no longer afford their basic way of life owing to carbon taxes and these policies, they are realising how little room for manoeuvre there is in existing mobility systems. Does this mean sustainable social mobility futures must safeguard or promote policies of social mobility? The Mobile Utopia Experiment did not explicitly address this question. However, it was an exploration of how we might change the systemic dynamics that create precarity as the condition of our times (Tsing 2015), connecting attempts to find new ways of sensing this precarity and working with it to create visions of a good life, and contesting what good life might be possible and what ‘good’ might mean, and for whom. This requires transdisciplinary science, but it is not a matter for science alone. John Urry’s What is the Future? (2016) sets out to mainstream the future, to engage diverse interests, knowledge, forms of expertise, creativity and practice to envisage and contest what good or better futures might be, and to put into them now the actions and decisions that might make them happen. The Mobile Utopia Experiment mobilised these ideas to transport them into lived everyday futures and used utopia as method to develop an archaeology, ontology and affirmative, creative architectural critique of social futures in collaboration with ordinary members of the public, students, academics, designers and anyone else interested. Mobilising engagement in future-making in this way provides new opportunities for the discovery of what it takes to bring about a great transformation. Among the top ten terms in the poll of key characteristics and values in ‘Synthopia’ were solidarity, privacy, stubbornness, affection, presence, courage and hope. Making these multi-scalar from the everyday to the geopolitical, as well as ideological, practical, affective and collective, is a monumental task. It cannot be achieved by individuals alone; it also requires systemic and structural change. Political courage, stubbornness, presence, affection, solidarity and hope are required. This, in turn, depends upon scientific courage, stubbornness, presence, affection, solidarity and hope in joining the natural sciences, the humanities and the social sciences with the epistemologies, ontologies, ethics and politics of people’s lived everyday realities.

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NOTE 1. At https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/cemore/project/mobile-utopia-experiment/ (accessed 17 December 2019).

REFERENCES Barad, K. (2007), Meeting the Universe Half-Way: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Beuys, J. (1978), Blackboard Drawing, drawn on the occasion of a lecture entitled: ‘Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler’ (‘Every human is an artist’), given in Achberg on 23 March 1978. From: Joseph Beuys (1988), Zeichnungen – Skulpturen – Objekte (Drawings – Sculptures – Objects), Exhibition Catalogue for the exhibition of the same name in Düsseldorf/Hafen, 25 September to 28 October 1988, Düsseldorf: Edition Achenbach, p. 124. Braidotti, R. (2016), ‘Posthuman critical theory’, in D. Banerji and M.R. Paranjape (eds), Critical Posthumanism: Planetary Futures, New Delhi: Springer India, pp. 13–32. Büscher, M., J. Urry and K. Witchger (eds) (2010), Mobile Methods, London: Routledge. Carrington, D. (2017), ‘Warning of “ecological Armageddon” after dramatic plunge in insect numbers’, Guardian, 18 October, accessed 17 December 2019 at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/ warning-of-ecological-armageddon-after-dramatic-plunge-in-insect-numbers. Dewey, J. (1927), The Public and its Problems, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Diamond, J.M. (2005), Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, London: Penguin. Felt, U. and B. Wynne (eds) (2007), ‘Taking European knowledge society seriously’, European Commission, accessed 9 December 2019 at http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/europe​ an-knowledge-society_en.pdf. Gross, M. (2010), Ignorance and Surprise, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hallmann, C.A., M. Sorg, E. Jongejans, H. Siepel, N. Hofland, H. Schwan, et al. (2017), ‘More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas’, PLOS One, 12 (10), 1–21. Haraway, D.J. (2010), ‘Sowing worlds: a seed bag for terraforming with earth others’, in M. Grebowicz and H.  Merrick (eds), Beyond the Cyborg Adventures with Donna Haraway, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 137–46. Haraway, D.J. (2016), Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (2019), ‘Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’, S. Díaz, J. Settele, E.S. Brondízio, H.T. Ngo, M. Guèze, J. Agard, et al. (eds), IPBES Secretariat, Bonn. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2018), Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C above Pre-Industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty, V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, et al. (eds), Geneva: IPCC. Jackson, T. (2016), Prosperity without Growth, 2nd edn, London: Routledge. Kaufmann, V., M.M. Bergman and D. Joye (2004), ‘Motility: mobility as capital’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28 (4), 745–56. Krohn, W. and J. Weyer (1989), ‘Gesellschaft als Labor: Die Erzeugung sozialer Risiken durch experimentelle Forschung’ (‘Society as laboratory: the creation of social risks through experimental research’), Soziale Welt, 40 (3), 349–73. Levitas, R. (2013), Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Marres, N. (2009) ‘Green living experiments, the ontological turn and the undoability of involvement’, European Journal of Social Theory, 12 (1), 117–33. McLuhan, M. (1964), Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Essential McLuhan, New York: Mentor. Polanyi, K. (1944), The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, repr. 2001, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Rancière, J. (2004), The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, London and New York: Continuum. Rigaud, K.K., A. de Sherbinin, B. Jones, J. Bergmann, V. Clement, K. Ober, et al. (2018), ‘Groundswell: preparing for internal climate migration’, World Bank, Washington, DC. © World Bank.

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Mobilities and social futures  61 Ripple, W.J., C. Wolf, T.M. Newsome, P. Barnard and W.R. Moomaw (2019), ‘World scientists’ warning of a climate emergency’, BioScience, 70 (1), 8–12: doi:10.1093/biosci/biz088. Ruppert, E., J. Law and M. Savage (2013), ‘Reassembling social science methods: the challenge of digital devices’, Theory, Culture & Society, 30 (4), 22–46. Sheller, M. (2018), Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes, London: Verso. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2006), ‘The new mobilities paradigm’, Environment and Planning A, 38 (2), 207–26. Shove, E. (2010), ‘Beyond the ABC: climate change policy and theories of social change’, Environment and Planning A, 42 (6), 1273–85. Sodero, S. (2020), ‘Blood drones: using utopia as method to imagine future vital mobilities’, Mobilities, 15 (1), 11–24, doi:10.1080/17450101.2019.1673034. Southern, J. (2012), ‘Comobility: how proximity and distance travel together in locative media’, Canadian Journal of Communication, 37 (1), 75–91. Spurling, N. (2019), ‘Parking futures: the relationship between parking space, everyday life and travel demand in the UK’, Land Use Policy, 91 (February), 1–8, doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.02.031. Szerszynski, B. (2018), ‘Drift as a planetary phenomenon’, Performance Research, 23 (7), 136–44. Szerszynski, B., S. Koerner and B. Wynne (2008), ‘Experimentality 2009/10’, accessed 17 December 2019 at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ias-experimentality. Thrift, N. (2008), Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect, London: Routledge. Tsing, A.L. (2015), The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (2019), ‘Emissions gap report 2019’, UNEP, Nairobi. Urry, J. (2004), ‘The “system” of automobility’, Theory, Culture & Society, 21 (4–5), 25–39. Urry, J. (2016), What is the Future? London: Routledge. Weick, K.E. (1988), ‘Enacted sensemaking in crisis situations’, Journal of Management Studies, 25 (4), 305–17. Wells, H.G. (1906), ‘The so-called science of sociology’, Sociological Papers, 3 (1), 357–77. Zumdick, W. (2013), Death Keeps Me Awake: Joseph Beuys and Rudolf Steiner. Foundations of their Thought, Baunach, Germany: Spurbuchverlag.

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PART II METHODS

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6.  openAnalogInput(BODY): investigating data mobilities through critical making Fernanda da Costa Portugal Duarte

With both hands over my stomach, I inhale and feel the air take over the full capacity of my lungs. I visualize the air entering through my feet and slowly taking over the internal space of my body. My smartwatch vibrates and reminds me to exhale. My self-awareness meditation routine is intuitive and computational. The wristband gizmo, powered by an array of sensors, also tells me if I had a good night of sleep, if I am active enough and how my body performance scores compare to those of my peers. My intuitive perception of how my body feels fades with time, but I rely on a datalog to assess my body’s performance each day. While the concept of self-tracking is not new, the use of pervasive computing technologies to keep records of activities and manage life itself is recent. In 2012, Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly, both editors of Wired Magazine, started the Quantified Self website1 to gather a growing community of self-trackers and to map resources on self-tracking tools. Users and makers of self-tracking tools turned the premise of ‘self-knowledge through numbers’ into a lifestyle and occupied online forums to conduct peer reviews of gadgets, build depositories of self-tracking experiments, and share knowledge of best practices for collecting and analyzing personal data. As I observed how the use of these pervasive wearable technologies allowed the monitoring, recording and data sharing of how bodies perform – for example, during fitness activities or illness – I became intrigued about the implications of a data-driven life to subjectification. A data-driven life is characterized by the social-technical protocols (Galloway 2004) that devise how data mobilities are practiced. It is sustained by the underlying logic of big-data mining, marked by the collection of large and complex sets of data, and processed through automated data analytics for data correlation and pattern recognition (Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier 2013; Andrejevic 2014). This chapter acknowledges that the pervasiveness of digital media across all dimensions of life has shaped processes of knowledge-making according to the epistemic actions of digital data. As overlapping topologies, data mining renders multi-scalar hybrid spaces and enacts an algorithmic form of knowledge of our biology through data correlation (de Souza e Silva 2006). The transcoding of the analog world into binary information creates non-semantic metadata which levels the playing field between human and machine actions. As subjects construct new objects of knowledge based on new strategies to generate, aggregate and analyze data, this new knowable reality also speaks about the subjects that are immersed in it. Therefore, I approach self-tracking as more than just a data-gathering practice but also as a strategy of subjectification. The goal of this chapter is to examine the dynamics of data mobilities and their implications on self-tracking, as they are sustained by a digital episteme (McKinney Maddalena 2014), on the micro-scale of the individual and the macro-scale of social 63

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64  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities politics. On a personal scale, self-tracking leads to the production of a sense of self that is bound to numeric measurement produced by sensors and mobile applications, that is, the measuring of your heart rate provides a score of your health condition. On a larger scale, the aggregation of personal data creates predictive models that are later translated into parameters and norms to assess risk. A danger of data correlation lies in the potential of its application for discriminatory practices, for example, when social profiling based on correlated data is conflated with the truth. To draw attention to the dangers presented by the supposed objective aura of digital data, this chapter encompasses a multidisciplinary approach to data mobilities that not only focuses on the functionality of data exchange, but also on how it enacts forms of power. It undertakes an epistemic approach to data mobilities that moves beyond the identification of data patterns and correlation and, instead, discusses the processes of formation, the reproduction of these patterns, and their social and political consequences. During this study, I investigate how self-tracking turns the biological body into a site of physiological data as well as a territory built upon data correlation. To explore these issues, I adopt a critical–making (CM) approach to digital media experimentation (Ratto 2011; Hertz 2012; Ratto and Boler 2014). Critical making is a multidisciplinary method that draws from critical theory, design and technology studies and advocates for experimental technology appropriation as a mode of critical composition. As a critical maker, I created an interactive installation titled ‘Truth or dare: a mobile moral compass for ethical living’ (ToD)2 that problematizes the adoption of quantified data as a parameter for truthfulness (Figure 6.1). The installation is composed of wearable sensors that collect physiological data from the participant and a mobile application (app) that interfaces with Twitter. When a participant interacts with the installation, he or she holds the sensors while he or she accesses the mobile app and writes a tweet. Meanwhile, his or her physiological data is relayed to the app and is compared to a distress scale. The app interprets extreme distress as falsehood. When the participant posts the tweet, the app automatically adds #true or #lie to his or her tweet and expresses its judgment of his or her actions. Simultaneously, a data visualization showcases the tweets posted by every participant. Whenever a tweet that features a lie occurs, rotating beam lights turn on to call attention to the moral commitment of truth-telling having been broken (Figure 6.2). As the participants see how the installation judges their tweets as true or false, they speculate about the parameters that define truth based on the content of the messages and on the material affordances of quantified data. I expand further on the experiment setup in the next section. The ToD installation explores how computational parameters for the construction of truth reveal a wide range of symbolic negotiations that shape the construction of ­mediated subjectivities. The agreement or denial of the assessment produced by ToD crafts the participants’ identities as truth-tellers or liars, and enacts how digital ­technologies can be appropriated as a form of self-governance (Foucault 2003). Truth or dare also covers the symbiotic relationship between digital technologies and quantification (as a measure of truth and as a measure of self), as sustained by a circuit of reproduction of a digital episteme founded upon discrete numeric information that can be aggregated and correlated. Ultimately, this chapter shows how CM can be applied as a method to investigate protocols of data mobilities and argues for an understanding of data analytics as performative and embedded in rhetorical materiality of modular numeric discretion.

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Investigating data mobilities through critical making  65

Figure 6.1  O  n the left, a participant holds the galvanic skin sensors which measure the variation in electric conductivity on her skin. This variation of value is translated into a quantifiable distress scale to assess truthfulness. On the right, the ToD mobile app interface receives the data relayed from the sensors and allows the participant to type tweets

CRITICAL MAKING AS A MODE OF EPISTEMIC ENGAGEMENT WITH DIGITAL DATA The pervasiveness of digital media across all dimensions of life has shaped processes of knowledge-making according to the epistemic actions of digital data. Lifelogging practices implemented through the use of wearable computing devices, such as fitness bands, rely on constant data collection that is set up as floating variables, which can be cross-compared to create correlations that users had not even anticipated. In this respect, Mark Andrejevic and Kelly Gates (2014) argue that the potential of usability for any data is speculative because it can only be assessed in comparison with other data sets. Data gathered today might only become relevant in the future, when newer data is collected and a pattern is identified. For this reason, it is justifiable to collect all data, at all times, aiming for total information awareness even when some data sets initially do not seem relevant. Big data emerge at the moment that strategies of sense-making through algorithmic data analytics can be applied to growing data troves. Personal data can be modulated to provide information on a micro-scale of the individual – a self-tracker’s individual sleep patterns – or integrated with large databases created by other users to generate correlations on the scale of a population – average American male sleep patterns. In this case,

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Figure 6.2  A  participant holds the sensors that collect her physiological data. Meanwhile, she types a tweet using the ToD app. After she types the message, the tweet is posted with either #true or #lie to show the assessment provided by the app based on her digitally transcoded emotional response. A data visualization showcases all tweets posted by participants

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Investigating data mobilities through critical making  67 the correlation on the scale of a population is critical to the creation of the parameters of good sleep and marks an epistemology of data-driven science that leans toward inductive reasoning. Data correlation is used to form a hypothesis before developing a deductive approach; ‘rather than testing a theory by analyzing relevant data, new data analytics seek to gain insights “born from the data”’ (Kitchin 2014, p. 2). Digital data is collected, correlated and manipulated as a rhetorical enactment and an object of knowledge, founded upon a digital episteme. In summary, what big data aspires to is the predictive power to arrive at correlations that otherwise could not even be intuitively imagined. Participants of the Quantified Self (QS) forum develop lifelogging strategies and appropriate wearable sensors to track physiological variables, such as heart rate variation, sleep activity, brain wave frequency, body weight, blood pressure and calorie intake. They use devices and sensors to monitor different variables that are correlated to reveal dependencies that are not foreseen (that is, a relationship between the consumption of a type of food and sleep activity). Through personal data correlation, QS users produce knowledge about the performance of their bodies and are prompted to decide to alter their behaviors to move closer to standardized health values (that is, the targeted values for body mass index). Through data analysis, they can then observe how the change in their habits produces different data values. They live in continuous self-experimentation forged through/by the continuous creation of knowledge about their bodies. To better understand the material processes involved in becoming a technogenetic body through self-tracking, I adopted a CM approach to develop the interactive installation ‘Truth or dare: a mobile moral compass for ethical living’. Matt Ratto, in an interview by Garnet Hertz (2012), tells us how CM encompasses different making practices (design, art and tactical media) to articulate social studies of technology. Since the 2000s, Ratto has developed a genealogy of CM from critical theory while addressing the potential of material production as a means of critical reflection and social intervention. Through the exploration of different ways to engage with materials and technologies, CM puts into practice the principle of material semiotics which states that objects are not only linguistics artifacts but also the materialization of our meaning-making process. Ratto (2012) questions the pretense of divorce between the activities of thinking and making. We commonly understand critical thinking as an intellectual, linguistic activity that takes form in verbal discourse. Meanwhile, making is commonly understood as an unreflexive, a-programmatic action. Critical making comprehends the overall process of material engagement with technologies as reflexive and informative about the world, while simultaneously deconstructing and opening up new articulations for how we relate to technology and society. ‘Critical Making emphasizes the shared acts of making rather than the evocative objective’ (Ratto 2012, p. 253). It is focused on the broader lived experience of making and understanding the broader social implications of technological practice. Experimentation in CM is focused on the emergence of the experiment. It is based on bottom-up creativity, and negotiated through the affordance of materials and the ­investment in reflecting upon our process and the uncertainty of outcomes. This vision of experimentation adopted by CM draws on three aspects of constructionist pedagogy (Ratto 2012). The first is the emotional dimension of learning, which encompasses the mental energy, feelings and motivations that are influenced by cognition or understanding. The affective ways in which the researcher engages with the

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68  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities ­ eaning-making process adheres to the researcher’s personal investment in the experim mentation. The second aspect is the use of transitional objects; in this experiment, the microcontrollers, sensors and the mobile app. These objects materialize abstract cognitive processing and bridge the motor and cognitive knowledge. According to Ratto (2012, p. 254), ‘these objects do not just serve to illustrate concepts but act to project oneself into an abstraction’. The third aspect refers to the importance of ‘messing about’ with computers (Ratto 2012) as a strategy to foster unstructured and autonomous exploration of how technology works. Thus, I do not consider ToD as a methodological tool to collect data in the positivist approach of science as an instrument of verification of truth. I consider the experiment of making, interacting with and observing the interactions of others with ToD as a mode of composition that engages in a dialogue with the theoretical and analytical components of the research.

TRUTH OR DARE: A CRITICAL-MAKING EXPERIMENT I built ToD, not as a functional mobile app, but as an ironic, critical tool to engage, provoke and stimulate critical reflection of common-sense use of biofeedback wearable technologies. The premise of ToD is that it mimics the function of a lie detector and, as a typical lie detector, can distinguish between true or false statements based on the participant’s biofeedback readings. The statements, in this case, are text-based tweets, and the biofeedback information is the measure of electric conductivity on the participant’s fingertips. Truth or dare is composed of a mobile app installed on an Android smartphone and a biometric sensor the participant must hold as he or she interacts with the app. The functioning of a biofeedback-based lie detector is based on the premise that the electric conductivity of a biological body varies according to emotional states. In situations of stress, the nervous system activates the sweat glands and the humidity of sweat on the surface of the skin lowers the skin’s resistance to an electric current. As a result, the amount of electric current passing through the body increases. The sensors on the surface of the skin register the increased value and this variation is interpreted as emotional distress. With ToD, the program translates emotional distress to correspond to a lie. To interact with ToD, the participant opens the app on the smartphone, allows his or her Twitter account information to be synchronized, holds the sensor in his or her hand and starts typing a tweet. From the moment the participant opens the app, the sensors are recording the values of electric conductivity as normal and defining the average value as a baseline for neutral emotion. When the participant finishes typing and selects ‘send’, the app collects a new value from the sensors and compares it with the baseline value. If the new value is higher, the app automatically adds #lie to the tweet. If the new value is equal or lower, #true is added to the tweet. The conceptual design of the ToD interactive installation was inspired by the Foucauldian concepts of games of truth and technologies of the self (Foucault 2003). Truth or dare teases out how the knowledge of what is true and what is the self are creations produced through technology. The relationships established between the subject, forms of knowledge and plays of power constitute experiences as normalized affects in the order of the sensible, in the construction of savoir – the particular conditions that underlie an object of knowledge or the formulation of an enunciation – and in the architecture of

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Investigating data mobilities through critical making  69 connaissance – the corpus of knowledge. A major implication of this shift is the denial of any aprioristic categories of the self, objective knowledge and, therefore, truth. With that, the impossibility of either to be constituted as autonomous entities is revealed through universal experiences of discovery. The construction of knowledge, truth, and the strategies of verification and validation of truth, emerge within historical experiences and act on, and are produced by, subjectification. The specific technologies that shape systems of representation we use to understand ourselves, referred to by Foucault as games of truth, are the strategies that fabricate what is historically defined as a normalized and hegemonic notion of truth. To account for what is truth, as a historical productive force and the product of history itself, we must construct a historical ontology of the self. The Foucauldian notion of games of truth deconstructs the notion that the discovery of truth (theory) gets closer to truth itself (reality). Instead, Foucault argues that understanding whatever truth is, requires a prior comprehension of the underlying discourses between knowledge itself and the subjects. The theories that emerge within these discourses are part of the history of the discourses; not as an abstraction, but as affects and practices. The biometric premises that animate ToD, and the strategies that shape the interactions with the installation, evince the contemporary technological dynamics of power–­ knowledge–subjectification that ‘create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects’ (Foucault 2003, p. 126). Truth or dare is a technological arrangement that produces historical modes of subjectification in relation to truth, as we are subjects of knowledge, in relation to a field of power, as we are subjects and apparatuses acting on one another, and in relation to morality, as we are biopolitical agents. Truth or dare explores modes of subjectification as practices of self-making and of governance of the self, while the participant monitors his or her corporeal performance. It also explores how (games of) truth are negotiated as normative practices of governing knowledge when physiological data is conferred true or false values. The application of galvanic skin response sensors, as biofeedback measures, show how biometrics becomes a technological protocol and how it is used as a mapping tool for the body’s performance. The physiological data, technologically rendered, is translated into terms of moral standards (truth or lie) and social norms (criminalization of a lie). The forces of socialbiotechnological assemblages emerge in the iterations, controversies and conflicts when there is a mismatch between emotional response and discursive performance of the tweets. The parameters of programming languages that process the collected data have gone through a threshold of formalization. While ToD contradicts the applied logic of if/then statements of programming languages as feasible correlations with the complex dynamics of life, it also draws attention to how this pretense logic of neutrality conveys a layer of normalized ideology. If we view command lines as statements, we can understand them not only as regards semantics (that is, if the collected data value is over the stored data threshold, then add #lie) but also as regards the large discursive formation in which they occur (that is, the expectation and desire of calculable standards for moral behavior and the social premises and moral standards defined by biofeedback measures). Command lines/statements take shape not only as functional tools for software programming, but also as a machinic discourse that problematizes the historically situated power network it is interwoven with. The ToD installation explored how computational parameters for the construction of truth reveal a wide range of symbolic negotiations that shape the construction of

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70  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities ­ ediated subjectivities. Moreover, the adoption or negation of the outputs produced by m ToD (#lie or #true) crafted the participants’ identities as truth-tellers or liars and enacted how digital technologies can be appropriated as a form of self-governance (Foucault 1997). It also spoke of the symbiotic relationship between digital technologies and quantification, (as a measure of truth and as a measure of self), as sustained by a circuit of reproduction of a digital episteme founded upon discrete numeric information that can be aggregated and correlated.

EMBODYING TRUTH, FLESH AND CODE During the exhibits, participants often interacted with the ToD experiment with curiosity and intimidation. ‘Ok, but does it work?’ was a recurring question. In my mind, I had to ask myself that same question. Does ToD work? It does work in the sense that the program executes the parameters that are predefined in the code. It does so promptly and consistently every time the application is executed. However, the programmatic efficiency is only one aspect of the question. Behind ‘Does it work?’ lies a second question ‘How does it work?’ and a desire to master the technology as a means to reach an end: discover the truth. When participants asked me this question, their expectations did not refer to the efficiency of the ToD computing machine, but to the purpose of ToD as an effective measure for truthfulness. In which forms does ToD produce moral parameters? I resort to Bruno Latour (2002) to answer this question and argue that ToD does produce morality, but not according to the instrumental expectation of participants. Latour (2002) fights the separation between the realm of technologies, perceived as a means to an end, and morality, as pertaining to the realm of humanity: Morality is no more human than technology, in the sense that it would originate from an already constituted human who would be master of itself as well as of the universe. Let us just say that it traverses the world and, like technology, that it engenders in its wake forms of humanity, forms of subjectivity, modes of objectification, various types of attachment. (Latour 2002, p. 254)

Technologies and morality are entrenched in a regime of enunciation; they constitute modes of existence as they produce a form of exploring existence. As a technology, ToD is not a probe tool that gathers objective evidence and, based on numeric parameters, labels one statement as true or false. Its morality is not exercised objectively and is not manifested obviously. It is exercised through distributive agency, sustained by a computing form of knowledge that organizes ways to know and represent reality. So, the moral judgment that ToD enacts does not occur when it assigns #lie to a tweet when the program collects data that are out of the range for truthfulness. Instead, it occurs as ToD embodies a moral philosophy of computing code as a form of knowledge, as a mode of existence and of being in the world that is historically situated in the contemporary age. Many participants would also interact with ToD as if they were testing a prototype of a new gadget. They would tweet statements they already knew to be true or false to verify if ToD would correctly assess them. On one occasion, a participant tweeted ‘The sky is blue,’ which was tagged with #lie. What followed that result was a series of speculations by the participant as an attempt to understand why ToD had labeled that statement as a lie. Had she not believed in the truthfulness of the statement enough while typing it? Had her body

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Investigating data mobilities through critical making  71 revealed her true beliefs about the color of the sky and exposed a true knowledge of which she wasn’t aware? After exploring these possibilities, the conclusion she came to was, ‘Oh, it’s been rainy today and it’s so gray outside. In fact, today the sky is not blue’. Truth or dare acted as a proxy to validate a version of the truth that was afterward reinvented by her. By proposing this justification to the outcome, she rearticulated the antagonism of discourses, actions and technologies, and rendered her own fiction, her own version of truth. Interactions such as this show that ToD functions as a lie detector not in the sense that it tells lies from truths, but as a Foucauldian apparatus that materializes games of truth, that is, strategies for fabrication of the truth. By either fulfilling or conflicting with the expectations of participants, the observed interactions with ToD demonstrated that whatever truth is, it is not defined by the parameters of the app but is based on practices. It happened in the negotiation between the participants and the ToD installation, as participants would change their discourses, and reinterpret ToD’s output in ways that were coherent and convenient to that social situation. Within the ToD installation, morality is rooted in the arrangement of discourses, affects and practices shared among the participants and computing technologies as a form of knowledge. The full development of an interactive system composed of sensors, a mobile app and data visualization might not have been required for ToD to enact a game of truth. A mock hardware setup and a simulation of an app could have sold the premise of a biometrics lie detector. The actual collection of physiological data transcoded into digital data was not what defined truthfulness in ToD. Regardless of ToD’s assessment of statements as true or false, participants would every time reinvent the meaning of the statement, rearticulate the ambiguity of the situation and end up themselves exercising a personal judgment of the truthfulness of statements. Absurd tweets, such as ‘Unicorns are real #true’ or ‘I am a jelly doughnut #lie’ express unrealistic possibilities and can be interpreted as a strategy to test ToD’s capacity to assess the truth. However, they also evince a ludic relationship between participants and ToD as the absurdity of the inputs and outputs turns the interaction into gameplay. This relationship marks a shift from ToD as a goal-orientated system to assess truth, to an open-ended arrangement of fictional arguments. These surrealistic tweets are merely another facet of an equally surrealistic expectation of outsourcing moral judgment to a lie detector machine. Truth or dare takes shape in ambiguity. It was built based on functional premises of lie detectors. However, it mocks them while proposing to self-validate all of the tweets. It intimidates gullible participants who would rather play it safe and not take the chance of being caught in a lie. It also awakens the inquisitive minds of others who tweet about unicorns and other non-existent creatures to test if the device is really functional. A web of fake lies takes over ToD’s Twitter account, as participants take the moral judgment back into their own hands. It prompts continuous tweeting, as heavy users repeatedly try to beat the machine and take control of the occasions when they get a #true or #lie. The data collected by the sensors is not intentionally given by the participants, as they do not always know which are the mechanisms that constitute that system. Thus, there is a clear shift in the subjects’ position as they are no longer in control of the experience. During the process of making ToD, I navigated a fine line between making a functional application versus an application that disrupted the familiarity in which we engage with mobile apps and provoked reflexive thinking about our interactions with pervasive technologies. My firm disbelief of the premise of biofeedback as a measure of emotional

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72  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities response and, furthermore, of moral judgment prevented me from falling into the trap of technology fascination. However, ToD needed to be consistently responsive – not in terms of assigning truthfulness, but in ways that provided consistent and coherent parameters of feedback, thus creating some level of credibility with participants. The ways in which digital materiality is organized – in the underlying cause–effect logic in which input/output sensors are built, in the syntax of programming language – is interwoven with how quantified emotional response is made analogous to truthfulness. At the same time that I conformed to the boundaries of the syntax and the lexicon of the programming language to make an operable installation, I was also faced with situations that challenged the role of analog sensors as probes of raw data and of the code as its objective translator. The challenge of the inconsistent values of the analog sensor translated into digital data, demonstrated the need for creative interference to produce the illusion of a direct correlation between physical and digital realms. This variation of data would sometimes occur owing to unexpected elements in the environment, such as interferences in the sensor’s materiality owing to its manipulation, and inconsistent voltage, which introduces noise to electronic circuits. At other times, ToD’s Twitter account would be temporarily disabled owing to excessive tweeting. The high volume of tweets was interpreted as spamming and went against established norms of conduct in social media. These situations reminded me that this making practice was not set up as a utilitarian technological project but as a creative, speculative experiment. I was also prompted to engage with ToD in ways that acknowledged the distributive agency shared among pieces of hardware, electric current, rationality and the senses.

CONCLUSION Truth or dare is motivated by genealogical research of self-tracking technologies, and for that, takes into consideration how the biological body is inscribed in a power–knowledge dynamic of digital self-tracking organized as a biopolitical practice of self-governance (Foucault 1997). With ToD, I appropriated digital technologies and used algorithmic analysis as a creative method to explore the epistemological underpinnings that drive data mobilities and produce algorithmic knowledge. The interactive arrangement proposed by ToD advocates against essentialist oppositions between human and machine, idealism and materialism, and reflects the deconstruction of said natural and artificial entities. Donna Haraway (1991) acknowledges coding as a social practice that has surpassed the world of informatics and linguistics. By distributing the agency of the conversation to a set of non-human agents (the ToD app withholds the code parameters for truthfulness), I call attention to our human condition as one that is ‘a political exercise of the interrelationship between science, technology, and power as a matrix of complex dominations’ (Haraway 1991, p. 165) built upon otherness and difference. The production of an interactive installation also aims to draw attention to the possibilities of multimodal composition in digital media research. By engaging with digital media as a constructive activity, I engage with the material processes and explore the conceptual limitations that shape the use of media technologies. I explore the rhetorical agency embedded in the material production of technology, and develop a critical perspective of the relationships between technology development and appropriation. The

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Investigating data mobilities through critical making  73 study in this chapter contributes to the field of digital humanities and the new-materialist approaches to cultural studies by developing further CM as a method that can overlap social-political perspectives with discursive and material analysis. Through this study, I also argue for further interdisciplinary collaboration among the fields of humanities, social sciences, design and media arts to nurture further debates about the social, ethical and political implications of new media technologies, especially regarding data mobilities and digital epistemology.

NOTES 1. See www.quantifiedself.com (accessed 1 April 2019). 2. The ToD installation was set up in three different exhibits: in 2013, at North Carolina State University, during the Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media PhD Program Annual Symposium; in 2014, at Carrack Gallery, in Durham, North Carolina, during the Interface Interference Smartphone Art Show; and in 2017 at the T2M Conference in Lancaster University, UK.

REFERENCES Andrejevic, M. (2014), ‘Big data, big questions: the big data divide’, International Journal of Communication, 8 (1), 1673–89, accessed 1 April 2019 at http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/2161/1163. Andrejevic, M. and K. Gates (2014), ‘Big data surveillance: introduction’, Surveillance & Society, 12 (2), 185–96, accessed 1 April 2019 at http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-andsociety/ article/view/bds_ed/ bds_editorial. De Souza e Silva, A. (2006), ‘From cyber to hybrid: mobile technologies as interfaces of hybrid spaces’, Space and Culture, 9 (3), 261–78. Foucault M. (1997), Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954–1984, vol. 1, New York: New Press. Foucault, M. (2003), The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, P. Rabinow and N. Rose (eds), New York: New Press. Galloway, A. (2004), Protocol. How Control Exists After Decentralization, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Haraway, D. (1991) ‘A cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century’, in D. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge, pp. 149–81. Hertz, G. (2012), Critical Making, Hollywood, CA: Telharmonium Press. Kitchin, R. (2014), ‘Big data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts’, Big Data & Society, April–June, 1–12. Latour, B. (2002), ‘Morality and technology. The end of means’, Theory, Culture & Society, 19 (5–6), 247–60. Mayer-Schönberger, V. and K.N. Cukier (2013), Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, Boston, MA: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. McKinney Maddalena, S.K. (2014), Mediating Atomistic Ontologies: LEGO, Synthetic Biology, and a Digital Episteme, Raleigh, NC: North Carolina State University. Ratto, M. (2012), ‘Critical making: conceptual and material studies in technology and social life’, The Information Society, an International Journal, 27 (4), 252–60. Ratto, M. and M. Boler (eds) (2014), DIY Citizenship. Critical Making and Social Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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7.  How to use time-geographic travel diaries in mobility research Malin Henriksson and Jessica Berg

INTRODUCTION What is everyday life? Is our understanding of everyday life affected by how we travel? For many, everyday travel is habitual and therefore invisible. However, how travelling is experienced and what travel modes dominate different types of journeys give insight into many aspects of society. Time-geography is an approach that is useful for studying people’s everyday lives (Ellegård 2019). It offers a method to highlight the activities an individual carries out, and where and when these activities take place. To carry out activities, people use knowledge, objects and tools, such as vehicles and mobile phones, and often involve social relations. Time-geography focuses on the interrelationships between people, society, objects and nature, and acknowledges that we are dependent on, but also shape, our material surroundings (Hägerstrand et al. 1991). By using methods based on the time-geographical approach, taken-for-granted relationships that in different ways influence people’s experiences, feelings and behaviours can be highlighted. In contrast to traditional transport-research approaches, which often focus on transport systems, infrastructures and short-term travel behaviour (Vilhelmson 2014), time-geography offers conceptual tools to situate the subject in the materiality of everyday life and in its social and geographical context. Mobility can be understood as derived from people’s needs and desires to carry out activities, such as working, socialising and shopping. The range of activities are at distances that must be bridged, which includes the use of time (Hägerstrand 1970; Rasouli and Timmermans 2014). Individuals and households have a unique environmental structure with a pattern of barriers and resources that create different preconditions for mobility. As an example, a comparison can be made between motorists and publictransport travellers. Those travelling by public transport need to spend more time than the driver to bridge the same distance. The time-geographical approach offers methods to analyse how different types of barriers enable or restrict an individual’s choices of action and is thus very suitable for research on mobility and travel behaviour. The aim of this chapter is to introduce time-geography as a method for mobility research. We will give practical instructions on how to design and use time-geographical travel diaries in combination with in-depth interviews. We also give examples of how to interpret and analyse the empirical material. The chapter begins with an introduction to the theoretical basis of time-geography and key concepts, and goes on to discuss how to use the time-geographical approach in research on mobility and travel behaviour.

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How to use time-geographic travel diaries in mobility research  75

KEY CONCEPTS Before we go into how travel diaries can be used in research on mobility, an introduction to three key concepts in time-geography is necessary. These concepts are activities, projects and constraints (Hägerstrand 1970; Ellegård and Svedin 2012). In our research, mobility is studied as a means to perform everyday activities, such as working or grocery shopping. Activities are always taking place somewhere; they are carried out at different times and are sometimes performed in parallel with other activities. According to the time-geographic perspective, an activity is not necessarily important or targeted (Ellegård 1999). It can also imply doing nothing. A series of activities that are necessary to achieve certain goals represents a project, for example, paid work or preparing dinner. How projects occur, how they are carried out and by whom, and how they compete for space and resources is vital for understanding preconditions for mobility. Even if time and transport modes are available resources, people face different types of constraints that limit their freedom of action (Hägerstrand 1970; Ellegård and Svedin 2012). According to the time-geographical approach, three types of constraints surround the individual and limit his or her freedom to implement activities. Capacity constraints concern an individual’s biological and cognitive characteristics, access to tools and the ability to use them. Capacity constraints are, for example, the need to eat and sleep regularly, physical and cognitive abilities (health) and material resources. For example, mental and physical ageing can have implications for the cognitive skills that are required for driving a car (Vichitvanichphong et al. 2015). Coupling constraints concern the interdependency between individuals, tools, material artefacts and the physical environment. This interdependency requires, but also complicates, coordination between people when carrying out activities (Ellegård and Svedin 2012). An example is how young children always require an adult person present in their vicinity. Authority constraints are laws, rules, norms and expectations that make certain places or domains available only for certain persons and activities at certain times. Fuel prices and access to public transport and its timetables are examples of authority restrictions that limit the individual’s choice of transport mode. An individual’s daily schedule is thus dependent on many decision-making entities that lie beyond his or her own control. By identifying these spatial and temporal constraints we can acquire context-dependent knowledge of why people do as they do, their preconditions for mobility and possible solutions for whatever it is we wish to change, whether it is increased mobility and accessibility or reduced car travel in favour of more sustainable modes of transport. Since its origin, time-geography has been further developed and applied in several fields of mobility research: the emotional experience of mobility (McQuoid and Dijst 2012; Scholten et al. 2012), mobility biographies (Berg et al. 2014), virtual communication (Thulin and Vilhelmson 2012), gender differences in travel patterns (Kwan 2000), air pollution exposure (Park and Kwan 2017) and ethnic segregation (van Ham and Tammaru 2016).

THE USE OF TRAVEL DIARIES IN MOBILITY RESEARCH Several methods of collecting data on people’s temporal and spatial movements exist, for example, micro- or macro-level register data. We present the travel diary, where ­individuals

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76  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities record their activities during a given time. We describe how to use time-geographical travel diaries in practice, how to design, introduce and use them throughout the research process, and how to combine them with different methods and theoretical frameworks. Finally, we provide examples of how to apply travel diaries in practice. We reflect on different aspects of how the travel diary affects the framing and the outcome of research. Time-geographical travel diaries are used to record details of each travel activity that an individual carries out during a day (or more), and include places, times, people, experiences and emotions. The diary can be very detailed or less so, depending on the aim of the research. Traditional travel surveys often present the total time used for each transport mode or travel activity, which has the advantage of showing how much, or little, time people spend on that activity during a day (Ellegård 1999). However, the added time use does not show the complexity of everyday life or when activities are carried out. The advantage of using time-geographic travel diaries as a data collection method is that it gathers information on the sequential order in which the travel activities are performed and intertwined with each other and with other people’s travel needs, and how activities compete for time and space. This is the contextual time use. Time-geographical travel diaries thus enable visualisation of the temporal and spatial constraints that influence the individual’s freedom of action (Berg et al. 2014). When people are asked about their transport patterns, for example, in questionnaires or interviews, it can be difficult to reflect upon patterns that are formed routinely and habitually. By keeping diaries every day for an agreed period of time, actions and activities that are otherwise taken for granted and unproblematised can emerge.

TRAVEL DIARIES FOR DIFFERENT PURPOSES How a travel diary should be designed depends first and foremost on the aim of the study and how the data will be used. In our research, we have used travel diaries to acquire knowledge of mobility and travel behaviour, and to propose policy recommendations to change travel behaviour in a more sustainable direction. In energy research, activity diaries have been used in a similar fashion (Palm and Ellegård 2011). However, a travel diary can also be used as a tool for the diary keeper to visualise the everyday structure of his or her activities to gain awareness of his or her everyday contexts. This method is especially used in research within occupational therapy and rehabilitation (Kroksmark et al. 2006; Orban et al. 2012). To the best of our knowledge, time-geographical diaries for self-reflection have not yet been used in research on transport mobility. However, we believe that the travel diary has the potential to work as a tool, for example, in work on promoting sustainable travel behaviour. People can be made aware of how much they use different modes of travel, how much money they spend on travel, to what extent their trips are (un)-organised and (un)-planned, and so on. Travel diaries can also be used to test how changes in the transport system or changes in travel behaviour affect the individual’s daily schedule. This can be achieved by setting the travel activities in the diary into another context (such as another city), assuming they are carried out by another individual (that is, with other physical and material preconditions) and theoretically replace all trips by car with public transport, with the given timetables in that city. What changes in the organisation of everyday life would be necessary for the

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How to use time-geographic travel diaries in mobility research  77 individual and his or her family? What activities would have to be moved in time, carried out elsewhere or would not be possible at all? By setting the travel diaries in this imaginary, possible future context, temporal and spatial constraints for different groups of travellers can appear. These suggested areas of interest are merely examples of the various potential studies in which travel diaries can be used. We encourage you to use travel diaries in new and, even, unexpected fields.

DESIGNING A TRAVEL DIARY The travel diary can be designed in paper or digital format. There are applications for smartphones on the market that can be used for diary-keeping. However, paper diaries are also very convenient. If possible, let the participant decide whether he or she prefers paper or digital format. The travel diaries we use often cover one week of travel activities in order to capture a weekly rhythm (Figure 7.1). Each journey is supposed to be written in sequential order to discern a transport pattern. The following parameters are recommended to be included in the diary: date, start-time and end-time of the trip, starting point, destination, distance (kilometres), travel mode and purpose of the trip. We also find it useful to include space for comments about each activity.

Figure 7.1  Extract from a travel diary

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78  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Participants tend to describe their activities very briefly, for example ‘going to work’, or ‘work out’. The travel diaries should encourage the participants to include more information such as ‘picked up by partner’ or ‘was too tired’. Before introducing the travel diary to a participant, we recommend doing a pilot study, perhaps in your own research team or with your colleagues. Not only do you get a chance to validate the travel diary design, but the experience to register your trips can evoke analytical ideas.

INTRODUCING THE TRAVEL DIARY How the travel diary is introduced for the participants determines whether it will be filled in correctly. We recommend giving participants oral instructions followed by written instructions. A common mistake that participants make is that they do not fill in the return trips, noting only when they leave and when they arrive, which means that a great deal of important information about their daily structure is lost. It is important to remember that a journey can consist of several partial trips, for example, from work to the gym (first trip), from the gym to the grocery shop (second trip) and from the grocery shop to the home (third trip). It must be made clear to the participants that all parts of their trips must be recorded. Depending on the participants and the length of the diary-writing period, it is fruitful to keep in touch with them during the diary period, not least to remind them and encourage them to write every day. Reminders might also be sent via text messages at a particular time each day. There is a risk that the diary writer may exclude some activities from the diary, which has consequences for the study results. However, this is an issue that affects all data collection methods that are based on people’s own records, such as interviews and questionnaires. Our recommendation is to combine travel diaries with other qualitative data sources, such as interviews.

HOW TO COMBINE TRAVEL DIARIES WITH OTHER DATA COLLECTION METHODS It is common to combine travel diaries with other qualitative methods, such as in-depth interviews. There are several benefits to this. Without the addition of interviews, it will be difficult to understand how mobility patterns relate to lived experiences. The travel diaries can function as one of several possible overarching themes in the interview. During the interview, the researcher asks the informant to show the diary and describe the week. Questions that follow are, typically, ‘what do you think (or feel) when you see the activities?’ or ‘is this a normal week?’ The researcher can also let the informant present the diary and describe each activity. To introduce this element the researcher can say: ‘Can you go through the week step by step?’ Another approach is for the researcher to describe and comment on the activities to stimulate discussion. The researcher can also ask questions such as: ‘here, you used the car; why was that?’ ‘Do you normally go shopping on Fridays, like you do here?’ ‘How long do you normally wait for the bus?’ It is important to give

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How to use time-geographic travel diaries in mobility research  79 the informant enough space to describe the activities, sometimes in general terms and sometimes in detail. Moreover, the travel diary method can beneficially be combined with auto-photography where informants are asked to photograph their experiences while performing particular activities. In a study about mobility practices among marginalised women in San Francisco, the participants were asked to keep a one-day diary, but also to take pictures of meaningful, emotional moments as well as routine places and situations during that day (McQuoid and Dijst 2012). The researchers concluded that with the mixed method approach they managed to elucidate the emotional experiences of time and space that previously had been left out of time-geographical analyses (McQuoid and Dijst 2012, p. 33). Thus, in mobility research, participants’ own photographs provide illustrative material to help in understanding their interpretations of places and their movements in time-space (see also, Johnsen et al. 2008). We recommend looking into the extensive literature on how to introduce, use and interpret visual materials such as pictures (for example, Rose 2012).

ANALYSING TRAVEL DIARY DATA Several means of analysing, describing and visualising data from time-geographical travel diaries are possible. How it is done is determined by the aim of the study and the questions that the travel diary intends to answer. It is the researcher’s skills, resources and imagination that set the limits on how data can be visualised. Any spreadsheet program can be used to enter diary data and transform it into pictures or graphs. Software programs for analysing time-geographical diary data exist1 (see also, Vrotsou 2010), but these are not specifically programmed for travel activities. In a study of online food shopping (Berg and Henriksson 2020), travel diaries were used to quantify the number of trips for grocery shopping, the distance between home and store, and the transport mode used. The data were then used as an input to a model for calculating the energy-saving potential of online grocery shopping.

COMBINING TIME-GEOGRAPHICAL DIARIES WITH THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS We have highlighted how time-geographical travel diaries can be used to visualise movements in space and time, and to identify constraints that people deal with for everyday life to function. We have also noted that even if the visualisation of space and time is explanatory, and therefore compelling, travel diaries do not capture meaning and embodied experience of mobility (Cresswell 2006) nor why certain activities take place and not others. As with many methodological approaches, there is a need to combine time-geography with a theoretical framework that can answer such questions. For instance, while travel diaries reveal travel activities, they do not reveal norms, representations and experiences of travelling, that is, the wider aspects of mobility (Sheller and Urry 2001). Therefore, mobility theory can contribute to a wider understanding of the data that travel diaries present. Another theory that works well with the time-geographical perspective is social practice theory. This theory concerns everyday practices and explains why people do what they

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80  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities do, when practices occur and if they are likely to endure or not (Reckwitz 2002). The main explanatory idea is that practices are embedded in socio-technical networks, and identifying and analysing the elements of the network will shed light on the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of practices (Shove et al. 2012). Moreover, a gender perspective can contribute to both visualising and explaining the power relations that surround human activity. Friberg (1990) visualised in her seminal work how women’s travel patterns differ from men’s, both in terms of transport modes, journey length and experiences of journeys, and is one example of how gender theory and time-geography can be fruitfully combined (see also, Root et al. 2000). The work of McQuoid and Dijst (2012) is another example of how the combination of gender and time-geography works well, where the concepts of poverty and marginalisation enrich the analysis. The application of gender theory to human geography (see Domosh and Seager 2001) offers a useful theoretical perspective, since the interlinks between gender, space and time are often compelling.

THE APPLICATION OF TRAVEL DIARIES IN RESEARCH PROJECTS In this section we share insights from three studies to highlight what travel diaries can accomplish. The described projects are all dedicated to understanding how transport affects the everyday life of individuals or households, and what type of activities ease or obstruct mobility practices and other daily activities. Travel Diaries Reveal Taken-for-Granted Activities We used travel diaries and interviews in a study of how online food shopping affects travel patterns (Berg and Henriksson 2020). Before the interviews, the informants kept a travel diary for one week. They registered all trips, transport modes used, when and where they travelled, and for what purpose. The travel diaries revealed that people’s perceptions about their travel patterns did not always coincide with their actual travel. As for shopping, many said that they shopped once or twice a week, while the travel diaries revealed that many shopped much more often. Their image of shopping was that it required a lot of time and included the purchase of groceries to last several days, but not occasional purchases of milk, snacks, and so on. However, all shopping trips generate transport. For this reason, travel diaries reveal activities that are taken for granted and not obvious even for those who perform them. When combining the travel diary method with in-depth interviews, the interviews present an opportunity to talk about these insights. Thus, travel diaries translate abstract activities that can be hard to keep track of, which is the case with routine and habitual activities. Travel Diaries Reveal Discrepancies In a study of newly retired people, travel diaries were important for understanding how retirement, as a key event in life, influences travel activities (Berg 2016). Going from a working life rhythm to a life with more time at their own disposal meant new time–space constraints. A common belief among the newly retired was that they travelled less than

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How to use time-geographic travel diaries in mobility research  81 before retirement. However, the travel diaries revealed how new responsibilities generated mobility activities, but some forced themselves to go out, which sometimes implied that errands had to be created. Judging from the travel diaries, the participants lived quite busy lives. This is another example of how the travel diaries are helpful to get a full picture of a phenomenon. However, to obtain a deeper understanding of the experiences of life after retirement and strategies to break feelings of isolation, interviews with the informants were vital. Travel Diaries Reveal Specific Experiences A third example of the type of information travel diaries can reveal is from a project about new mobility services (Berg et al. 2019). In the project, residents in a newly established housing area were offered the chance to use electric vehicles (bicycles, cargo bikes and cars). The aim was to explore if a diverse vehicle-sharing service could meet the mobility needs of the households and replace private car use. The participants kept a one-week diary when they used the vehicles, and recorded errands and transport modes used, including walking and public transport. The travel diaries gathered information about journeys that the informants performed and revealed time–space constraints concerning the vehicles in the pool. In one case a young man, who seldom used a car, borrowed his parent’s car to go to the recycling station and to buy furniture since the electric car in the sharing service was not equipped with a tow bar. This type of detailed information is vital to understanding the use of a vehicle pool, and how to improve it to meet the needs of different users. If informants try to guess what type of information will be important for the study they will probably (unintentionally) withhold information that he or she finds unimportant. The travel diary amplifies these types of invisible or forgotten elements.

CONCLUSIONS In this chapter, we have presented time-geographical travel diaries as suitable tools to identify individual space–time movements. A benefit of using travel diaries in research on mobility is that, when combined with methods such as in-depth interviews, they make visual how an individual’s activities are presented in sequential order, and thus reveal the time–space constraints that constitute a complex everyday life. Thus far, time-geographical diaries have shed light on the complexities of travel behaviour. We argue that, for future research, travel diaries may be an important tool for researchers who seek to understand travel behaviour among different groups, as well as the groups’ experiences and feelings connected to the transport system. Travel diaries can be used in research on mobility strategies among marginalised groups, those with experiences of fear and violence in the transport system, and to understand how social categories such as gender affect mobility and activity participation. This knowledge is important not only for further advancements in the mobility field, but also for transport planning. We invite other researchers to use their imagination and creativity, and explore how the travel diary method can be applied and combined with new theoretical approaches and concepts.

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NOTE 1. VISUAL-TimePAcTS (2018): http://visual-timepacts.itn.liu.se/ (accessed 24 August 2018); Daily life (2011): https://liu.se/artikel/vardagen-2011 (accessed 24 August 2018).

REFERENCES Berg, J. (2016), ‘Everyday mobility and travel activities during the first years of retirement’, PhD thesis, Department of Social and Welfare Studies, Linköping University. Berg, J. and M. Henriksson (2020), ‘In search of the “good life”: understanding online grocery shopping and everyday mobility as social practices’, Journal of Transport Geography, 83 (C), doi:10.1016/j. jtrangeo.2020.102633. Berg, J., M. Henriksson and J. Ihlström (2019), ‘Comfort first! Vehicle-sharing systems in urban residential areas: the importance for everyday mobility and reduction of car use among pilot users’, Sustainability, 11 (9), art. 2521. Berg, J., L. Levin, M. Abramsson and J.-E. Hagberg (2014), ‘Mobility in the transition to retirement – the intertwining of transportation and everyday projects’, Journal of Transport Geography, 38 (June), 48–54. Cresswell, T. (2006), On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World, New York: Routledge. Domosh, M. and J.K. Seager (2001), Putting Women in Place: Feminist Geographies Make Sense of the World, New York: Guilford. Ellegård, K. (1999), ‘A time-geographic approach to the study of everyday life of individuals – a challenge of complexity’, GeoJournal, 48 (3), 167–75. Ellegård, K. (2019), Thinking Time Geography. Concepts, Methods and Applications, New York: Routledge. Ellegård, K. and U. Svedin (2012), ‘Torsten Hägerstrand’s time-geography as the cradle of the activity approach in transport geography’, Journal of Transport Geography, 23 (July), 17–25. Friberg, T. (1990), Kvinnors vardag. Om kvinnors arbete och liv. Anpassningsstrategier i tid och rum (Women’s Everyday Life: About Women’s Work And Life. Adaptation Strategies in Time and Space), Lund: University Press. Hägerstrand, T. (1970), Tidsanvändning och omgivningsstruktur Urbaniseringen i Sverige: en geografisk samhällsanalys (Time Use and Environmental Structure. Urbanization in Sweden: A Geographical Social Analysis), SOU 1970:14, Stockholm: Expertgruppen för regional utredningsverksamhet (ERU). Hägerstrand, T., G. Carlestam and B. Sollbe (1991), Om tidens vidd och tingens ordning: texter av Torsten Hägerstrand (About the Breadth of Time and the Order of Things: Texts by Torsten Hägerstrand), Stockholm: Statens råd för byggnadsforskning. Johnsen, S., J. May and P. Cloke (2008), ‘Imag(in)ing homeless places: using auto-photography to (re)examine the geographies of homelessness’, Area, 40 (2), 194–207. Kroksmark, U., K. Nordell, H.J. Bendixen, E. Magnus, K. Jakobsen and S. Alsaker (2006), ‘Time geographic method: application to studying patterns of occupation in different contexts’, Journal of Occupational Science, 13 (1), 11–16. Kwan, M.P. (2000), ‘Gender differences in space-time constraints’, Area, 32, 145–56. McQuoid, J. and M. Dijst (2012), ‘Bringing emotions to time geography: the case of mobilities of poverty’, Journal of Transport Geography, 23, 26–34. Orban, K., A.-K. Edberg, and L.-K. Erlandsson (2012), ‘Using a time-geographical diary method in order to facilitate reflections on changes in patterns of daily occupations’, Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 19 (3), 249–59. Palm, J. and K. Ellegård (2011), ‘Visualizing energy consumption activities as a tool for developing effective policy’, International Journal of Consumer Studies, 35 (February), 171–9. Park, Y.M. and M.P. Kwan (2017), ‘Individual exposure estimates may be erroneous when spatiotemporal variability of air pollution and human mobility are ignored’, Health & Place, 43 (January), 85–94. Rasouli, S. and H. Timmermans (2014), ‘Activity-based models of travel demand: promises, progress and prospects’, International Journal of Urban Sciences, 18 (1), 31–60. Reckwitz, A. (2002), ‘Toward a theory of social practices: a development in culturalist theorizing’, European Journal of Social Theory, 5 (2), 243–63. Root, A., L. Schintler and K. Button (2000), ‘Women, travel and the idea of “sustainable transport”’, Transport Reviews, 20 (3), 369–83. Rose, G. (2012), Visual Methodologies. An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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How to use time-geographic travel diaries in mobility research  83 Scholten, C., T. Friberg and A. Sandén (2012), ‘Re-reading time-geography from a gender perspective: examples from gendered mobility’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 103 (5), 584–600. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2006), ‘The new mobilities paradigm’, Environment and Planning A, 38 (2), 207–26. Shove, E., M. Pantzar and M. Watson (2012), The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How It Changes, London: Sage. Thulin, E. and B. Vilhelmson (2012), ‘The virtualization of urban young people’s mobility practices: a timegeographic typology’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 94 (4), 391–403. Van Ham, M. and T. Tammaru (2016), ‘New perspectives on ethnic segregation over time and space. A domains approach’, Urban Geography, 37 (7), 953–62. Vichitvanichphong, S., A. Talaei-Khoei, D. Kerr and A.H. Ghapanci (2015), ‘What does happen to our driving when we get older?’, Transport Reviews, 35, 56–81. Vilhelmson, B. (2014), ‘Transport geography in Sweden’, Journal of Transport Geography, 39 (July), 246–7. Vrotsou, K. (2010), Everyday Mining: Exploring Sequences in Event-Based Data, Linköping studies in science and technology dissertations, no. 1331, Norrköping: Linköping University.

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8.  Applying multiple and multi-scalar methods to mobilities hub research Gunvor Riber Larsen

COMPLEX MOBILITIES HUBS AND HUB MOBILITIES IN SITU We have all been there, trying to navigate interchanges, where we had to embark on a journey or change trains, aeroplanes or coaches to continue an onwards journey. Mobilities hubs are complex places, where the mobilities said to define our contemporary society (Urry 2000) become confusingly tangible, despite all the best efforts from planners and designers to create frictionless travel spaces and corridors. As complex as these mobilities hubs are, it is just as complicated to research hub mobilities, to map, understand and improve the movements happening in these manifestations of the connected contemporary world. Try, though, we must, because it is important to understand how these places work, and what their links to the mobilities systems in which they are hubs consist of, both in nature and in quantity. The mobilities hubs are critical points of contact (Jensen and Morelli 2011) that shape the (im)mobilities that constitute a dynamic backbone in the twenty-first century global society. This chapter offers insights into the often troublesome venture it is to perform an analytical reduction of a complex mobilities reality. This is achieved through highlighting some central elements that a mobilities hub analysis must include: the scale at which each method is applied, and the attention to methods hierarchy that the various mobilities that constitute the hub afford. Building the methodological scaffolding needed to map, understand and improve the mobilities hub in Copenhagen Airport, which this chapter reports on, has a theoretical underpinning in ‘mobile situationalism’ (Jensen 2013, p. 10). The focus is on the manifest mobilities that are staged at an intersection of social mobile interactions and embodied performance in a reality dictated by physical settings, material spaces and design (Jensen 2013). The mobilities staged at interchanges are very situational, and thus complex, as each mobilities situation is a result of a range of decisions, opportunities, desires, infrastructures, restrictions and demands for mobilities. Each of these factors must be captured through targeted data collection methods that only in combination will reveal the true extent and interrelationships of the mobilities reality at the mobilities hub. This type of multiple and multi-scalar methodology has been applied to the Airport City Futures (AirCiF) research project. The project aims to address the unmet need in Denmark for aeromobilities research and to develop a cross-sectoral aeromobilities decision support model. Bridging research and practice, the project is moored in Copenhagen Airport, where the airport mobilities hub is stage for interactions between human and non-human agencies – and possibly even representing a post-human study, an ‘analysis of mobilities and especially of multiple and intersecting mobility systems, where each is in an adaptive and evolving relationship with each other’ (Büscher et al. 2011, p. 3; see 84

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Applying multiple and multi-scalar methods to mobilities hub research  85 also Hayles 1999). The airport is a place where all five mobilities types identified by Urry (2007) can be identified: corporeal travel, physical movement, and imaginative, virtual and communicative travel. Here relationships between management rationales, infrastructures and lived mobilities play out and set the scene for hub mobilities on scales ranging from the global route network of the airlines servicing the airport, to the miniscule on-the-spot hesitant movement of individuals trying to work out where to go in an unfamiliar site. To unpack these relations a multimethod research design is needed, combining qualitative and quantitative data across scales, in an ‘alternative theoretical and methodological landscape’ (Büscher et al. 2011, p. 4). The methodological part of this Copenhagen Airport mobilities hub landscape is mapped next.

THE AIRCIF METHODS MESHWORK Airport City Futures’s vision is to ‘produce an aeromobilities decision support model that will increase international air accessibility for Danish business and industry, and facilitate Copenhagen Airport becoming an international hub airport’ (AirCiF 2016, p. 2). To achieve this, knowledge and information must be acquired that covers the three mobilities ‘spheres’ identified by Jensen (2013, p. 10): (a) social interactions, embodied performances and physical settings, (b) material spaces and (c) design. These spheres are nested in an understanding of mobilities situations being staged both from above and below. The from-above influences are made by ‘planning, design, regulations and institutions’. From below the mobilities in situ are influenced by ‘consociates in interaction and individual performances of mobile self-presentation’ (Jensen 2013, p. 10). Six focus areas in AirCiF aim to ensure a holistic analysis of the complex Copenhagen Airport mobilities hub, and each focus area employs a range of methods to establish an empirical foundation for analysis. The six focus areas and the associated methods are listed in Table 8.1. The details of each of the data collection methods applied in the AirCiF project is reported on elsewhere (AirCiF 2016), and will not be included here. Instead, attention is paid to how these methods in combination reach across scale in revealing a mobilities reality in, and relationship to, Copenhagen Airport. A hierarchy of methods appear, where each data collection method is linked in a meshwork to reality without distorting it in a need for analytical simplicity. Hierarchy A wide range of old and new data collection methods are applied to the research into hub mobilities at Copenhagen Airport. One of the methodological challenges faced in the research process has been to assemble a research design encompassing the needs for data in each of the research focus areas into the overall research design. Awareness was on possible synergies across focus areas, but also on identifying problematic issues where data collection for one purpose might spell challenges for data collection elsewhere in AirCiF. This latter issue has mostly been in relation to data access, and collaboration with project and external actors. A research project of this magnitude (a budget of €2 million, four years of research, 15 associated researchers, and ten academic and non-academic partners) requires careful consideration regarding the methodological setup. It is in the

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86  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Table 8.1  AirCiF focus areas and associated methods Focus area

Data collection methods

Mapping of megatrends in   global aviation Becoming a passenger –  exploring the passenger experience and airport design

Expert interviews Document analysis Architectural and design-orientated mapping and registration Interviews, walk-along interviews and focus group interviews Ethnographic field study Thermal tracking of passengers Eye-tracking of selected passengers On-site design experiments Web-survey among business travellers In-depth interviews with business travellers (Access to secondary data-sets from Copenhagen Airport and  SAS surveys of passengers) Desk research into other European airports’ infrastructural  connections to their land-side catchment areas Access to, and merger of Copenhagen Airport land-side  catchment area data-sets from public transport service providers Expert interviews Document analysis

Managing business travel –  from air travel management to aeromobilities management Planning the Airport City –  increased catchment area impact on the airport Managing airports – the  importance of strategies, policies, regulations and investments for hub airport development Aeromobilities decision support  model

Expert workshops Document analysis Scenario-building

initial research design process that the matter of methods hierarchy becomes apparent and a question that needs to be addressed. The methods hierarchy that emerges in AirCiF is both temporal and one where some of the data collected has a higher prominence and importance for the research outcome than others. The temporal hierarchy relates to the data collection for AirCiF being a progressing process, where it is important that some data is collected and analysed before other parts of the data collection can start. This is apparent in both the staggered commencement of each of the focus areas listed in Table 8.1, but also within each focus area. This type of temporal hierarchy is not in itself a new approach or insight into mobilities research methods stemming from AirCiF, but it has been a highly significant factor for the planning and design of the research project, and has to a very high degree determined the practical execution of the research. Part of establishing a data collection sequence is to consider which obtainable data-sets might take precedence over other data-sets in relation to exploring the research questions. This relates as well to the second hierarchy issue of some data having a higher prominence and importance for the research outcome than others. The research question(s) will determine which data-sets are more important than others, as will the theoretical perspective chosen for the research. By applying their

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Applying multiple and multi-scalar methods to mobilities hub research  87 logic to the methodological landscape under construction, a hierarchy of data collection methods will emerge, reflecting the importance and emphasis of each data-set present in the research. This hierarchy of data collection methods will then need to be applied to the research design of the research project. Thus, a data collection methods hierarchy exists, and it dictates the sequence in which data is collected, as the insights from one part of the research project influence the parts to follow. This sequence of data collection will have to be designed specifically for the research project it relates to, and no general guidelines can be established for how such a sequence will look. In an ideal world, the timeline for data collection would be fully dictated by the research question(s) and the methodological logic of which data needs to be collected and analysed before other data is collected. However, and this will come as little surprise to practising researchers, reality often requires things to be different, and the AirCiF is no exception. In general terms, AirCiF data has been collected according to the ideal plan, but issues relating to data access and administrative matters have in some cases caused data collection and analysis to be either delayed or pushed forward. Matters arising from acting in this reality has in AirCiF been dealt with through a meticulous risk assessment and management plan, which was developed before project commencement, and is revisited at fortnightly status meetings. Scale The mobilities literature has us well informed about how the various scales mobilities are played out at, both geographically, ranging from the global to the highly localised (Cresswell 2006; Herold 2011), and the mobilities of individuals versus mobilities en masse. The airport encompasses mobilities on all scales, and therefore this scalar attribute of mobilities on theoretical and practical levels also needs to be reflected in the methodological landscape mapping these mobilities. Thus, in AirCiF it has been important to be fully aware of on which scale each different mobilities-inquiry was relevant, asking the question of geographical extent and the aggregation of individuals performing mobilities. In line with the theoretical underpinnings of AirCiF, which also encompass individual and aggregated mobilities, this view on scale as an important element of understanding the mobilities performed at Copenhagen Airport has been integrated into the research design. This has been achieved through consciously employing data collection methods that will allow knowledge to be produced about mobilities on various geographical scales, as well as on the continuum of mobilities along the individual–mass mobilities scale. As a general (not exclusive) observation, it can be noted that the higher the scale (global geographical reach or mass mobility), the more quantitatively orientated the data is, and the smaller the scale (local geographical reach or individual mobility), the more qualitative is the data collected. Researching hub mobilities is likely to involve mobilities linked to the different types of scales described above. In AirCiF it has become clear that paying explicit attention to how scale impacts both the performed mobilities and the methodologies needed to capture those scaled mobilities enhances the insights to be gained from the explorations. Scale will be an explaining factor (among others) of hub mobilities, as well as a methodological tool to be applied in the research design. Applying scale as a methodological tool involves thinking-through the outcomes of the different data collection methods across scales within the research design. Various

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88  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities data collection methods, well known and new alike, will yield data that, when analysed, become knowledge about hub mobilities at the extreme points of both scales described previously, and where the data collection was aimed at another aspect of the research. It is important to be aware of this multi-scalar knowledge production stemming from other corners of the research, because hub mobilities are complex and highly interwoven. You could run the risk of making a false analytical deduction, if only taking into account the knowledge acquired through one specific data collection method, on one specific scale, to be relevant only at that scale. The research is then likely to run the risk of not uncovering the links that exist in between the scales that the hub mobilities simultaneously play out at in situ. Such multi-scalar thinking and application of knowledge within hub mobilities research requires academic prudence. It will rest upon qualified judgement of what knowledge can be transferred across scales, and how this can be done without compromising the data integrity pinned down in the research design and methodology. Understanding hub mobilities, and mobilities hubs, does require this endeavour, however, since compartmentalising data, and thus knowledge, will not generate an accurate picture of what is going on in the mobilities hub. Data Access The issue of data access is an increasingly prominent question, owing to the vast amount of data collected by a range of actors, some with commercial incentives, some for surveillance reasons and yet others for research purposes (the lines between these are often blurred), and owing to the value, monetary and strategically, that these data-sets represent. In 2011 the need for attention to data and its production was highlighted by Büscher et al., warning of an emerging data future through which mobilities r­ esearchers must be prepared to navigate: (E)ngagement is difficult and there are powerful social forces involved in the monitoring and surveillance of populations who are on the move and forming and reforming new kinds of social groupings. Fluid socialites are increasingly recordable (Thrift 2007) and calculable. Qualculation involves the ability to compile huge amounts of data and to design increasingly powerful algorithms to sort, correlate, categorise and rank this mobile data – combining objective ­calculation with qualitative judgement in actuarial predictions. It is said that these developments in computation and calculation are bringing about a new world order. (Büscher et al. 2011, p. 14)

On a tangible level this data future has become reality in the AirCiF project, because access to data is essential when conducting the analysis of the mobilities performed in the Copenhagen Airport hub, since the study is empirical rather than theoretical. Some data is produced through the research methods outlined above, while other data is produced outside the AirCiF project. This setup leads to various tricky data situations, and has required ongoing research design adjustments as well as continuing negotiations with external data owners about access to both their data, and, in the case of Copenhagen Airport, access to data production in the terminal buildings: ●●

Access to data production: this has been a challenge primarily in relation to the AirCiF focus area, ‘Becoming a passenger – exploring the passenger experience

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Applying multiple and multi-scalar methods to mobilities hub research  89

●●

●●

and airport design’. Here, AirCiF needed to conduct surveys and observations inside the terminal buildings in Copenhagen Airport, on the airside of security. As reported elsewhere (Jensen 2018), the airport is a unique space, with specific safety and security regulations dictating allowable behaviour, and is also a company that will protect its own business interests. Other AirCiF focus areas have encountered similar issues in relation to primary data production, owing to approached actors wanting to protect commercial and strategic interests, leading to access negotiations and, in some cases, to new methods of acquiring the needed or desired data. Data produced outside AirCiF, for purposes other than AirCiF: a significant part of the quantitative data being analysed in AirCiF is produced by others, and for other purposes than the AirCiF research. These data-sets come from Copenhagen Airport and Scandinavian Airlines Systems (SAS, the main airline at Copenhagen Airport), each of which continuously survey their passengers. Access to these datasets have been granted as part of the project, and forms an important empirical element of the research into, particularly, the business travel conducted via the airport. Further data-sets on the public transport servicing the airport has been made available by Movia (bus) and DSB (train) respectively. This will enable AirCiF to explore the infrastructural links to the landside catchment area of Copenhagen Airport. Data produced outside AirCiF, but specifically for AirCiF: a smaller part of the data used as the empirical foundation for the AirCiF analyses is data produced by others, but with the primary aim to be fed into the research project. This applies in relation to a survey that Danish National Rail conducted among their train travellers, where an offer was made to AirCiF to formulate questions relating to train access to and from the airport, that were then incorporated into the overall survey.

This combination of quantitative data sources has emerged as a productive challenge for AirCiF. Although a great deal of administrative resources has been spent on establishing a data management setup that was fit to handle data and data transfer from the collaborators to AirCiF (owing to the size of the data-sets, General Data Protection Regulation concerns and discussions of which data would be relevant to share), this empirical contribution to AirCiF is indispensable for the holistic aim of the analysis. These aggregated data-sets provide a cumulative view of the people that use the airport, thus being a vital perspective on how the users ‘from below’ (cf. Jensen 2013) in their individual mobilities situations look at an amassed scale. This view paves the way for qualculation (Büscher et al. 2011), where qualitative assessment of statistical analysis offer new understandings of the mobilities that are played out in and around Copenhagen Airport, in a way that neither qualitative inquiry nor statistical analyses alone could have done. However, it is important to pay heed to both the hierarchy of methods (here, data-sets) and scales. Some of the data-sets represent a strategic sample of selected travellers, others represent a much wider sample, each thus having a different width and depth in relation to the reality they stem from. This needs to be addressed when placing the analysis of each data-set into the methodological hierarchy subsequently becoming the holistic analysis of the hub mobilities in Copenhagen Airport.

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CONCLUDING REMARKS As a way of wrapping up the discussions in this chapter, an ever relevant question is asked: how do you conduct research of complex hub mobilities in complex mobilities hubs? First you take a deep breath, and then you ask yourself: what knowledge about these mobilities and this place is it I want and need? This will be closely linked to the research question that guides your research. Having mapped that, you proceed to ask yourself: how can I acquire this knowledge, and which of the myriad of ways of epistemological inquiry that I am (more or less) familiar with do I need to employ in order to get to know more about this? This approach would be applicable in most research projects, so for a mobilities hub research inquiry the add-on advice is to mix methods and to accept that holistic mobilities research is a messy business. Mixed Methods The aeromobilities decision support model that AirCiF has as an end goal builds upon a mix of well-established as well as new, creative methodologies and technologies. This provides a comprehensive analytical framework for mobilities hub development. Classic social science data collection methods have been employed, such as interviews, surveys, literature reviews, statistical analysis and document analysis. None of these methods are innovative or creative, but they are tried and tested in getting the researcher closer to the subjects and objects of inquiry. Mixed with these very well-known methods, other forms of data collection have been indeed tried and tested in the AirCiF research project, with thermal cameras and eye-tracking being used in the data collection inside terminal buildings in Copenhagen Airport. Applying these methods has been a tour de force through practical, administrative and epistemological challenges, doubts and victories, with the outcome promising, but not yet definitive. Mixing methods is not a new approach to research nor to mobilities research (see, for example, Büscher et al. 2011; Creswell 2013). The central argument is that you cannot conduct research into hub mobilities nor into mobilities hubs unless you mix methods. No single data collection method will provide you with enough data to understand what is going on in these places. Some methods will result in data that gives you insights into how the mobilities are staged from above, but they will not be appropriate to enlighten you about the social and embodied mobilities being staged from below. Also, the methods that allow you to get closer to the individual and experienced mobilities ‘on the floor’ will leave you none the wiser about the planning, design, regulations and institutions that frame the mobilities. You need both perspectives to understand the mobilities in the mobilities hub. Accept that Holistic Mobilities Research Is Messy – and Probably Always Will Be This mixing of methods does not bode well for a neat methodology chapter and wellstructured field notes, but that is probably also too much to ask for when the reality under scrutiny is not neat or well structured either. A lesson from the AirCiF mobilities hub research project is that the data collection is simultaneously well planned and structured according to theory and experience on paper, while subject to the messiness of real life. The advice is to embrace this messiness in a way that does not try to reduce it, as this would

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Applying multiple and multi-scalar methods to mobilities hub research  91 be to alter the object of the research in the name of research convenience – ­potentially providing us with analyses that do not leave us much the wiser about the reality we aim to understand (and sometimes even improve). There is no set formula for how embracing messiness can be achieved, as this will be context dependent, but achieved it must be. The mixing of old and new data collection methods for exploring mobilities hubs, set in a theoretical framework that allows disparate epistemological approaches, is likely to be a convoluted affair in practice. While the AirCiF research project has shown how this can be done in an aeromobilities context in Copenhagen Airport, this approach to knowledge production can also be applied to research into other mobilities hubs and hub mobilities. The implications of this for further research is two-stringed: as regards research into mobilities methodologies, it would be relevant to explore the added value of holistic methodological approaches in mobilities research. What knowledge and insight is it exactly that we gain from a holistic approach that is not produced through more one-dimensional methodologies and research designs? Exploring this would suggest a comparative study of the same hub, but with two sets of research design, with a later comparison of the difference in results. The second string of further research coming from this exploration of multiple and multi-scalar mobilities hub research is a call for more examples and cases of research projects consciously applying multiple and multi-scalar methods to their inquiry. This would produce a best-practice catalogue for doing valid mobilities hub research. No two mobilities hubs are the same, so it will not be possible to establish comprehensive universals for their exploration, but, remembering the explanatory power of the case study emphasised to us by Flyvbjerg (2006), over time enough research experience from a wide range of mobilities hubs will allow us to identify commonalities and recurrences that can guide us in our continuous effort to understand hub mobilities and improve mobilities hubs.

REFERENCES Airport City Futures (AirCiF) (2016), ‘Investment agreement’, Aalborg University and Innovation Fund, Denmark, unpublished. Büscher, M., J. Urry and K. Witchger (2011), ‘Introduction: mobile methods’, in M. Büscher, J. Urry and K. Witchger (eds), Mobile Methods, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 1–19. Cresswell, T. (2006), On the Move – Mobility in the Modern Western World, London: Routledge. Creswell, J. (2013), Research Design. Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches, London: Sage. Flyvbjerg, B. (2006), ‘Five misunderstandings about case studies research’, Qualitative Inquiry, 12 (2), 219–45. Hayles, N.K. (1999), How We became Post Human: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Herold, A. (2011), Scale, London: Routledge. Jensen, O.B. (2013), Staging Mobilities, Abingdon: Routledge. Jensen, O.B. (2018), ‘The material politics of future airport cities – re-thinking design, power and materiality in light of airport design’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, New Orleans, LA, 10–14 April. Jensen, O.B. and Morelli, N. (2011), ‘Critical points of contact: exploring networked relations in urban mobility and service design’, Kortlægning og Arealforvaltning, 46 (1), 36–49. Thrift, N. (2007), Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect, London: Routledge. Urry, J. (2000), Sociology beyond Society – Mobilities for the 21st Century, London: Routledge. Urry, J. (2007), Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press.

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9.  Drone mobilities and auto-technography Julia M. Hildebrand

INTRODUCTION The warm summer evening in Philadelphia was perfect for recording the sunset over the river with Jay, my drone. As I try to locate a safe place to fly amid picnicking, strolling, ­jogging and cycling activities, I have on my mind the US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) rule to not fly over people or moving vehicles. Eventually, I detect a secluded spot next to a pathway with enough space for me to set up and launch the football-sized quadcopter. I have got used to the careful fumbling that setting up the foldable DJI Mavic Pro Platinum requires: Four propellers need to be correctly attached to the drone body, the camera lens protection comes off, my smartphone is wired to and clamped into the remote controller, the app needs to be launched on the phone. Eventually, the remote controller, drone application (app) and the small aircraft detect each other. Any software updates required? No. Good, that could have delayed me enough to miss this spectacular sunset. Finally, I am ‘good to fly’ with Jay having connected to 13 satellites nearby. I carefully scan my surroundings horizontally and vertically using my eyes and ears. Will I be in the way of any pedestrians or cyclists? Do I detect the sound of aerial traffic nearby? Are there any birds that might get curious if I fly the drone above the river towards the sunset? All clear. I hold both controlling sticks down. ‘Take-off’ the soft Siri-like voice inside the drone app tells me. After eight months and 65 flights, I have become comfortable with the remote control and the manoeuvres it prompts in the flying device. Why am I starting the chapter with this anecdote? Because what happened that evening not only taught me more about recreational drone use, but also prompted me to critically reconsider my auto-technographic positionality as a researcher. I reflectively stepped outside of myself, zoomed out, and looked back down on myself from an aerial drone perspective. In this chapter, I make the case for this self-aware, multi-directional way of seeing and sensing as both a practical and metaphorical technique activated by the drone. I discuss auto-drone-technography – the self-reflective engagement with technology and through that technology to tap into a technological unconscious (Clough 2000; Thrift 2004, 2011) – as a worthwhile supplement to the mobile methods tool kit. Expanding Vannini and Vannini’s (2008) conception of technography, the suggested approach has methodological merits in reconfiguring a range of fertile mobile methods while asking auto-technographers to examine their own emplacements, relationalities and mobilities. So, what happened that summer evening? A helicopter seemed to approach slightly beneath the 400-feet level in which drones are legally permitted to fly. Operating the drone at about 200 feet above the river, I noticed the familiar humming sound behind me, looked up away from the remote controller, detected the helicopter, and tried to lower the drone above the river as fast and carefully as I could. Alarmed yet focused, my gaze moved back and forth between the approaching helicopter and Jay who started to disappear behind trees. To keep the drone in visual line of sight as required by the FAA, I stepped out of 92

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Drone mobilities and auto-technography  93 my protected spot, further up the pathway while hoping that the connection between my remote control and flying device would not falter. In that case, the drone would automatically ‘return home’ by rising up again to a pre-set height and travel back to the launching coordinates. As I concentrated on getting the drone as far away from the helicopter’s potential paths as possible, I barely noticed how my body was almost getting in the way of passing cyclists. The ringing of bicycle bells joined the buzzing of the helicopter in my ears. Detached from my mind’s and eye’s fixation on the still invisible drone, my body managed to instinctively move here and there to avoid a crash on the ground. In the end, neither harm nor damage occurred on both vertical levels. The helicopter passed, and the drone returned to the ground. Curious to learn more about the sociocultural value of recreational drone flying and eager to do justice to the practice by being there and becoming a hobby pilot, I briefly found myself in the position of potentially harming others and/or myself. Together with insights into human–machine interactions and aerial sensibilities that my engagement with the drone fosters, this experience left me wondering more explicitly about my own investment in this research and the risks this aerial self-extension entails. Moreover, just as the drone perspective allows me to visually explore aerial geographies and quite literally opens up my horizon, the drone’s visual and metaphorical gaze back at me on the ground cues me to critically reflect on my positionality beyond considerations typically to be found in a limitations section of a journal article. In the following, I briefly outline how my auto-technographic research design is informed by both mobile method-rich mobilities research next to media ecological understandings of human–technology relationships. I then discuss the epistemological value of drone-logs as a mobile video ethnography and elicitation technique that evocatively reconfigures sky video with ground audio. In this context, I argue for hybrid methods that juxtapose ways of knowing to sharpen the lens onto physical, corporeal, virtual, communicative, imaginative and, particularly, (auto)-affective mobilities that imbue the flows of contemporary everyday life together with the very research seeking to make sense of them. I conclude with observations of how the distant and detached drone perspective can complement mobile methods practically and metaphorically. Adopting an aerial view on ourselves and the practice can encourage us to more consciously take account of our own corporeal, intellectual, imaginative and affective mobilities within the larger research picture.

HYBRID RESEARCH/ER For studying hobby drone practices, I combined multiple approaches: participant observations in the Philadelphia region, in-depth interviews with consumer drone users, online ethnographies of two user groups on Facebook, and visual analyses of drone-generated imagery. All of these methods gave me an idea of the physical, corporeal, communicative, virtual and imaginative mobilities involved in personal drone adoptions. While these methods continue to provide rich data, it is the auto-technographic component that allows me to connect the pieces, make sense of those mobilities and directly experience the fleeting, distributed, slippery, multiple, non-causal, sensory, emotional and kinaesthetic aspects of drone flying and image-taking (Law and Urry 2004). Learning to operate the

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94  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities small unmanned aircraft, studying the regulatory settings, choosing times and places to fly, and creatively engaging with the collected imagery, enabled me to self-reflectively discover the non-representational ways of relating to the technology, the practice, the space and myself. Furthermore, the camera drone holds innovative means for reflecting, recording and analysing these multi-sensory mobilities beyond drone-centric contexts. During each flight, the aerial views of the drone are live-streamed onto the screen of my smartphone, allowing me to see what the drone sees in real time. When I record those images, my smartphone’s microphone will pick up on any sounds and noises that occur around me on the ground and connect this ground audio with the corresponding sky video. While many hobby pilots use this feature when live-streaming their aerial views on social media platforms, I juxtaposed the audio and video into what I term drone-logs. Together with the naturally occurring sounds from the ground, I articulate any thoughts about the drone flying and image-taking in diagnostic voiceovers which the drone app combines with the respective aerial recordings. I return to the methodological merit of those drone-logs later. Embracing the term ‘technography’ as a ‘sensuous, engaged ethnography of technology’ (Vannini and Vannini 2008, p. 1299), I emphasize my attunement to such generative tools, techniques and corresponding tempers. Here, I follow Vannini and Vannini (2008, p. 1275) and their ‘view of technography as a research strategy and art of representation’ for their analysis of embodied media: ‘From our perspective technography is the study and writing of technical structures of communication processes, both their material and symbolic substance, and their potential for shaping social outcomes’ (Vannini and Vannini 2008, p. 1299). I similarly study and write the socio-technical grammar of the remotecontrolled flying camera, engaging with both its interactional material and immaterial affordances for hobby pilots but also social scientists. Furthermore, I seek to call up the ‘technological unconscious’ that mobilizes ways of knowing that ‘do not belong to “us” or to the environment. Rather they have been coevolved, and so refuse a neat distinction between organic and inorganic life or between person and the environment’ (Thrift 2004, p. 176). In the auto-technographic, researchers orientate themselves towards what Thrift (2004, p. 177) describes as ‘the bending of bodies with environments to a specific set of addresses’, such as those of camera drones. Just as Vannini and Vannini’s creative project (2008) is inspired by the probing thoughts of McLuhan (1964), so too is this exploration deeply informed by the lenses of media ecology. Central to this intellectual tradition are the biases and effects inherent to all human-made technologies. Those media biases, shaped by us as technological extensions of ourselves, shape us back when we uncritically engage with them. Media have an environmental quality; they surround us. After processes of media acclimatization and mythologization, they tend to become invisible to us. In their newness, the character of camera drones is not yet invisible to us, and we can critically examine the socio-technical relationships that emerge as a result. As technological extensions of human senses and faculties, drones enclose knowledge about themselves, us and any hybrid selves in-between. Hence, drones are a compelling medium for understanding not only the technology itself but our relationship to technology more generally by converging multiple modalities: aerial navigation, visual production, and networked communication. As McLuhan (1964, p. 57) writes, ‘The hybridization or compounding of these agents offers an especially favourable opportunity to notice their structural components and properties.’

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Drone mobilities and auto-technography  95 As such, the kind of hybrid interfacing innate to contemporary camera drones is a useful measure for what McLuhan understands as turning media from ‘make happen’-agents into ‘make aware’-agents (1964, p. 57). The drone-logs’ configuration of ground audio and sky video, then, present a further level of revelatory hybridization. The goal of this technique is to similarly enhance auto-drone-technography as both a ‘make happen’- and ‘make aware’-process. According to McLuhan (1964, p. 63), the hybrid or the meeting of two media is a moment of truth and revelation from which new form is born. For the parallel between two media holds us on the frontier between forms that snap us out of the Narcissus-narcosis. The moment of the meeting of media is a moment of freedom and release from the ordinary trance and numbness imposed by them on our senses.

That is, the interfacing and juxtaposing of different media forms can function as a type of resistance to the sensorial numbness we may develop when engaging with our technological extensions. The same argument is valid for our ways of conducting research. Interfacing and juxtaposing multiple mobile methods can similarly snap us out of a potential analytical Narcissus-narcosis. McLuhan (1964, p. 66) expands on this idea, speaking to the alert media-user and critical researcher alike: ‘Our very word “grasp” or “apprehension” points to the process of getting at one thing through another, of handling and sensing many facets at a time through more than one sense at a time.’ Creatively experimenting with different media to ‘grasp’ and ‘apprehend’ our research subjects and objects can fruitfully stir routinized research and reflections. Auto-drone-technography is one of those ways that has mobilized me to not only preserve my drone practice from unreflective drone-use narcosis, but also pushed me to more deeply engage with my multiple selves as researcher, drone pilot and visual subject from a bird’s-eye view. By turning the drone into a ‘make aware’-medium in the effort to make myself aware of the drone, I am increasingly being made aware of myself, my temporal and spatial selves, and my evolving self-awareness. When the FAA’s registration website prompted me to enter a name for my brand-new Mavic Pro, I did not foresee how fitting the offhand initial of my first name would become. ‘J’ keeps unmasking aspects of the consumer-drone-world along with parts of me, my role and responsibilities as I self-extend into space. Increasingly, researchers are tapping into the educational and epistemological potentials of consumer drones, with human geographers Birtchnell and Gibson (2015) making a case for aeromobile methods and posing important questions about the politics and ethics of such personalized remote aeromobilities. Closer to my focus and conclusions, Garrett and Fish (2016) acknowledge that ‘If in flying, the human operator is surrounded by the machine, is intimate with the machine, becomes the machine, is overcome by, or reins in the machine, then drone methodologies are already changing how we think and act.’ Going beyond the methodological purchase of consumer drones, Jablonowski (2017, p. 97) calls for a ‘“dronie citizenship” that does not fear drones but explores their ambiguous powers and pleasures’. While I endorse his approach for a dronie citizenship, I shift away from his argument that the view from above ‘does not establish a particular self through media technologies, but destabilizes its individuality and particularity’ (Jablonowski 2017, p. 100). To my auto-drone lens, the aerial camera and its multi-directional gaze establish particular spatial selves and thus represent Sloterdijk’s (2011) notion of an ego-technical

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96  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities device. More than anticipated, the ego enters the auto, reminding me of my grounds while up in the air.

DRONE-LOGS Combining sky video with ground audio, drone gaze with human voice, drone-logs present an innovative format for sharpening our analytical attention to multi-scalar and multi-sensory mobilities. The hybrid format captures consciously and unconsciously communicated atmospheres and affects during the flying and recording process. An excerpt from a drone-log transcript illustrates this technographic approach. In this example, I experiment with one of the autonomous flight functions, the Active Track, that come with the Mavic Pro. The ground audio picks up on the occasional wind gusts that interrupt my analytical voice-overs and the swishing sound of my jacket against the smartphone microphone when the drone animates me to run. The sky video is focused on me until I move out of the frame and the drone camera starts to visually search for me with subtle camera adjustments (Figure 9.1). Ok, I am in Active Track right now. I am not operating anything right now. [Video shows drone camera following me; only one hand is on the remote controller]. [. . .] This is kinda cool [sounds excited]. I have this green frame around me on the screen that says GO [chuckles]. It’s like the drone is telling me to move, or like the system and the screen are telling me to move with this green square. It almost feels like as if I am in a video game. Or like a first-person-shooter and I am the target. [still walking] So, what happens if I go over there? Still focusing on me, I guess?

Source:  Photograph by the author.

Figure 9.1  The drone is actively tracking me on the ground

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Drone mobilities and auto-technography  97 Yep, still finding me. [Starts running across the field]. No. Ok, now it’s lost me. Oh, now it’s found me again.

This unintentional hide-and-seek interplay between the drone and myself continues for a while. The drone-log captures my experimental interactions with the drone as vocalized on the ground and depicted from the air. Both my and the drone’s independent mobile agencies come to the surface. A week after this drone session, I am set to give a presentation at my university and debate whether or not to show this video despite its analytical richness for understanding the interactional mobilities between user and technology. Watching and listening to the drone-log, I have second thoughts about the analogy to the first-person shooter game (and also find my running in the heavy winter jacket silly-looking and -sounding). For that presentation, I ended up selecting a different drone-log to substantiate my arguments. The continued technographic drone-logging and subsequent audio-visual analysing of myself engaging with the drone have made me develop a more analytically distant and affectively detached lens onto the sky videos and ground audios of myself. For example, as my drone-logging self struggles to describe what about the drone is telling her to move – ‘the drone’, ‘the system’ and ‘the screen’ – my elevated analytical self learns about the struggles to articulate the complex assemblage of human and non-human agencies. The same applies to the offhand first-person shooter analogy which I hesitated to endorse. Returning to those drone-logs from a stance of advanced understandings if not emancipated elevation, I can (re)consider my immediate reactions and affective processes of evaluation for additional conclusions. The technographic format, consequently, aligns with but also extends mobile video ethnography more generally. Embraced by mobilities researchers, mobile video ethnography taps into ‘a multitude of mobile, material, embodied practices of making distinctions, relations and places’ (Elliot et al. 2017, p. 7) and enhances and shapes ‘recollection of sensory and affective encounters’ (Spinney 2015, p. 236). Moreover, as Adey (2017, p. 275) states: ‘Video approaches to mobility therefore seem to collide different forms of sensing, witnessing and narrative.’ The juxtaposition of effectively attached audio yet physically detached video along with an imaginative and imaged aerial gaze back at the researcher herself initiate new questions about this collision of different forms of sensing, witnessing, and narrative. Auto-drone-technography combines features of mobile video ethnography with video elicitation techniques. In addition to reflecting the visual manoeuvres of the drone and the user’s corresponding articulations, the drone-logs present what Spinney (2015, p. 236) describes as ‘sensual prompt[s] to recollection, helping to foreground the aspects of experience we are interested in knowing about and creating a framework through which to talk about felt experiences arising from relations with fleeting, mundane and easily forgotten phenomena’. The immediate responses of the drone-logger and any bystanders in combination with the aerial imagery can thus solicit further reflection from a spatially and temporally remote perspective. While my drone-logging self is often occupied with safely operating the drone, moving the gaze back and forth between drone and screen, my post-logging self can bring her critical attention to visual and auditory details as she reviews the embodied memories. Here, the experience continues to be a mobile one. However, to use Murray’s words (2009, p. 18), the ‘range of emotional responses to space and mobility is reduced.’

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98  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Recording from drone launch to landing, the unedited audio-visual diaries quite often drone on. Yet, they thus include notions of the active and quiescent (Bissell 2009), the purposeful and accidental as central to the recollection of various mobilities. There is more. While the drone-logs link ground audio with sky video, they are assembled with the live-streamed version of the sky video transmitted to the smartphone. Occasionally, this image transmission is lagging or shaky; sometimes the image will blur and go blank when the connection to the flying drone is poor. In the meantime, a highquality video version of the drone’s recording is also saved onto a storage device inside the drone. Those mute videos (there is no microphone on the drone itself) allow me to fill such visual gaps in my drone-logs. With these data, I see what the drone saw in the short moments that my ground self was ‘in the dark’ about the aerial gaze. On one occasion, the drone app suddenly froze, cutting off the live-feed of the aerial images onto my smartphone while the drone was locked in the tracking function. Pointing towards and moving with me, the drone camera continued to silently record my confusion, amusement, frustration and pondering in this moment of shifted agencies. Later, I discovered this high-definition gem on the micro SD card inside the drone, enriching the data-set with a backup record of this rare event.

AUTO-AFFECTIVE MOBILITIES Many studies drawing on mobile methods stress the importance of ‘being there’, ‘moving with’ and researching ‘in situ’ as crucial for not only data collection but also analysis (Fincham et al. 2009, p. 5). Paying attention to the non-representational experience, Merriman (2014, p. 177) notes that ‘the practices of making a video, riding-along, and moving-with are perhaps more instructive or informative than the images, data or experiences gathered’. That is, the generated drone-logs and other mobile video ethnographic and elicitation methods are analytically valuable not only as collected data but also processes of uncovering the studied mobilities. Auto-ethnographic approaches take the principle of being there and moving a step further. As ‘systematic sociological introspection’ (Ellis 2004, p. xvii), auto-ethnography favours individualized and subjective accounts of the research topic, an abundance of which may never materialize as ‘data’ or ‘fact’ (Luvaas 2016b, p. 90). In that sense, ‘Auto-ethnography does not just use the self to do research; it is explicitly about ‘the self’ as the medium through which research transpires’ (Luvaas 2016b, p. 90). In auto-technography, then, it is the self in combination with technique and technology that poses the hybrid medium of research. By attending to the ‘auto’, I take explicit account of my motions, notions, and emotions in the interplay with the drone both during and after the practice as, what Luvaas (2016a, p. 12) considers, ‘a meaningful form of knowledge in its own right.’ In this process of being/seeing/moving there (a mobilities principle that the drone as remote technology can complicate), I experience not only the respective corporeal, physical, virtual, communicative and imaginative, but also my affective mobilities. These include the sensory challenges of, and emotional responses to, drone flying and imagetaking as well as researching. The opening anecdote about the helicopter is one prominent example that brings my vulnerabilities as remote pilot and researcher to the fore. The respective drone-log for that experience includes this segment:

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Drone mobilities and auto-technography  99 I am at 200 feet. [Drone camera moves left and right overviewing the river]. I’m trying to always see it [the drone], but I am also sort of surrounded by trees. Oh, wow. [Camera captures the sunset]. So, I’ve been looking up at the drone for the past couple moments and now I am looking at the screen and it looks beautiful. [Pause] Ok, I hear a helicopter [drone starts lowering]. It’s behind me. [Bicycle swishes by. Helicopter buzzing gets louder and quieter again.] Ok, there was a . . . that was a bit scary. My heart just dropped. I just brought the drone straight down over the river, so I’m not sure where it is hovering right now. Ok, there it is. Yeah, come back towards me.

Shifting between purposeful narration and automatic reaction, this drone-log transcript gives a sense of the multiple emotions and motions active during the encounter. On other occasions, I enter the field wondering if something bad could happen: what if the drone flies away, drops down, lands in the wrong spot, damages something or, worst of all, hurts somebody? Is this all worth it? These and similar vulnerabilities and anxieties are not exclusive to my analytical practice and may apply to other mobile methods (see Luvaas 2019). I see the auto-drone process as unveiling a ‘technological unconscious’, understood as ‘the bending of bodies-with-environments to a specific set of addresses without the benefit of any cognitive inputs’ (Thrift 2007, p. 91). This process prompts me to metaphorically look up, out and back down at myself as researcher at a distance. It asks me to critically consider my role and responsibilities in the research process as well as the big picture of my work. A call for auto-drone perspectives across mobile methods, then, seeks to encourage researchers to actively take account of these affective mobilities by shifting their analytical lens up, out and back down onto themselves. What does that mean and what is it good for? The idea is to consider the relational emplacements and mobile positionings of researchers in their work from a drone point of view. While camera drones capture what we are usually not in a position to see, they also capture us in ways that we do not usually see ourselves; from an aerial distance. In contrast to other valuable auto-ethnographic work which seeks visual immediacy as ‘a way of connecting with the field more intimately’ (Luvaas 2017, p. 164), the auto-drone lens can serve as a means of disconnecting from the field, of seeing yourself from an elevated, remote stance. The aim is for a personal overview of the research processes including their own multi-sensory mobilities. The method speaks to the ‘sensuous turn’ within ethnography that centralizes multi-sensuous, emplaced practices, and ‘attends to the question of experience by accounting for the relationships between bodies, minds and the materiality and sensoriality of the environment’ (Pink 2009, p. 25). The researcher’s senses, emplacements, movements and environments become central in the auto-drone angle. Last but not least, as Rojek (1993, p. ix) observes: ‘Up there in an airplane one is, as it were, suspended from earthly cares. Looking down from above the clouds one cannot avoid thinking.’ If the aerial is indeed a space for contemplation, then the drone perspective allows us to entertain celestial considerations while firmly on the ground. The auto-drone can serve mobile methodology as a lens for what Luvaas (2016a, p. 13) describes as moving ‘between embodied modes of practice and critical self-reflexivity’. Hence, a worthwhile outcome of this approach is the increased attention given to the researcher’s physical, corporeal, communicative, imaginative and affective mobilities in the conception, design, conduct, reflection and presentation of the research.

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100  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS In this chapter, I addressed several dimensions of auto-drone-technography as a creative and self-reflective addition to the mobile methods tool box. While the drone technique teaches me about the drone technology, the drone has analytical purchase beyond that. In combining different modalities, such as aerial navigation, image production and virtual communication, the drone presents a compelling hybrid medium that can sharpen the perspective onto the individual mobile and mediating processes. Moreover, it provides a generative format for capturing and recalling multi-sensory mobilities in the combination of sky video and (research-reflective) ground audio. Here, the suggested auto-dronetechnography combines the ground with the sky, the human with the non-human, the personal with the impersonal, the immobile with the mobile, the invisible with the visible, the immediate with the hypermediate, the up close with the distant, the here with the (somewhere) over there, the anxious with the inanimate, the affective with the effective, the technically conscious with the technologically unconscious, the ego with the auto, and the topic and tool with the technographer. Adey (2017, p. 294) states that ‘artistic and creative practices may offer further insight into another range of methodologies attentive to mobility often through the making and juxtaposition of different kinds of visual and moving images’. Drone-logs have that potential. More generally, the auto-drone view is meant to encourage researchers to zoom out, see the larger picture and, most notably see themselves inside it together with the multiple material and immaterial mobilities that the research demanded, prompted and inspired. Supplemental to other mobile methods, data collection strategies and elicitation techniques, this self-reflexive approach takes note of the position, emplacement, role and investment of the researcher in the research process. This aerial top-down angle can make us visible to ourselves within a larger picture and aid us in making our research practices and processes – together with the multi-sensuous mobilities and auto-affective relationalities we encounter, animate and enact – visible to our audiences.

REFERENCES Adey, P. (2017), Mobility, 2nd edn, London and New York: Routledge. Birtchnell, T. and C. Gibson (2015), ‘Less talk more drone: social research with UAVs’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 39 (1), 182–9, doi:10.1080/03098265.2014.1003799. Bissell, D. (2009), ‘Travelling vulnerabilities: mobile timespaces of quiescence’, Cultural Geographies, 16 (4), 427–45, doi:10.1177/1474474009340086. Clough, P. (2000), Autoaffection: Unconscious Thought in the Age of Teletechnology, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Elliot, A., R. Norum and N.B. Salazar (2017), Methodologies of Mobility: Ethnography and Experiment, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Ellis, C. (2004), The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography, Lanham, MD and Oxford: Rowman Altamira. Fincham, B., M. McGuinness and L. Murray (eds) (2009), Mobile Methodologies, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Garrett, B.L. and A. Fish (2016), ‘Attack on the drones: the creeping privatisation of our urban airspace’, Guardian, 12 December, accessed 26 January 2017 at https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/dec/12/atta​c​k-dro​ nes-privatisation-urban-airspace. Jablonowski, M. (2017), ‘Dronie citizenship?’, in A. Kuntsman (ed.), Selfie Citizenship, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 97–106.

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Drone mobilities and auto-technography  101 Law, J. and J. Urry (2004), ‘Enacting the social’, Economy and Society, 33 (3), 390–410. doi:10.1080/03085140 42000225716. Luvaas, B. (2016a), Street Style: An Ethnography of Fashion Blogging, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Luvaas, B. (2016b), ‘Urban fieldnotes: an auto-ethnography of street style blogging’, in H. Jenss (ed.), Fashion Studies: Research Methods, Sites and Practices, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 83–100. Luvaas, B. (2017), ‘The affective lens’, Anthropology and Humanism, 42 (2), 163–79, doi:10.1111/anhu.12190. Luvaas, B. (2019), ‘Unbecoming: the aftereffects of autoethnography’, Ethnography, 20 (2), 245–62, doi:10.1177/1466138117742674. McLuhan, M. (1964), Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York: McGraw-Hill. Merriman, P. (2014), ‘Rethinking mobile methods’, Mobilities, 9 (2), 167–87. doi:10.1080/17450101.2013.784 540. Murray, L. (2009), ‘Contextualising and mobilising research’, in B. Fincham, M. McGuinness and L. Murray (eds), Mobile Methodologies, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 13–24. Pink, S. (2009), Doing Sensory Ethnography, London: Sage. Rojek, C. (1993), Ways of Escape: Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sloterdijk, P. (2011), Bubbles: Spheres, Volume I: Microspherology, Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext. Spinney, J. (2015), ‘Close encounters? Mobile methods, (post)phenomenology and affect’, Cultural Geographies, 22 (2), 231–46, doi:10.1177/1474474014558988. Thrift, N. (2004), ‘Remembering the technological unconscious by foregrounding knowledges of position’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 22 (1), 175–90, doi:10.1068/d321t. Thrift, N. (2007), Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Thrift, N. (2011), ‘Lifeworld Inc—and what to do about it’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29 (1), 5–26, doi:10.1068/d0310. Vannini, P. and A. Vannini (2008), ‘Of walking shoes, boats, golf carts, bicycles, and a slow technoculture: a technography of movement and embodied media on Protection Island’, Qualitative Inquiry, 14 (7), 1272–301, doi:10.1177/1077800408322708.

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10.  Logbooks of mobilities Larissa Schindler

INTRODUCTION TO LOGBOOKS AS A MOBILE METHOD ‘As I read the logbooks almost as a set of novels, telling the story of each successive trip out to the sea, patterns around the practices of fishing began to emerge’, Tarryn-Anne Anderson (2011, p. 37) notes in her ethnography on skippers tracking fish. What are logbooks, and how could they contribute to our understanding of mobile worlds? In tackling this genre, I study a rather sparsely employed type of data. Compared to video, field notes or interviews, logbooks might appear to be rather thin. Particularly for questions concerning mobilities however, they can add to empirical field work in a different form, since they provide ‘inquiries from within’ (Büscher et al. 2010, p. 13). In historiographical research, logbooks are one of the remaining sources about bygone mobile practices and their entanglements with the rest of the (mobile and sedentary) world. In research on current mobilities, they offer inspiring insights into mobile practices, their written accounts and the knowledge networks of which they form a part. Solicited logbooks are a mobile version of interviews, as they follow the traveler’s route. Written far away from a researcher, they are relatively independent reports of travelers’ views on their journeys as well as on what they find worth documenting for someone absent. Thus, logbooks not only provide an approach for investigating mobilities, but they constitute a mobile practice themselves. They are texts-in-motion (Smith 2006, p. 86). In this chapter, I delineate different forms of logbooks and their possible contribution to (mostly multi-method) research designs. I start with an outline of the origin and meaning of the term, concentrating especially on the connection to (and the overlap with) diaries as a research method. I continue by discussing two principal forms of logbooks: those that are pre-existing ones, and those that are solicited, that is, research induced. In these two sections, it becomes evident that logbooks cannot be understood as one method, but as quite different types of data that provides the researcher with different empirical insights. Also, their integration into multi-method designs varies considerably. Subsequently, I introduce an example of empirical research employing logbooks (within a broader, ethnographic study). Finally, I discuss how to analyze this data. Since logbooks appear in very different forms, these are general guidelines of analysis rather than fixed rules.

LOGBOOKS Historically, logbooks arose in navigation in the late sixteenth century. Usually, the first officer of a vessel kept a logbook in order to record for the owner that the passage was accomplished as agreed upon (Schürmann 2016, p. 8). Currently, logbooks can be found in many different areas, including aviation and medicine, mainly logging the course of 102

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Logbooks of mobilities  103 working processes. In the past few years, web logbooks, blogs, have gained broad attention (Hoffmann 2006). In humanities, the term logbook is used for a broad scope of texts ranging from detailed life stories to short notes: For instance, Heinz Hartmann (2007) published a biographical account on 50 years as a sociologist titled Logbook of a Sociologist. Also, the term is used for documenting and categorizing collections of empirical data (Tuma et al. 2013, pp. 77–80) or as an instrument for evaluation (for example, Fischer et al. 2008). However, logbooks are rarely used as empirical data, although various empirical studies (for example, Anderson 2011, 2015; Kunz and Pfadenhauer 2014; Schürmann 2016) have employed logbooks fruitfully for investigating historical as well as current mobilities. The broad scope of the term logbook in humanities leads to an overlap with research based on diaries, which do share a number of characteristics with logbooks. Both consist of widely autonomous records of informants whose writing is accomplished with the ‘operative fiction of a monologue’ (Hirschauer and Hofmann 2012, p. 10, my translation) to create ‘self-reports’ (Kunz 2015, pp. 145–50). Similar to interviews, informants are relatively autonomous in reconstructing events; thus diaries are textual constructions (Alaszewski 2006, pp. 48–9; Pfadenhauer 2012, p. 288). As empirical data, diaries appear in two different forms: as already existing, often historical data (for example, Ekirch 2001) or as research induced, that is, diaries that are written for a researcher (solicited diaries). The latter can be found in different variations ranging from highly standardized to completely open versions. The German mobility panel (for example, Eisenmann et al. 2018), for instance, gathers route diaries through a structured questionnaire, but there are also semi-structured (for example, Jacelon and Imperio 2005) and open (for example, Hirschauer and Hofmann 2012) versions of diary-based research. Within the range of solicited diaries there are close formal resemblances to data denoted as logbooks. Therefore, the notion of a diary or logbook is formally contentious in many cases. Instead, the terms are used synonymously within the range of research-induced data and assign logbooks (as the less usual form) to the method of diaries (Kunz and Pfadenhauer 2014, p. 21). From a more substantial than formal perspective, which focuses on the origins of the two genres, the following difference can be drawn: diaries reflect (in written form) on stages of life; similar to letters, they are ‘documents of life’ (Alaszewski 2006, p. 44), whereas logbooks report on routes, passages or work processes. Diaries, on the one hand, usually comprise many daily reports and are especially suitable for recording changes of view or even intra-personal processes (Bolger et al. 2003, pp. 586–8). Logbooks, on the other hand, report on routes or processes and often consist of only one entry. Both methods, however, are particularly based on written observations of the writer’s own experiences, which are specifically fruitful for revealing tacit and otherwise hidden dimensions of everyday life. These insights sometimes even surprise those keeping the logbook or diary, as Noeli Rodriguez and Alan Ryave (cf. Rodriguez and Ryave 2002, p. 21) note, with reference to their investigation on telling lies in everyday life (Rodriguez and Ryave 1990). The keeping of these reports closely resembles established cultural techniques, since self-documentation in different (more or less structured) ways (job applications, social media, and so on) has become part of our everyday lives (Kunz 2015, p. 145). Informants will therefore find little difficulties in such an activity.

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104  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities

PRE-EXISTING LOGBOOKS In his historical investigation of nineteenth-century whalers off the coasts of Africa, Felix Schürmann (2017, p. 22) identifies logbooks as a particular medium of communication aboard ships. These logbooks were kept in order to document nautically, contractually and legally relevant incidents of the voyage. More as a by-product, this often included reports on interaction with people from harbors and lands the vessel passed. How do pre-existing logbooks contribute to studies of mobilities? For historiography, logbooks provide a rich source of data about whalers off the coasts of Africa – a research area that generally does not suffer from an abundance of data on ordinary people’s everyday practices. In addition, whalers’ primary goal was their prey. Their reports on Africa are therefore influenced by the interests of the shipowners, and less by the colonial project in which missionaries and merchants were engaged. Since whalers usually did not know vernacular languages, they depended on the information of intermediaries. These Africans also had their impact on whalers’ views of the situation and on their reports in logbooks (Schürmann 2016, pp. 21–2). In this respect, logbooks add remarkably to the historical and anthropological knowledge otherwise mostly derived from reports by missionaries and merchants. (Until Malinowski’s 1922 claim against an armchair ethnography, anthropologists themselves hardly ever traveled.) In Schürmann’s research, logbooks fulfill a second goal. Since the vessels kept moving, logbooks provide more ephemeral data than other sources (Schürmann 2016, p. 21). Often, the crew only stayed at one place for a few days or weeks, where they met coastal dwellers as well as other vessels’ crews (Schürmann 2012, pp. 32–3). Since logbooks reported on the whole voyage, they contain information on a poly-local field. They provide inspiring insights into the ways in which the history of global entanglements was created by ordinary people (Schürmann 2012, p. 41). In this way, logbooks provide a rich source for questions about (historical) mobilities. Another example for research based on pre-existing logbooks is Tarryn-Anne Anderson’s (2011, 2015) ethnography on fishing in South Africa. Anderson investigates how skippers’ extensive practical knowledge is concretized and reduced to logbooks which connect to scientific and managerial knowledge about the sea. In contrast to historical logbooks (cf. Kunz 2015, p. 147, fn. 14; Schürmann 2016, pp. 8–12), these documents are strictly structured into rows and columns. Logbooks, Anderson suggests, have two lives: one of production and one of dissemination. They ‘form a part of a series of networks, and establish points of connection between different knowers in fisheries research’ (Anderson 2015, p. 320). However, this process requires a sequence of translations, from one way of knowing to another, that creates severe difficulties: As an archive of activity and productivity out at sea, logbooks provide researchers with the opportunity to collect a great deal of particularly relevant information, which could offer insight into fish behavior, which fishermen are particularly well placed to pass along. Yet, logbook data and catch reports make it extremely difficult for skippers to communicate, since what they think is relevant does not fit into the boxes and the lines provided. (Anderson 2015, p. 321)

To cope with these difficulties, skippers sometimes add ‘notes on the margin’ that can be notes for themselves as well as messages to others (Anderson 2011, pp. 33–7). Based on these insights, Anderson suggests scrutinizing current practices of logbooks as part of

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Logbooks of mobilities  105 the European–American heritage. As a culturally and historically shaped practice, it can be modified to enable a better integration of skippers’ knowledge about the sea and to realize the strength of these connections between different ways of knowing. These examples of research based on pre-existing logbooks not only exemplify the historical origins of the genre, but also report on the historical and current mobile practices in which logbooks were and are incorporated. Thus, they illuminate the particular circumstances of production that not only connect to the events and/or specific ways of knowing, but also to the logbooks’ readers and their interests. Since these sources are bound to previous and coming interaction, they create their own view on occurrences, emphasizing certain aspects and moving others into the background. Both authors ­therefore integrate logbooks into a multi-method design. Within this design, logbooks are thin reports that generate knowledge according to specific criteria. Yet they are also a mobile and ephemeral medium that connects different ways of knowing, and provides insights into the entanglement of different events, people and cultures creating complex networks. It is particularly this quality that I wish to link to when working with solicited logbooks.

SOLICITED LOGBOOKS Where logbooks do not form part of the mobile practice, researchers sometimes ask for them to be created. This can have different backgrounds, since logbooks add differently to a study’s design, depending on the object, on the situational dynamics and infrastructure in the research field, as well as on the analytical focus of the research project. Often, logbooks are used within a multi-method design, bringing in specific characteristics that have to connect to the other forms of data employed. Therefore, logbooks can fulfill very different tasks. However, they usually share the following characteristics. Logbooks are mostly written accounts1 of the writer’s own experiences that are produced relatively independently from researchers’ influence – compared, for instance, with oral interviews that are accomplished in co-presence following the researcher’s questions. Instead, these texts are mostly inspired by whatever is relevant to the traveling person. Also, they are usually written during the practice of research interest or shortly afterwards. Thus, they are closer to the events than interviews, which often take place weeks or months after the actual travel. Entangled in the practice while writing, informants are usually more aware of practical and routine knowledge (which returns to being tacit the more distance they gain from the practice). Also, logbooks accomplish a triangulation of participant observers, since they produce different views on the phenomenon at hand and exhibit personal strategies in coping with the situation of travel. In general, writing a logbook resembles various practices of self-reporting we employ in everyday life. Thus, informants usually have little difficulty writing them. Yet, receiving a logbook depends on informants’ willingness and ability to engage in this time-consuming activity without the soft strain of the researcher’s presence. As Alexa M. Kunz (2015, pp. 157–8) notes, the concrete form of the solicited logbook has to adapt to the informant’s suitability regarding (1) their motivation, (2) their skills, and (3) possible ways of integrating the reporting activity into their lived practice. Therefore, solicited logbooks can be found in different forms on a continuum between structured, semi-structured and

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106  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities open logbooks. Also, there are momentous differences owing to the strategy of recruiting logbooks’ authors. The actual form of the solicited logbook provides informants with different possibilities for expressing their knowledge and their experiences of and within the researched mobile practice. While structured logbooks facilitate completing the logbook and make it more time-efficient, they can also hinder obtaining information other than that which is explicitly asked for. Problems similar to that which Anderson reported on skippers’ logbooks may arise.2 Open logbooks, in turn, provide informants with the opportunity to express their knowledge and/or experiences more freely, while they may also challenge informants because they have to find their own form of expression. In both cases, however, whether more structured or more open, writing the text constitutes an activity of communicating a particular view on the occurrences. Texts are written and read within given settings, and they are a part of trans-local relationships, as discussed in detail by Dorothy Smith (1978, 2006). Smith suggests understanding texts not only as a product, but as an activity. This also applies to solicited logbooks, which are explicitly created for both reasons: to provide the researcher with field-specific knowledge and to establish a form of trans-local communication. Thus, the activity of writing and reading logbooks is an important feature of doing research using this method.

AIR TRAVEL: AN EXAMPLE FOR USING LOGBOOKS WITHIN A MULTI-METHOD DESIGN In my own ethnographic research on air travel,3 logbooks have turned out to be very useful in order to fill a methodical gap that arose between participant observation and interviews: Participant observation as a mobile method provides the researcher with deep insights into the tacit and embodied experiences of air travel. However, this approach suffers from the narrow view on the plane and it is restricted to current events. Interviews, though, widen the perspective of the study considerably, since they include other passengers’ and the staff’s view. Also, they can provide background knowledge and report on events before and after a flight. Yet, interviews are restricted to informants’ abilities of reporting, and they are usually conducted after the flights. With this gap in mind, I searched for a mobile version of interviews and came upon logbooks.4 Air passengers usually do not keep logbooks, so I had to ask for them. Since I was interested in broadening my perspective on the phenomenon, I decided upon an open design. I simply asked different people to write about their experiences while traveling. Most of the logbooks I received were written while traveling or shortly afterwards. They range between two and four pages in volume, reporting one or two flights apiece. Since informants usually did not receive any explicit suggestions about what to write about, these logbooks were mostly inspired by whatever was relevant to the traveling person. Often, they revealed strategies and customs of flying which I had not thought about before. I took these up for my own travels and thus came to alternate my traveling routines and reframe my experiences. They inspired me to consider my own flying practices from a new angle, to scrutinize them and to try out different ways of traveling. In this way, logbooks not only added to the interviews, but also entangled with my participant observation. Similar to interviews, these logbooks are invited stories (Cuff and Francis 1978) as they

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Logbooks of mobilities  107 (normally) would not have come into existence without my initiative. Also, they are a form of research-independent documentation. Since I was not present when the logbooks were written, I could not interfere, say, by asking questions. This created a challenge about what to write, which informants solved in different ways. The style of writing ranges from short and telegrammatic to scenic and eloquent. The following two fragments of logbooks from a technician and a cultural scientist give an impression of this range: Spent a lot of time watching movies and trying to catch sleep. Lufthansa failed to cater my vegetarian request but luckily they had vegetarian options on each meal. Which was just average. Flight left delayed but the pilot managed to arrive on-time after 10:20 mins. In flight en­tertainment is good. There isn’t a working WiFi on the plane. My traveling partner’s system didn’t work properly. (Logbook D, long haul, technician in his early forties, frequent flyer, May 2015) The flight is long and boring. The screen in front of me is out of order, so I can’t watch a movie or listen to a radio program. I read a crime novel, crochet a few rows on a teddy bear and sleep for a while. I am delighted that the airline serves snacks, drinks, meals, and in-flight shopping at the perfect moments to divide the flight into short intervals. . . . I don’t even have to be scared, since there are no turbulences. Looking out of the window, I don’t see anything, even though it is daytime: The entire Atlantic Ocean is covered by clouds. Only two hours before landing, the light starts to fade very slowly indeed, and all of a sudden, I see . . . drift ice! I hardly believe my own eyes. I had no idea we were flying that far north. (Logbook J, long haul, cultural scientist in her early thirties, slight fear of flying, April 2015, my translation)

The differences in style reflect the minor influence of the researcher compared with, say, interviews. In a way, the professional background of the informants seems to be reflected in writing style and chosen topics. Also, many logbooks show a strong communicative dimension in addressing the researcher. An example of this can be found in the following fragment of a logbooks by a sociologist (on her way to a private city trip): I get calmer since now, nothing can really go wrong anymore. I take out my note pads and start putting down some ideas for the logbook. I notice that this task is making me more aware of my environment. (Logbook K, sociologist in her late twenties, August 2015, my translation)

In this fragment, the informant does not only report on the circumstances and her experiences on this flight, but also reflects on the activity of writing a logbook while traveling. This thought inspires a methodological reflection on writing logbooks that also applies to writing field notes during participant observation. This also supports the aforementioned entanglement of logbooks and participant observation. In summary, solicited logbooks are a mobile version of interviews, as they follow the traveler’s route. They also add further perspectives to the field notes of my participant observations, which is crucial particularly for all areas with limited access for participant observation, such as the security screening (for a detailed discussion, see Pütz 2012).

ANALYSIS Tarryn-Anne Anderson reports having read logbooks almost like novels, suggesting that even strictly structured logbooks contain inspiring knowledge for the researcher. How can

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108  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities we reveal it? Since logbooks appear in very different forms, there are no fixed guidelines for analyzing them. However, I suggest three general lines of analysis. First, the content of a logbook will be an important focus. In this regard, important questions are: what are key-topics and codes?5 Are these developed throughout the text and how is this accomplished? Do they prompt specific questions or concepts within the range of mobilities? Which of these questions can be answered regarding the available data? Is there any other form of data that would be more useful in this regard? How do logbooks characterize the researched mobile practice? How does this analysis modify or adapt existing knowledge and theories of mobilities? Secondly, the circumstances of writing deserve particular attention. Especially in the area of pre-existing logbooks, these are often produced under specific circumstances. Thus, they are considerably influenced by professional norms of writing and/or career opportunities, by the economic and/or legal interests of the client, by historically specific discourses and views, and by the literal knowledge, talent and interest of the author. This also applies to solicited logbooks, since they are written against the social background of the practice. These circumstances of production are reflected in the data. Thirdly, as outlined by Dorothy Smith, texts are active in a certain way. Their inner organization and their wording suggest specific ways of understanding. They are practical solutions to the problem of transmitting a certain view, and thus they are situated social activities that can be understood as turns within a sequence of action (Wolff 2011). Methodically, their inner organization as well as their position within a sequence of action is interesting. How do they suggest certain views on the occurrences? How do they accomplish trans-local relations? Practically, Wolff (2011, pp. 257–8) suggests two steps for such an analysis: (1) developing a probable reading of the report, and (2) asking how the text suggests this reading by analyzing your own process of reasoning.

CONCLUSION Within the mobilities paradigm, researchers are not only looking for methods through which to analyze mobilities as an object of research. They are also interested in finding mobile methods or mobilizing existing methods. For this endeavor, logbooks offer an interesting approach. In various ways, they are texts-in-motion (Smith 2006, p. 86). Pre-existing logbooks are a product of mobile writing activities that provide the researcher with rich insights into (historical and current) mobile practices. These logbooks are written and read within a given setting, interfacing with other forms of knowledge as part of trans-local relations. In this way, logbooks have two lives, as Anderson (2015, pp. 321–3) states; one within the writing process and another within dissemination. Usually, they connect to shipowners, authorities and/or to managerial knowledge about fishing. However, within mobilities research they develop another life, presumably unforeseen by their authors at the point of writing; they become empirical data. Solicited logbooks instigate this reporting activity where logbooks are not part of the investigated mobile practice. Since they follow the informant’s route of travel, they constitute a type of mobilized interview, albeit much more independent from the (absent) researcher. As (usually written) accounts on the voyage, they concentrate (and reduce) the practical knowledge of the traveler to those aspects they find worth documenting

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Logbooks of mobilities  109 for someone absent. Sometimes, the activity of documenting even reveals aspects of the practice to the authors themselves that they had not considered before. These relatively independent reports of travelers’ views on their journeys appear in different forms and add in various ways to the different research designs. Therefore, there are no fixed guidelines for the analysis. Instead, three directions of analysis can be distinguished: (1) content, (2) circumstances of writing and (3) the form of the account. As data, logbooks are points of connection between the research field and mobilities research. They are objects of mobilities and reveal nuanced knowledge about them. Thus, further research in mobilities might find this type of data stimulating in different ways, particularly within a multi-method design. As mobile, independently written reports, they can make a considerable contribution to deepening our understanding of mobile worlds.

NOTES 1. Although logbooks are usually written accounts, other forms exist. Hislop et al. (2005) have used audiodiaries for their research on sleeping. In principle, this strategy could apply to logbooks too. Also, logbooks sometimes include photos, drawings or sketches (Kunz 2015), or can be designed as an application for mobile devices (Kunz and Pfadenhauer 2014). For a short review on different forms of ‘time-space diaries’, see Büscher et al. (2010, pp. 9–10). 2. Some pre-structured designs, however, include creative parts within the logbook (cf. Kunz 2015) that can help mitigate this problem. 3. The ethnographic study ‘Air travel: on the embodied accomplishment of technically augmented mobility’ is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) (project number 27143744, principal investigator: Larissa Schindler). It focuses on the embodied dimensions of technically augmented mobility. Following the ethnographic approach (for example, Breidenstein et al. 2013), the methodology is based on contextsensitive methods as well as on the combination of different data. By now, the corpus consists of field notes of 47 short-, middle- and long-haul flights (including photographs and some short videos), 22 qualitative interviews with passengers, flight attendants and pilots, as well as 21 logbooks of short- and long-haul flights. 4. Interviews on board would have been another solution for this problem. However, the setting of an airplane gives rise to severe ethical problems. Since both parties (interviewer and interviewee) cannot escape from the situation, reluctant potential interviewees will have to reject explicitly the request of the interview, since implicit and therefore socially easier forms of rejection (such as repeatedly postponing or not answering) are not possible in this setting. This might create a more than unpleasant situation for them. 5. Grounded theory suggests a very rich outline of how to analyze data by finding and developing codes.

REFERENCES Alaszewski, A. (2006), ‘Diaries as a source of suffering narratives: a critical commentary’, Health, Risk & Society, 8 (1), 43–58. Anderson, T.-A. (2011), ‘Tracking the movement of fish. Skipper’s logbooks and marine knowledge in fisheries management’, minor dissertation, University of Cape Town, accessed at 23 August 2018 at https://open.uct. ac.za/handle/11427/10031. Anderson, T.-A. (2015), ‘Tracking the movement of fish: skippers’ logbooks and contestations over ways of knowing the sea’, Marine Policy, 60 (October), 318–24. Bolger, N., A. Davis and E. Rafaeli (2003), ‘Diary methods: capturing life as it is lived’, Annual Review of Psychology, 54 (1), 579–616. Breidenstein, G., S. Hirschauer, H. Kalthoff and B. Nieswand (2013), Ethnografie: Die Praxis der Feldforschung (Ethnography: The Practice of Field Research), Konstanz: UTB. Büscher, M., J. Urry and K. Witchger (2010), Mobile Methods, Abingdon and New York: Taylor & Francis. Cuff, E.C. and D.W. Francis (1978), ‘Some features of “invited stories” about marriage breakdown’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, (18), 111–33.

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110  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Eisenmann, C., B. Chlond, T. Hilgert, S. von Behren and P. Vortisch (2018), ‘Deutsches Mobilitätspanel (MOP)– Wissenschaftliche Begleitung und Auswertungen. Bericht 2016/2017: Alltagsmobilität und Fahrleistung’ (‘German Mobility Panel for 2016/2017: everyday mobility and mileage’), Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, Bonn and Karlsruhe. Ekirch, A.R. (2001), ‘Sleep we have lost: pre-industrial slumber in the British Isles’, American Historical Review, 106 (2), 343–86. Fischer, C., K. Rieck and K.R. Lobemeier (2008), ‘Mit Logbüchern dokumentieren und reflektieren. Das Beispiel SINUS-Transfer Grundschule’ (‘Documenting and reflecting with logbooks. The example of SINUS-transfer basic school’), in E. Lankes (ed.), Pädagogische Professionalität als Gegenstand empirischer Forschung, Münster: Waxmann, pp. 73–85. Hartmann, H. (2007), Logbuch eines Soziologen: Arbeit, Ausbildung, Anerkennung im Fach (1950–2000) (Logbook of a Sociologist: Work, Training, Recognition in the Field (1950–2000)), Münster: Spurt-Verlag. Hirschauer, S. and P. Hofmann (2012), ‘Schwangerschaftstagebücher. Produktionsbedingungen und Nutzungschancen eines Datentyps’ (‘On the production and use of pregnancy diaries as data’), Transnationale Vergesellschaftungen: Verhandlungen des 35, Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie 2010, (CD), pp. 1–11. Hislop, J., S. Arber, R. Meadows and S. Venn (2005), ‘Narratives of the night: the use of audio diaries in researching sleep’, Sociological Research Online, 10 (4), accessed 20 April 2017 at http://socresonline.org. uk/10/4/hislop.html. Hoffmann, N. (2006), ‘Von mobilen Logbüchern und vermeintlichen Ja-Sagern’ (‘On mobile logbooks and alleged yes-men’), in W. Gebhardt and R. Hitzler (eds), Nomaden, Flaneure, Vagabunden: Wissensformen und Denkstile der Gegenwart, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 159–70. Jacelon, C.S. and K. Imperio (2005), ‘Participant diaries as a source of data in research with older adults’, Qualitative Health Research, 15 (7), 991–7. Kunz, A.M. (2015), ‘Log-und Tagebücher als Erhebungsmethode in ethnographischen Forschungsdesigns’ (‘Logbooks and diaries as data in ethnographic research designs’), in R. Hitzler and M. Gothe (eds), Ethnographische Erkundungen, Wiesbaden: Springer, pp. 141–61. Kunz, A.M. and M. Pfadenhauer (2014), ‘One campus–many ways to go?! A methodological comparison of paper-pencil and electronic logbooks when exploring students’ patterns of spatial use’, Journal of New Frontiers in Spatial Use, 6, 21–7. Malinowski, B. (1922), Argonauts of the Western Pacific. An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pfadenhauer, M. (2012), ‘Dabeisein ist (nicht) alles’ (‘It’s (not alone) the taking part that counts’), in N. Schröer, V. Hinnenkamp, S. Kreher and A. Poferl (eds), Lebenswelt und Ethnographie: Beiträge der 3. Fuldaer Feldarbeitstage, Essen: Oldib-Verlag, pp. 285–93. Pütz, O. (2012), ‘From non-places to non-events: the airport security checkpoint’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 41 (2), 154–88. Rodriguez, N. and A. Ryave (1990), ‘Telling lies in everyday life: motivational and organizational consequences of sequential preferences’, Qualitative Sociology, 13 (3), 195–210. Rodriguez, N.M. and A. Ryave (2002), Systematic Self-Observation: A Method for Researching the Hidden and Elusive Features of Everyday Social Life, Thousand Oaks, CA, London and New Delhi: Sage. Schürmann, F. (2012), ‘Ships and beaches as arenas of entanglements from below: whalemen in coastal Africa, c. 1760–1900’, InterDisciplines. Journal of History and Sociology, 3 (1), 25–47. Schürmann, F. (2016), ‘Überlieferungen amerikanischer Walfänger als Quellen zur afrikanischen Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts’ (‘Traditions of American whalers as sources on African history in the nineteenth century’), Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien, 16 (31), 1–26. Schürmann, F. (2017), Der graue Unterstrom: Walfänger und Küstengesellschaften an den tiefen Stränden Afrikas (1770–1920) (The Grey Undercurrent: Whalers and Littoral Societies at the Deep Beaches of African History (1770–1920), Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus Verlag. Smith, D.E. (1978), ‘“K is mentally ill”: the anatomy of a factual account’, Sociology, 12 (1), 23–53. Smith, D.E. (ed.) (2006), ‘Incorporating texts into ethnographic practice’, in D.E. Smith, Institutional Ethnography as Practice, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 65–88. Tuma, R., B. Schnettler and H. Knoblauch (2013), Videographie: Einführung in die interpretative Videoanalyse sozialer Situationen (Videography: Introduction to Video Analysis of Social Situations), Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Wolff, S. (2011), ‘Textanalyse’ (‘Text analysis’), in R. Ayaß and J. Bergmann (eds), Qualitative Methoden der Medienforschung, Mannheim: Verlag für Gesprächsforschung, pp. 245–73.

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11.  Sensory imagination as mobile method: sonic place-making on forest roads* Helena Krobath

1. INTRODUCTION This chapter describes creative methods for exploring relationships between space, sensing and knowledge that co-construct or render place. Instead of static settings to be inhabited, places are produced by activities, inscriptions, relationships and sensing registers (Massey 1995; Büscher, 2006; Gabrys 2016). Inspired by environmental sensing studies of Jennifer Gabrys (2016), I consider how communicative environments are formulated and engaged through sensing, networking and rendering. I attend to soundscape as a way of probing imaginaries of infrastructure and generating critical questions. In 2016 and 2017, I performed sensory fieldwork to investigate forest nature parks in my childhood hometown of Mission, British Columbia, Canada, and how they express and co-create knowledge as spatial environments. I observed knowledge through embodied attention to senses, especially sound. By embodied attention, I mean considering my body’s context and relationship to other forces, including how it registers movement, impact, pressure, entanglement, and so on. While driving to forest areas, I soon became curious about how organizational forces of automobility, as articulated by Mimi Sheller and John Urry (2006), express and co-create sensory relationships within forest areas. New sensing tools can radically change the programs and structures that are imaginable, and they produce constraints and grooves in how environments are understood. How does approaching place by car-logic predispose ways of engaging with the land during the drive and beyond? An accompanying research question, the focus of this chapter, asks which methods can deploy my situation as a tool of inquiry. To approach both questions, I have practiced embodied fieldwork and artmaking, triangulating them with theory and documentary research. Observing a recurring forest drive, this chapter outlines thick perceptual methods for tuning and exploring co-constructions of place. My childhood hometown was idyllic in natural setting but bleak in colonial histories. Mission is a working-class municipality (construction, resource extraction, transport and retail service)1 of about 36 000 residents, approximately an hour’s drive from Vancouver. A Catholic missionary project in the late eighteenth century and colonial railway town, the settlement violently displaced local communities, economies and mobilities through speculative land development and the Indian Reservation system (still in existence). I learned local histories first through Manichaean narratives – those describing moral forces that subdue forces of disruption and correlate to the colonizer’s view of the colonized (Fanon 2004). These narratives have been used to justify dispossession and top-down, unilateral control of spatial zones and bodies.2 I asked how nature spaces are produced as places of meaning in such an ideological context, and how I 111

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112  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities could use c­ reative multi-methods to identify such narratives in my local/imaginative spatial relations. While potential to interlace stories is endless, the development of infrastructures, memory sites and valid uses is linked to dominant stories (Nora 1989; Massey 1995). I observed settler tropes of homesteading, pioneering and resource mastery, together with my internal fantasy-scapes populated by elements of wilderness Gothic, German romantic, and medieval fairy tale. To keep the task of reading space relations in scale, I narrowly focus this case on the stretch of the Dewdney Trunk Road that links local forest sites (Figure 11.1). The Dewdney Trunk Road connects rural residences and backwoods operations before merging into Highway 7,3 running north of the Sto:Lo (Fraser River) between Vancouver and Eastward communities. In Mission, Dewdney connects forestry and quarrying operations (obscured by mandatory tree buffers alongside the road), utility stations, municipal landfill, hiking and biking trailheads, and gated properties marked by no trespassing signs and cameras. The road crosses Stave Falls Dam, connecting the expansive Stave water network and Hayward Lake Reservoir (officially managed by Crown energy utility BC Hydro).

2.  THEORETICAL CONCEPTS To explore how backroad driving informs my sense of forest space, I seize concepts from spatial critique (Lefebvre 1991, on rhythmanalysis; Foucault 1984, on heterotopia), ideology critique and historiography (Fanon 2004, on Manichaean dichotomy; Massey 1995, on spatial heritage inscription), and phenomenology of place (Bachelard 1994, on poetics of space; Casey, 1998, on configuration; Lakoff and Johnsen 2003, on metaphor). I iteratively formulate approaches, organizing a toolkit of fieldwork and art practices. Throughout the process, I draw heavily on three spatial concepts. First, I consider textures. Environmental texture is an informative phenomenon. What appears as background or patterned space shifts with attention, sensory parameters and orientation. From a distance, forest foothills visually resemble fuzz. Coming closer, this fuzz separates into objects, movements and spaces, which can also be re-scaled. Acoustic textures, in our conscious and unconscious monitoring, also resolve at different scales to communicate complex information and constantly construct spatial awareness (Truax 2016). Textures also underscore ways of abstracting space into categories. Lefebvre points out that rangeland surrounding urban centres bears stamps of authority, such as signs and formatting, which symbolically bind and enclose space within the texture of the central regime (Lefebvre 1991, pp. 234–5). Space becomes enmeshed with a political design and seems to be ordered by it. At other times, the background’s role is to seem empty or conductive, enabling movement between entities (Gabrys 2016, p. 12). What types of enclosing mesh can be suggested by sounds? What other information is communicated by spaces read as background? Second, I draw on the concept of heterotopia. Foucault (1984) identifies heterotopia as spaces physically separated from daily flows and organized by superseding management. Heterotopia isolate social fears, such as in seniors’ homes, hospitals, prisons and schools,

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Sensory imagination as mobile method  113

Source:  Photograph by the author.

Figure 11.1  Views of the Dewdney Trunk Road where death, illness, violence and degeneracy are transformed into expressions of control in pseudo-hermetic environments. In the Fraser Valley, where my field sites are located, expropriation of land on which the parks came to exist was operationally locked with enclosure of First Nations people in reservations.

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114  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Enclosure – cartography, parceling the Indian Reservation system and residential schools – was a colonial hallmark, and many Sto:Lo4 land relationships were not based on exclusion (Naxaxalhts’I, S. McHalsie 2018). Pre-capitalist agrarian society in England also shared uses, until parcelling ended access and produced a homeless, carceral class (Meiksins Woods 1999 [2002]). Heterotopic space thus refracts historical injustice, dominant narratives and containment of certain bodies. Foucault describes immersive gardens as idyllic heterotopia, reflecting at once aesthetic harmony, orchestrated biology, managerial order, romantic environs, and so on, while excluding corruption from implied ‘microcosms’ (Foucault 1984, p. 19). How does the backwoods road relate to zoning, enclosure and heterotopic boundaries? Third, the concept of virtuality is useful for approaching place knowledge, as invisible architectures exist for each experiencer. For example, a wooden bridge may cause me to recall my previous experiences of wooden bridges and other structures, stories and states of mind. Virtual space, instead of a separate environment, also exists in semblance with physical reality – a range of possibilities and previous encounters, all helping to create the present (Benjamin 1996; Massumi 2011). When I encounter sensory triggers along the routes of drives – an empty space where a mailbox used to stand, for example – virtual worlds have opened between space, movement and time (Tartia 2018). Prosthetic spaces and tools deliberately augment or change sensory imaginative experience through scale and register. They also reimagine subjects through forms of sensing and identification. For example, placing contact microphones on the path changes the trail’s function and relocates the packed dirt from being bottom of a landscape to surface of a drum; it invites me to reorientate my perspective from the ears to the feet. Artistic experiments further configure and locate knowledge through tools and processes that redirect awareness (Powell 2015). That is, memory-space constitutes a virtual architecture, accessed through spatial imagination and sensation (Casey 1998). The idea of prosthesis has influenced my approach to tools, vehicles and my body. My sonic awareness and vocabulary rely on methods of tuning into environments through artful improvisation developed by Hildegard Westerkamp (2002) and Pauline Oliveros (2005). Their spatial-sensory observations are rooted in the body, foremost through practices such as soundwalking and deep listening, which observe embodiment through attention to non-visual dimensions. Deliberate listening and embodied attention to sound alter place, time and space, and tune into frictions between forces, points of intervention, spatial performances (for example, of tropes) and perceptual habits (Paquette and McCartney 2012; Sterne 2012). Listening produces modes of interiority and exteriority between an experiencer and surrounds, conveys survival cues and reorientates experience (Truax 1984). To produce alternative sensory maps (Powell 2010), I organize emplaced listening activities under three headings, which overlap but can usefully structure field exercises: 2.1 Dwelling I spend time circling spaces, layering impressions, and recording and rendering through various media and positions. For example, I observe myself following trails, choosing viewpoints, and shifting aural attention. I note the words I use to verbalize dwelling and movement, reflect on sensations and probe memories. Some features of my encounters

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Sensory imagination as mobile method  115 grow prominent or even ritualistic, narrative structures coalesce and a body of expectations begins to imbue the space. Staging imaginative encounters, I re-imagine inhabitation, presence and time. The Wetland Project (2018) by Brady Marks and Mark Timmings demonstrates multifaceted immersive practices and experiments with key sounds that inform daily textures. After installing audio recording equipment in the wetlands of Saturna Island on the coast of British Columbia, Canada, the collaborators internationally broadcast 24 hours of the stream for Earth Day 2017.5 Their recording aurally illuminated the communicative environment of the swamp, while extended radio broadcasting allowed listeners to hybridize and connect their ambient soundscapes with the wetland. In a multichannel audio installation at VIVO Media Arts Centre (Vancouver), an algorithm was designed to visualize sound frequency and intensity in real-time light pulses. The exhibit concluded with a ‘Wetlands Sleepover’ that immersed participants in wetland space (sonic) and data (visual), provoking entanglements with knowledge from within imaginative space of the gallery (Wetland Project 2018) (see Figures 11.2 and 11.3).

Source:  Photograph by the author with permission from the artists and VIVO Media Arts Centre.

Figure 11.2  Wetland Project installation at VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver, 2018

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Source:  Photograph by the author.

Figure 11.3  Author’s visualization of frog chorus during the Wetland installation 2.2  Shifting Modes By shifting modes through sensory play, I notice habits and norms through which I have come to relate to space. To become mindful of grooves, I experiment with exercises in automatic performance and processes of imaginative play, empirical observation and creative rendering. The Ambleside Seaplane Sound Monitoring project in West Vancouver illustrates modal play through listening. Initiated in 1973 by R.M. Schafer, the study investigated rising levels of seaplane activity. Listeners traced sonic envelopes (a simple contour of how quickly and loudly a sound starts, sounds and fades) through second-by-second impressions over the course of an hour. See Figure 11.4. The experiment was recreated 45 years later when Canadian sound artists Zoe Gordon and Elizabeth Ellis reconsidered the project in mentorship with Hildegard Westerkamp (Westerkamp 2018), inviting myself and sound artist Elisa Ferrari to participate. In debriefing, the team discussed how floatplane sounds became differentiated with increasing subtlety from an environment of drones and washes (for example, overlapping waves, wind, bridge traffic, boats and jets). Such narrow tracking of sound produced

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Sensory imagination as mobile method  117

Source:  Photograph by the author.

Figure 11.4  F  ield team sound envelope graphs from the 2018 Ambleside monitoring project dense observations about not only flows and presences, but about temporal experience and how it changes with focus. While the Vancouver Soundscape Project archive will have a longitudinal account of floatplane activity, the perceptual effects of the exercise were also informative. For instance, the minute level of attention – searching and graphing one sound in 60-second increments – limited multi-tasking or wandering attention. It had the paradoxical effect of elongating and amplifying sensory details momentarily while compressing my overall sense of time. I also noticed residual ear training for the unique sound of seaplanes. 2.3  Using Tools Tools can alter communication with and about the environment by changing sensing parameters or transposing impressions into other forms. I use tools for mobility, such as vehicles; for sensing, such as microphones and cameras; and for composition, such as audio software, pencils and paint. I consider how the form and interface of the tool changes what I hear, how I am predisposed to hear, and how I personify or incorporate the device. Innovating with sensory tools, composer Christina Kubisch reorientates space-sense by highlighting activity usually imperceptible to humans. Kubisch has adapted portable

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118  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities headsets to pitch-shift electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) from inaudible ranges and feed them back to listeners in real time, allowing participants to sense city soundscapes differently (Kubisch 2013–18). I attended Kubisch’s Vancouver electrical walk as part of the Destroy Vancouver XVIII festival (2016). Through the headphones, we encountered a field of activity marvellously appearing in what seemed empty space. What I perceived as air immediately became eloquent with acoustic gestures, including screeching appliances and EMF streams come alive around me. I followed a Wi-Fi signal with my body, losing and finding it across the road. In Pacific Centre shopping mall, theftdetection devices emitted intense energy, and I correlated their pitch to a bodily pressure I had not previously named but felt. This illumination of invisible activity through sound offered deeper awareness of digital infrastructure’s occupation of space and movement. Similarly, other tools can prompt opportunities to recalibrate what feels known about a place.

3.  D  EWDNEY TRUNK ROAD STUDY (THREE SESSIONS IN AUGUST 2016) I conducted this series of backroad visits in August 2016. In this section, I narrate my experiments with creative methods, before organizing and discussing some observations. This close look at road experience is situated in broader questions about how land parcelling and enclosure are normalized as social order and naturalized through spatial experience. 3.1  Open-Ended Encounters The first road session emerges from fieldwork investigating soundscapes at Rolley Lake Provincial Park and Campground. I pick up my sister/field companion an hour west of Mission in the early afternoon of 8 August 2016. Somewhere on Highway One, I ask her to check batteries and the Secure Digital (SD) card in the field recorder. When we stop at the forest parking lot, I find the record button running. This accidental audio of the drive calls into question my positioning of the site as after the drive.6 Later, I listen to my recordings and start processing – tagging, marking, trimming, listening for patterns and recomposing. My field recordings in forest parks convey articulate, clear space, with various resonant presences and reverberations detailing movements. In contrast, audio from driving is fuzzy with wind, wheel friction and engine humming. Broadband sound7 dominates the track, together with our voices, which rise and fall to negotiate volumes of driving. I comb the track for events in the rush of road noise, but even without our voices, this search for action brings me back inside the car, to moments such as the crisp click of the turn signal or the ring of a phone articulating. This search for somewhere to land inspired my exercises in the next field session (to physically try landing). The wall of noise is next diminished and made porous by slowing down. The transition to the forest parking lot is marked by crunching gravel, which articulates the car leaving its optimized environment. The transition between fuzzy road sounds and clear forest ambience makes for dramatic contrast and feels like a move from noisy to clear space and from emptiness to meaning. ‘Cutting through’ (Lefebvre 1991, p. 165) both urban and forested

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Sensory imagination as mobile method  119 space, the road presents a place apart, prioritizing fast motion and implying emptiness. However, I find the road’s acoustic properties recall energized natural forces, for example, rivers, winds and electricity. In my notes, I comment on my use of words such as ‘emerging’ and ‘surfacing’ to describe the feeling of exiting the highway and my driving state of mind. After this field session, I also noted the physiological energy cost of driving, and invited myself to consider how I account for that energy exiting the car at the nature park. 3.2  Reimagining Sound On 13 August 2016 afternoon, I prepare imaginative tasks to perform while driving. First, I try to resist forward attention and consider anywhere a networked centre. This follows observations from the first session that road space appears simultaneously powerful and empty, as a container for travel. I practice stopping or trying to stop the car en route, asking myself where I can and cannot create a sense of arrival by exiting road logic for other purposes. Stopping is possible but uncomfortable for stretches where the shoulder is narrow or when fast drivers are tailgating (see Figure 11.5). The shoulder widens near driveways, which are frequently barred, at parking lots, near the landfill, at utility/water access spots and near gated logging roads. Exiting the car at the shoulder, I feel blows of air from passing dump-trucks and cars. The challenge of searching for stopping points affirms that this space is captured by a master project (Lefebvre 1991) of speed.

Source:  Photograph by the author.

Figure 11.5  The Dewdney Trunk bike lane

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Source:  Photograph by the author.

Figure 11.6  Sonic visualization exercises

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Sensory imagination as mobile method  121 Meanwhile, moving out of the speed zone into thicker margins introduces obstructions such as fences, and stopping within the road zone results in collision. Second, I creatively visualize sonic movements that do not conform to road boundaries and use them to approach space speculatively. I prompt my synesthetic imagination, spending extra time at two stops to ask how my hearing entangles other senses to render sounds as presences, shapes, colours and movements (see Figure 11.6). Sounds suggest directionality, spread, thickness, speed and associations with poetic imagery. Visualizing sound in the vertical plane while outside the car leads me to reconsider the relatively fixed position of my head when inside the car and the limited directionality of that body. After the drive, I sketch my imaginings of sounds and spatial journeys that cross the road space. Not only do sounds suggest visual shapes through spatial movement, they also resonate with memory and suggest dramatic unfolding of events as they arise in time. I prompt myself to consider sounds in terms of narrative dynamics. For example, the whistling wind of a passing dump-truck communicates proximity to mass and potential collision, putting me in vulnerable tension with the movement. The truck, at its loudest when passing me, diminishes with distance, resolving the story. Put more simply, I am reminded of force and saved by adherence to road order. As I consciously associate shapes of sounds with ­narrative form and archetypes, my storytelling grows increasingly fanciful and far-ranging. These two speculative activities underscore the road’s unilateral functioning and reduction of thickness8 and multi-directionality for sake of speed and arrival. 3.3  Metaphors for Vehicles During session 3, on 21 August 2018, I consider my vehicle in metaphorical terms. As Lefebvre observes, cars can be imagined ‘at once extensions of the body and mobile homes’ (Lefebvre 1991, p. 132). With room-like interiors complete with windows, chairs, music and cup-holders, cars provide home-like comforts. In this session, I ask how experiencing vehicles as mechanical (mech) suits, instead of mobile rooms or beast-like companion-carriages, opens different imaginative space. To consider how the car interacts with my bodily boundary, I practice some imaginative tasks. First, I journal about my virtual encounters with mech suits, recently in first-person action role-playing games (RPGs) and shooter video games. These suits may be slow and heavy for defense and carrying capacity or mechanized for speed and advanced environmental sensing. After pondering my associations with mechanized suits, I start imagining my car as a suit, connecting it to my body. I maintain this connection by meditating on each part of my body as I drive, audio-recording my commentary. Excerpts from audio fieldnotes, 21 August 2016: My head stays still – almost no movement throughout the car interior. It swivels side-to-side and up-and-down at stoplights. From the driver’s seat, the bulk of my new car-body hangs to the right. If the car is a suit expanding my body, my face is located in the left eye of the suit. The roof covers my head like a heavy helmet. Eyes are constantly scanning forward, focusing on the road and decoding simple information in lights and signs. I can’t close them or safely study anything except what’s directly ahead. On either side, the trees make a blur of green and flickering light, stretched by movement and not available for visual probing. Where my ears would be, I have ‘extra eyes’ in the form of mirrors.

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122  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Aurally, I focus inward and attend to other places (not road) through conversation and audio media inside the car. My ears which usually scan the world for information or absorb a sense of ambience from around me have limited range of sensation beyond the car. In the car, my aural attention wanders until alarmed . . .

I notice how the expanded car-body makes signals, navigates direction and takes up space. Reflecting on my notes from this session, I ask questions about how expectations and metaphors shape sensory palettes during activity. What type of carriage would rely on hearing or cross terrains without a paved speed zone? Even imagining these movements undermines long-term naturalization and normalization of road space and teases out its form and constraints. 3.4  Fieldwork Discussion The creative fieldwork sessions produce thick observations of emplaced experience and generate research questions about land enclosure thematics. In session 1, I prioritize open-ended observation and media processing to generate research questions. In session 2, I observe how barriers and zones posit places and non-places; I explore how listening can transgress or undermine those borders and functions. In session 3, I observe bodily engagement with driving infrastructure and prompt creative ways of imagining carriage. I articulate ways cars predispose my body to disconnect from emplacement in travel space. Without active imagination, my sensory experience of the road disposes me to anticipate the destination site, instead of networking sensations along the way. As I observe sounds animating environmental flows, my imagination questions categorical separation of road space and surrounding environments. Taking up documentary research iteratively, I go on to probe not only the origin of the road, but the presence of roadside tree buffers and other traits I previously took for granted. With mandated tree cover along the way,9 secluded recreation sites seem wrapped for consumption as thematic natural spaces. The sonic and visual qualities of the approach by car enhance the sites’ heterotopic qualities. While car-bodies are limited to road space and operations, imagining cars as different bodies can open new imaginings of terrain. The research invites deeper exploring of historical intersections between land policy regimes, roadbuilding and nature space in British Columbia, and how they express possibilities. It could also investigate other forms of backwoods site access and how they make sense of environments.

4.  C  ONCLUSION: SOUND METHODS AS RESEARCH GENERATORS This chapter has explored some creative methods for re-forming approaches to familiar space through sound-focused embodiment. These creative, sense-based methods focus on listening through personal situation, conceptual frames and embodied practices, which produce a thick experiential account of spaces while illuminating intersections with environmental narratives and technical routines. Not only does this generate research questions, but it reforms my environmental orientation through sensory training.

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Sensory imagination as mobile method  123 Environmental programming paradigms address not only programming of space, but by and through space. I consider phenomenology of place an entangled concern of coprogramming worlds (building social reality) that also reconstitutes the perceiving subject (how I understand myself). Through methods explored in this chapter, I have further encountered heritage projects, utility structures and narratives that interact with sensory knowledge, planning programs and social worlds. While management science has defined operations in terms of conservation, enhancements and best uses, it also concretizes (Gabrys 2016) or scripts (Lefebvre 1991) environments over time, rendering path-determined and sedimented spaces, imaginaries, and options within which people live and make choices. Sonic methods can further unpack how roads and resource infrastructure come to seem fixed, even as they propose habits, material arrangements, sensory experience and social explanations. I consider these iterative practices as an idea generator for exploding dimensions of place and opening leads for radically prototyping futures.

NOTES * This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. It was also funded by Réseau Hexagram’s Research-Creation Grant and by the Mobile Media Lab in Concordia University’s Department of Communication Studies. I wish to thank Hildegard Westerkamp, Elizabeth Ellis, and Barry Truax for generous information on the Ambleside Seaplane Sound Monitoring project. 1. At the 2016 census (Statistics Canada 2016). 2. In school, I learned heritage narratives of homesteading, steam-power and hydroelectricity as marks of progress, but did not learn about large-scale canyon fishing displaced by colonial energy or legislated racial exclusions from homesteading incentivization schemes, together with disinheritance of First Nations women (McLaren et al. 2011; Moss and Gardner-O’Toole 1991). 3. Highway 7 is a transport artery, also presented as a heritage tour (‘Drive Scenic 7’ 2018). 4. Literally, ‘the river people’ who lived in the Sto:Lo (Fraser Valley) region before colonization and continue to inhabit the region despite large-scale dispossession (Moss and Gardner-O’Toole 1991; Naxaxalhts’I, S. McHalsie 2018). 5. Aired on the project website and on Vancouver Co-op Radio CFRO 100.5 FM (Wetland Project 2018). 6. Sheller and Urry (2006) have problematized the category of destination. 7. Broadband is sound representing a wide frequency range, which masks or obscures other sounds from detection (for example, as with a large waterfall). 8. Edward Casey (1998) characterizes thick places as accommodating engagement and entanglement, while smooth surfaces resist long-term traces of inhabitation. 9. By municipal regulation, Mission requires a 10-meter buffer of trees on either side of the backwoods road. See District of Mission ‘Zoning by-laws’ (2009) and District of Mission ‘Official community plan’ (2017, p. 28).

REFERENCES Bachelard, G. (1994), Poetics of Space, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Benjamin, W. (1996), ‘On semblance’, in M. Bullock and M. Jennings (eds), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Büscher, M. (2006), ‘Vision in motion’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 38 (2), 281–99. Casey, E. (1998), The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. District of Mission (2009), ‘Zoning by-laws’, accessed 4 April 2020 at https://www.mission.ca/wp-content/uploa​ ds/5050-2009-Zoning-Bylaw-COMPLETE.pdf. District of Mission (2017), ‘Official community plan’, accessed 4 April 2020 at https://www.mission.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2017-08-14-Draft-Official-Community-Plan-Bylaw.pdf.

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124  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities ‘Drive Scenic 7’ (2018), accessed 10 August 2018 at http://scenic7bc.com/. Fanon, F. (2004), The Wretched of the Earth, New York: Grove Press. Foucault, M. (1984), ‘Of other spaces: utopias and heterotopias’, Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité, 5 (October), 46–9. Gabrys, J. (2016), Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Kubisch, C. (2013–18), ‘Electrical walks: electromagnetic investigations in the city’, accessed 20 June 2018 at http://www.christinakubisch.de/en/works/electrical_walks. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson, (2003), Metaphors We Live By, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lefebvre, H. (1991), The Production of Space, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Massey, D. (1995), ‘Places and their pasts’, History Workshop Journal, 39 (Spring), 182–92. Massumi, B. (2011), Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts, Cambridge, CA: MIT Press. McCartney, A. (2010), ‘Ethical questions about working with soundscapes’, World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) international conference ‘Ideologies and ethics in the uses and abuses of sound’, Koli, Finland, 19 July. McLaren, D., K. Neary, C. Crockford and B. Gray (2011), ‘Evidence of Duncan McLaren’, Archaeological Inventory and Impact Assessment / Ruskin Switchyard, Exhibit C3-6, accessed 4 April 2020 at https://www. bcuc.com/Documents/Proceedings/2011/DOC_28261_C3-6_KFN_Evidence.pdf. Meiksins Wood, E. (1999), The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View, repr. 2002, London: Verso. Moss, W. and E. Gardner-O’Toole (1991), ‘Aboriginal people: history of discriminatory laws’, Law and Government Division, BP-175E. Naxaxalhts’I, S. McHalsie (2018), Bad Rock* Tours: Narrated Place Names Tours of S’ólh Témèxw ‘Our Land/ World’, oral history, Chilliwack, BC. Nora, P. (1989), ‘Between memory and history: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Representations, 26 (Spring) special issue, 7–24. Oliveros, P. (2005), Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice, New York: iUniverse. Paquette, D. and A. McCartney (2012), ‘Soundwalking and the bodily exploration of places’, Canadian Journal of Communication, 37, 135–45. Powell, K. (2010), ‘Making sense of place: mapping as a multisensory research method’, Qualitative Inquiry, 16 (7), 539–55. Powell, K. (2015), ‘Breathing photography: prosthetic encounters in research creation’, Qualitative Inquiry, 21 (6), 529–38. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2006), ‘The new mobilities paradigm’, Environment and Planning A, 38 (2), 207–26. Statistics Canada (2016), 2016 Census Profile: Mission, British Columbia, Ottawa: Statistics Canada. Sterne, J. (2012), ‘The sonic imagination’, in J. Sterne (ed.), The Sound Studies Reader, New York: Routledge. Tartia, J. (2018), ‘Driving in/between places: rhythms, urban spaces, and everyday driving routes’, Architectural Research in Finland, 2 (1), 36–52. Truax, B. (1984), Acoustic Communication, Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Truax, B. (2016), ‘Acoustic space, community, and virtual soundscapes’, in M. Cobussen, V. Meelberg and B. Truax (eds), The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art, New York: Routledge, pp. 253–63. Westerkamp, H. (2002), ‘Linking soundscape composition and acoustic ecology’, Organised Sound, 7 (1), 51–56. Westerkamp, H. (2018), ‘Excerpted from proceedings text for Global Composition 2018’, author’s personal correspondence. Wetland Project (2018), The Wetland Project, Slow Radio Broadcast, accessed 10 August 2018 at http://wetland​ project.com/ra-more.php.

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12.  Campervan ethnographies: mobile experiments and methodological manoeuvres Sharon Wilson

Initially I couldn’t be bothered to draw up a research plan. As a VW campervan owner, I just wanted to get in and drive it. I wanted to see what would happen by just setting off, gathering random insights along the way. (VW Researcher, 2012)

INTRODUCTION This chapter examines the theoretical-methodological approaches to have emerged from experimental fieldwork of Volkswagen (VW) campervan mobilities in the UK. With reference to current debates and application of the new mobilities paradigm that welcomes plurality and innovation in research episteme, this discussion seeks to contribute to the evolution of creative methodological practices by considering their applications in an auto-ethnographic study of leisure driving on the British motorway (M1). From the inter-disciplinary foundations of art school meets social science, it is suggested that novel approaches used to capture the embodied experiences of VW campervan tourists in this contribution expand the repertoire of inventive forms of sociological enquiry. From this freewheeling adoption of mixed methodologies in data collection, the chapter makes a claim that fluid, artistic and participative approaches have not only enabled the crossing of disciplinary boundaries, but have also led to diversifications of knowledge production. In a critical discussion of the methodologies used, the chapter clarifies how these approaches have enabled ways of seeing the phenomenon from a social, imaginative and embodied perspective. It is argued that, through the use of an eclectic mix of methods, a blurring of disciplinary boundaries emerging from the chaos has led to new sensitivities, investigative orientations and creative insights. As outlined, the purpose of this work is to disseminate the interdisciplinary research practices used in the study of VW campervan mobilities and experiences. While anchored in findings of particular tourism phenomena, this discussion contemplates both the philosophical and methodological approaches used in fieldwork to prompt researchers from different fields of practice to consider less formulaic approaches to data collection. This discussion therefore invites contemporary academia social scientists to reinvent their methodological approaches, defying restrictive views of disciplinary boundaries by not only engaging with the latest and greatest techniques, but also, it is anticipated, inventing some. Büscher and Urry (2009) also contend that researchers immersing themselves in fleeting, multi-sensory, distributed, mobile and multiple, yet local, practical and ordered making of social and material realities, seek understandings of movement not governed by rules, but as being methodologically generative. In sharing the methods used in a doctorate research project, I argue that while unexceptional in the singular, once combined, 125

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126  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities these randomly applied methods offer creative formulae towards new epistemologies. In ­addition, as anticipated through critical consideration of these adoptions, wider contributions to tourism study rooted in the experiments and outpourings of the ‘mobilities paradigm’ are present in this contribution. To provide a context, the chapter introduces the fieldwork origin and then explains its philosophical position as an interdisciplinary research experiment. This is followed by a brief explanation of how crystallisation methods were used to draw together fragments of knowledge from a plurality of sources. Next, Latour’s (2005) actor-network theory is used as a thinking exercise in the formative stages of induction. As described by Rowland et al. (2011, p. 97) as ‘a workbench on which new tools can be built’, its application to the conceptualisations of the VW campervan experience is examined. Finally, the methods used in ethnographic and auto-ethnographic fieldwork to include visual, mobile data collection are discussed. The purpose of this chapter is not to claim to have transformed the methodological landscape, but instead to extol the virtues of a multi-methodological and often serendipitous acquisition of what Law (2004, p. 6) terms ‘elusive realities’. While this creative, mobile and at times erratic approach may not have resulted in a new ­methodological algorithm per se, in its ability to reveal alternative views of VW campervan travel it is proffered as an open-minded technique, adaptable to other research contexts.

RESEARCH CONTEXT The impetus for the research stemmed from a love–hate relationship with a VW camper­ van. Through ownership of a classic 1972 Westfalia Bay, my own experience of driving and communing with Volkswagen subcultures led to a broader enquiry of how travellers participate in enjoyable leisure in a vehicle which is not only awkward to drive, but also mechanically unstable and costly to maintain. By following the slow journeys of VW campervan tourists travelling to festivals, it was found that, despite its precarious nature, many owners had strong emotional attachments towards their vehicles and often anthropomorphised them. To explore these paradoxes further, a critical analysis was undertaken of how VW campervans engage their owner’s affections to shape tourism mobility. While other forms of travel are theorised in tourism research, by looking at the particularities of this leisure form, through methodological experimentation it is argued that a contribution to the discourses of embodied travel has emerged. To develop this debate further, two fieldwork strategies were employed. The first was an auto-ethnography conducted by myself, the researcher, driving on the M1 and the A69, main roads in England, visiting the festivals of Harwood Hall (Leeds), Volkspower (Redcar), The Mighty Dubfest (Druridge Bay), Durham Dubbers, (Gibside Hall, Gateshead), Volksfling Festival (Biggar) in Scotland and VW Rally (Tynemouth). The second fieldwork strategy was an ethnography involving VW campervan club members from the North East of England and Scotland who attended the Volkswagen-themed events. Before discussing some of the methods used in fieldwork, clarification of the epistemic logic is in order. As Finlay (2002) recounts, even within qualitative and interpretive paradigms, scholars have called for increased reflexivity and the questioning of methodological practices. In a shift towards a review of disciplinary orthodoxies in what

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Campervan ethnographies  127 Spinney (2011, p. 162) calls a ‘post-mortem of existing methods’, this work represents a minor border-crossing. In support of this approach, Law (2004) suggests that to discover new knowledge, using standard and unchallenged repertoires is counterintuitive because rules not only describe but also produce already known realities. Similarly, from a tourism perspective, Graburn and Jafari (1991, pp. 7–8) add, ‘no single discipline can accommodate, treat or understand tourism and it can only be studied if disciplinary boundaries are crossed and inter-disciplinary perspectives are sought and formed’. In signalling to new developments towards further dismantlement of academic silos, as Merriman (2014) more recently observed, diversification and pluralisation of research methods and methodologies are a welcome occurrence, currently fuelling some of the most innovative and exciting mobilities research. Based on this pretext, this discussion considers what I term the shoddy architectures upon which the methods were purposely built to ­demonstrate how the mobile experience can be traced as not one, but multiple, truths (Geertz 1973). That is, being on the move methodologically, it was intended that freedom from disciplinary limitations may result in what Büscher et al. (2011) describe as new types of researchable entities, a new or rediscovered realm of the empirical and within new avenues of critique. Admittedly, participant observation and its multi-faceted research techniques are not new. Mindful of the dangers of over-assertion, therefore, I propose that through the auspices of a multi-disciplinarian approach in transgressing the boundaries of science and art, these messy inventions have made alternative views possible. In support of this, as Dewsbury et al. (2002) note, experimentation, openness, creativity, participation and performance have become the maxims of a broad assemblage of methods and techniques. In trying to begin with a blank slate instead of a prescriptive plan, the aim of an open-minded approach was to create the conditions for data to emerge in different guises. In order to coordinate the potential truths derived from a plurality of techniques, in the first instance the crystallisation method was introduced to draw together fragments of knowledge to maximise a variety of epistemologies towards multiple ways of knowing. According to Richardson (2000, p. 934), ‘Crystals are prisms that reflect externalities and refract within themselves, creating different colours, patterns, and arrays, casting off in different directions’. In using the metaphor of crystallisation, diverse interpretations are analogous with viewing something through a crystal. As Ellingson (2009) notes, however, this does not radically depart from recent developments in qualitative analysis and so is not a formulaic method, but a way of thinking through grounded theory and creative genres of representation that combine science and art. Encouraging researchers to cross genres and to use crystallisation as a working principle, I suggest made it more possible to push beyond conceived paradigmatic boundaries and for different knowledge to be added to the mix. This included the seemingly infinite possibilities of scraps of data which were embraced through improvised fieldwork tactics, enabling them to be considered alongside substantive data collected using traditional ethnography. Crystallisation enabled ­integration, layering and blending of data to represent the subject through different prisms.

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EMBODIED RESEARCH In embodied research, since the researcher is also the subject, an important philosophical principle to note, as Ellis (2004) surmises, is that the line between narrative ethnography and auto-ethnography can shift continuously because ethnographic stories often reflect the researcher’s self, even as the researcher constructs the selves of others. Mindful of this subjectivist position, it was useful to return to Haraway’s (1991) point that detachment is never possible because as we produce knowledge, we are all located somewhere in our practices and in our bodies. While Thrift (2014, p. 83) argued that tourism study has a tendency to ‘follow the logic of the corpse’, authors such as Obrador (2012) more recently maintained they have paid greater attention to the body. Therefore, as part of the continuum to imbibe corporeality into methodologies, I used the situatedness of VW campervan ownership to engage with its sensory, aesthetic and communal natures. Without denying the moral dilemma of insider status or to prescribe that the only way to use this methodical approach is to be a subject, an innovative auto-ethnography allowed a variety of objects to be traced as we can ‘follow the thing’ Cresswell (2012, p. 647). Furthermore, owing to an anthropomorphic relationship with the van, I suggest the researcher can arguably get close to ‘being the thing’. As Fincham et al. (2010) predicate, many scholars have recently highlighted the vital importance of methodological innovation with emphasis on methods that enable researchers to be or see with mobile research subjects. According to D’Andrea et al. (2011), by moving with an object of research (mobile ethnography) it is argued that innovation can occur at the micro scale of bodily or daily mobilities, instead of through broader analysis of mobility systems. With new attention given to this micro-human experience, as Sheller (2014) notes, sociology has been called upon to discard the spatial boundaries implied by the term society, and to adopt a relational ontology that uses mobile methodologies. As Cresswell (2012) contends, ethnography has become mobile, moving from a deep engagement with singularities to a consideration of several sites at once. In conducting research rooted in the idea that tourism is a corporeal act, volatile yet contingent on constraints and possibilities of travel, to unravel these entanglements while touching upon the problem of insularity by bridging the divide between spatial-analytical or quantitative research (Goetz et al. 2009, p. 323), actor-network theory (ANT) was called upon to align the enquiry with the central concept of ANT, that of network. As Law (1994) and Latour (2005) pointedly note, ethnographic methods seem best suited to ANT orientation owing to its qualitative, flexible nature and its openness to different techniques, within which researchers would not be constrained to only one set of tools.

ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY APPLIED To comprehend VW campervan mobility as a sensory experience which manifests through the socialities of travel, ANT (Latour 2005) was used as a methodological orientation to consider this phenomenon not only on a linear trajectory of A to B, but as constellations of complex relationships between people, objects and information. As Sheller (2014) notes, mobilities research has stimulated a creative recombination of current theoretical traditions, methodological perspectives, epistemologies and ontologies of a world comprised of relationships rather than entities. As noted by Jensen (2013, 2014, in Sheller

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Campervan ethnographies  129 2014) mobilities scholars have considered the work the micro interactional coordination of everyday mobility and its performative relationship with specific built environments. In questioning how these circulations work in a tourism context, it seemed logical to use ANT to unpack slow travel on roadscapes as emergent, yet volatile, social interactions. As Jóhannesson (2005, p. 133) explains, for example, ANT is immanent in the concept of translation to understand how tourism occurs in place, through hybrid network practices of different actors in grasping multiple relational orderings to draw many types of tourism spatialities into the analysis. In an attempt to make sense of these entanglements, however, as Baiocchi et al (2013, p. 323) states, ANT does not offer a ‘catch-all’ explanatory theory, but is a sensibility, disposition or attitude, instead of a rigid framework which I contend can be used in creative ways. With the theoretical underpinning of ANT, the Deleuzian concept of diagram was used to trace not only observable objects, such as campervan, driver, motorway, campsite, and so on, but also as ‘relations between forces unique to a particular formation’ (Deleuze and Guittari 1988, p.72). Given ANT’s principle of general symmetry insisting researchers refute pre-ordained distinctions between classes of possible actors to focus on processes of network-building and network consolidation (Law 1994; Murdoch 1997), the pictorial representation of these associations admittedly did result in some agencies in the VW campervan network being prioritised over others. However, using art skills to illustrate the forces that maintain this movement led to a deeper understanding of what Doughty and Murray (2016) describe as interactions between macro and micro discourses of mobility to elaborate relationships between dialogue, embodiment and space. To explain this empirically, as shown in Figure 12.1, vehicle and owner are conceptualised as a

Figure 12.1  Researcher drawing/together apart

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130  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities body–machine hybrid of material, corporeal and spatial attributes; the vehicle made of metal, rubber tyres, interiors, engine parts and sounds and aesthetic properties, with the driver anthropomorphising the van and using it to express personal identity, homeliness and nostalgia. That is, what is essentially functional transport with no inherent human attributes, once considered through a network metaphor, is a transhumanist project with multiple ties. Actor-network theory was instrumental in determining how VW campervan mobility sustains itself through recruitment of agencies into its network. As illustrated in Figure 12.2, for example, oil companies, gradients on roads and weather effects take charge of mobility, while the driver’s emotional attachments influence speed, feelings, health, routes and imagination. As one of the experiments conducted in auto-ethnography, the production of explorative drawings enabled a deeper consideration of what constitutes VW campervan travel and helped to unpack it further. These insights not only informed

Figure 12.2  Researcher drawing/moving together

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Campervan ethnographies  131 the inductive process in the project offering other routes to knowledge, but findings also contributed to a growing body of literature that examines the cultural production of friction in tourism mobility (see Wilson and Hannam 2017). Arguably, this contribution to new mobilities theory may not have evolved without the use of an interdisciplinary approach.

MOBILE AND VISUAL METHODS I just wanted to enjoy driving, but doing research meant I had to put the experience into words, so when the feeling took me I made a film, did a drawing or had a chat with another VW campervan owner before moving on to the next interesting thing. (VW Researcher, 2012)

This section concerns itself with the application of mobile and visual methods. While many experimental approaches were used in fieldwork, two examples are discussed. The first is the use of a mobile phone to produce a video-ethnography of the researcher driving on the M1; the second a brief overview of an art workshop used to promote wider research participation. In acknowledging that mobility is central not only to driving practices, but given its moving nature is also a methodological imperative in this research, a spontaneous drive-by approach was used to initiate a free-flowing dialogue with participants. As Büscher and Urry (2009) intimate, mobile ethnography allows us to capture and explore mobilities and interpret boundaryless, dynamic settings. Therefore, in asserting that everything in the project was ‘on the move’, that is, tourist, vehicle, location, thoughts, feelings, and so on, mobile methods could apprehend subjects and objects constantly ‘shifting, morphing and mobile’ (Hannam et al. 2006, p. 10). Mobile Phone: Video-Ethnography Whether driving on motorways or interacting with Volkswagen owners at festivals, it was reasoned that in order to understand these socialities better, by documenting them ‘on the hoof’, researchers could ‘observe spatial practices in situ’ rather than after the fact (Kusenbach 2003, p. 463). In order to follow the mobile subjects without complicated or cumbersome equipment, I chose to capture their experiences on a mobile phone. Embedded into the practices of everyday life, the familiarity and constant proximity of this device enabled easy improvisation and experimentation during the capture of in-cab driving performances. With no formal plan other than to drive to the festival, depending on weather, light conditions, other vehicles, noise, speed and desires effecting my mood, intuitively I fixed the phone to my body or a window, dashboard or seat and then pressed record. Once on the motorway, I would speak out loud to describe what was going on around me, randomly capturing whatever felt interesting at the time. (VW Researcher, 2012)

As Ihde (2009, p. 42) remarks, an ‘embodiment relation’ is a relationship with mobile technology where users experience the world through that technology, rather than upon the technology itself. In this terminology, the user embodies the device. It seemed logical to assume that a camera phone was more likely to capture the world of its owner, as

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Figure 12.3  Film still, VW Researcher the owner experienced it. However, while digital technology can be used imaginatively, I was mindful not to subvert this imagery for aesthetic reasons, drawing a distinction between making art that creatively transforms the subject and its seemingly objective subjective representation in auto-ethnography. Mannay (2016) is supported by Rose (2010, p. 26), who argues ‘visual imagery is never innocent’, for while images are widely recognised to evoke the human experience, they are nonetheless subject to multiple interpretations. To collect data, approximately five hours of digital footage/audio recordings were made en route to festivals. In trying to understand where to point the camera, in the same way that ANT was used to underpin the diagramming method highlighted in the previous section, the network metaphor was also used as a guide when deploying mobile and visual methods. To unpack these volatile and emerging interactions between driver, vehicle and environment while the gaze was privileged, the journey was documented by the driver, mediated through their senses. Although impossible to account for everything in the mobile assemblage, selections were taken and deciphered for their meanings and significance. In Figure 12.3, for example, the digital films reviewed after the event, enabled a partial return to the sounds, sights and atmospheres of the journey. While this was not reliving the moment, the movie was a useful aide memoir to support the more traditional ethnographic work. Finally, the selected images were annotated for what was interpretatively deemed significant, and voiceovers were transcribed. All texts were compiled in the software package NVIVO and coded thematically. As Mead (1995, p. 4) notes, visual research has worked hard to overcome the pervasive bias of the social sciences as a ‘discipline of words’. In this instance, however, while imagery was used to mediate the travel experience, the findings were eventually translated into a verbal account. Empirical Fieldwork ‘Family Fun’ Activity Prior to being a social scientist, I was an arts practitioner with experience in the delivery of public participation programmes that used creativity to encourage communities to get together to share skills, cultures and issues. With this previous expertise, it was a familiar

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Campervan ethnographies  133

Figure 12.4  Family fun workshop, Redcar Festival (VW Researcher, 2012) practice for me to run hands-on craft activities to facilitate a social space: a place for informal conversations with VW owners. The ‘Colour in the Campervan’ free activity held in a family area in Redcar, UK (see Figure 12.4) demonstrates how basic art skills were used to encourage VW campervan owners to get involved and share their worlds through informal conversations. Rather than organising interviews in advance, I set up a stall and invited visitors to have creative fun. If parents were happy to chat about their Volkswagens whilst their children played, I would facilitate a research driven conversation, but only if adding to the flow or enjoyment of their session. (VW Researcher, 2017)

Running a workshop which aligned with the festival theme meant that, as a researcher, I was tolerated by the VW campervan owners within their social spaces. Therefore, in creating an environment where adults felt comfortable to contribute informally, the voices of the subcultures were made accessible. However, as Kusenbach (2003) argues, even with an insider perspective, the presence of the researcher is still, despite familiarity, fundamentally contrived. Entering the fieldwork scenario with an interview checklist in my mind, I socialised and talked about my own experiences of VW campervan ownership. Conversations were not recorded at this time, but notes were generated from memory after the event. If

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134  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities participants demonstrated a particular interest in offering deeper insights, contact details were shared and formal interviews organised separately. Although this craft activity was really a facilitator to start conversations and did not provide data in itself, entertaining the visitors and giving back to the VW campervan community resulted in participation occurring by default. As Mannay (2016) notes, a shared understanding and common ground can contribute to a relaxed and open atmosphere, which is often reflected in the scale and quality of the data. By putting the participants’ well-being first and not pushing the research agenda against any resistance, I suggest as part of the mobile methods strategy in going with the flow, resulting in the knowledge thereby produced not having followed from a structured set of questions, but having been drawn from fluid social interactions and deeper, shared understandings.

CONCLUSION As Merriman (2014, p. 182) asserts, mobilities scholars have more recently looked for new ways to capture the practices and sensations of human-embodied movement as fleeting occurrences that often elude representation. In a shift towards empirical experiments which acknowledge the need to remedy an academic neglect of various movements of people, objects, information and ideas, the proposed application of the mobilities paradigm has led to new empirical sensitivities, analytical orientations, methods and motivations (Büscher and Urry 2009). As Mannay (2016) contends, with an interest in developing innovative research techniques, methods and theoretical stances, moving subjects can be apprehended through explanatory force of the body, inviting social scientists to reconfigure methodological approaches and to defy restrictive views on disciplinary boundaries by engaging with sensuous approaches. It is important to remain mindful of Merriman’s (2014, p.167) further point however that ‘mobile methods’ are not justified because ‘conventional’ approaches have failed, but instead are responses by researchers to ‘capture, track, simulate, mimic, parallel and “go along with” the sorts of movements that characterise the contemporary world’ (Büscher et al. 2011, p. 7). As further contribution to these developments, this chapter has offered insights into how interdisciplinary and creative methodologies may be used in fieldwork. For example, ANT was used as a thought experiment to unpack VW campervan travel as a mobilisation of people, things, machines, texts and non-humans that perform the social (Law 1994). Since movement is often seen on a linear trajectory from A to B, once conceptualised as a network it was understood through the transmissions of embodied relations, intensities of circulations, uncertainties and affects. Furthermore, as I was able to use the mediums of drawing, film-making, photography and participatory arts, these creative skills were adapted to explore other phenomenological representations. Finally, as Ellis (2004) notes in support of inter-disciplinarity, the call to move beyond defining art as not science and science as not art has undergone an important lateral rethink. By blurring the methodological boundaries as proposed, new sensitivities, investigative orientations and creative insights have emerged from the chaos.

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REFERENCES Baiocchi, G., D. Graizbord and M. Rodríguez-Muñiz (2013), ‘Special issue: reassembling ethnography: actornetwork theory and sociology’, Qualitative Sociology, 36 (4), 323–41. Büscher, M. and J. Urry (2009), ‘Mobile methods and the empirical’, European Journal of Social Theory, 12 (1), 99–116. Büscher, M., J. Urry and K. Witchger (2011), Introduction: Mobile Methods, pp. 1–19. Cresswell, T. (2012), ‘Still’, Mobilities II, 36 (5), 645–53. D’Andrea, A., L. Ciolfi and B. Grey (2011), ‘Methodological challenges and innovations in mobilities research’, Mobilities, 6 (2), 149–82. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1988), A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: Athlone Press. Dewsbury, J.D., P. Harrison, M. Rose and J. Wylie (2002), ‘Enacting geographies’, Geoforum, 33 (4), 437–40. Doughty, K. and L. Murray (2016), ‘Discourses of mobility: institutions, everyday lives and embodiment’, Mobilities, 11 (2), 303–22. Ellingson, L. (2009), Engaging Crystallization in Qualitative Research: An Introduction, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ellis, C. (2004), The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography, Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Fincham, B., M. McGuinness and L. Murray (2010), ‘Mobile methods and the empirical’, European Journal of Social Theory, 12 (1), 99–116. Finlay, L. (2002), ‘Negotiating the swamp: the opportunity and challenge of reflexivity in research practice’, Qualitative Research, 2 (2), 209–30. Geertz, C. (1973), The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books. Goetz, A., T. Vowles and S. Tierney (2009), ‘Bridging the qualitative–quantitative divide in transport geography’, The Professional Geographer, 61 (3), 323–35. Graburn, N. and J. Jafari (1991), ‘Introduction. Tourism social science’, Annals of Tourism Research, 18 (1), 1–11. Hannam, K., M. Sheller and J. Urry (2006), ‘Mobilities, immobilities and moorings’, Mobilities, 1 (1), 1–22. Haraway, D.J. (1991), Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Association Books. Ihde, D. (2009), Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Jensen, O.B. (2013), Staging Mobilities, London: Routledge. Jensen, O.B. (2014), Designing Mobilities, London: Routledge. Jóhannesson, G.T. (2005), ‘Tourism translations: actor-network theory and tourism research’, Tourist Studies, 5 (2), 133–50. Kusenbach, M. (2003), ‘Street phenomenology: the go-along as ethnographic research tool’, Ethnography, 4 (3), 455–85. Latour, B. (2005), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, New York: Oxford University Press. Law, J. (1994), Organizing Modernity, Oxford: Blackwell. Law, J. (2004), After Method, London: Routledge. Mannay, D. (2016), ‘Visual, narrative and creative research methods’, Application, Reflection and Methods, Abingdon: Routledge. Mead, M. (1995), ‘Visual anthropology in a discipline of worlds’, in P. Hocking (ed.), Principles of Visual Anthropology, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 3–10. Merriman, P. (2014), ‘Rethinking mobile methods’, Mobilities, 9 (2), 167–87. Murdoch, J. (1997), ‘Inhuman/nonhuman/human: actor-network theory and the prospects for a nondualistic and symmetrical perspective on nature and society’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 15 (4), 731–56. Obrador, P. (2012), ‘The place of the family in tourism research: domesticity and thick sociality by the pool’, Annals of Tourism Research, 39 (1), 401–20. Richardson, L. (2000), ‘Writing: a method of inquiry’, in N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds), Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd edn, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 923–48. Rose, G. (2010), Doing Family Photography: The Domestic, the Public and the Politics of Sentiment, Farnham: Ashgate. Rowland, N.J., J.-H. Passoth and A.B. Kinney (2011), ‘Reassembling the social: an introduction to actornetwork-theory’, Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science, 5 (1), 95–9. Sheller, M. (2014), ‘The new mobilities paradigm for a live sociology’, Current Sociology Review, 62 (6), 789–811.

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136  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Spinney, J. (2011), ‘A chance to catch a breath: using mobile video ethnography in cycling research’, Mobilities, 6 (2), 161–82. Thrift, N. (2014), ‘Summoning life’, in P. Cloke, P. Crang and M. Goodwin (eds), Envisioning Human Geography, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 81–103. Wilson, S. and K. Hannam (2017), ‘The frictions of slow tourism mobilities: conceptualising campervan travel’, Annals of Tourism Research, 67 (November), 25–36.

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13.  Mobility orientations*

Konrad Götz and Georg Sunderer

1. INTRODUCTION The current protests on climate change are putting politics on the spot because they make it clear that the past 40 years have seen no real progress in dealing with an existential problem already addressed in 1972 in Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972). Part of this problem is the prevailing mobility culture and the corresponding traffic system. The capacity to move – mobility – is vital to reach fulfilment. We also know that mobility must be decoupled from automobility (CITY:mobil 1999). In this respect, we have always been aware that subjective and sociocultural mobility orientations, that is, people’s stances, attitudes and passions regarding mobility, play a key role together with objective factors such as space, technology and infrastructure, both when it comes to stabilising the traditional concept of mobility and overcoming it in moving towards a post-car society (Urry 2007). However, in our analyses we had not expected that a completely new influencing factor, such as the political and behavioural reactions to the corona virus, would emerge and affect traffic patterns the way it did in 2020. And we cannot forsee what consequences this incident will have. In this chapter we describe the research concept of mobility orientations, developed as part of transdisciplinary sustainability research on mobility, and provide examples of how to apply it. In the next section, we describe the theoretical background of the concept. We then deal with the empirical surveying of mobility orientations, for which we cover both qualitative and standardised methods. This is followed by possible fields of application of the concept, such as characterising specific groups, creating typologies, explaining traffic behaviour and designing scenarios. The final section deals with potentially critical aspects of the concept.

2.  THEORETICAL BACKGROUND The dominant models understand traffic as a flow that is deterministically derived from socio-demography and comprises places and activities within a certain space. This definition of traffic is not wrong per se and is certainly suitable for simulating traffic within models. The downside of the approach is that it considers neither the mindset of individuals and social groups, that is, their reasons and motives for specific traffic behaviour, nor their different lifestyles and social milieus with differing basic attitudes. While the car as a status symbol is widely debated, the symbolic dimension plays hardly any role in traffic science. In order for the symbolic dimension to be integrated, it is first of all important to distinguish between mobility and transport. Mobility is seen multidimensional, which means 137

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138  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities spatial, social and sociocultural aspects all have to be considered: spatial in terms of the ability to move within a physical space and social in the ability to change social position. The sociocultural factor of mobility had hardly been researched before. To go deeper into that aspect, we looked at Bourdieu’s insights (1984) into ‘distinction’. Means of locomotion play an important role in his thoughts on cultural capital. Second, we viewed the milieu models that appeared at about the same time (for the current version, see Sinus 2020). Third, Ulrich Beck provides a theoretical framework with his theses on pluralisation and individualisation in the risk society. He sums up the drastic changes in social and natural systems at the turn of the millennium (Beck 1986), a concept that Kesselring (2008) applied to mobility. Based on these approaches, we concluded that basic lifestyle attitudes have an influence on mobility orientations and thus on traffic behaviour. In order to record behaviour, we used various methods of traffic behaviour research, for example, traffic diaries and reference date surveys. The aim was to examine the relationship between mobility orientation and behaviour in an integrative way. This integrative approach means that practices have a symbolic side and a material side, a perspective suggested by the theory of societal relations to nature and which we at the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE) use to investigate social-ecological problems (see Hummel et al. 2017). Our thesis is that the different sociocultural dimensions of mobility are reflected in the subjective attitudes of individuals. These attitudes become apparent in motivations and provide orientation for action in the context of mobility, which is why we call them mobility orientations. When mobility orientations influence actions and thus social practices, they must be considered in order to promote sustainable mobility. Mobility orientations indicate the motivation behind and the meaning of mobility. They influence the general choice of transport mode and reflect a socially prevalent model of mobility that is still dominated by the automobile, despite insights into its harmful effects. However, mobility orientations also reflect innovations that deviate from the mainstream.

3.  SURVEYING MOBILITY ORIENTATIONS The purpose of analysing mobility orientations is to fill the gap left by deterministic models. Transport should not just be understood as a necessary flow, but as a phenomenon triggered by social practices, individual actions and subjective motives. We assume that every mode of transport must be capable of transporting users from A to B, which means that (almost) all forms of transport always have a rational component, as suggested by rational choice theory. This, however, is only one of several components. If it was only a matter of finding the cheapest and fastest way of getting from A to B, expensive cars would no longer stand a chance in cities with good public transport systems. Other factors are also involved in the decisions. The reason for analysing mobility orientations is to identify these factors in order to better understand mobility and transport, and to create a better basis for strategies that support sustainable mobility. 3.1  Qualitative Analysis Anyone wishing to survey mobility orientations in a particular region or area for the first time should start with qualitative methods (in-depth interviews, focus groups and

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Mobility orientations  139 observations). Qualitative methods have the advantage of generating new hypotheses rather than working with existing ones. Instead of being confronted with a theoretical construct, the starting point is people’s everyday life. Qualitative surveys can have five different functions in the analysis of mobility orientations (see Götz et al. 2011): 1. An explorative function to gain a deeper understanding of the research object by reconstructing meanings and patterns of interpretation, plus the motives, emotions and actions associated with it (Lamnek 2005). Qualitative interviews enable stories to be told and, as Giddens (1976) recommends, enables the researcher to dive into everyday life. 2. Qualitative results can stand for themselves, that is, they can explain actions. For example, a young skilled worker intent on owning a BMW car (although he can only afford a Renault) wants to set himself apart from his Golf-driving friends, saying: ‘It was love at first sight . . . It simply looks good’. He invests a lot in this passion. When asked what his ‘little luxury’ is, he answers: ‘For me, my car is a luxury, it eats me out of house and home’. This episode shows what role the car plays in the man’s life and that of his friends. It illustrates how he is willing to suffer for the investment in his car. It quickly becomes clear that this is by no means about rational transport from A to B but about passion. 3. Qualitative investigations also have a preparatory function for further research phases. This includes the task of forming hypotheses about correlations. For instance, the BMW car-owner example can be used to form the hypothesis that men from the working classes are very willing to invest a relatively high sum in cars. Whether this connection between the investment of time and money and social class really does exist can only be proved by a representative study. 4. Another function of qualitative studies is the development of theoretical constructs. For example, several interviews have shown that the decision to own a car is apparently experienced as a guarantor of social participation. A 39-year-old nurse says: ‘Basically I don’t need a car. I’m still a little ambivalent as to whether I should get rid of it. Yes, it’s just that feeling of being more independent’. When asked how she would describe a typical car driver, she answers: ‘Dynamic, impatient, a bold type . . . looking out for action . . . compared to someone who walks or rides a bicycle: generally faster, faster-moving . . . the women I know who drive cars are more independent, more involved in life.’ When asked what this person has in common with her, she answers: ‘Being flexible, needing things to happen fast, being in the stream of life, in the rhythm of life’. There were a number of similar interviews. It became apparent that the car was not so much a status symbol as a symbol of social integration. 5. Finally, the qualitative material serves as a treasure trove of quotations that facilitate the development of a standardised survey instrument for a possible subsequent phase of the survey. This makes it possible to develop questionnaires that are adapted not to the abstract construct of science but to the everyday world. Sampling The qualitative surveys are distributed throughout the study area in order to achieve a spread of influencing factors and capture local peculiarities. A sample size of between

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140  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities 40 and 100 interviewees is normally enough. The aim is a balanced representation of genders, phases of life and life situations (see Götz 2007). Different methods are available for recruiting suitable respondents and there are science-inclined market research institutes which can be fit for purpose, providing they recruit new recruits and not frequent interviewees. Analysis The analysis is based on transcripts of the digital recordings, which are usually coded and paraphrased along central themes. Software (for example, MAXQDA) allows for a topicrelated, cross-sectional view and a case-related hermeneutic reconstruction. Paraphrasing helps in developing case-related abstracts and marginal notes, hypotheses about relevant orientations, potential segments and theoretical constructs. 3.2  Standardised Analysis The main function of the standardised survey is to provide insight into the distribution of mobility orientations within the surveyed population. For example, the construct ‘own car as a symbol of social integration’ was surveyed in a representative survey in Germany with the help of statements. This resulted in the following agreement values: 75 per cent of respondents (somewhat) agreed with the statement ‘One’s own car is simply a necessary part of life’; and 57 per cent (somewhat) agreed with the statement ‘To participate in life, you need your own car’. The typical approach used to transition from the qualitative to the standardised phase is the operationalisation of the question based on findings and materials from the qualitative phase. To measure mobility orientations, it has proved useful to translate them into attitude statements. Another function of the analysis is the comparison of subgroups, where we look at specific results, for example, those for men, women, different age groups, people with and without cars, or people in different settlement types. The results can then either be compared with each other or related to the population average. The comparative analyses provide indications of particular subgroup-specific behavioural patterns or acceptance of certain mobility services. A further step is to compact the various attitude items with the help of factor analyses. When selecting the appropriate factor solution, not only statistical criteria such as factor loads and explained variance should be taken into account but also content criteria, that is, whether the solution makes sense and whether it can be understood. Furthermore, the analysis of mobility orientations can help to create a typology. With the previously developed factors, a typology that we call mobility styles can be identified (see Götz et al. 2016). The investigated population will be segmented into groups with similar patterns of mobility orientations. This typology can then be used as a target group model. This means that tailor-made measures, products or services can be developed. Segmentation is usually carried out with the cluster analyses in which it is usual to calculate different cluster numbers (see Blasius 1994, p. 244). Cluster analyses have the disadvantage that their results depend on the conditions in the calculation process. It is therefore recommended not to commit to a single cluster method. Instead, different procedures should be used in parallel and then checked to see which clusters remain stable.

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Mobility orientations  141 Additional criteria are relevant for the selection of a suitable solution: How do the clusters relate to the theoretical hypotheses and to the findings of the qualitative phase? Can the clusters be interpreted meaningfully? Are there clear differences when behavioural criteria are taken into account? Which solution would be preferable according to formal indicators? Once a mobility style typology has been developed, a comprehensive description of the identified types is made based on the mobility orientations and other characteristics (for example, socio-demographics, equipment and behaviour). In addition, they should be provided with catchy and vivid names that refer to the central characteristics of the respective type. Target group models should provide holistic impressions. This includes knowing people’s orientations and patterns of action, and the extent to which mobility orientations explain behaviour. These correlation analyses are another option for analysing standardised data. We do not assume that orientations alone can explain actions nor do we believe that a mere change in awareness can bring about the major change we need in the transport sector. Political, space-structuring and marketing factors, together with technology and discursive practices, also affect how we move around and how we perceive mobility. Nonetheless, meanings that people associate with mobility, that is, how they frame it, are reflected in the mobility orientations. It is therefore important to gain an integrated understanding of the symbolic and material sides – mobility as part of the societal ­relations to nature. In order to enable correlation analyses, we collect behaviour indicators separately from the mobility orientations. Classical methods of causal analysis can then be used to investigate the influence of mobility orientations; model comparisons allow us to gauge the effect of mobility orientations on traffic behaviour compared to other factors. Since mobility orientations have a significant influence on traffic behaviour, they can also be used as a basis for scenarios. This makes sense if we assume within the framework of one or more scenarios that the mobility orientations of the population will change. Based on the calculated effect of the mobility orientations on behaviour, we can estimate the behavioural changes likely to result from the assumed change in orientations. In a project on sustainable mobility in Baden-Württemberg, we used the results of this correlation to estimate further scenario-specific developments related to the transport behaviour of the population. In the scenarios it was possible to include ecological (for example, carbon dioxide emissions), social (for example, health effects) and economic (for example, job development) impacts. Thus, we can say that mobility orientations can contribute indirectly to the prognosis of further changes beyond the transport behaviour (see Blanck et al. 2017).

4. APPLICATIONS In order to better illustrate the functions of the standardised analysis presented in section 3, corresponding application examples are described in this section. All of them are taken from the research context of sustainable mobility.

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142  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities 4.1  E  xample of a Group-Specific Approach: Mobility Orientations of Free-Floating Car Sharers In the project ‘Share’ more than 3000 free-floating car sharers were interviewed (Hülsmann et al. 2018; Sunderer et al. 2018). The questionnaire included a battery of questions on mobility orientations. The answers were condensed with the help of factor analyses. In order to compare the mobility orientations of free-floating car sharers with those of the average population, the survey results were compared with those of an ISOE study, representative for Germany. The analysis shows that free-floating car sharers are less inclined to consider their own car as a means of social integration than the total population. Furthermore, their average affinity for cars, although also high, does not necessarily refer to a car of their own. Another clear difference to the a ­ verage population is the higher affinity for a multimodal use of transport. In their mobility decisions, the free-floating car sharers consider various alternative means of transport to a much greater extent. Interestingly, however, their affinity for bicycles and public transport is only slightly higher than in the representative sample. So their higher affinity for multimodality can hardly be associated with a stronger preference for bicycles and public transport. The results shown in Figure 13.1 represent average values for the total sample. However, the free-floating users prove to be far more differentiated – indeed, extremely ­heterogeneous – when segmented along the mobility orientations (see section 4.2). Car affinity because of freedom and flexibility

Representative

Own car as a symbol of social integration

Representative

Own car as a burden

Representative

Car as a means of stylisation

Representative

Well-being in public transport

Representative

Bicycle affinity Affinity to multi-optionality

2.95* 2.74

Share 2.18 1.66

Share

1.62

Share

1.86

Share

2.25 2.41

Share

2.46

Representative

2.84

Share

2.87

Representative

2.60

Share

3.21

1.00 N (share) = 3096 N (representative) = 1088

*Mean values on a scale from 1 to 4

2.40

1.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

Rejection

4.00 Approval

Source:  ‘Share’ project (Hülsmann et al. 2018, translated).

Figure 13.1  M  obility orientations of free-floating car sharers in comparison to the German average

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Mobility orientations  143 4.2  Examples of Typologies Mobility styles in the city of Freiburg The CITY:mobil study was the first ever in which a typology was developed based on mobility orientations – the mobility style typology (Götz and Jahn 1998; Götz et al. 2016). The study took place in two cities. The following is a brief description of the types in Freiburg: ●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

The reckless car fans (20 per cent). This type represents an up-and-coming socialclimber type inclined to risk-taking and occasional aggression while driving. The car is a symbol of independence and escape from everyday life. This type represents the ambitious, engine-mad, middle-aged driver (male proportion: 90 per cent). The status-oriented automobilists (15 per cent). This group embodies a prestige- and leisure-orientated type who values the indispensable car as a status symbol. They have a prevailing sense of danger and threat when walking and cycling, and a clear aversion to public transport (women slightly overrepresented at 65 per cent). The traditional nature lovers (24 per cent). This group is highly sensitive to environmental issues and has a high affinity for walking. Their focus is on experiencing nature, but they find the situation as a pedestrian unprotected and dangerous. The tram is highly valued, but night-time journeys are perceived as particularly threatening (female proportion: 67 per cent). The ecologically resolute (17 per cent). The members of this group tend to be younger. They are open to new technologies, enthusiastic about bicycles and reject driving for ecological reasons. Whenever they do use a car, they experience a sense of conflict owing to environmental concerns. All alternatives to motorised private transport are rated positively. Members of this group who do own a car are considering getting rid of it (at 56 per cent, men are slightly overrepresented). The traditional domestics (24 per cent). The members of this group are a household- and safety-orientated type with no marked orientations. Older people and women are just as over-represented as people with a lower level of education. In this group we find an above-average number of pensioners and housewives (female ­proportion: 66 per cent).

User segments in free-floating car sharing Another form of typology evolved from the ‘Share’ project (Hülsmann et al. 2018; Sunderer et al. 2018); it refers not to the average population but to the specific group of free-floating car sharers. In addition to a factor on transport-specific environmental awareness, several factors on mobility orientation were included in the cluster analyses (see section 4.1). The analyses led to a typology of four clusters (Figure 13.2). Two of them show quite opposite orientations: the strongly environmentally conscious and the strongly car focused. The former manifest a very pronounced environmental awareness accompanied by a high affinity for bicycles, public transport and multimodality, while the affinity for cars is relatively low. This group has the highest proportion of women, the highest level of education and the highest proportion of people without cars. The orientations of the strongly car focused are the exact opposite: their environmental awareness and affinity

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Traffic-related environmental consciousness

144  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities

Strongly environmentally conscious 26%

Environmentally orientated 19% Car-orientated 34% Strongly focused on cars 21% Car affinity

Source:  ‘Share’ project (Hülsmann et al. 2018, translated).

Figure 13.2  User segments in free-floating car sharing for bicycles, public transport and multimodality are relatively low, while their affinity for cars is very high. The proportion of women is lowest in this group, the level of education is slightly below average and a large majority of 90 per cent own a car. The other two types are in between. A stronger deviation from this almost linear pattern is only to be found in the case of affinity for multimodality. Here, the strongly environmentally conscious, the environmentally orientated and the car orientated are on a similarly high level, with only the strongly car focused deviating to a significantly lower degree. 4.3  Behaviour Explained In the CITY:mobil project, the traffic behaviour of the different types was analysed. The results show a strong correlation between mobility orientation and behaviour (without control of further variables). ‘The ecologically resolute’ made only 10 per cent of their journeys by car as opposed to 56 per cent for ‘The reckless car fans’. The ‘Traditional nature lovers’ travelled 43 per cent of all distances on foot, while the ‘Reckless car fans’ only walked 19 per cent of all distances. Figure 13.3 provides an overview of the results. This strong influence can also be seen in evaluations based on data from the ‘Mobility and ICT’ project (for details, see Blanck et al. 2017, p. 47f). The influence on traffic behaviour was investigated for several mobility orientations. The strongest influence was exerted by the orientation ‘affinity to cars because of freedom and flexibility’. In addition, three socio-demographic variables were included in the correlation analyses: income, residence (town/country) and whether there are children in the household. These three variables also influence transport behaviour, but their combined explanatory power is significantly

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Mobility orientations  145 60%

56%

50% 44%

43%

40%

37%

26%

14%

0%

25%

19%

20%

10%

31% 29%

30%

30%

The reckless car fans

14%

12%

12%

5%

18% 18%

15%

10%

4% The status-oriented automobilists Car

The traditional domestics

Public transport

Bicycle

The traditional nature lovers

The ecologically resolute

Walking

Source:  Study CITY:mobil (Götz et al. 2016, translated).

Figure 13.3  Traffic behaviour of mobility styles less than that of the mobility orientations. The analyses thus underline the importance of mobility orientations for explaining traffic behaviour. 4.4  As a Basis for Scenarios The project ‘Mobiles Baden-Württemberg’ (Blanck et al. 2017) provides an example of an application in scenarios. The aim of this project was to identify possible paths of transformation towards sustainable mobility for the federal state of Baden-Württemberg. We subsequently described the paths using three scenarios and examined the likely extent of their contribution to the main sustainability goals. An important parameter for evaluating the sustainability indicators – especially the greenhouse gas emissions – is the modal split. The corresponding values were not simply set, but derived from assumptions about the change in orientations and the results of the interrelation of orientations and behaviour. Two aspects favoured the use of mobility orientations: on the one hand, orientations have a significant influence on the choice of transport (see section 4.3.) and, on the other, the three scenarios assume different developments for the mobility orientations within the population. In one of the scenarios (‘New mobility culture’), a strong change towards a low affinity for cars was assumed, while the affinity for multimodality increases significantly. A decisive driver for this is digitalisation, which makes new mobility services as alternatives to a car more attractive and reduces the (objective) relevance of our own car.

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146  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities A further assumption was a stronger orientation towards the local area and corresponding forms of settlement structures (functional mix and short distances). In the second scenario (‘New services’) the assumption was: the advantages of the various means of transport, especially sharing services, are equally appreciated and a pragmatic multimodal mobility orientation prevails. This means that the attachment to cars will become much weaker than it is currently. In the third scenario (‘New individual mobility’), there is still a high affinity for the car, analogous to the current situation but based on a fully electrified car fleet. Triggered by increasing digitalisation, however, this is at least accompanied by an increased affinity for multimodality. These different developments are illustrated by four types of orientation that vary in proportion depending on the scenario. For example, the type ‘(rather) low affinity for cars combined with (rather) strong multimodality orientation’ was presumed to predominate in ‘New mobility culture’. The ‘New individual mobility’ scenario, however, is dominated by those types that have a high affinity for cars. The relationship between orientation and behaviour was first calculated on the basis of current data. From this, the trip-related modal split of the types was calculated. Based on this type-specific traffic behaviour and on the assumed share of each type in the scenarios, overall scores were calculated per scenario (further assumptions, such as spatial population distribution and technological developments, were included in these calculations) (see Figure 13.4). The results show a strong shift towards a more environmentally friendly transport mode in the ‘New mobility culture’ scenario: the proportion of private car trips is only 13 per cent. In the second scenario, the changes are not as pronounced but are also clearly moving in the direction of environmentally friendly mobility. The changes in the ‘New individual mobility’ scenario are, by contrast, relatively moderate. However, owing

Walking Cycling PT ride sharing PT classic Car sharing MIT private

Basic year

Reference scenario

New individual mobility

New services

New mobility culture

Source:  Study ‘Mobiles Baden-Württemberg’ (Blanck et al. 2017, translated).

Figure 13.4  Trip-related modal split in the scenarios for the year 2050

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Mobility orientations  147 to the higher affinity for multimodality, the share of private cars is also declining to an appreciable extent. The results of the modal split were then used to calculate the value of ‘distance travelled per person’, which in turn was used to evaluate the ecological, social and economic sustainability indicators.

5.  CRITICISM AND PERSPECTIVES With regard the concept of mobility orientations, there are some criticisms we would like to reflect upon. First, it could be argued the approach is out of date. The lifestyle concept on which the method of mobility orientation is based dates back to the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, societies experienced an increase in education, strong economic growth, and a surge in individualisation and pluralisation. We now live in a different world. This applies not only to the greater gap between rich and poor but also to the processes of digitalisation, which strongly influence behaviour. Regarding this first objection: our empirical work confirms that – despite the greater relevance of structurally related social inequality – (lifestyle) orientations are still highly relevant for behaviour. However, we would no longer say that pluralisation and individualisation exist ‘beyond social classes and layers’ (Beck 1983, p. 47) but in spite of and across classes and layers. It is empirically evident that the additional consideration of mobility orientations leads to a far greater explanatory power than if only socio-demographic variables are included in the models. With regard to digitalisation, we note that technological developments currently seem to act as great equalisers. However, history shows that other important technological developments, such as the invention of the car, the telephone and the radio, have not had a unifying effect. A second criticism could be that the theoretical basis is insufficient (see Rössel 2011). Thus far we have proceeded empirically on the basis of lifestyle research. This was important and expedient for processing the research field, but a corresponding theoretical foundation which systematises and links findings will be needed to support future studies. Our work has provided us with rich empirical data. However, we are convinced that a better theoretical link must be established with the theory of societal relationships with nature (see Kramm et al. 2017). We think a theoretical discussion should take place on whether and how the approach is connected to, or compatible with, the approaches of social-ecological and socio-technical systems. The question of the spatial scale to which the approach is most suited should also be answered more clearly. In summary, the mobility orientation approach cannot be assigned to any specific academic school. At ISOE, where we work within the framework of social ecology, we take a problem-orientated approach. In our mobility orientation research we learn, on the one hand, from the classical approach of the relationship between attitude and behaviour (Eagly and Chaiken 1993). On the other hand, however, we assume that other factors, such as those formulated by practice theory, are also relevant for the transformation of the mobility system (see Shove and Spurling 2013). Nevertheless, behaviour as an element of mobility practices must be empirically investigated. In accordance with the latest action theories, we assume that not only motivations and orientations, but also opportunities, knowledge and competences, are central to behavioural change (Michie et al. 2011).

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148  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities

NOTE * We wish to thank Maxine Demharter, Heidi Kemp, Harry Kleespies and Melina Stein for editing our English, trimming the word count and eliminating our mistakes.

REFERENCES Beck, U. (1983), ‘Jenseits von Stand und Klasse?’ (‘Beyond social status and class’), in R. Kreckel (ed.), Soziale Ungleichheiten, Göttingen: Schwartz, pp. 35–74. Beck, U. (1986), Die Risikogesellschaft (Risk Society), Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp-Verlag. Blanck, R., F. Hacker, D.A. Heyen, W. Zimmer, J. Deffner, K. Götz, et al. (2017), Mobiles Baden-Württemberg: Wege der Transformation zu einer nachhaltigen Mobilität (Mobile Baden-Württemberg: Path of Transformation to Sustainable Mobility), Stuttgart: Baden-Württemberg-Stiftung, accessed 11 June 2019 at https://www. bwstiftung.de/uploads/tx_news/BWS_SR_MobilesBW_A4_web_interaktiv_01.pdf. Blasius, J. (1994), ‘Empirische Lebensstilforschung’ (‘Empirical lifestyle research’), in J.S. Dangschat and J. Blasius (eds), Lebensstile in den Städten, Opladen: Leske und Budrich, pp. 237–54. Bourdieu, P. (1984), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Frankfurt am Main: Routledge. CITY:mobil (ed.) (1999), Stadtverträgliche Mobilität (City Friendly Mobility), Berlin: Analytica. Eagly, A.H. and S. Chaiken (1993), The Psychology of Attitudes, Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Giddens, A. (1976), New Rules of Sociological Method, London: Hutchinson. Götz, K. (2007), Freizeitmobilität im Alltag oder Disponible Zeit, Auszeit, Eigenzeit –warum wir in der Freizeit raus müssen (Leisure Time Mobility in Everyday Life or Availability Time, Time Out, Personal Time – Why We Have to Get Out in Our Free Time), Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Götz, K. and T. Jahn (1998), ‘Mobility models and traffic behaviour – an empirical socio-ecological research project’, in J. Breuste, H. Feldmann and O. Uhlmann (eds), Urban Ecology, Berlin and Heidelberg: SpringerVerlag, pp. 551–6. Götz, K., J. Deffner and T. Klinger (2016), ‘Mobilitätsstile und Mobilitätskulturen – Erklärungspotentiale, Rezeption und Kritik’ (‘Mobility styles and mobility cultures – explanatory potential, reception and critique’), in O. Schöller, W. Canzler and A. Knie (eds), Handbuch Verkehrspolitik, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, pp. 781–804. Götz, K., J. Deffner and I. Stieß (2011), ‘Lebensstilansätze in der angewandten Sozialforschung am Beispiel der transdisziplinären Nachhaltigkeitsforschung’ (‘Lifestyle approaches in applied social research on the example of transdisciplinary sustainability research’), in J. Rössel and G. Otte (eds), Lebensstilforschung, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, pp. 86–112. Hülsmann, F., J. Wiepking, W. Zimmer, G. Sunderer, K. Götz and Y. Sprinke (2018), ‘Share – Wissenschaftliche Begleitforschung zu car2go mit batterieelektrischen und konventionellen Fahrzeugen. Forschung zum freefloating Carsharing. Abschlussbericht’ (‘Share – scientific accompanying research on car2go with battery electric and conventional vehicles’), Öko-Insitut/ISOE, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, accessed 11 June 2019 at http://www.isoe.de/fileadmin/redaktion/Projekte/share/share_Endbericht.pdf. Hummel, D., T. Jahn, F. Keil, S. Liehr and I. Stieß (2017), ‘Social ecology as critical, transdisciplinary science – conceptualizing, analyzing and shaping societal relations to nature’, Sustainability, 9 (7), art. 1050, accessed 11 June 2019 at https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/7/1050/htm. Kesselring, S. (2008), ‘The mobile risk society’, in W. Canzler, V. Kaufmann and S. Kesselring (eds), Tracing Mobilities. Towards a Cosmopolitan Perspective, Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, pp. 77–102. Kramm, J., M. Pichler, A. Schaffartzik and M. Zimmermann (2017), ‘Societal relations to nature in times of crisis – social ecology’s contributions to interdisciplinary sustainability studies’, Sustainability, 9 (June), art. 1042, accessed 5 June 2019 at https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9c41/8afa502fe9209d1084a57898cd8d6e16ce8b.pdf. Lamnek, S. (2005), Qualitative Sozialforschung (Qualitative Social Research), Weinheim: Beltz-Verlag. Meadows, D.H., D.L. Meadows, J. Randers, W.W. Behrens III (1972), The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind, New York: Universe Books. Michie, S., M.M. van Stralen and R. West (2011), ‘The behaviour change wheel: a new method for characterizing and designing behaviour change interventions’, Implementation Science, 6 (April), art. 42, accessed 5 June 2019 at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3096582/. Rössel, J. (2011), ‘Soziologische Theorien der Lebensstilforschung’ (‘Sociological theories in lifestyle research’), in J. Rössel and G. Otte (eds), Lebensstilforschung, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, pp. 35–61. Shove, E. and N. Spurling (2013), Sustainable Practices. Social Theory and Climate Change, London and New York: Routledge.

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Mobility orientations  149 Sinus (2020), ‘Sinus-Milieus’, accessed 5 May 2020 at https://www.sinus-institut.de/en/sinus-solutions/sinus-milieus/. Sunderer, G., K. Götz and W. Zimmer (2018), ‘Attraktivität und Akzeptanz des stationsunabhängigen Carsharing’ (‘Shaping social innovations locally’), in H.-W. Franz and C. Kaletka (eds), Soziale Innovationen lokal gestalten. Sozialwissenschaften und Berufspraxis, Wiesbaden: Springer VS, pp. 99–118. Urry, J. (2007), Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press.

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PART III APPLICATIONS

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14.  Mobility behaviour change programmes in France: contexts of emergence, governance, goals and impacts Marie Huyghe, Ghislain Bourg and Anaïs Rocci

1. BACKGROUND Most experts agree on the need to change our ways of living in order to preserve the environment. In the European Union, transport was the second largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2015, accounting for 24 per cent. By comparison, in France, transport generates almost 29 per cent of total GHG emissions, of which private vehicles account for 80 per cent. In addition to atmospheric pollution, transport is linked to other environmental nuisances (noise pollution, urban sprawl and congestion) and social problems (stress, car accidents and high cost of mobility). Changing our mobility habits is an important goal in order to reduce our environmental impact, and a necessity in order to anticipate the depletion of fossil-fuel energies. This aim can be reached by developing new transport services and infrastructures, by planning territories where distances are shorter, but also by developing a better understanding of the individual ways of living, mobility practices and potential for change. There is considerable resistance to change (Howarth 2009) and this can be explained by the disparity between environmental concerns, the constraints of daily life and the force of habit, but also by negative perceptions and a lack of knowledge about alternative solutions to individual car use (Rocci 2007). Several studies have shown that public information and knowledge concerning a transport system have a strong influence on the choice of mode of transport (Sammer et al. 2006). Based on the idea of optimising existing systems, a large number of voluntary travel behaviour change (VTBC) programmes have been developed worldwide to facilitate change in mobility behaviour (Brög et al. 2009; Stopher et al. 2013; Meloni et al. 2016). These programmes, commonly referred to as individualised marketing, were initiated in the 1990s by the SocialData consultancy firm under the brand name IndiMark. They are ‘soft’ mobility management tools that act on demand rather than supply. Their aim is to encourage a shift in mobility behaviour, by raising users’ awareness of the personal and collective interest of changing behaviour, providing information about the most relevant alternatives for each person and enabling them to overcome preconceived ideas (Rocci 2009). These procedures are designed for users in urban areas where there are viable alternatives to the private car and where a change in behaviour is thus objectively feasible. These facilitating programmes have produced positive results in modal shift, with a reduction of the car modal split of approximately 5 percentage points (Bamberg and Rees 2017). In France, VTBC experiments only began in the 2010s, with small samples of individuals, compared with other countries where programmes involved much larger samples. To our knowledge, these French operations have rarely been the subject of scientific analysis 151

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152  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities (Huyghe 2015; Lagadic and Rocci forthcoming), and the contexts in which they are initiated have never been examined. The aim of our exploratory research, bringing together a sociologist, a psychologist and an urban planner, is to analyse French experiments through the lens of their background, the people involved, their objectives and the way they have evolved over time. This comparative analysis will provide insight into the trends arising from these operations in France.

2.  METHOD AND STUDY LOCATIONS A series of semi-structured interviews was carried out with people who had initiated or worked in a VTBC operation in France. The aim of our work was not to investigate all the operations carried out in France, but to analyse a range of projects varying in year of implementation, scale of application, targets, objectives, people involved and duration. Table 14.1 summarises the procedures followed by the programmes we analysed: the type of area where they were carried out, the number of participants, the tools used and the methods of evaluation. Generally, all the projects were based on similar procedures: diagnosis of the participants’ mobility behaviour, period of test of alternative solutions, support and evaluation of change in mobility practices. All the procedures resulted in a significant reduction in single-occupancy car use and its environmental and economic impacts and in an improvement of the image and knowledge of alternative modes. For example, 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the participants in the operation carried out in the Picardy region changed their behaviour, some even getting rid of their car, while the programme of Les Ambassadeurs de la Mobilité (Mobility ambassadors) led to a 6 per cent reduction in car use among the participants.

3.  W  HAT ARE THE CONDITIONS REQUIRED FOR INITIATING VTBC OPERATIONS IN FRANCE By analysing the circumstances in which these procedures were introduced, their aims, the partnership work involved, as well as their results and indirect effects, we sought to identify the prerequisites for conducting these procedures in France, to evaluate the forms they take and the way they evolve. 3.1  Circumstances Leading to the VTBC Operations in France Analysis of the circumstances leading to the VTBC operations revealed common elements that appear to be favourable, or essential, for the introduction and smooth functioning of the operations. Shifting from a policy of supply to a policy of demand Voluntary travel behaviour change programmes operations are generally implemented by territories whose mobility policies aim at encouraging increasing numbers of inhabitants to change their mobility practices. In a context of strong budgetary constraints making any new major investments in the coming years difficult, it has become crucial to find

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153

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Les Ambassadeurs de   la Mobilité (Mobility ambassadors) Communauté  d’Agglomération du Pays d’Aix

8 12 40 335 294

127

2012–14

Allez-vous préférer le train?   (Will you prefer taking the train?) Picardy region 2014 2015 2016 2017 2015–16

6 4 50 30

2012 2013 2014 2015

L’agglo sans mon auto   (Urban area without car) Communauté  d’Agglomération (CA) of Cergy-Pontoise

Mobil’Acteurs (Mobile   actors) Rennes urban district

Number of participants

Year

Operation (location)

1 year

2 weeks

18 months

1 month

Duration of the operation

1. Personal interviews 2. Opening ceremony 3. Mobility advice by telephone 4. Test during 1 week 1. Personal interviews with advice and engagement 2. Monitoring during the test 3. Social media 4. Training option

1.  Personal interview 2.  Opening ceremony with mobility kit 3. Test of modes for 1 month + advice and personalised plan 4. Social media 5. Closing ceremony with prizes 1. Personal interviews and signature of a charter of commitment 2. 1 month free ticket for the train with monitoring 3. Support and monitoring for over a year

Procedure and incentives

Table 14.1  Methods (sample, procedure) and main results of the operations in the study

Interviews  (after the test, 5 months later) and questionnaire (1 year later) Log book  (and then smartphone application) Questionnaire  (before, and at 1, 6 and 12 months)

Questionnaire  before/after the operation

Evaluation

154

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150

18 50

2016 2017

Trois semaines sans ma   voiture (Three weeks without a car) Paris

75

2015–17

2016

Number of participants

Year

COPILOT Université Catholique de  Lille (UCL)

Conseil en mobilité   (Mobility consultancy) Eurometropolis of  Strasbourg

Operation (location)

Table 14.1  (continued)

1 month

2 weeks

18 months

Duration of the operation

1. Personal interviews 2. Opening ceremony and mobility kit 3. 3-week free test with monitoring 4. Social media 5. Closing ceremony with prizes

1. Personal interviews 2. Personalised advice sheet 3. Test with support 4. Prizes for the first 20 users

1. Search for personalised itineraries 2. Personal interviews 3. 2-week free test of alternatives, with support

Procedure and incentives

Questionnaires  before and 6 months to 1 year afterwards Questionnaire  and interviews at 6 and 12 months Questionnaires  (during, at the end, 2 months later)

Evaluation

Mobility behaviour change programmes in France  155 innovative ways of encouraging a modal shift. Some territories have a tradition of mobility consultancy; for example, the district of Rennes has had a mobility advice service since 2005. Others have worked for a long time with firms on (inter-)company transport plans, although these mobility plans only became obligatory for companies with over 100 employees in January 2018 (for example, the Communauté d’Agglomération of CergyPontoise and the district of Rennes). Furthermore, these territories and regions have experiences of mobility management. They have moved beyond a techno-centred approach, realising that infrastructure development is no longer enough and that more is needed to achieve the objective of a modal shift. They have thus adopted a demand-based approach to mobility, seeking to encourage more changes in behaviour and to optimise the existing infrastructure. The emergence of VTBC operations follows this shift from a policy of supply to a policy of demand. For example, the Catholic University of Lille observed (in an interview in June 2018) that the modal shift produced by actions focusing on infrastructure had begun to run out of steam: ‘We carried out a mobility plan in 2006, with an evaluation in 2010 showing a modal shift following actions related mainly to infrastructure. Since 2010, actions and modal shift have stagnated somewhat. We came to the conclusion that we could not do much better at the infrastructure level’. A similar situation can be observed in Picardy: ‘When working on supply, I started to look at the behaviour of users, and I wondered how to act on behaviour’ (interview, June 2018). A variety of sources of inspiration Among the operations we analysed, two main sources of inspiration and knowledge acquisition emerge: the experience of other regions and, to a much lesser extent, scientific knowledge. Some project leaders (in the Pays d’Aix and the Picardy region) were inspired by the first VTBC operations carried out in other countries by SocialData. Alongside this knowledge, others were inspired by VTBC operations undertaken by other local authorities in France that produced tangible results. For instance, the Catholic University of Lille (UCL) had heard of individualised marketing at a conference on mobility management. However, while local authorities can inspire each other, there is little in the way of experience-sharing. Project leaders do not attempt to provide detailed records of their methodology and tools. The project leaders of L’agglo sans mon auto (Urban area without car) said that they were inspired by a similar operation in another French city and then constructed their own operation, while the leaders of the Mobil’acteurs (Mobile actors) project were inspired by the example of Cergy-Pontoise, but did not necessarily follow the same lines. Project leaders thus develop procedures based on their knowledge or experience of mobility or other sectors. For example, the L’agglo sans mon auto operation was inspired by studies carried out within the framework of transport plans that identified mobility problems in different sectors. The ‘Les Ambassadeurs de la Mobilité’ project in the Pays d’Aix was inspired by the Ambassadeurs du Tri (Recycling ambassadors) project conducted in the region. Very few operations refer to the scientific literature on VTBC operations; some project leaders mention ‘a lack of documentary sources’ (Cergy-Pontoise), or say that they had not thought of reading the existing scientific literature. The design of the procedure is

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156  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities thus rarely based on theories that have been developed on the subject, notably in social psychology. Nonetheless, some of the project leaders knew about, and referred to, the transtheoretical model of Prochaska and Di Clemente (1982). For example, the aim of the operation in Strasbourg was to target participants according to their ‘stage on the steps of change’. However, the project leaders we met did not consider the theoretical background as a hindrance to the smooth running and success of the operations. Nevertheless, an agent we interviewed in Cergy-Pontoise observed that ‘it would also be interesting to know what acts on behaviour and theoretical knowledge might help us go further or faster’. These different sources of inspiration led project leaders towards different objectives. Different objectives and different forms of VTBC operations Voluntary travel behaviour change programmes enable some regions to deal with the issue of modal shift other than through infrastructure or mass communication about supply. Thus, the first aim of those programmes is to experiment another way to encourage behavioural change, mainly focused on the individuals. After several years of working on information and communication about supply, the aim of L’agglo sans mon auto was to test the effects of guiding users in their mobility practices. Similarly, the aim of the Mobil’Acteurs’ ­operation was to test a new approach based on individuals’ needs: ‘The mobility issues that we worked on with companies were working well, and we wanted to see what would happen if, rather than proposing a framework, we started from people’s needs, by asking them: “What could you do differently?”’ (interview, June 2018, original emphasis). Other VTBC operations rely on small samples to create a network of ambassadors and spread good practices. For example, the Trois semaines sans ma voiture (Three weeks without a car) operation in Paris had 18 participants, was considered to be the ‘first circle of participants, whose mission was to spread the work by talking about their experiences’ (interview, June 2018). Neither of these types of operation have a quantified objective for modal shift; they seek to ‘create a buzz’ rather than trying to reach a large number of people through mass marketing. They are based on considerable use of communication tools throughout the tests to create a snowball effect. This was the case of the first trials of Mobil’Acteurs, which made use of different tools to enliven the operation (festive events to launch the operation, setting up a Twitter wall and relaying information about the operation on social media). These operations are generally conducted over short periods, from one to several weeks (for example, the Mobility Week national event in the case of Mobil’Acteurs). The objective of other operations is to make individualised mobility advice available to all, and to bring about mass behavioural change. To this end, they work notably with large samples; for example, the ‘Les Ambassadeurs de la Mobilité’ worked with 300 inhabitants over a period of one year (which remains small compared with operations led abroad). These operations aim at generalising their action. Some operations tend to make a mobility advice service permanent. Five years after it was launched, the L’agglo sans mon auto operation became an itinerant mobility agency, in which members of the local community (student councils or associations, job centres and welfare-to-work organisations) provided an advisory service. In Rennes, the leaders of the Mobil’Acteurs project are planning to create a Mobil’Acteurs certification label, which would add value to behaviour-change initiatives throughout the year.

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Mobility behaviour change programmes in France  157 Other regions try to systemise the approach with automated tools. For example, the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg has worked, since 2014, on providing an inclusive service to companies to bring about behaviour change; this included testing and evaluating the effectiveness of mobility advice and studying the relevance of introducing it on a larger scale. After the Allez-vous préférer le train? (Will you prefer taking the train?) operation, the Picardy region has developed a tool to industrialise the free month ticket of the train, intended for companies and their employees: ‘We wished to industrialise the procedure, to create a dematerialised tool, a shared platform with the SNCF [French train operator] and the regional authorities. The idea was to give employees the possibility of free train travel . . . So it was useful to industrialise it’ (interview, June 2018). The platform has been in operation for one year (since summer 2017). It is now a permanent regional scheme, we are no longer in the experimentation phase. Everything works from a technical point of view . . . It’s far from perfect, and it took rather a long time to set up; the market was launched in 2012 and industrialised in 2017 – a good 5 years. (interview, June 2018)

Thus, prolonging the operations can take different forms, each new trial offering the opportunity to continue or substantially modify the communication, method or target population. For others, the success of the operation provides the opportunity to develop mobility advice, from a one-off action to an ongoing service. The direct impacts of behaviour change and modal shifts, and the indirect effects of the operations, encourage the project leaders to continue the action. Indeed, the people we interviewed reported indirect effects of the operations which are of interest. First, it brings recognition and credibility to behaviour change management; thanks to the direct impacts of the operations, the decision-makers (local councillors and managers) and inhabitants gradually come to see that this type of political strategy works. The success of a scheme and its media coverage can help justify continuing to employ public agents or, even, setting up a new department. Moreover, the experience of setting up and implementing the operation gives the project leaders greater skills relating to behaviour change. Not only can this help raise awareness of the issue of behaviour change, but can also create new working relationships and facilitate potential future collaboration. These types of operations reinforce the interactions and cooperation between local stakeholders (other local councillors or university departments, transport officials, and so on). 3.2  Basic Prerequisites for Implementing VTBC Operations Obtaining the support of decision-makers Launching these operations requires the support, or at least the approval, of decisionmakers (local councillors and the university rector at UCL). Convincing the decisionmakers requires energy, arguments and time. The Picardy region managed to bring all the stakeholders together and convince its local councillors fairly rapidly: ‘They had a more political approach. Nevertheless, we could rapidly persuade them with notes and arguments . . . The time between first thinking of the operation and launching it, was less than one year. It was fairly quick’ (interview, June 2018). By contrast, negotiations in the Pays d’Aix took two years, and the operation was launched another two years after it had been approved: ‘I discussed the subject with

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158  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities the decision-makers for two years, it took ages! And it was accepted by the council in December 2013’ (interview, June 2018). In some instances, a favourable situation facilitated the implementation of the VTBC operation. For example, the operation conducted by the UCL benefited from the involvement of the president of the university in a scheme to make the Hauts-de-France region one of the leading regions in Europe as regards energy transition and digital technology. The president thus became a key driving force in the implementation of the VTBC scheme. In other cases, such as in Rennes, the key drivers of the scheme seized the opportunity of electoral transition periods to obtain approval and to speed up the launch of the operation. By contrast, in some cases, these election periods slowed down the approval process. These examples show the importance of key drivers and partnerships with supportive decision-makers. The arguments that can convince the most intractable local councillors are based either on feedback from other local authorities or on the positive results of initial trials. The main obstacle is frequently the cost of this type of operation. Another key argument is thus the demonstration of return on investment and the effectiveness of the operation in relation to other policy measures. By contrast, a lack of reliable and precise data and the absence of any rigorous evaluation of the operation’s cost-effectiveness can hinder local authority involvement in the operation. You have to be careful that the cost is not an obstacle to the policy-makers’ decision, or show that there is a good return on investment. You have to be able to sell the project to the policy-makers, to be able to provide figures about modal shift . . . An EMD [regional surveys of household travel behaviour] has a cost and there is little modal shift. The project is less expensive than a BHNS [bus rapid transit system], for the same modal shift. You have to be able to prove that. Compare costs and results in France. Before launching the project, you have to convince the decision-makers. (Pays d’Aix, interview, June 2018)

The success of an initial trial can help confirm decision-makers’ support. Thus, in spite of an unfavourable political situation following the fusion of regions and a change in the political majority, the positive results of the initial experiments in Picardy easily convinced the elected representatives and partners to industrialise the system. ‘We had to make a strong case for the project internally, because we needed a computer engineer to develop the platform . . . We quickly reached an agreement with the Region and the SNCF; there was no difficulty selling the scheme, even with a change of scale and political majority’ (interview, June 2018). The success and media coverage of the first Mobil’Acteurs project also convinced the elected representatives of the Rennes metropolis to repeat the experiment. In subsequent trials, the elected representatives became the ambassadors of the project: ‘Given the media attention and the success of the first trial, the elected representatives, notably those responsible for mobility, got really involved’ (interview, June 2018). By contrast, in Cergy-Pontoise ‘we had to go back and argue again, despite the media attention’ (interview, June 2018). Essential partnership work As we could see, a proactive mobility management policy and the support of decisionmakers are the prerequisites for launching VTBC operations. Implementation of the operations then requires considerable work in partnership with key actors, each taking on a specific role (6t-bureau de recherche 2014). Individualised marketing operations are

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Mobility behaviour change programmes in France  159 all implemented in partnership with a network of local stakeholders: people involved in mobility, employers (companies and state departments), welfare-to-work professionals, user groups, and so on. Voluntary organisations or other neighbourhood groups act as links to target and recruit potential participants to the project, to provide mobility counsellors and/or organise training courses. As partners, public transport operators are also key players by providing free transport passes or contributing to communication actions. The partnership can take the form of human and/or financial investment: ‘Financially, we gave most, but we couldn’t have done it without [the regional public transport operators]’ (Cergy-Pontoise, interview, June 2018). Similar to the local councillors, the public transport operators need to be convinced: Getting the green light was a bit difficult, especially from the SNCF, who didn’t want to hear about free travel. But we managed to convince them. Using an accounting package, it was possible to write €0 on the tickets so that there wouldn’t be any charge; it was transparent in terms of accountancy, it just needed human resources to process applications and issue the tickets. (Picardy region, interview, June 2018)

Involving companies is also essential to carry out this type of operation successfully; the first step, which is extremely valuable for the operation, is to involve companies that are already partners and that are aware of the issues and of their responsibility, or that have a mobility plan or corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy. In particular, this facilitates the recruitment of participants, which is a key element in the success of the operation. By contrast, mobilising companies that do not have this profile is a major challenge, and the time needed to motivate them is often under-estimated. As with local councillors, the project leaders must use arguments to persuade the employers to become involved in the operation: It was very difficult to get companies involved. There are arguments that can be used to convince companies that it is in their interest to participate. It works better for companies that have a CSR policy, or who have to deal with a parking policy. But it’s difficult to find arguments to persuade the others. We counted too much on company participation and we didn’t have a commercial approach to get them involved. (Eurometropolis of Strasbourg, interview, June 2018)

It is also essential to have access to technical expertise and financial support. Thus, to implement the procedure, the largest operations enlist the support of service providers to provide technical expertise (communication, recruitment, coordination, methodology, evaluation, and so on). In France, the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) is a key player in this type of procedure; they provide feedback from other projects, the types of tools used in the projects, the conditions for success, as well as providing financial assistance. This agency supported most of the projects we surveyed. Finally, the involvement in the project of all the stakeholders, whoever they are  – ­companies, transport operators, voluntary organisations or local authorities – is facilitated by their knowledge of each other and previous cooperation: ‘A lot of the voluntary organisations are funded by the town council, and so they agree to participate in the operation to maintain a good relationship’ (Cergy-Pontoise, interview, June 2018)). In the Pays d’Aix, the ease of contact with certain local authorities partly guided the choice of

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160  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities where to conduct the operation: ‘We chose two areas. They were targeted geographically . . . we had good contact with the local authorities’ (interview, June 2018). The involvement of project leaders upstream, of stakeholders and partners throughout the procedure, is crucial for successful implementation of the operation. Furthermore, in Paris, the lack of involvement of particular stakeholders and some coordination problems delayed implementation of the Trois semaines sans ma voiture operation. The existence of alternatives to the single-occupancy car as a prerequisite for the choice of location While operations have been developed in a variety of urban locations (cf. Table 14.1), the existence of alternatives to the car is seen as a real advantage, or even a prerequisite for the operations. ‘We intervened in a favourable context, with really efficient alternatives. The operation would have been compromised if there hadn’t been a sufficiently efficient alternative’ (Cergy-Pontoise, interview, June 2018). Moreover, an alternative that is not considered to be of good quality (for example, the TER, regional express train, in Picardy) can be an obstacle to the launch of the operation. It then requires arguments to convince the local councillors: ‘The decision makers were afraid that it would be counter-productive because the train often has problems, the quality of the service is not very good. They wondered if it was really a good idea to make people use the train’ (Picardy region). Nonetheless, operations have been carried out in areas with poor public transport facilities, by combining different choice factors such as ease of contact with key players (local councillors or companies). For example, the Strasbourg Eurometropolis operation was carried out in two business parks; one had poor public transport, but it was easier to get the companies involved because there was already an inter-company transport plan in operation. Similarly, the Pays d’Aix gave priority to facilitating contact with the local council in areas without good public transport. However, the lack of available transport options can hinder the success of these operations, highlighting the lack, or inadequacy, of alternatives to single-occupancy car use.

4. CONCLUSION Analysis of these VTBC operations carried out in France between 2012 and 2017 highlights the contextual elements and favourable, or even essential, conditions that make them possible: a proactive policy, dynamic key players, partnerships with local stakeholders, technical and financial support, the availability of alternatives to the single-occupancy car, and so on. It also revealed a tendency (or at least a desire of mobility managers) to perpetuate and generalise these procedures in order to bring about massive behavioural change. Two trends can be observed; first, a form of industrialisation with the use of an automated tool and limited human involvement, and, secondly, development of a permanent mobility advice service. A challenge for future research is thus to ascertain, on the one hand, whether automation of these schemes using digital and technological tools is as efficient as low-technology approaches, and, on the other, whether an internal or outsourced mobility advice service can lead to a massive modal shift at regional level. Further, research should assess the adequacy between those different approaches and the territories’ objectives and issues.

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Mobility behaviour change programmes in France  161 Another challenge concerns evaluation of these operations in respect of cost-­ effectiveness, an aspect that has not been particularly addressed by current operations (Lagadic and Rocci forthcoming). While all the stakeholders we interviewed said that an evaluation method had been drawn up and implemented together with their VTBC operation, their methodological rigour is generally poor. Would automated or permanent VTBC schemes be more rigorous in terms of evaluation? Finally, as we could see in the field, a challenge relating to public policy concerns the way transport and mobility issues could be managed in a more integrated approach: how to enable a better dialogue between transport and mobility worlds?

REFERENCES 6t-bureau de recherche (2014), ‘Mesures incitatives pour le changement de comportement de mobilité. Comment interpeller et convaincre les personnes cibles d’entrer dans un dispositif d’aide?’ (‘Incentives measures for mobility behaviour change. How to interest and persuade people to participate in an aid scheme?’), study report for ADEME (the French Environment and Energy Management Agency), Paris. Bamberg, S. and J. Rees (2017), ‘The impact of voluntary travel behavior change measures – a meta-analytical comparison of quasi-experimental and experimental evidence’, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 100 (June), 16–26. Brög, W., E. Erl, I. Ker, J. Ryle and R. Wall (2009), ‘Evaluation of voluntary travel behaviour change: experiences from three continents’, Transport Policy 10 (1016), 281–91. Howarth, C. (2009), ‘Public understanding of climate change and the gaps between knowledge, attitude and travel behavior’, Eighty-eighth Meeting of the Transport Research Board, Washington, DC, January. Huyghe, M. (2015), ‘Habiter les territoires ruraux – comprendre les dynamiques spatiales et sociales à l’œuvre, évaluer les perspectives d’évolution des pratiques de mobilité des ménages’ (‘Living in rural areas – ­understanding spatial and social dynamics, evaluating the outlook for the households’ mobility habits’), PhD thesis, Tours University, Tours. Lagadic, M., A. Rocci and N. Louvet (forthcoming), ‘The challenge of inducing large-scale modal change in cities: leveraging technology to automate Voluntary Travel Behavior Change programs’, Transportation Research Procedia. Meloni, I., B. Sanjust and E. Spissu (2016), ‘Lessons learned from a personalized travel planning (PTP) research program to reduce car dependence’, Transportation, 44 (February), 853–70. Prochaska, J.O. and C.C. Di Clemente (1982), ‘Trans-theoretical therapy – toward a more integrative model of change’, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice, 19 (January), 276–88. Rocci, A. (2007), ‘De l’automobilité à la multimodalité’, PhD thesis, Paris 5 – La Sorbonne University. Rocci, A. (2009), ‘Changer les comportements de mobilité. Exploration d’outils de management de la mobilité: les programmes d’incitation au changement de comportement volontaire (VTBC)’ (‘Changing mobility behaviours. Exploring mobility management tools: voluntary travel behaviour change programs’), research report, INRETS (the French National Institute for Transport and Safety Research). Sammer, G., C. Gruber and G. Röschel (2006), ‘Quality of information and knowledge about mode attributes in mode choice’, paper presented at the Eleventh International Conference on Travel Behaviour Research, Kyoto, 16–20 August. Stopher, P., C. Mouton and W. Liu (2013), ‘Sustainability of voluntary travel behavior change initiatives: a 5-years study’, paper presented at the Thirty-Sixth Australasian Transport Research Forum (ATRF), Brisbane, 2–4 October.

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15.  Investigating mobilities with literary methods Anita Perkins

1.  I NTRODUCTION: APPLYING A MOBILITIES FRAMEWORK TO A CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF LITERATURE Common media responses to popular culture texts involving protagonists on the autism spectrum often pose some version of the question: ‘How accurate is this portrayal of the experience of autism in the real world?’ A mobilities scholar might instead ask: ‘How, through framing and reiterating certain tropes and practices of im/mobility, does the writer portray the journey of the protagonist moving through and negotiating the world through the lens of autism?’ Further, we might ask: ‘What cultural meanings and commentary on society are being communicated via these texts?’ This chapter explores how cultural studies of literature can be augmented using a mobilities framework. My examples illustrate how concepts of im/mobilities can be drawn upon to gain an understanding of the inventive textual responses of writers constructing unconventional stories within, in this instance, the well-known format of romantic popular culture. In the section entitled ‘Method and application: selecting material and suggested research questions’, I present a repeatable three-step approach to a mobilities analysis of literature. My aim is that this approach could be applied to a range of texts with different themes, genres and modes of representation. This methodology focuses on particular moments in texts, as well as interviews with the writer and secondary articles and reviews. In doing so, it aims to build, from a mobilities perspective, a layered analysis of both the creative textual narrative and the social commentary in which it is embedded. In the subsequent section, ‘Using this approach to analyse the novel The Rosie Project’ (Simsion 2013), I apply my own three-step approach to a romance novel. The Rosie Project is a novel by Graeme Simsion in which the protagonist, an autistic university professor, sets out in search of love. Personally, I hold great flame to contemporary German writer Ingo Schulze’s observations that contemporary writers through a keen cultural awareness, intense contact with everyday citizens and a propensity towards a high volume of reading are particularly well-positioned to make observations about the world going on around them, and to disrupt dominant expert discourses (see Perkins 2016, p. 170). Mobilities studies brings us a methodology to place movement and travel at the heart of human experience. Writers are some of the most highly qualified to elucidate and critically examine this mobile experience in a way that brings meaning to the everyday reader. In this chapter, I suggest the usefulness of applying a cultural mobilities approach to bring a fresh perspective to the writer’s textual representations of mobile experience and, more broadly, to bring analytical depth to the more traditional field of literary studies. I apply these methods to the analysis of a text in which an unconventional hero is on a quest for love and romantic mobility. 162

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Investigating mobilities with literary methods  163 Applying a mobilities framework to the analysis of literature emerged for me as a way forward at a time when I was developing a methodology for my PhD thesis. Broadly, I was interested in looking at themes of travel, identity and cultural exchange. The frameworks I initially attempted were problematic in terms of comprising of static categories that seemed to pin down or put writers and texts into boxes. Drawing on concepts from mobilities enabled me to conceptualise, and to apply to literary travel texts, analysis of the contradictory but coexistent forces of dwelling (in a Heideggarian sense), on the one hand, and extreme mobility, on the other. By identifying moments where writers reflect on or communicate ideas of dwelling, travel, movement, mobility, and so on, it felt as though I was able to be epistemologically guided by the object of inquiry rather than forcing it into a predetermined category. Drawing on a framework that is inherently interdisciplinary has also allowed me to make connections across other disciplines, such as transport geography or anthropology, which I may otherwise not have made. Making these connections and keeping a wide academic perspective is also important in this context. Traditional scholarly approaches in the humanities are losing support. We need to be able to stay afloat and to make sense of increasingly mobile and complex cultures. In some cases, the very future of our research interests depends on this.

2.  M  ETHOD AND APPLICATION: SELECTING MATERIAL AND SUGGESTED RESEARCH QUESTIONS When applying a mobilities framework to the cultural analysis of literature and looking at mobile human experience, I focus on the representations of events and physical phenomena, and their social consequences. Instead of examining everyday lives per se, the focus is on everyday lives and how they have been transformed by experiences of mobility. What does this mean at the practical level of research design? I have translated aspects of my research methodology diary into a three-part, step-by-step manual-type method, in order to make the approach as accessible as possible to readers. The method and application section follows three main questions: 1. Which text should I select? 2. What kind of examples should I look for in the text? 3. How do I relate these examples to secondary sources related to but external from the text itself ? When applying a mobilities framework to the cultural analysis of literature. I take a multi-layered approach which attempts to take a cross-sectional view of the context within which the text was produced. More specifically, I look at specific examples from the primary text, and then relate these to secondary material, such as interviews with the author, reviews of the text or other relevant secondary commentary on the material. Using this methodology allows the text to speak for itself. The traditional delineation between fictional and non-fictional fades in terms of significance. It could be argued that, on close inspection, finding a way in which to wholly demarcate so-called fiction from socalled non-fiction as a primary focus, would be a complex and arduous task. This reflects

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164  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Greek film-maker Theo Angelopoulos’s statement that ‘[e]very moment consists of the past and the present, the real and the imaginary, all of them blending together into one’ (Fainaru 2001, p. 98). What comes to the fore are connections and inferences that can be made between the meanings of the created world in the text and the externally negotiated world in which it is produced. Using this approach, we might mobilise traditional theories and begin to deconstruct this blend of real, imagined, historical and contemporary present with the production and consumption of the text. In setting out this open methodology, it is not my intention to make hard-and-fast parameters for this type of mobile-textual approach. Instead, it is my aspiration that I might provide the reader with some guidance as to the types of topics and questions he or she might consider when designing an analysis of literature from a mobilities perspective. Step 1: Selecting the Text A mobilities framework could theoretically be applied to the cultural analysis of any piece of literature. However, the reader may choose to engage with a text for which a mobilities analysis may be particularly revealing. He or she may wish to consider which writers are engaging in ideas of travel, movement and im/mobility in their texts, and what type of messages and meanings they are attempting to transmit through their characters and narrative. Table 15.1 sets out potential topics upon which the reader may wish to base his or her selection of text, as well as suggested questions or issues to consider when making a selection for analysis. Table 15.1  Suggestions for selecting a text Potential topics

Suggested questions or issues to consider

Travel and exploration

How does the traveller’s mobile experience impact his or her sense of   self and others? What social and political forces enable/hinder his or her travel? What expectations does he or she have for his or her travel and how   are these met/not met? What forms of travel does he or she use and what objects does he or   she take? How and about what does he or she communicate with those around   him or her? How does gender impact the mobile experience of the protagonist? What gendered mobile identities and interactions are played out in   the text? What broader social, political and fiscal factors have a bearing on the   protagonists’ mobile experience and agency over it? What linguistic and cultural contexts inhibit or promote the way in   which the migrant moves through space and place? How does the protagonist’s physical or mental disability/disorder   impact his or her mobility and how is this discursively portrayed? How does the protagonist’s movement set him or her apart from  other mobilities present in the text, and how does this relate to the narrative tropes of the text?

Gender(ed) experience Migration stories

Disability/disorder

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Investigating mobilities with literary methods  165 Table 15.2  Suggestions for finding examples in the text Potential examples

Suggested questions or issues to consider

When a protagonist is reflecting on the  experience of travel/movement/mobility/ mode of transport. Does he or she (directly or indirectly) make connections to wider issues of identity or social, cultural or political processes? When the mobility of one character is  juxtaposed to that of another

What type of language techniques are used to  describe this experience? What motivated the character’s reflection on his  or her mobile experience and the links he or she makes to wider contextual factors?

When the mobility of a character is inhibited  or enhanced by forces outside his or her control Examples of when a protagonist is made  immobile and the impact that has on him or her

What is the writer revealing or highlighting in  this moment in terms of agency, power and character relations? How do the uneven power dynamics  underlying mobility play out in this example? Is the character cognizant of the social or environmental impact his or her movement or lack thereof results in? Is the immobility in this situation externally or  internally imposed? What physical aspects of the environment render the character immobile?

Step 2: Finding Examples in the Text My approach after selecting the text is to go through it identifying examples using a mobilities lens. In doing so I would ask myself: ‘At what points in the text is the writer communicating, either manifestly or inferentially, particular meanings and ideas concerning the im/mobility of the characters?’ Table 15.2 sets out ideas for the way in which the scholar might approach finding examples for analysis in the selected text, as well as suggested questions or issues for him or her to consider in evaluating potential examples for analysis. Step 3: Relating the Examples to Secondary Material The third step in building a multi-layered cultural analysis of literature using a mobilities framework is to relate the examples from the text to the external layer of the writer and the world of consumption and perception in which the text is created, embedded and consumed. That is, the method is about looking for examples in the texts and the application is about relating this to secondary material such as interviews, cultural discourses, current events and book reviews. It is in the connections that are made here that the scholar can shed light on the links and reciprocal influences between lived experience and textual production, from a mobilities perspective. This can be summarised in the question: ‘What links are there between the writer’s text and the mobile world in which they live and produce that text?’ Here it can be helpful to look for secondary material which links directly to the examples selected from the text (Table 15.3). In applying this layer to the analysis, the reader will need to consider what sources are

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166  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Table 15.3  Suggestions for secondary material Potential source

Suggested questions or issues to consider

Interview with the writer

What does the interview reveal about the way in which the writer thinks about and experiences mobilities, and how he or she has translated this to the examples in the text? What does this material reveal about the writer’s lived experience of mobilities and how these experiences may have either consciously or unconsciously influenced the writing or making of the text? What commentary and analyses do public and academic critics bring to light in relation to the text and the writer’s lived mobile experiences? In the case of reviews, how are these connections valued in terms of the perceived quality of the text? This can add extra contextual information which may be relevant to the examples selected about transport, social mobility, politics and immobilities, etc.

Biographic information on the writer Reviews and academic analyses of text

News stories and other relevant information on the time, place or historical context in which the writer lived

available for the period of the text in which he or she is carrying out the analysis. Interviews with writers may be commonly available on YouTube for the analysis of texts from the past 15 years. For older texts, the researcher might inquire into texts by contemporaries of the writer, such as influential thinkers focusing on similar areas of cultural, social or political observation and critique.

3.  U  SING THIS APPROACH TO ANALYSE THE NOVEL THE ROSIE PROJECT In this section I apply the three-step approach set out in the section above to the selection and analysis of The Rosie Project. Step 1 ●● ●●

Which text should I select? Which writers are engaging in ideas of travel, movement and im/mobility in their texts, and what type of messages and meanings are they attempting to transmit through their characters and narrative?

My previous research focused on predominantly German travel narratives in which the writer consciously engages in the experiential idea of travel and its social impacts. Therefore, these analyses belonged broadly to the above topic category of travel and exploration. For the purposes of this chapter, I was interested to take the same methodological approach of applying a mobilities framework to the cultural analysis of literature, but to a different area. I selected texts which relate to the topic suggested above, of disability/disorder.

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Investigating mobilities with literary methods  167 The Rosie Project is a novel by Graeme Simsion in which the protagonist, an autistic university professor, sets out in search of love. When reading this text, I was struck by the writer’s decision to use an unconventional hero. As a mobilities scholar, I was intrigued to further investigate the writer’s representation of the protagonists in relation to mobile or immobile experience. By this I do not mean whether the characters’ movements are accurately suggestive of an authentic lived experience of a person with autism; that is, a protagonist on the autism spectrum moving both physically and emotionally through a world of predominantly neurotypicals. In bringing these two texts to light, I do not claim that Simsion set out to make texts manifestly engaging in mobilities. However, in interviews with Simsion he implies a desire to creatively explore, in pop fiction mode, the experience of an unconventional hero overcoming a kind of social immobility. Suggested topic question: ‘How does the protagonist’s physical or mental disability/ disorder impact her mobility and how is this discursively portrayed?’ The main protagonist of this novel, Don Tilman, is a genetics professor who decides he wants to find a wife. According to Simsion: ‘Don’s a 39-year-old professor of genetics who’s a little (OK, a lot) socially challenged. His life is well-organised, productive and just fine – except he wants a partner’ (Lamb 2014). The novel is written in first-person narrative. This approach allows the reader to experience how Don experiences the world, to have understanding or empathy for the approaches he takes and the challenges he faces in attempting to gain access to the socially challenging world of romantic love. The narrative can be understood around the social mobility challenges involved in his unconventional search for love. In this text this is not particularly manifest in Don’s physical movements but in the social expectations and norms commonly perceived by neurotypical others and used to navigate social spaces, but which are invisible to Don. Suggested topic question: ‘How does the protagonist’s movement set her apart from other forms of mobility and how does this relate to the narrative tropes of the text?’ This question reveals the complexity and dynamism of social relationships which are always mobile and changing. This context presents challenges for someone who has a preference towards the ordered. Simsion explains: ‘It’s about dealing with the complexity of society and the rules – often very trivial – that we are surrounded by. Don Tillman is uber-clunky: he needs to analyse everyone, so he makes visible to us just how many rules there are’ (Williams 2014). That is, Don Tillman is, compared to other people, rendered socially immobile in terms of access to a romantic relationship. A recurring theme in the novel is how he attempts to move in and gain access to this world of romantic mobility. For example, one of his scientific methods of finding a compatible partner is the development of a multi-question ‘Wife Project’ questionnaire. Don says, ‘I had resolved never to attend another singles party, but the questionnaire allowed me to avoid the agony of unstructured social interaction with strangers’ (Simsion, 2013, p. 37). The narrative is also about how, eventually, he finds love, or becomes romantically mobile, at the same time as experiencing social challenges compared with his partner: ‘Rosie had failed numerous criteria on the Wife Project, including the critical smoking question. My feelings for her could not be explained by logic. . . . I was in love with Rosie’ (Simsion 2013, p. 312, original emphasis).

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168  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Here we might re-frame slightly one of the theoretical influences raised by Sheller and Urry (2006) in ‘The new mobilities paradigm’. This influence ‘concerns the recentring of the corporeal body as an affective vehicle through which we sense place and movement and construct emotional geographies’ (Sheller and Urry 2006, p. 216). Within The Rosie Project, we might say there is a centrality of the mind concerning the approach to social sense-making as a key to romantic mobility. Here it is the differences of mind that need to be negotiated in order to construct a relationship, or to construct and navigate a type of shared emotional geography between the two main characters. Step 2 ●● ●●

What type of examples should I look for in the text? At what points in the text is the writer communicating, either manifestly or ­inferentially, particular meanings and ideas concerning the im/mobility of the characters?

We might view the following example from The Rosie Project as an inferential example of the ways in which Don attempts to gain access to a romantic relationship, despite the relative social immobility of his character concerning the negotiation of unspoken subtleties and social norms. Together, he and Rosie construct a shared emotional geography by, in effect, re-purposing time itself. At this moment in the text, Don meets his next candidate for ‘The Wife Project’, Rosie, when he goes on his first official date with her. A series of incidents end up with the pair leaving the restaurant they planned to eat at and taking an unscheduled diversion to eat instead at Don’s house. This is a departure from Don’s usual, scheduled standardised meal system. Don recalls the situation: I had another unexpected moment of feeling good as I recalculated times.   Rosie interrupted again. ‘If you were doing your usual schedule, what time would it be now?’   ‘6:38 p.m.’   The clock on the oven showed 9:09 p.m. Rosie located the controls and started adjusting the time. I realised what she was doing. A perfect solution. When she was finished, it showed 6:38 p.m. No recalculations required. I congratulated her on her thinking. ‘You’ve created a new time zone. Dinner will be ready at 8:55 p.m. – Rosie time.’   ‘Beats doing the maths’ she said.   Her observation gave me an opportunity for another Wife Project question. ‘Do you find mathematics difficult?’ (Simsion 2013, pp. 61–2)

Here we see Don struggling with the interruption to the rigidity with which he would usually plan, cook and time meals. Rosie reaches out and together they bridge the social divide with the creation of ‘Rosie time’. However, Don, while experiencing ‘another unexpected moment of feeling good’ remains primarily focused on his ultimate goal of finding a wife who meets the criteria, as defined by his ‘Wife Project’ questionnaire. Step 3 ●●

How do I relate these examples to secondary sources related to but external from the text itself ?

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Investigating mobilities with literary methods  169 ●●

What links are there between the writer text and the mobile world in which they produced that text?

In connection with secondary material for this novel, I came across written and recorded interviews with the author as well as reviews of the novel itself. What stood out here, in relation to the trope of the challenges of navigating a neurotypically dominated social world, gaining romantic mobility and drawing on the perspective of autism, were a set of sometimes internally contradictory layers, each linked to the external context within which the text itself was constructed. The first layer we might discuss is how Simsion went about researching and creating the character of Don Tillman. On creating the character of Don Tillman, Simsion notes that he based this character on some of his own experiences as a middle-aged man, as well as his observations from working with people in academe and in the information technology sector (Lamb 2014). He clarifies a key character trait which can lead to instances of Don’s social immobilisation: ‘to Don Tillman every problem looks like a science problem’ (Lamb 2014). Here we see some of the writer’s inspiration for the scientific approaches of the romantically immobilised Don attempting to gain access to the world of love, manifesting as the ‘Wife Project’ questionnaire, and the re-negotiation of the standardised meal system. We might also use secondary information to investigate another analytical layer – a relational layer. That is, the scholar might look at how Simsion both juxtaposes and reveals similarities between the character of Don and his romantic interest, Rosie. In doing so, he particularly highlights Don’s scientific approach to romantic social problems. In an interview, Simsion notes that the character development process was influenced by ‘25 years working in information technology and meeting colleagues’ partners!’ (Lamb 2014). In terms of juxtaposing the Rosie character to Don he says: ‘I rewrote it with a character who was superficially the opposite to what Don wanted’ (Lamb 2014). That is, owing to the similarities in their approach and the ability of Rosie to understand and empathise with Don’s scientific approach to life and relationships, a space opens up in which to mutually construct an emotional geography. Despite some misgivings along the way, the example referred to above relates to a mutually constructed ‘Rosie time’ as symbolic of a kind of romantic mobilisation. This leads into the third layer we might deconstruct by looking at examples in the text and secondary material pertaining to its writer; that is, the plane of universality. Here, Simsion relates both Don’s experience as someone with autism and his relationship in terms of universal experience. It could be interesting to analyse whether this may be a discursive technique to deter interviewers and audiences from their fixation on whether the representation in the text of a protagonist with autism is authentic. The following extract is from one review. The reviewer comments and then quotes Simsion: ‘And, he [Simsion] insists, Don-a-likes are not exactly unusual: “Almost everybody who comes to a book launch seems to know somebody like Don”’ (Williams 2014). In a similar vein, Simsion is also quoted as follows: ‘Some of the Asperger’s characteristics are simply stronger forms of attributes we all have to some extent – social awkwardness, discomfort with uncertainty, need for our own space. The desire for connection which drives the story is close to universal, and so too the fear that we will not find it’ (Lamb 2014). Here the writer would appear to expound that the experiences of the individuals, Don and Rosie, and their experiences together are universally relatable. However, do critics of

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170  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities the novel concur with Simsion’s discourse concerning the meanings the reader might take away from the text? One book reviewer implies that the construction of a character with autism who, despite a scientifically dominated world view of life, falls in love, and is thus in some way emotionally mobilised, is almost dehumanising, or a misappropriation or misrepresentation of people with autistic experience and how individuals might find love. This critique reads: ‘[S]imsion ultimately undoes his good work by implying that love can conquer all. As Nick Hornby – the father of an autistic son – has written, it’s a mistake to believe that people with autism must contain a “normal” personality “trapped inside, waiting for release”’ (Scott 2013).

4. CONCLUSION Mobilities and the Study of Literature In writing this chapter my primary focus was on positing a repeatable methodological framework for the cultural analysis of literature. There are some challenges in analysing a text which is more pop culture than high literature. In the text analysed here, the negotiation, understanding of, and access to, a form of mobility is more about a constructed emotional geography or a romantic journey than about a more tangible physical form mobility or voyage. There are analytical challenges in that the writer is portraying this narrative trope of negotiating difference in the search to become romantically mobile. Emotional or romantic mobility itself is more inferential than manifest. However, I think that just because these areas make the textual analysis more challenging, this fact in itself would warrant further testing of the three-step approach, that is, to see what can be revealed in different modes of textual representation, and, in particular, at the emotional level. We can test just how far approaches from mobilities studies’ literary theories can be combined and tested in non-traditional ways to bring further understanding and perspectives to the mobile world in which we live, produce, consume and make meaning. That is, I think that the possibilities for applying this type of unconventional approach are probably insightful and potentially unending. A Fixation with Authenticity At the beginning of this chapter I noted that my approach was not to do an analysis of the text in order to judge whether the writer had created an authentic portrayal of a character with autism. This is an area that comes up in interviews with Simsion. Again, I hesitate to suggest that it is the role of the average mobilities scholar (that is, without requisite medical or psychological background) to analyse the authenticity of the portrayal of autistic characters in literature. However, I think it may be productive to look at two areas in this vein. First, why, at this moment in time, is there a choice by writers to textually represent the life worlds and experiences of (usually male) autistic heroes? Future research questions might include: ‘What is behind the growing emergence of creative professionals who choose to explore fictional representations of (predominantly male) protagonists on the autism spectrum?’ ‘What types of emotional and physical mobilities are commonly represented in such

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Investigating mobilities with literary methods  171 texts?’ ‘What do different modes of representation – written texts, television and genres, romantic comedy, drama, action film, and so on – bring to the fore in these representations of mobile experience?’ A second bundle of research question might be: ‘In terms of criticism, what types of discourses are manifesting in terms of value judgements of the work of writers constructing “authentic” portrayals of characters with autism?’ ‘What type of criticisms emerge, and from whom, and how do writers and characters respond in terms of justifying authenticity or dispelling a need for this particular focus?’ Simsion, for example, makes note of approval, from the persons with autism or people in their communities, of the authenticity of Don as a representative character (Lamb 2014; Williams 2014). Where to Next? In focusing on the application of theory, and setting out and providing examples for a three-step process to analysing literature from a mobilities perspective, I hope to have added some impetus to the mobilisation of mobilities theory itself into new areas. To me, the main power in the methodological approach set out in this chapter is in combining the enabling qualities of a mobilities approach – to deconstruct, to allow for the coexistence of simultaneous contradiction and to test traditional fixity and l­ inearity – with the analysis of the creation of a text in conjunction with the lived experience of the writer who produces that text. That is, we can analyse a text in multiple layers of constructed and lived mobile experience and make inferences about the multidirectional influence of representation and readers’ consumption of texts. There are then additional opportunities for comparisons across themes, time periods and modes of representation. The potential here is exciting, and the options are limitless.

REFERENCES Fainaru, D. (2001b), ‘The human experience in one gaze’, in D. Fainaru (ed.), Theo Angelopoulos: Interviews, Mississippi, MS: University of Mississippi, pp. 93–100. Lamb, C. (2014), ‘Author to author interview: Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project’, Cathy Lamb, 7 January, viewed 15 September 2018 at cathylamb.org/2014/01/author-interview-graeme-simsion-the-rosie-project. Perkins, A. (2016), ‘Travel texts and moving cultures: German literature and the mobilities turn’, G. Schulz and T. Mehigan (eds), Australian and New Zealand Studies in German Language and Literature, vol. 22, Berne: Peter Lang. Scott, C. (2013), ‘The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion: review’, Telegraph, 30 April, accessed 15 September 2018 at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10027297/The-Rosie-Project-by-Graeme-Simsion-review. html. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2006), ‘The new mobilities paradigm’, Environment and Planning A, 38 (2), 207–26. Simsion, G. (2013), The Rosie Project, Melbourne: Text. Williams, H. (2014), ‘Interview: Graeme Simsion on the success of his first novel and his nerves when writing a sequel’, Independent, 21 September, accessed 15 September 2018 at https://www.independent.co.uk/artsentertainment/interviews/interview-graeme-simsion-on-the-runaway-of-his-first-novel-and-the-nerves-whenwriting-a-sequel-9745013.html.

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16.  Vital mobilities*

Stephanie Sodero and Richard Rackham

INTRODUCTION How do we move things when it really matters? This chapter introduces the concept of vital mobilities, focusing on blood as a compelling and complex example. Vital mobilities are movements of goods, people and information that impact life chances. They constitute ongoing circuits of care that are required in everyday contexts and can be intensified during crisis. First, we theorize vital mobilities, extending Adey’s (2016) work on emergency mobilities. Second, we discuss two events, the Manchester bombing (2017) and the Filton flood (2012), to illustrate challenges specific to the vital mobilities of blood. Third, we flag areas for research and application: everyday, disruptions and futures. Vital mobilities offer researchers and practitioners a concept with which to analyze priority movements, both in the context of everyday circulations and in response to disruptive events, such as bombings and floods. It is a sister concept to Adey’s emergency mobility. Emergency mobility focuses on issues of governance in the context of disaster. Vital mobilities offer a different perspective by focusing on movement of goods, people and information in the context of everyday and crisis. Vital mobilities is apt for a future where disruption is commonplace. For example, climate change, including extreme weather and carbon constraint raise difficult questions about societal mobility priorities (Urry 2013). Transport planners, disaster managers and community organizers can use a vital mobilities lens to analyze, frame and address priority mobilities in an era of climate change and societal disruption, such as the global COVID-19 pandemic.

VITAL MOBILITIES Thirsty, we turn on the tap. Sick, we visit the pharmacy. Injured, we go to hospital. This is a typical Western experience of what we term vital mobilities, that is, mobilities of goods, people and information that impact life chances. They are external circulations that enable internal bodily circulations necessary to life. Of myriad global mobilities, these are the mobilities most required and, arguably, most taken for granted, until they are absent and the ‘infrastructural backstage of . . . life becomes startlingly visible’ (Graham 2014, p. 471). The term vital draws on three concepts: vital signs, vital systems and vital materialities. First, vital signs refer to the observation of and, if necessary, intervention in the key indicators of life: respiration rate, pulse rate, body temperature and blood pressure (Sell et al. 2012). The performance of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), where air is transferred and circulated from one human to another, is a basic and intimate expression of vital mobilities (Ikeya 2003; see also Scarry 2011). Second, vital systems security focuses on maintaining critical infrastructure (Collier and Lakoff 2015). The field is a 172

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Vital mobilities  173 product of Cold War preoccupation with the vulnerability of large-scale and interlinked infrastructure systems – transport networks, power grids and water supplies – to intentional, accidental or natural disasters. Vital systems security draws on measures, such as stockpiling goods, decentralizing services and building in redundancies, to ensure and govern vital flows. Third, vital materialism highlights the role materials play in shaping society. Bennett (2010) looks at the agency of food that sustains life, such as omega fatty acids in fish oil that regulate human mood and stem cells that repair human life. She describes these as vibrant materialities that course ‘alongside and inside humans’ (Bennett 2010, p. viii). She softens conceptual boundaries between body and environment, as well as between life and matter. Bringing together the concepts of vital signs, vital systems and vital materialities, we introduce vital mobilities as an extension of the mobilities paradigm apt for a time of growing disruption exacerbated by climate change (see Chapter 3 in this volume) and global inequalities (see Chapter 1 in this volume). Redfield (2008) uses the term ‘vital mobility’ to frame the movement of humanitarian goods. Here, we expand, the concept of vital mobilities to include: ●● ●● ●●

goods (for example, oxygen, saline intravenous solution, insulin, vaccines and epipens) (for example, Chapter 26 in this volume); people (for example, chemotherapy patients, dialysis patients, home care workers, utility crews, aid workers and refugees); and information (for example, patient records, votes, early warning systems and telemedicine) (for example, Rizza et al. 2017).

In addition to what is being moved, vital mobilities can be categorized by circumstances that trigger mobility: ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●● ●●

acute medical conditions (for example, avian flu; Lavau 2014); chronic medical conditions (for example, tuberculosis; Kiel 2014); human tissues (for example, blood; Morgan et al. 2015); humanitarian goods (for example, emergency shelters; Fredriksen 2014); peacekeeping (for example, medical evacuations; vanDongen 2017); search and rescue (for example, night training exercises; Yarwood 2012); social services (for example, food banks; Davis et al. 2014); and utilities (for example, urban infrastructure; Graham 2014).

To this we add vital immobilities, movements of goods, people and information that are to be prevented to increase life chances. Examples include self-isolation and quarantine measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, poison control services and the containment of radiation. These lists are generative, rather than exhaustive; a starting point for researching and applying vital mobilities. Drawing on the metaphor of blood, we term successful movement as circulation and obstructed or failed movement as coagulation (see Sodero 2018). Circulation is used in diverse ways in mobilities scholarship. In medicine, Wood (2016) describes the circulation of knowledge entailed in medical equipment engineering. In urban studies, Usher (2014) examines how approaches to water circulation in Singapore shifted from discipline, that

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174  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities is, controlling water, to security, that is, working with natural hydrocycles. Coagulated vital mobilities include large-scale lack of access to humanitarian supplies, as in besieged Yemen (Nikbakht and McKenzie 2018), and widespread power outages disrupting electricity-dependent medical equipment, such as incubators, sterilizers and cold chains, in post-hurricane Puerto Rico (Hernandez et al. 2017). When Hurricane Maria, a category 5 hurricane, hit Puerto Rico it impacted health care on and beyond the island. Power outages resulting from the hurricane shut down a major producer of saline solution. This is the mundane but vital substance used in intravenous (IV) bags to dilute and transport all other medications into the bodies of patients. Lack of production in Puerto Rico translated into shortages in mainland United States. As a result, nurses administered medication directly into patient IV lines, which is comparatively time-consuming and risky (Wong 2018). Hurricane Maria exposed vulnerabilities in and beyond Puerto Rico. The storm raises questions about which mobilities, such as electricity and saline solution, are vital to health care delivery. Such vital mobilities need to be prioritized and ensured every day, as well as in the case of disruptive events.

EMERGENCY MOBILITIES Vital mobilities complement and extend Adey’s work on the ‘inescapable pairs’ of emergency and mobility (Adey 2016, p. 32). Adey observes that emergencies, ‘whether in flight or in response . . . demand highly intensive forms of movement that radically transform one’s life chances and quality of life’ (Adey 2016, p. 32). Adey focuses on the governance of emergency mobilities, which center on efforts to organize ‘activities, practices, technologies . . . so as to get things moving again’ (Adey 2016, p. 36, emphasis added). A return to normal is the driving imperative. We introduce vital mobilities as a sister concept to emergency mobilities. We highlight three differences. First, while techniques, ethics and politics of mobility are a focus of both, emergency mobility highlights issues of governance, while vital mobility foregrounds movement of goods, people and information. Though governance and mobility are components of each, there is a difference in entry point and emphasis. Second, vital mobilities are non-optional (distinguished from Ormond 2015, on elite international medical travel). Mobility, whether of goods, people or information, must be accomplished to safeguard life. Lack of mobility translates into decreased quality of life and, at an extreme, mortality. Third, while vital mobilities are critical, in that they must occur, they are not necessarily constitutive of an emergency. For example, as part of standard practice, hospitals require stocked blood banks. This practice occurs regardless of whether there is an emergency. While what constitutes vital is contextual, our focus here is on external societal circulations that enable internal bodily circulations necessary to life. Such a framing focuses on the physical requirements of life, highlighting and blurring the critical and complex mobilities entailed in the perceived boundaries between external supply chains and internal biological functioning. The focus is on the human rather than the citizen: ‘the field of humanitarian concern is clearly focused on the fluid and expansive conception of vital need, spread beyond the citizen to the figure of the human’ (Redfield 2008, p. 163; see also Agamben 1998 on bare, biological life versus quality of life). Adey and Anderson (2011, p. 2883) relate this to decision-making in the space-time of emergency, arguing that such

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Vital mobilities  175 decisions call on ‘us to ask about the relation with life that is enacted, or promised, as decisions are made and taken’ (see also Chapter 2 in this volume). The mobilities that define much of society are not external and at a distance but constitute bodies and enable life.

BLOOD MOBILITIES Focusing on blood as one expression of vital mobility illustrates the dynamic temporalities, spatialities and rhythms at play. In terms of humanitarian efforts, Fredriksen (2014, p. 149) frames the challenge as untangling the ‘relationships between mobility, materiality, and temporality’. Dynamics of blood mobilities are ever changing. In the UK, infrastructure is undergoing consolidation with the number of blood-testing and manufacturing units declining from ten each (in 2005), to two and three respectively (in 2018). Demand for blood is decreasing as minimally invasive keyhole surgery results in reduced blood loss. However, demand for specific blood types is increasing as the ethnic profile of the country diversifies. Rising rates of international air travel translate into higher risk from non-endemic blood-borne diseases, such as Zika virus and West Nile virus. Further, global warming is contributing to disease migration. West Nile virus, now endemic in southeastern Europe, seasonally migrates westward and is included in routine testing of blood donated in the UK (Semenza et al. 2016). We profile two blood-supply challenges experienced in the UK by NHS Blood and Transplant, the National Health Service body responsible for blood donation, manufacturing and transfusion: the Manchester bombing and the Filton flood (see also Sodero and Rackham 2018). They illustrate the complexity, including circulations and coagulations, entailed in achieving vital mobilities.

MANCHESTER BOMBING On 22 May 2017, a bomb was detonated at the Manchester Arena where approximately 14 000 people attended Ariana Grande’s ‘Dangerous Woman’ concert. Immediately following the performance (at 10.30 p.m.), a bomb containing nuts and bolts exploded in the arena’s foyer, which is located above a major train station. National emergency preparedness plans were activated (Kerslake 2018). In total, 160 people were assessed in hospital and 22 individuals died. In May 2018, it was estimated that 800 individuals were experiencing physical and psychological injury (Doughty et al. 2018). In the immediate aftermath of a mass casualty event, the identification of individuals, including their blood types, is a challenge for first responders (Noël et al. 2017). It takes two hours to identify the blood type of a given individual. The protocol in circumstances where there is a lack of patient information is to infuse O negative red blood cells (Doughty et al. 2016). O negative is referred to as the universal donor, as most people, regardless of blood type, can receive it. However, while high in demand, it tends to be low in supply. Approximately 8 to 10 per cent of the donor population has O negative blood. In everyday contexts, there is pressure on O negative stocks, accounting for 12 to 14 per cent of blood products issued. Demand exceeds supply. In times of crisis, O negative is often over-ordered threefold given uncertainties about the number and condition of

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176  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities casualties, as well as duration and extent of the inciting event (Glasgow et al. 2012; Noël et al. 2017). A further factor that needed to be accounted for in the allocation of blood supplies, specific to the Manchester attack, was that girls and women were disproportionately impacted as they made up most of the concert audience. Seventeen (77 per cent) of the fatalities were female and ten (45 per cent) were under the age of 20. It is standard protocol to ensure that women under the age of 60 are given blood that is rhesus negative (Glasgow et al. 2012; Noël et al. 2017). Rhesus positive blood can cause an immune response which compromises current or future pregnancies. Owing to the concert demographics, O negative was over-ordered between fivefold and sixfold to ensure adequate supply. Of the 163 units of O negative red cells shipped to six Manchester hospitals, 31 units were transfused. Of these, 28 units were transfused as emergency O negative (Doughty et al. 2018). Given the nature of trauma that results from a bombing, a small number of those injured require large volumes of blood (Noël et al. 2017). Following the 2005 London bombing, 25 of 700 (4 per cent) casualties required blood transfusion, and of this one patient received 91 of the total 400 red blood cell units transfused during the incident aftermath (Glasgow et al. 2012). Following the Manchester bombing, O negative stocks were impacted as almost half of all blood ordered was O negative. Local stock was recovered by transporting blood around the country the day after the attack. A surge in public donation, together with normal blood service practices, ensured that stock recovered nationally.

FILTON FLOOD The Filton Blood Centre is the institutional heart that permits the circulation of blood throughout England. Located in the southwest, the center opened in 2008 and is the largest blood manufacturing center in Europe (17 400 square meters). Within England, of all donated blood, approximately 40 per cent is processed and more than 60 per cent is tested at this 24-hour facility. It is the physical location of key services, including the British Bone Marrow Registry, the International Blood Group Reference Laboratory and the National Cord Blood Bank. Given the importance of the facility, regular emergency preparedness exercises are undertaken to test staff and system readiness. One of these exercises, ‘Arizona’ (in 2010), was premised on a two-vehicle accident on the main road connecting the Filton facility to the rest of the UK. Such a scenario was considered plausible, while other scenarios, such as flooding and power outages, were considered less likely. With the road blocked, how would vital blood products get to the facility for testing and processing, and from Filton for distribution to local hospitals and stock-holding units located around England? For an incident that affected access to the center, rather than the center itself, the effects were significant. Donated blood due for processing, together with samples for testing were stuck on the road; the clock was ticking in terms of complying with regulatory requirements for processing times. Staff were unable to get to work, and those at work, unable to leave. Arizona, though specific to a car crash, offered principles transferable to other disruptive events, namely, evacuate staff and blood products. Lessons learned from

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Vital mobilities  177 this exercise are in place, such as diverting work nationally, expanding staff emergency contacts and implementing a large-scale emergency planning system. Adey and Anderson (2011, p. 2895) observe that ‘decisions are almost always taken at the limits, edges, or just inside established, previously exercised, plans or protocols’. Two years after ‘Exercise Arizona’, on 24 September 2012, the preparedness of the Filton facility and larger blood system was tested by reality. After a wet summer, there was a 1 in 30-year precipitation event on 23 and 24 September. The risk of flooding in the area was known, but the Filton Blood Centre was designed to withstand a 1 in 200-year flooding event. While the facility itself was prepared, it does not exist in isolation. A culvert on an adjacent property, not owned by the National Health Service, was partially collapsed and blocked. Water pumps were overwhelmed, resulting in the flooding of an adjacent field. Within 20 minutes of the facility breach (8.00 a.m.), the manufacturing floor was covered in 20 centimeters of water. Other parts of the center were flooded to depths between 5 and 20 centimeters. Within an hour all communication, data and electrical service was lost (see Savitzky 2018 on flood-blackout events). National Health Service officials ordered an evacuation, comprising 600 staff, 12 000 blood products and equipment such as freezers. The evacuation occurred over six hours. Measures included using refrigerated trucks as temporary cold rooms and activating re-provisioning plans (see Morgan et al. 2015 for detailed chronology). The Filton Blood Centre was physically and metaphorically islanded (Sheller 2013). The size of the facility, as well as its central role in UK blood provision, posed unprecedented challenges. Blood products were packed and moved to other stock-holding units, such as Birmingham. Distribution was based on the National Hospital Service’s re-provisioning plan, which details what back-up locations are to be used should a given site fail. This was effective but complicated by the fact that the plan had not kept pace with two recent consolidations. The evacuation of staff, blood products and equipment, the immediate priority, was only the first-wave effect. Receiving facilities not only accepted blood products, but attendant workloads. The labor of testing, manufacturing and stockholding was redistributed, resulting in longer work hours, longer delivery journeys and donated blood being redirected to different sites. The Filton Blood Centre needed to be cleaned using existing and contracted staff. An external team from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency recertified the site. Finally, the facility was restocked. After initial flooding, it took 14 days to return to business as usual. Externally, the disruption was unnoticed as production was maintained and service to hospitals undisrupted. From a business contingency perspective, this is a key marker of success. The aim is not an unrealistic one of entirely avoiding disruption, but to manage disruptions so that the users of the system – medical staff, patients and families – are unaware that contingency plans were enacted. Internally, the flood did not result in a loss of donated blood. However, it did result in significant loss of consumable products, such as testing kits, and the intensification of staff time and energy across numerous facilities. The incident was debriefed across the organization and triggered a fundamental review of emergency procedures and a commitment to involve business continuity staff in future consolidations, so responses could be built into planning instead of designed afterwards.

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DISCUSSION The Manchester bombing and Filton flood are two vastly different challenges to achieving the vital mobilities of blood, epitomizing circulation and coagulation, respectively. One demonstrates emergency planning and the other business continuity. The bombing required ramping up to meet an external need, while the flood affected internal business as usual. Sources of disruption range from the intentional detonation of an explosive device in an urban area, to the innocuous blockage of a neglected and remote culvert. From the perspective of vital mobilities, the bombing occurred downstream, triggering high demand for blood products, while the flood disrupted operations upstream, in production. Despite the scale of the flood, there was no impact on the delivery of health care. Staff, however, experienced stress evacuating blood products; accommodating testing, manufacturing and distributing duties; and cleaning and recertifying the Filton facility. By contrast, the impacts of the Manchester bombing on health care were acute, given the number of casualties and long-term physical and psychological trauma. NHS Blood and Transplant, as an organization, was positioned to respond to this type of event with sufficient blood stock, staff capacity and protocol knowledge. Its capacities were challenged, but not exceeded, falling within the range of anticipated scenarios. We use the phrase ‘range of anticipated scenarios’ with care, as there are too many scenarios to plan for specifically. A plan manages a generalized impact. There is no plan for a bomb in Manchester, but there is a plan for a mass casualty event that suddenly increases demand for blood. There is no plan for a flood at Filton, but there is a plan for the loss of any blood center. These events are within the range of anticipated scenarios. Terrorism and severe weather are two anticipated sources of disruption to the movement of blood as a vital mobility. The UK has experienced mass casualty events in recent years. The largest was the 2005 London bombing with 56 fatalities. In 2017, in addition to the Manchester bombing, there was the Westminster Bridge attack (22 March), the London Bridge attack (3 June), the Finsbury Park mosque attack (19 June) and the Parsons Green train bombing (15 September). A 2017 ransomware attack impacted the  UK’s National Health Service, resulting in inaccessible patient records, diverted ambulances and cancelled operations (Grierson and Gibbs 2017). Within the UK, emergency blood services response to such mass casualty events is evolving (Doughty et al. 2016). Blood services are increasingly partnering with emergency preparedness, resilience and response organizations, and refining response measures, such as determining, in advance, response capability within the critical first hour of an event (Doughty et al. 2016). As regards climate change, flooding impacts the UK. Carbon-intensive transport contributes to climate change and, in turn, climate change disrupts transport. Flooding in the northwest, such as Storm Desmond (in 2015) disrupted the blood collection network. In the short term, flooding prevented the movement of donors and blood workers. In the long term, prolonged road closures, detours and construction resulted in the permanent closure of an established donation center and required reconfiguring regional logistics (Mobile Futures Design Workshop 2017). Savitzky (2018), reflecting on Storm Desmond, describes the scramble to demobilize and remobilize complex systems. Similar impacts were experienced during fuel protests (in 2000) and the outbreak of foot-and-mouth

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Vital mobilities  179 disease (in 2001) (see Law 2006). All saw the closure of roads, delays in transport and disruption of logistics. Health care and emergency services, as national infrastructure systems, are vulnerable to disruption, including climate change impacts (Iacobucci 2016). Especially significant are the acquisition of emergency medical supplies and impacts on essential medical travel during extreme weather events (Pitt 2007; Marsden et al. 2016). The frequency of disruption begs the question: what are the implications if two events, such as a terrorist attack and flood, occur at the same time? As Savitzky (2018) emphasizes, independent and cascading disruptions constitute a new normal. Understanding the implications for vital mobilities is critical.

VITAL (MOBILITIES) RESEARCH AND APPLICATION Two events, a bombing and a flood, are a gateway into understanding the routine and taken-for-granted societal circulation of blood as an example of a compelling and complex vital mobility. Theorization of vital mobilities, informed by vital signs, vital systems and vital materialities, lifts the black box of smoothly functioning systems and asks: what is entailed in the journey of vital mobilities from the point of donation or manufacture to the point of care? What social-technical assemblages permit and perform vital mobilities? What needs to be moved to permit life? What temporalities, spatialities and rhythms characterize vital mobilities? Examining the mobilities and immobilities specific to vital mobilities is a rich area for research and application. We propose three broad areas to frame a vital mobilities research agenda: ●● ●● ●●

Everyday – how do vital mobilities of goods, people and information circulate in everyday, routine circumstances? Disruptions – what are actual and potential sources of disruption? What contingencies are possible? How might disruptions cascade and compound? Futures – in the face of mobility scarcity, how are vital mobilities prioritized? How might vital mobilities be reconfigured to more equitably enhance life chances?

The frequency of terrorist and severe weather events in the UK, and the impact on just one facet of health care, blood supply, hints at the profound knock-on effects, that is, coagulations, created by disruptive events. Research is needed into how vital mobilities circulate every day, move (or fail to move) in the face of disruption, and the potential future transitions and reconfigurations (for example, Chapter 5 in this volume). This research can assist practitioners, including contingency planners and disaster managers, in thinking through how to mitigate impacts on health care delivery, especially for the most vulnerable users. Adey and Anderson (2011, p. 2883) ask us to reflect on the ‘relation with life that is enacted, or promised, as decisions are made and taken’. Vital mobilities asks how, given the likelihood of disruptive events – including severe weather, terrorism and a global pandemic – and related temporary and permanent mobility disruption, can we prioritize and ensure the movements of goods, people and information needed to sustain and improve life?

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NOTE * The authors acknowledge NHS Blood and Transplant staff, as well as the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Lancaster University’s Centre for Mobilities Research.

REFERENCES Adey, P. (2016), ‘Emergency mobilities’, Mobilities, 11 (1), 32–48. Adey, P. and B. Anderson (2011), ‘Event and anticipation: UK civil contingencies and the space-time of decision’, Environment and Planning A, 43 (12), 2878–99. Agamben, G. (1998), Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. D. Heller-Roazen, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bennett, J. (2010), Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Collier, S. and A. Lakoff (2015), ‘Vital systems security: reflexive biopolitics and the government of emergency’, Theory, Culture & Society, 32 (2), 19–51. Davis, L., I. Sengul, J. Ivy, L. Brock and L. Miles (2014), ‘Scheduling food bank collections and deliveries to ensure food safety and improve access’, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 48 (3), 175–88. Doughty, H., S. Glasgow and E. Kristoffersen (2016), ‘Mass casualty events: blood transfusion emergency preparedness across the continuum of care’, Transfusion, 56 (April), 208–16. Doughty, H., E. Watkins and K. Pendry (2018), ‘Blood service support following the 2017 Manchester concert bombing’, Bloodlines, 127, 28–32. Fredriksen, A. (2014), ‘Emergency shelter topologies: locating humanitarian space in mobile and materials practice’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32 (1), 147–62. Glasgow, S., S. Allard, H. Doughty, P. Spreadborough and E. Watkins (2012), ‘Blood and bombs: the demand and use of blood following the London Bombings of 7 July 2005 – a retrospective review’, Transfusion Medicine, 22 (4), 244–50. Graham, S. (2014), ‘Disruptions’, in P. Adey, D. Bissell, K. Hannam, P. Merriman and M. Sheller (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities, New York: Routledge, pp. 468–71. Grierson, J. and S. Gibbs (2017), ‘NHS cyber-attack causing disruption one week after breach’, Guardian, 19 May. Hernandez, A., W. Leaming and Z. Murphy (2017), ‘How Puerto Rico power outages affect citizens after Hurricane Maria’, Washington Post, 14 December. Iacobucci, G. (2016), ‘NHS is unprepared for risks posed by climate change, warn leading UK health bodies’, British Medical Journal, 352 (1781), doi:10.1136/bmj.i1781. Ikeya, N. (2003), ‘Practical management of mobility: the case of the emergency medical system’, Environment and Planning A, 35 (9), 1537–64. Kerslake, B. (2018), ‘The Kerslake report: an independent review into the preparedness for, and emergency response to, the Manchester Arena attack on May 22nd, 2017’, accessed 23 March 2020 at https://www.jesip. org.uk/uploads/media/Documents%20Products/Kerslake_Report_Manchester_Are.pdf. Kiel, R. (2014), ‘Disease’, in P. Adey, D. Bissell, K. Hannam, P. Merriman and M. Sheller (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities, New York: Routledge, pp. 388–97. Lavau, S. (2014), ‘Viruses’, in P. Adey, D. Bissell, K. Hannam, P. Merriman and M. Sheller (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities, New York: Routledge, pp. 298–305. Law, J. (2006), ‘Disaster in agriculture: or foot and mouth mobilities’, Environment and Planning A, 38 (2), 227–39. Marsden, G., J. Anable, J. Shires and I. Docherty (2016), ‘Managing major disruption interim report for Transport Scotland’, accessed 23 March 2020 at http://www.disruptionproject.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Manag​ ing-Major-Disruption-Workshop-Interim-Report-28-11-16.pdf. Mobile Futures Design Workshop (2017), ‘Mobile Futures Design Workshop: disaster, flooding, disruption’, Lancaster University, accessed 23 March 2020 at https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/cemore/mobile-futures-designwork​shop-disaster-flooding-disruption/. Morgan, S., R. Rackham, S. Penny, J. Lawson, J. Walsh and S. Ismay (2015), ‘Business continuity in blood services: two case studies from events with potentially catastrophic effect on the national provision of blood components’, VoxSanguinis, 108 (2), 150–59. Nikbakht, D. and S. McKenzie (2018), ‘The Yemen war is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, UN says’, CNN. 3 April. Noël, S., A. Francois, F. LeFailler, F. Charpentier, T. Baudonnet, P. Bierling, et al. (2017), ‘Lessons learned from Paris and Nice’, International Society of Blood Transfusion Science Series, 13 (1), special issue, 35–46.

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Vital mobilities  181 Ormond, M. (2015), ‘En route: transport and embodiment in international medical travel journeys between Indonesia and Malaysia, Mobilities, 10 (2), 285–303. Pitt, M. (2007), The Pitt Review: Learning Lessons from the 2007 Floods, London: UK Cabinet Office, accessed 23 March 2020 at https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100812084907/http:/archive.cabinetoffice. gov.uk/pittreview/_/media/assets/www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/flooding_review/pitt_review_full%20pdf.pdf. Redfield, P. (2008), ‘Vital mobility and the humanitarian kit’, in A. Lakoff and S. Collier (eds), Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 147–72. Rizza, C., M. Büscher and W. Hayley (2017), ‘Working with data: Ethical, legal and social considerations surrounding the use of crisis data and information sharing during a crisis’, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 25 (1), 2–6. Savitzky, S. (2018), ‘Scrambled systems: the (im)mobilities of “Storm Desmond”’, Mobilities, 13 (5), 662–84. Scarry, E. (2011), Thinking in an Emergency, New York: W.W. Norton. Sell, R., M. Rothenberg and C. Chapman (2012), ‘Vital signs’, in R. Sell, M. Rothenberg and C. Chapman, Dictionary of Medical Terms, 6th edn, Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series. Semenza, J., A. Tran, L. Esinosa, B. Sudre, D. Domanovic and S. Paz (2016), ‘Climate change projections of West Nile virus infections in Europe: implications for blood safety practices’, Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source, 8 (15), 1–28. Sheller, M. (2013), ‘Islanding effects: post-disaster mobility systems and humanitarian logistics in Haiti’, Cultural Geographies, 20 (2), 185–204. Sodero, S. (2018), ‘Vital mobilities: circulating blood via fictionalized vignettes’, Cultural Geographies, 26 (1), 109–25. Sodero, S. and R. Rackham (2018), ‘Circulating blood: a conversation between Stephanie Sodero and Richard Rackham on vital mobilities in the UK’, Applied Mobilities, 4 (1), 124–31. Urry, J. (2013), Oil and Society, London: Zed Books. Usher, M. (2014), ‘Veins of concrete, cities of flow: reasserting the centrality of circulation in Foucault’s analytics of government’, Mobilities, 9 (4), 550–69. VanDongen, T., J. de Graaf, M. Plat, E. Huizinga, J. Janse, A. van der Krans, et al. (2017), ‘Evaluating the military medical evacuation chain: need for expeditious evacuation out of theater?’, Military Medicine, 182 (9), 1864–70. Wong, J. (2018), ‘Hospitals face critical shortage of IV bags dues to Puerto Rico hurricane’, Guardian, 10 January. Wood, L. (2016), ‘Organising the machine: Material-discursive practices and mobile medical equipment engineers’, Applied Mobilities, 1 (2), 161–75. Yarwood, R. (2012), ‘One moor night: emergencies, training and rural space’, Area, 44 (1), 22–8.

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17.  Tracing human mobilities through mobile phones Siiri Silm, Olle Järv and Anu Masso

1. INTRODUCTION We live in an ever-mobile, digital and globalized network society, and we witness constant mobilities of people in physical, social and virtual space (Canzler et al. 2008). Given the mobilities turn in social sciences, we know why we need to study human mobilities (Sheller and Urry 2016). Yet, how do we examine human (im)mobilities precisely in practice? One feasible possibility is to apply the mobile positioning approach; tracing locations of mobile phones through time and physical (potentially social and virtual) space. This chapter focuses on mobile positioning as a novel approach to examine the spatio-temporal mobility of people and population dynamics to better manage and plan more sustainable societies. Mobile phones provide a unique opportunity to study human mobility, as they are the most popular mobile technology; more than 5 billion people in the world have a mobile phone and the number of users are increasing (GSMA Intelligence 2018). Mobile positioning enables us to collect individual data, such as conventional travel diaries and surveys. However, mobile positioning also provides more accurate spatio-temporal information than conventional methods, and data can be collected almost in real time. Moreover, mobile positioning data is automatically collected and inherently digital. This helps to lower respondents’ response burden and to obtain spatio-temporal human mobility more objectively; it excludes respondent’s (un)intentional selectivity and memory gaps in filling in traditional travel surveys. The mobile positioning method was first implemented in the early 2000s (Asakura and Hato 2004). One of the first to use mobile positioning to study the spatial phenomena of a society was Rein Ahas, human geography professor at the University of Tartu and the founder of Mobility Lab (http://mobilitylab.ut.ee). He defined it as the social positioning method, a means for collecting and analysing data which combines spatio-temporal information with the phone user’s social variables (Ahas and Mark 2005). To date, mobile phones are considered as proxies for people, and several research groups and leading scholars are developing the mobile positioning method and implementing it in very different research fields (Onnela et al. 2007; Silm and Ahas 2014a; Cinnamon et al. 2016; Shoval and Ahas 2016; Järv et al. 2018). Next, we provide a brief overview on different mobile positioning methods and its implementation for social good. Finally, we address ethical challenges, and conclude by reflecting on future research directions in human mobilities research and beyond.

2.  MOBILE POSITIONING DATA Collecting mobile positioning data is technically possible in each mobile operator network and for each mobile phone. However, the exact positioning method varies across mobile 182

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Tracing human mobilities through mobile phones  183 network operators and the hardware and software used. The mobile positioning data consists of two core elements: geographical location and moment of time, similarly to other methods such as travel diaries, questionnaires or Global Positioning System (GPS)based studies. Mobile positioning can be both network based, examining mobile phone users’ locations through network performance at aggregate level (Ratti et al. 2006), and mobile phone based, examining each mobile phone individually (Ahas et al. 2010b). The more detailed mobile phone-based approach can be divided into three different types of positioning methods: passive, active and smartphone-based mobile positioning. 2.1  Passive Mobile Positioning In passive mobile positioning, the data is automatically stored by the mobile network operator based on customer billing, network maintenance and performance monitoring. The most common form of passive mobile positioning data is call detail records (CDR). A CDR database contains all call activities initiated by a mobile phone user: incoming and outgoing calls and sent messages (sort message service, or SMS, and multimedia messaging service, or MMS). Call activities are recorded in the host mobile network, while these are received via the roaming service when abroad. Passive mobile positioning data usually contains the following variables: (1) unique identification code for each phone user (usually randomly generated by the mobile network operator to anonymize the database for researchers); (2) start time of call activity; and (3) geographical coordinates of the network antenna that provided the network signal for the call activity. Also, mobile network operators can provide some background information about mobile phone users (such as gender, year of birth or preferred language for communicating with the operator), and connections with call partners (Puura et al. 2018). The spatial accuracy of passive mobile positioning depends on the geographical division of the mobile network, which is not equally distributed in space. Inherently, passive mobile positioning is spatially more precise in densely populated urban areas and near highways owing to the greater number of network antennae (Ahas et al. 2008a). However, many advanced interpolation methods can significantly increase the spatial accuracy (Järv et al. 2017). Call activities are initially registered with the precision of a second. However, call activities are commonly aggregated into larger time units such as hours, days, weeks, months or years when the data is analysed. Passive mobile positioning has two main strengths: longitudinality and extensive samples. Mobile network operators continually collect CDRs, and data-sets can cover several years. For example, the Mobility Lab of the University of Tartu already has a continuous 12-year time series of CDR data from Estonia. This enables the examination of long-term transformations in a society, and reveals the life-cycle changes in human mobility (Masso et al. 2019). Passive mobile positioning data includes phone usage of all mobile phone users who are customers of the mobile network operator that is providing the data. Theoretically, all the mobile phone users of a country can be examined, if data from every mobile network operator can be combined. Passive mobile positioning has some weaknesses that must be taken into account in research. The data do not represent the whole population while, for various reasons, not everyone uses mobile phones (for example, young children, elderly, some socio-economic groups) (Masso et al. 2019). Mobile phone users’ call activity habits and patterns vary in

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184  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities space and time owing to characteristics of an individual, social and physical environment which influences research findings (Ahas et al. 2010b; Järv et al. 2014). In addition, passive mobile positioning data usually has no or little background information on the phone users, and access to data is limited, while mobile network operators are hesitant to provide their data. 2.2  Active Mobile Positioning Active mobile positioning is a method based on mobile network operators; the location of the mobile phone is determined with a special query initiated by the mobile network operator and presumes the prior consent of the respondent for his or her positioning (Ahas et al. 2010a). The location specified with active mobile positioning is more precise than the mobile antenna coverage area, as in the case of passive mobile positioning, although it still depends on the density of the mobile network (Ahas et al. 2007b). Mobile phones are positioned based on network signals from the network antennae, and most commonly using the signal triangulation method (Adams et al. 2003; Ahas and Mark 2005). The temporal interval and study period of active mobile positioning depends on the objective of a certain study (for example, the precision of mobility). The temporal interval may vary from 1 minute to several hours, with the optimum being between 15 or 30 minutes (Ahas et al. 2007b). Active mobile positioning study periods may vary from a few days to up to a year. The main strength of active mobile positioning, compared with passive mobile positioning, is the ability to combine spatio-temporal mobility with additional information about respondents, obtained from questionnaires. That may include respondents’ demographic and socio-economic background, lifestyle, motivations and objectives for mobility (Ahas et al. 2007b). The main drawbacks are that the study area is limited to the mobile operator’s network coverage area, and that the limited sample size is significantly smaller than that of passive mobile positioning – the sample is created on the same bases as in any other conventional social research study. However, owing to some limitations such as the existence of a mobile phone and suitable mobile operator, and willingness of people to share their locations for research purposes, it is difficult to apply random sampling. Hence, the quota or snowball sampling method is usually applied, and hundreds to thousands of respondents examined (Ahas et al. 2010a). 2.3  Smartphone-Based Positioning Smartphone-based mobile positioning is similar to active mobile positioning as it presumes prior consent of the respondent for his or her positioning. However, this positioning method is the most precise in space and time (primarily a precise GPS) and collects data globally. Smartphones contain many integrated sensors, which help to locate a phone precisely in different ways, both outdoors (GPS and triangulation) and indoors (for example, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), while collecting information about movements (gyroscope, accelerometer and compass). Additional smartphone sensors, such as light sensors, sound sensors, microphones and cameras, barometers, thermometers and hygrometers, also help to gather information about the respondent’s surrounding environment.

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Tracing human mobilities through mobile phones  185 Smartphones can be also used to collect information about the phone use of the respondents (for example, calls, SMSs, screen activation and alarm clock ringing), calling partners and applications in the mobile phone. As well as additional questionnaires before and after the tracking study, it is possible to ask the respondents specific questions during the survey about the places they have visited, their travel behaviour and their embodied experiences (Prelipcean et al. 2018). For example, a location-based question, via application or text message, can ask what transport mode was used to visit a certain location (for example, urban park) and what emotional feelings the user experienced while there (Linnap and Rice 2014). Several mobile applications have already been developed for smartphone-based positioning, such as MobilityLog (Linnap and Rice 2014) and Future Mobility Sensing (Nahmias-Biran et al. 2018). Thus far, the smartphone positioning method has mainly been applied in travel behaviour and transport research (Prelipcean et al. 2018). The main drawbacks (so far) are small sample size, which resembles active mobile positioning and ordinary surveys, considerable use of phone battery (requires more frequent charging) and the operation system (OS) of a smartphone – positioning applications are often developed for one OS and are not applicable to others, and this may create sample biases.

3.  APPLICATIONS OF MOBILE POSITIONING Mobile positioning data provides spatio-temporal knowledge from multitude aspects – locations, flows and spaces – from both individual and aggregated perspectives (Figure 17.1). Mobile positioning data reveals the locations visited by an individual, a proxy for human presence (Figure 17.1a). A person’s digital footprint in time and space reveals their important activity locations, such as anchor points – places of residence and work or school (Ahas et al. 2010b) (Figure 17.1b). This enables us to examine and understand both individual spatio-temporal mobility between activity locations (Ahas et al. 2007b) and an individual’s daily and long-term activity spaces (Järv et al. 2014) (Figure 17.1c). To date, mobile positioning data is examined predominantly retrospectively, but implementing methods for (near) real-time data collection will enable the operation and management of smart cities in the near future (Batty et al. 2012; Taylor 2016). The scaling up of individuals’ activity locations and movements reveals the dynamics of human presence and the mobility of the whole population as well as within spatial structures (Figure 17.1d–f). Aggregated individual mobility uncovers daily work-related commuting flows (Ahas et al. 2010a). Aggregated activity locations and flows unveil the urban spatio-temporal structures, land use and settlement hierarchies of societies and even sheds light on how these structures change over time (Ahas et al. 2015; Louail et al. 2015; Pei et al. 2014). This helps to identify and monitor hinterlands of cities and functional urban regions (Novak et al. 2013). Mobile positioning data contributes to our understanding of population dynamics and changes over time (including short-term changes): seasonal dynamics of the population (Silm and Ahas 2010), variation of human activity spaces (Järv et al. 2014) and residential changes (Kamenjuk et al. 2017). In the field of transport and mobility, mobile positioning contributes to managing traffic flows (Wang et al. 2012), assessing the characteristics

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Individual positioning data

Flow intensity

Location

Meaningful activity location Other activity location

Location hierarchy

Mobility frequency

Catchment area

Figure 17.1  T  he processing flow of mobile positioning data implementation. (A) Person’s mobile phone data points in space and time, which (B) allows the extraction of their activity locations. (C) Temporal information enables researchers to link locations and reveal mobility trajectories. (D) Individual mobility trajectories can be further aggregated into mobility flows between locations, for example, cities, while (E) can reveal the spatial structure of locations and (F) their catchment areas of road users (Järv et al. 2012) and better understanding individual travel behaviour (Allström et al. 2017). Regarding the spatial justice of a society, mobile positioning data shows spatial accessibility to services more realistically while revealing the socio-spatial inequality within a society (Järv et al. 2018). From a public health perspective, mobile positioning data provides better knowledge about accessibility to health-care services and provides better disease models in epidemiology (Wesolowski et al. 2015). Data enables better risk assessment abilities, given the exposure of people to social and environmental risks such as air pollution (Dewulf et al. 2016). Furthermore, mobile positioning provides new perspectives for more efficient risk and disaster prevention regarding planning, monitoring and managing emergency situations, as well as informing the public (Cinnamon et al. 2016). Mobile positioning method is well implemented in tourism research as it performs

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Tracing human mobilities through mobile phones  187

Figure 17.2  P  rofiling foreign tourism in Estonia. (A) The distribution of foreign visitors’ visits within Estonia over a two-year period, 2011–13. An example of foreign visitors’ visits to Saaremaa island (highlighted in dark grey) regarding (B) the temporal dynamics of given visits, and (C) the share of visitors by origin country better than current tourism data collection methods (Shoval and Ahas 2016), and provides detailed spatio-temporal information about tourist behaviour (Figure 17.2). Data uncovers the quantity and spatial distribution of both local and foreign tourists (Ahas et al. 2008b), the seasonal dynamics of tourism flows (Ahas et al. 2007a) and tourists’ travel behaviour within a destination (Ahas et al. 2008a; Raun et al. 2016). This enables us to evaluate the social and economic impact of tourism sector and special events (for example, music and sport) on the host community (Nilbe et al. 2014). Tourists’ repetitive travel behaviour indicates their loyalty to tourist destinations (Tiru et al. 2010), whereas cross-border mobility patterns help to explain the movements of transnational people

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188  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities (Ahas et al. 2017). Mobile positioning data already provides input for official tourism statistics (Saluveer et al. 2020); to the authors’ knowledge, only two countries in the world apply this data, that is, Estonia and Indonesia (www.positium.com). Mobile positioning data linked with phone users’ background information (see section 2 in this chapter), or even combined with questionnaires, contributes to socially relevant issues – new insights on social phenomena and processes. For example, the method already contributes to segregation research by revealing the complex temporality of segregation and allowing the incorporation of a person-based approach to examine socio-spatial differences and (in)equalities in society. Research unveils how an individual’s activity spaces and their use of geographical space is influenced by gender (Silm et al. 2013), age (Silm et al. 2018; Masso et al. 2019) and ethnicity (Silm and Ahas 2014a, 2014b; Järv et al. 2015; Mooses et al. 2016). Finally, data fusion with other data sources allows the application of mobile positioning data as a proxy to describe society. For instance, human mobility derived from given data can reflect a person’s socio-economic status (Xu et al. 2018). In developing countries, mobile positioning data can reveal the spatial division of poverty (Blumenstock et al. 2015) and illiteracy (Sundsøy 2016). Research on socio-economically disadvantaged and marginal social groups needs to take mobile positioning data analysis as well as data fusion findings especially critically – how and what message is sent to society and how to consider the opinions of the data subjects (Taylor 2016).

4. ETHICS Privacy and security are paramount issues as regards mobile positioning, similar to any other technological advancement over past decades (Clarke 1988, 2001). These sensitive aspects are important for everyone – phone users, mobile network operators and all of society. Although understanding of individual privacy differs among different people, it is assumed that, in general, the threshold of individual privacy concerns becomes lower in the Digital Age as generations change; compared with their parents, young people are more prone to adopt new technology and to share personal information through social media (Männiste and Masso 2018). However, research (Männiste and Masso 2018) and recent events (for example, Cambridge Analytica) indicate that the subject of possible danger to institutional privacy has been added to the collective consciousness in addition to that of individual privacy; not only other people but also institutions increasingly use data about single individuals. The fear of violating individuals’ privacy while using mobile positioning data for research purposes can only be reduced by conducting transparent research and communicating clearly, to all stakeholders (mobile network operator, officials, politicians and specialists) and the general public, how data is collected, stored and processed, how the privacy of subjects is ensured and what social good it brings to society. In the European Union, for example, the collection, storage and processing of mobile positioning data must comply with regulations on general data protection and the processing of personal data (Regulation (EU) 2016/679; Directive 2002/58/EC), and the respective national laws and regulations. In addition, research using mobile positioning data needs approval from a scientific ethics committee.

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Tracing human mobilities through mobile phones  189 In general, the privacy of subjects can be protected at three different stages. First, ensuring the security of data during data collection and storing. Second, ensuring the anonymity of individuals during data processing and analysis. Finally, ensuring that results are always presented on a spatial and temporal scale which does not allow the identification of any individual (de Montjoye et al. 2013).

5.  FUTURE DIRECTIONS The global adoption of the ubiquitous mobile phone in the age of big data has opened up the use of the mobile positioning method, a valuable tool set in social sciences to advance mobilities research (Canzler et al. 2008) and to contribute to the mobilities turn (Sheller and Urry 2016). The method has significant implications in a wide array of academic fields, both within mobilities research and beyond, as well as in policymaking and managing society. Mobile positioning enables researchers to investigate and understand individuals’ daily activity locations and spatio-temporal movements within their activity spaces. Aggregated individual data reveals mobility flows and population dynamics to understand how societies function, and to better govern and plan more sustainable societies. Hence, the method has already contributed to research in urban and population studies, transport and travel behaviour, tourism, health and spatial planning. The strengths of the method are also implemented in revealing different (im)mobility patterns of people for advancing research on segregation and socio-spatial inequality. However, the value of detailed spatio-temporal data from mobile positioning can be increased significantly by combining it with other data collection methods to include the social perspective – a proper basis to examine the interlinkage of the social and the spatial. For example, mobile positioning linked with health-care registry data reveals more realistically the linkage between human mobility, locations visited and individuals’ health conditions. This can provide better predictions of vulnerability to social and environmental risks. Spatio-temporal footprints combined with in-depth interviews can provide new insights on socio-spatial phenomena, such as segregation and socio-spatial inequality, immobility, cross-border interactions and transnationality, and integration, thus contributing to research on spatial justice and mobility justice (Sheller 2012; Soja 2010). Increasing research using mobile positioning has already given rise to more critical views on its feasibility and applicability, in addition to discussion concerning opportunities and threats to tackle societal challenges and to contribute to social good. Thus, there is a growing demand for developing both the concepts and methods to address and overcome the method’s current weaknesses and limitations. One methodological challenge is the relatively long value chain in implementing mobile positioning data, which requires expertise from several research fields (Ahas et al. 2008a). In addition to ethical issues and privacy concerns, poor interpolation of spatial data into official spatial units and lack of ground truth data to validate obtained mobility findings have hindered the implementation of the method so far (Järv et al. 2017). Fortunately, the positioning accuracy of mobile phones increases as mobile communication technology advances (3G, 4G, 5G), and network operators already have the capability to locate all of their network users with

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190  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities precision in seconds. However, the current bottlenecks are (legal) access to data and the cost of storing and managing the unprecedented amount of data. In the near future, passive mobile positioning will provide the basis for monitoring the dynamics of a society in real time and efficiently planning different aspects of a society: sustainable mobility, transport, services, security and governance. For example, population-wide mobile positioning data will be crucial for planning and managing mobility as a service (MaaS). Smartphone-based positioning could become one method in promoting participatory democracy (Al-Kodmany 2001). With mobility behaviour, people can express their opinions towards certain locations and indicate the social value and sense of place of these locations. To date, the method is predominantly applied in research related to physical mobilities; however, it has not yet been implemented in mobilities research from the social and virtual mobilities perspective. Mobile positioning data, per se, is (mostly) about social interaction in virtual space – traces of mobile phone use. Thus, mobilities of people in both virtual and social space, and their relationship to physical space using the method, is still unexplored. One future avenue could be research on motility of people and its realization in physical space. In conclusion, the question is not whether the mobile positioning method becomes one key method in social sciences, but when this will happen, and which research fields will be successful in implementing it. For mobile positioning to become a universal method for the public interest around the world requires further legislation at the international level.

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Tracing human mobilities through mobile phones  191 Asakura, Y. and E. Hato (2004), ‘Tracking survey for individual travel behaviour using mobile communication instruments’, Transportation Research Part C, 12 (3–4), 273–91. Batty, M., K.W. Axhausen, F. Giannotti, A. Pozdnoukhov, A. Bazzani, M. Wachowicz, et al. (2012), ‘Smart cities of the future’, European Physical Journal Special Topics, 214 (1), 481–518. Blumenstock, J., G. Cadamuro and R. On (2015), ‘Predicting poverty and wealth from mobile phone metadata’, Science, 350 (6264), 1073–6. Canzler, W., V. Kaufmann and S. Kesselring (eds) (2008), Tracing Mobilities: Towards a Cosmopolitan Perspective, Aldershot: Ashgate. Cinnamon, J., S.K. Jones and W.N. Adger (2016), ‘Evidence and future potential of mobile phone data for disease disaster management’, Geoforum, 75 (October), 253–64. Clarke, R. (1988), ‘Information technology and dataveillance’, Communications of the ACM, 31 (5), 498–512. Clarke, R. (2001), ‘Person location and person tracking – technologies, risks and policy implications’, Information Technology & People, 14 (2), 206–31. De Montjoye, Y.-A., C.A. Hidalgo, M. Verleysen and V.D. Blondel (2013), ‘Unique in the crowd: the privacy bounds of human mobility’, Scientific Reports, 3 (1), 1376. Dewulf, B., T. Neutens, W. Lefebvre, G. Seynaeve, C. Vanpoucke, C. Beckx, et al. (2016), ‘Dynamic assessment of exposure to air pollution using mobile phone data’, International Journal of Health Geographics, 15 (1), art. 14. GSMA Intelligence (2018), GSMA intelligence data, accessed 13 May 2019 at https://www.gsmaintelligence. com/. Järv, O., R. Ahas and F. Witlox (2014), ‘Understanding monthly variability in human activity spaces: a twelvemonth study using mobile phone call detail records’, Transportation Research Part C, 38 (Januray), 122–35. Järv, O., R. Ahas, E. Saluveer, B. Derudder and F. Witlox (2012), ‘Mobile phones in a traffic flow: a geographical perspective to evening rush hour traffic analysis using call detail records’, PLoS ONE, 7 (11), e49171. Järv, O., K. Müürisepp, R. Ahas, B. Derudder and F. Witlox (2015), ‘Ethnic differences in activity spaces as a characteristic of segregation: a study based on mobile phone usage in Tallinn, Estonia’, Urban Studies, 52 (14), 2680–98. Järv, O., H. Tenkanen and T. Toivonen (2017), ‘Enhancing spatial accuracy of mobile phone data using multi-temporal dasymetric interpolation’, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 31 (8), 1630–51. Järv, O., H. Tenkanen, M. Salonen, R. Ahas and T. Toivonen (2018), ‘Dynamic cities: location-based accessibility modelling as a function of time’, Applied Geography, 95 (June), 101–10. Kamenjuk, P., A. Aasa and J. Sellin (2017), ‘Mapping changes of residence with passive mobile positioning data: the case of Estonia’, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 31 (7), 1425–47. Linnap, M. and A. Rice (2014), ‘Managed participatory sensing with YouSense’, Journal of Urban Technology, 21 (2), 9–26. Louail, T., M. Lenormand, O.G. Cantu Ros, M. Picornell, R. Herranz, E. Frias-Martinez, et al. (2015), ‘From mobile phone data to the spatial structure of cities’, Scientific Reports, 4 (1), 5276. Männiste, M. and A. Masso (2018), ‘The role of institutional trust in Estonians’ privacy concerns’, Studies of Transition States and Societies, 10 (2), 22–39. Masso, A., S. Silm and R. Ahas (2019), ‘Generational differences in spatial mobility: a study with mobile phone data’, Population, Space and Place, 25 (2), e2210. Mooses, V., S. Silm and R. Ahas (2016), ‘Ethnic segregation during public and national holidays: a study using mobile phone data’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, 98 (3), 205–19. Nahmias-Biran, B., Y. Han, S. Bekhor, F. Zhao, C. Zegras and M. Ben-Akiva (2018), ‘Enriching activity-based models using smartphone-based travel surveys’, Transportation Research Record, 2672 (42), 280–91. Nilbe, K., R. Ahas and S. Silm (2014), ‘Evaluating the travel distances of events visitors and regular visitors using mobile positioning data: the case of Estonia’, Journal of Urban Technology, 21 (2), 91–107. Novak, J., R. Ahas, A. Aasa and S. Silm (2013), ‘Application of mobile phone location data in mapping of commuting patterns and functional regionalization: a pilot study of Estonia’, Journal of Maps, 9 (1), 37–41. Onnela, J., J. Saramäki, J. Hyvönen, G. Szabó, D. Lazer, K. Kaski, et al. (2007), ‘Structure and tie strengths in mobile communication networks’, PNAS, 104 (18), 7332–6. Pei, T., S. Sobolevsky, C. Ratti, S.-L. Shaw, T. Li and C. Zhou (2014), ‘A new insight into land use classification based on aggregated mobile phone data’, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 28 (9), 1988–2007. Prelipcean, A.C., G. Gidófalvi and Y.O. Susilo (2018), ‘MEILI: a travel diary collection, annotation and automation system’, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 70 (July), 24–34. Puura, A., S. Silm and R. Ahas (2018), ‘The relationship between social networks and spatial mobility: a mobilephone-based study in Estonia’, Journal of Urban Technology, 25 (2), 7–25. Ratti, C., D. Frenchman, R. M. Pulselli and S. Williams (2006), ‘Mobile landscapes: using location data from cell phones for urban analysis’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 33 (5), 727–48.

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192  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Raun, J., R. Ahas and M. Tiru (2016), ‘Measuring tourism destinations using mobile tracking data’, Tourism Management, 57 (December), 202–12. Saluveer, E., J. Raun, M. Tiru, L. Altin, J. Kroon, T. Snitsarenko, A. Aasa and S. Silm (2020), ‘Methodological framework for producing national tourism statistics from mobile positioning data’, Annals of Tourism Research, 81, 102895. Sheller, M. (2012), ‘Sustainable mobility and mobility justice: towards a twin transition’, in J. Urry and M. Grieco (eds), Mobilities: New Perspectives on Transport and Society, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 289–304. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2016), ‘Mobilizing the new mobilities paradigm’, Applied Mobilities, 1 (1), 10–25. Shoval, N. and R. Ahas (2016), ‘The use of tracking technologies in tourism research: the first decade’, Tourism Geographies, 18 (5), 587–606. Silm, S. and R. Ahas (2010), ‘The seasonal variability of population in Estonian municipalities’, Environment and Planning A, 42 (10), 2527–46. Silm, S. and R. Ahas (2014a), ‘Ethnic differences in activity spaces: a study of out-of-home nonemployment activities with mobile phone data’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104 (3), 542–59. Silm, S. and R. Ahas (2014b), ‘The temporal variation of ethnic segregation in a city: evidence from a mobile phone use dataset’, Social Science Research, 47 (September), 30–43. Silm, S., R. Ahas and V. Mooses (2018), ‘Are younger age groups less segregated? Measuring ethnic segregation in activity spaces using mobile phone data’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (11), 1797–817. Silm, S., R. Ahas and M. Nuga (2013), ‘Gender differences in space – time mobility patterns in a p ­ ostcommunist city: a case study based on mobile positioning in the suburbs of Tallinn’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 40 (5), 814–28. Soja, E.W. (2010), Seeking Spatial Justice, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Sundsøy, P. (2016), Can Mobile Usage Predict Illiteracy in a Developing Country?, http://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01337. Taylor, L. (2016), ‘No place to hide? The ethics and analytics of tracking mobility using mobile phone data’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34 (2), 319–36. Tiru, M., A. Kuusik, M.-L. Lamp and R. Ahas (2010), ‘LBS in marketing and tourism management: measuring destination loyalty with mobile positioning data’, Journal of Location Based Services, 4 (2), 120–40. Wang, P., T. Hunter, A.M. Bayen, K. Schechtner and M.C. González (2012), ‘Understanding road usage patterns in urban areas’, Scientific Reports, 2 (1), art. 1001. Wesolowski, A., W.P. O’Meara, A.J. Tatem, S. Ndege, N. Eagle and C.O. Buckee (2015), ‘Quantifying the impact of accessibility on preventive healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa using mobile phone data’, Epidemiology, 26 (2), 223–8. Xu, Y., A. Belyi, I. Bojic and C. Ratti (2018), ‘Human mobility and socioeconomic status: analysis of Singapore and Boston’, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 72 (November), 51–67.

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18.  MoVE: mobile virtual ethnography Jennie Germann Molz

INTRODUCTION A striking feature of life in twenty-first century society is the extent to which our face-toface encounters and embodied mobilities have become interwoven with virtual spaces and mediated interactions. In our daily commutes to work or school, on business trips and for summer holidays we increasingly rely on mobile devices and communication infrastructures to stay in touch while we move across the city or around the world. This is especially evident for leisure and lifestyle mobilities. How can we gain insight into these ‘mobile lives’ (Elliott and Urry 2010) and the intricate textures, emerging arrangements and subtle intimacies they entail? Mobile virtual ethnography (MoVE) is a methodological approach that adapts ethnographic techniques to tune into the interplay between travelers’ online and on-the-road mobility practices.1 In its traditional form, ethnography involves long-term immersion in a remote place where the ethnographer conducts intensive participant observation, or ‘deep hanging out’ (Geertz 1998). Ethnographic fieldwork involves making careful observations, interviewing key informants, accessing relevant records or archival texts, and documenting observations in detailed field notes which ethnographers then analyze using interpretive and inductive techniques. The outcome is a thick description (Geertz 1973) of a particular community and its culture. Mobile virtual ethnography draws on all of these ethnographic techniques, but repurposes them to account for the unique characteristics of mobile practices and mediated interactions. Informed by the techniques of ‘virtual ethnography’ (Hine 2000) and by the methodological innovations introduced with the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ (Sheller and Urry 2006) in the early 2000s, MoVE focuses ethnographic attention on the interplay between embodied, spatial, and virtual movements. Mobile virtual ethnography is not, strictly speaking, a new method but it does represent new ways of conceptualizing and implementing the traditional components of ethnography in an effort to understand mobile lifestyles from the perspective of the people who live them. My aim in this chapter is to illustrate what MoVE is in practice. I do this first by describing in broad terms how I have applied this methodology in various research projects. I then offer a more fine-grained account from my field notes to illustrate how MoVE reimagines four components of ethnographic research: the ethnographic field, immersion in the field, the role of the ethnographic interview and what counts as data.

ETHNOGRAPHY ONLINE AND ON THE MOVE For a long time, ethnography was assumed to be unsuitable for studying tourists and longterm travelers whose physical mobility and impromptu social relations seemed to defy the ethnographer’s stock in trade, that is, long-term immersion. Similar concerns were raised 193

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194  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities about the ephemeral and disembodied nature of online social interactions (cf. Amit 2000; Hine 2000). Later, as ethnographers began to incorporate mobile technologies into their research toolkit, new worries emerged about the potential for these devices to disconnect and distract the ethnographer from the practices at hand or to distance them from the communities they were studying. In these critiques, mobility and technology were framed as obstacles to the authentic practice of ethnography. Mobile virtual ethnography, in contrast, sees mobility and technology – and especially the interplay between them – not as obstacles to ethnography, but as the object of ethnographic enquiry. The issue, then, is not how to fit social phenomena to the traditional parameters of ethnography, but how to repurpose ethnography to engage with the fluid, ephemeral, mediated and dispersed nature of mobile sociality. Several researchers have done exactly this, applying ethnographic techniques to understand long-term backpackers and their online practices (O’Reilly 2006; Mascheroni 2007) and the way these travelers virtually moor themselves in the social media spaces of the blogosphere (Paris 2010). Some researchers have followed tourists across multiple sites from home to online sites to destinations abroad and home again (Haldrup and Larsen 2010). Others have connected online and in person in moments of instant ethnography with those global nomads who never intend to go home (Kannisto 2018). Similar to these researchers, I have been fascinated by the convergence of technology and tourism (Germann Molz 2012). I have applied mobile and virtual ethnographic techniques to study online hospitality networks, such as Couchsurfing and Airbnb, mobile mediated walking tours, travel blogging, flashpacking and worldschooling. My fieldwork involves a combination of virtual, embodied and mobile togetherness with travelers. While studying Couchsurfing, I stayed in Couchsurfers’ homes and hosted strangers in my own home, usually after extensive online interactions to arrange these hospitality encounters. Also, I browsed and analyzed member profiles and ratings on the digital platform. My study of travel blogging and flashpacking entailed countless hours online following travelers’ social media posts, downloading and analyzing digital content, and interviewing them online or by telephone. Just arranging those interviews with travelers who did not know where they would be in a week or whether they would have Internet access provided insight into the texture of their mobile lives. More recently, I conducted a mobile virtual ethnography of worldschooling. These middle-class families take their children out of conventional schools and educate them while traveling the world, using technology along the way as a learning resource and as a source of income to fund their mobile lifestyle. In addition to following, downloading and analyzing families’ blogs and interacting with them on social media forums, I also traveled with my own family for seven months, meeting up with and interviewing a dozen families along the way. These projects illustrate in broad strokes the way MoVE shifts between virtual realms, digital interactions, physical mobilities and embodied encounters, not as if these were separate domains of social practice, but as intertwined modes of moving and being with respondents. They also reveal the extent to which MoVE is informed by an ethnographic commitment to exploring lived experiences as they happen. In the next section, I offer a story from one of my ethnographic encounters to illustrate how MoVE mobilizes ethnography by reimagining the field, immersion, in-depth interviews, and the kind of data this method generates.

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MoVE: mobile virtual ethnography  195

MOVE IN PRACTICE I met Elsa Hart online long before I met her in person. As part of my virtual ethnography on worldschooling, I had been following and corresponding with Elsa through her blog as she traveled with her husband Byron, son Erik and daughter Marisa through Europe and Southeast Asia. When we discovered that our families would be in Chiang Mai, Thailand, at the same time, Elsa and I started sharing tips about educational things to do there with kids and we made plans to meet up. Elsa suggested a café in a shopping mall near the apartment the Harts had rented. As we stepped into the mall, we found ourselves in the middle of a study-abroad fair being staged in the main atrium. Thai students in crisp white shirts milled around, collecting glossy brochures for English-language programs at campuses in the United States and England. We browsed a bit, too, before heading upstairs to the café, a place with soaring ceilings and large tables for group work that felt like a Silicon Valley start-up. The kids grabbed the WiFi code and disappeared to the other side of the café with Erik’s tablet. ‘He’s working on a video for our website,’ Byron explained. While the kids worked on the tablet, Elsa turned on her computer and pulled up her blog to show me the e-book she and Byron had just published.   Before we started talking, I asked for Elsa and Byron’s permission to conduct and record the interview. ‘Oh sure,’ Elsa agreed. ‘We’ve done lots of these.’ She was referring to the fact that they had interviewed and been interviewed by several other worldschooling parents, interviews that had then been posted as content on their respective blogs. Although I had clearly identified my role as a sociologist and carefully explained how this interview would be used as part of a research project, Elsa and Byron interpreted our conversation according to this familiar format. And for good reason. It turned out that our meet-up was not significantly different from the interviews and playdates they had arranged in various destinations with other families during their trip. Nor were the topics I introduced: what were the kids learning from traveling? How are you using technology as part of their education? How do you afford this traveling lifestyle? And so on. They had heard it all before.   One topic was particularly familiar: global citizenship. Elsa and Byron explained that they were committed to raising Erik and Marisa as global citizens, a concept they illustrated with stories of their kids being exposed to other cultures, learning how to cope with change, developing their technological skills and becoming fluent in a second language. As we talked, I thought about the Thai students downstairs, considering their own options for learning a second language abroad, and those around us, tapping on their laptops in this high-technology setting. How might their understandings of, and aspirations for, global citizenship compare with the Harts’ wishes for their children?   After a few hours, the kids came over to show us their creation, a video about a boat ride in Chiang Mai that Erik would publish on the family’s blog the next day. ‘Let’s get a picture before you go,’ Elsa suggested. She handed her smartphone to a young man at the next table and the seven of us pulled in tight for the group photograph. That photograph, too, appeared on the family’s travel blog a few days later, together with several similar group shots in an album featuring the other worldschooling families the Harts had encountered during their journey. We hugged goodbye, with the caveat that we would see each other online soon, and maybe run into each other again somewhere in the world.

The Ethnographic Field: From Place to Messy Webs Even though my interview with the Harts took place in Chiang Mai, it would be inaccurate to claim that Chiang Mai, or any one of the destinations where I met up with world­schoolers, was the field site for my research. The mobile practice of worldschooling takes place across multiple, mediated and intermittent settings. This is a significant departure from traditional ethnography, in which the field is understood as a discrete geographical location awaiting the ethnographer’s arrival. The ethnographer’s journey

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196  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities to the field, albeit often ‘long, brutal and dangerous’ (Novoa 2015, p. 98), was more a scholarly rite of passage than a feature of the research itself. By the end of the twentieth century, anthropologists were questioning this paradigm. In his 1997 book, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, for example, James Clifford encouraged ethnographers to focus on the travel encounters between people and across cultures, instead of focusing on cultures fixed in place. Soon after, George Marcus (1998) introduced the influential concept of multi-sited ethnography, which expanded the field from a single, fixed place to connections across multiple geographic locations. This view of the ethnographic field in terms of routes, instead of as a predefined or geographically bounded place, informs the way MoVE envisions the field as mobile, multiple, mediated and messy. To begin with, the ethnographic field is mobile. It is less like ‘a village or a controlled laboratory or a site of initiation and inhabitation,’ Clifford (1997, p. 25) writes, and ‘more like a hotel lobby, urban café, ship, or bus’. Here, the metaphors for a sedentary ethnographic field are replaced with metaphors for mobility: hotel lobbies, cafés and ships. Scholars have literally mobilized the field, for example in mobile ethnographies of cycling (Spinney 2015), bus trips (Jain 2009) or daily commutes (Bissell 2018) where the field is the road or the vehicle or movement itself. Philip Vannini’s (2012) ethnography of ferry mobilities on the west coast of Canada uses the metaphor of the itinerary to describe his ethnographic field as a series of arrivals and departures. With MoVE, I have conducted participant observation and interviews in hotel lobbies, cafés, trains, airports and while walking in the city. It is important to note, however, that the ethnographic field is not always or inherently mobile. It may take the form of a walking tour or an airport one day and then hours planted in front of the computer the next. In this sense, MoVE mirrors the way stillness and immobility are woven into the lived choreographies of mobile lifestyles. The field is also multiple and mediated. To the extent that interactive travel and mobile lifestyles are performed in and across several places, MoVE adapts Marcus’s concept of multi-sited ethnography. In mobile virtual ethnography, the field is not just a physical place nor just a physical place. The multi-sited-ness of the field includes multiple physical destinations as well as online forums, social media feeds, websites and digital platforms where social relations are enacted. Here, the field is less a place than it is a network of technical and social connectivity (Wittel 2000; Hine 2000). In MoVE, embodied mobilities and geographical places are entangled with mediated interactions, producing the ethnographic field as a hybrid place better imagined as flows and webs. In their study of social media activists in Barcelona, for example, John Postill and Sarah Pink (2012) describe moving back and forth across digital and face-to-face contexts as they shared a bus ride with activists, collaborated with them on Facebook or showed one another photographs on their smartphones at a coffee shop. Their methods resonate with my interactions with Elsa. We communicated online both before and after our face-to-face meeting. Even sitting side-by-side at the café, we were simultaneously logged on to our devices. The kids, too, were physically co-present with one another but also engaged together in a digital space creating content for an online audience. Our embodied togetherness was then represented online in the Harts’ blog a few days later. This is not a static field that pre-existed my interview with the Harts, but a ‘messy web’ of ‘contextual fellowship’ (Postill and Pink 2012, pp. 131–2) that emerges as an effect of our encounter (see Amit 2000; Frohlick 2006).

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MoVE: mobile virtual ethnography  197 Participant Observation: From Sustained Immersion to Following Flows What does it mean for the researcher to become immersed in a mobile, mediated and messy field? While MoVE subscribes to the ethnographic spirit of intensive engagement, the traditional ethnographic technique of sustained immersion in a geographical location is anathema to the types of mobile social phenomena MoVE is designed to study. The more we engage with our respondents’ mobile lives as they unfold online and on the move, the more we must abandon the idea of embodied immersion in a fixed place. This loss provokes anxiety among some ethnographers, but as Susan Frohlick (2006, p. 100) suggests, ‘rather than mourn the loss of long-term immersion’ we should embrace the opportunity to ‘rethink how immersion is constituted, not only by ourselves as individual fieldworkers but by our research subjects.’ That is, researchers are not alone in their loss of a sense of place or immersion. Our respondents, too, are navigating new social worlds that require new ways of engaging with mobile and geographically dispersed social networks. Instead of relying on sustained immersion in a place, MoVE involves what we might term flickering moments of immersion, to paraphrase David Bell (2012). Immersion is not just multi-sited, but also multi-temporal and multi-modal. It is both embodied and mediated, mobile and still, brief and extended, synchronous and asynchronous, and it often toggles back and forth between these different modes. As my ethnographic vignette illustrates, I only met the Harts in person once, for a long afternoon at a café. However, I engaged with Elsa online intermittently over many months, sometimes in real time and sometimes asynchronously as I read the archives of her blog. Postill and Pink (2012, p. 6) refer to their participant observation of online/offline social activism in terms of ‘catching up,’ ‘exploring,’ ‘interacting’ and ‘archiving.’ Much of this kind of immersion involves hours of online tasks, but frequently requires face-to-face and mobile interaction with respondents, which mimics the social practices of the activists they studied. In my research, I have described my immersion in the field as following, sharing and meeting up (see Germann Molz and Paris 2015), which also happens to be how the respondents in my studies describe relating to one another. It is not coincidental that MoVE borrows the same techniques that respondents use to engage with their friends, family members and one another on the move. Just as I do in my research, they interact in social media forums, use the Internet to arrange meet-ups in various destinations, share their experiences online and follow one another’s journeys. These forms of immersion enact the very type of mobile sociality that MoVE intends to examine. Key Informants: From Interviews to Encounters The in-depth interview, a key ethnographic tool, is also imagined and implemented in MoVE in new ways. Interviews do not just document a respondent’s account, but are themselves instances of the mobile and mediated sociality being investigated. You might think that it is not every day someone is invited to participate in a social research project, but my interview with the Harts was far from a remarkable or unique situation for them. As do many worldschooling families, they had become accustomed to using the Internet to connect with other families, to arrange playdates for the kids in various destinations and to conduct interviews as a way of generating content for their blogs. Even the questions I asked in my research interview reflected the topics and struggles they discussed

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198  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities on a regular basis with other worldschooling parents. In seeking to reveal the desires or anxieties that shaped their worldschooling endeavors, my interview merely echoed the same conversations they were having with other worldschoolers. Furthermore, the way I coordinated our meeting – connecting online to then meet up in person – is not just a practical way to schedule an interview; it is the mode par excellence for arranging mobile sociality. While conducting research with worldschooling families, my interviews often took the form of a playdate. It was common for worldschoolers to post their upcoming location on a social media forum to arrange playdates with other traveling families who would be in the same place at the same time. More than offering a practical arrangement for my research interviews, then, playdates manifested one of the common ways that these mobile families interacted with one another. The same was true in my research on Couchsurfing. Couchsurfers are accustomed to being approached online by travelers requesting to stay with them. Despite my diligent efforts to present myself as a researcher and to explain my project, my meetings with Couchsurfers tended to play out as host–guest rather than subject–researcher encounters. Even when I was not staying in their home, my interlocutors insisted on feeding me, introducing me to friends, showing me around their city, neighborhood or village, and generally ensuring I was enjoying myself. As I have discussed elsewhere (Germann Molz 2012), engaging in interviews that are, in themselves, performances of mobile sociality can generate rich insights about people’s mobile lives, but it can also raise thorny ethical issues related to power in the research relationship (see also, Sin 2015). It is perhaps more accurate to refer to these interactions not as interviews, but as encounters. I asked questions and probed for stories and insights, but these conversations were contextualized in the complex social dramas of online coordination, playdates, hosting and guesting, or walking tours. As David Bissell (2018, p. xxxv) explains in his research with commuters in Sydney, each interview was ‘instead an encounter in its own right, chock-full of awkward pinch points, backward-tracing realizations, and cascading memories, replete with subtle transitions, overbrimming with heart-thumping intensities and felt emotions’. It was not just the transcript of these encounters that served as data, but the lived experience of the encounter itself that became an object of my analysis. This brings me to the final issue about the type of data MoVE generates. Generating Data: Beyond Representation Mobile virtual ethnography generates data from different sources and perspectives. Travel blogs, as an example of digital data, are both online archives and vibrant sites of social interaction. They can be a source of textual data, but they can also be read as performative sites where texts, meanings and socialities are co-produced with an online audience. Interviews, too, can generate both representational data in the form of narratives, memories, metaphors and other sense-making registers or as a performative encounter in itself. Bissell (2018, p. xxxv) observes that traditional interviews can elicit details that help ‘build a coherent picture of what is going on’. However, the interview can also enact the types of socialities respondents participate in: connecting with people online, meeting up with them in person, walking or traveling together, hosting one another and then taking the encounter back into the digital realm. As Bissell (2018, p. xxxv) notes: ‘When treated as

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MoVE: mobile virtual ethnography  199 a representation of wider things, the interview might have had its day, but when treated as a creative encounter in itself, the interview offers exciting potential for becoming attuned to the uniqueness of different situations.’ My story about meeting the Harts offers one snapshot of the multifaceted representational and performative data MoVE produces. Had I only ever interacted with Elsa online, I would have missed the study-abroad fair and the competing versions of global citizenship it brought to my attention. Another example was a chance meeting with the Hoffmeyers, a family I met at a restaurant in Thailand. I first noticed them because all three of the children were absorbed in their digital devices. I then recognized the mother, Kim, as the author of one of the blogs in my sample. I recalled that she had written passionately on her blog about limiting children’s screen time, which left me a bit puzzled that she was allowing the kids to play on their devices at the dinner table. I approached the family and we arranged a playdate/interview at our hostel the next day. While the children swam and squealed, the parents talked. I asked Kim about the apparent contradiction between her online condemnation of children’s technology use and what I had witnessed the night before. She described her deep ambivalence about her children’s use of technology and how she struggled to balance useful online educational resources against mindless and addictive entertainment. It is tempting to think of MoVE as a way of triangulating data to test representations posted online against lived realities. However, triangulation implies that there is a generally accurate truth that can be distilled out of contradicting evidence. I prefer to think of MoVE as revealing complexity instead of triangulating data to pin down a true interpretation. Kim was not saying one thing online but doing another offline, as if one action invalidated the other. Instead, like many parents, she was navigating real pressures and deep ambivalences about children’s use of technology. These multiple forms of data provided a more complicated insight into her family’s way of living with a dilemma that most of the parents in my study were grappling with. By generating both representational and more-than-representational data, MoVE helps researchers develop a robust, if always partial, understanding of mobile lives.

CONCLUSION I have described the various ways MoVE departs from traditional ethnography, but it also extends the spirit of ethnography into new empirical realms. In particular, MoVE embodies ethnography’s longstanding commitment to generating rich accounts of lived experience, its experimental disposition and its more recent turn toward reflexivity. Similar to traditional ethnography, the aim of MoVE is to generate a thick description of a social phenomenon that brings people and practices to life (Geertz 1973). In this way, MoVE fulfills the ethnographic remit to leverage the ‘power of the scientific imagination to bring us into touch with the lives of strangers’ (Geertz 1973, p. 16). By adapting ethnographic techniques, MoVE brings into view the mobile and mediated forms that those lives now take. Also similar to traditional ethnography, including even the thickest of descriptions, the story MoVE tells only ever reveals a partial picture of the world. This incompleteness should not be read as a failure of the method, however, but as a feature of it. Mobile

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200  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities virtual ethnography intervenes in a story that is, by definition, always in the process of being told (see Frohlick and Harrison 2008). The technologies people use and the way these technologies intertwine with embodied mobilities and social practices are always changing, which means that MoVE is always, to some extent, an experimental method; as is the practice of ethnography itself (Salazar et al. 2017, p. 16). Ever since the earliest days of anthropological research, ethnographic methods have been experimental, a way of feeling our way into that ongoing story. There is ample room for researchers to expand the scope of MoVE to study, for example, the mobile lives of non-leisure travelers, such as military and diplomatic personnel and their families, corporate expats, digital nomads, seasonal migrant laborers or care chain workers (see Amit 2007). It could be extended beyond the bubble of middle-class travelers to study the intersection of technology with the elite mobilities of the global jetset or the non-voluntary mobilities of vulnerable groups, such as forced migrants, refugees or asylum seekers. With its focus on leisure mobilities and voluntary mobile lifestyles, MoVE has tended to feature that class of travelers who have the financial wherewithal and technological know-how to travel for fun. However, if MoVE enacts the mobile worlds it studies, then as researchers we must also reflect on the way our ethnographies are entangled with the reproduction of global inequalities. Mobilities scholars have long paid attention to who moves and who does not, and they have been especially concerned about the gap between those in the fast lane who have access to and control over their own mobility, and those in the slow lane who do not (Cresswell 2010). In this way, MoVE has much to offer a mobility justice agenda in mobilities studies (see Chapter 1 in this volume). With its potential to offer a glimpse into mobile lives as they occur, MoVE can help us produce richly detailed comparative accounts of people’s lived experiences of mobility and technology, and of the complex, hybrid and often stratified social worlds they inhabit.

NOTE 1. MoVE, mobile virtual ethnography, is not to be confused with MVE, mobile video ethnography (Spinney 2011, 2015), though mobile video techniques would certainly be at home in a MoVE approach.

REFERENCES Amit, V. (ed.) (2000), Constructing the Field: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Contemporary World, London: Routledge. Amit, V. (ed.) (2007), Going First Class? New Approaches to Privileged Travel and Movement, Oxford: Berghahn. Bell, D. (2012), ‘Hospitality is society’, Hospitality & Society, 1 (2), 137–52. Bissell, D. (2018), Transit Life: How Commuting Is Transforming Our Cities, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Clifford, J. (1997), Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cresswell, T. (2010), ‘Towards a politics of mobility’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28 (1), 17–31. Elliott, A. and J. Urry (2010), Mobile Lives, London: Routledge. Frohlick, S. (2006), ‘Rendering and gendering mobile subjects: placing ourselves between local ethnography and global worlds’, in S. Coleman and P. Collings (eds), Locating the Field: Space, Place and Context in Anthropology, Oxford: Berg, pp. 87–104. Frohlick, S. and J. Harrison (2008), ‘Engaging ethnography in tourist research’, Tourist Studies, 8 (1), 5–18.

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MoVE: mobile virtual ethnography  201 Geertz, C. (ed.) (1973), The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, pp. 3–32. Geertz, C. (1998), ‘Deep hanging out’, The New York Review of Books, 45 (16), 69. Germann Molz, J. (2012), Travel Connections: Tourism, Technology and Togetherness in a Mobile World, London and New York: Routledge. Germann Molz, J. and C.M. Paris (2015), ‘The social affordances of flashpacking: exploring the mobility nexus of travel and communication’, Mobilities, 10 (2), 173–92. Haldrup, M. and J. Larsen (2010), Tourism, Performance and the Everyday: Consuming the Orient, London and New York: Routledge. Hine, C. (2000), Virtual Ethnography, London: Sage. Jain, J. (2009), ‘The making of mundane bus journeys’, in P. Vannini (ed.), The Culture of Alternative Mobilites: Routes Less Traveled, Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 91–110. Kannisto, P. (2018), Global Nomads and Extreme Mobilities, London and New York: Routledge. Marcus, G.E. (1998), Ethnography through Thick and Thin, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mascheroni, G. (2007), ‘Global nomads’ mobile and network sociality: exploring new media uses on the move’, Information, Communication and Society, 10 (4), 527–46. Novoa, A. (2015), ‘Mobile ethnography: emergence, techniques and its importance to geography’, Human Geographies, 9 (1), 97–107. O’Reilly, C.C. (2006), ‘From drifter to gap year tourist: mainstreaming backpacker travel’, Annals of Tourism Research, 33 (4), 998–1017. Paris, C.M. (2010), ‘The virtualization of backpacker culture: virtual mooring, sustained interaction and enhanced mobilities’, in K. Hannam and A. Diekmann (eds), Beyond Backpacker Tourism, Clevedon: Channel View, pp. 40–63. Postill, J. and S. Pink (2012), ‘Social media ethnography: the digital researcher in a messy web’, Media International Australia, 145 (1), 123–34, doi:10.1177/1329878X1214500114. Salazar, N., A. Elliot and R. Norum (2017), ‘Studying mobilities: theoretical notes and methodological queries’, in A. Elliot, R. Norum and N. Salazar (eds), Methodologies of Mobility: Ethnography and Experiment, Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 1–24. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2006), ‘The new mobilities paradigm’, Environment and Planning A, 38, (2), 207–26. Sin, H.L. (2015), ‘“You’re not doing work, you’re on Facebook!”: ethics of encountering the field through social media’, Professional Geographer, 67 (4), 676–85. Spinney, J. (2011), ‘A chance to catch a breath: using mobile video ethnography in cycling research’, Mobilities, 6 (2), 161–82. Spinney, J. (2015), ‘Close encounters? Mobile methods, (post)phenomenology and affect’, Cultural Geographies, 22 (2), 231–46. Vannini, P. (2012), Ferry Tales: Mobility, Place, and Time on Canada’s West Coast, London and New York: Routledge. Wittel, A. (2000), ‘Ethnography on the move: from field to net to internet’, FQS: Forum: Qualitative Social Research/Sozialforschung, 1 (1), art. 21.

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19.  Mixed mobile methods for a mobile practice: inclusive research on pilgrimage mobilities* Avril Maddrell

INTRODUCTION We live in a world characterised by mobilities – international, national, regional and local. Mobilities are not just about travel – movements are shaped by economic, social, political, emotional and cultural processes to become journeys motivated by and coloured with particular practices, purposes and meaning-making. Pilgrimage, the focus of this chapter, is variously defined as a form of formal religious journeying to a holy site; as a more loosely defined spiritual practice; as a time-space-journey of reflection; or as a journey to the sacred, however that is defined. In the context of this broader understanding of the practice, pilgrimage is a global phenomenon and has attracted a growing number of participants in early twenty-first century Western Europe. Bringing the new mobilities paradigm into nascent dialogue with pilgrimage studies, Coleman and Eade (2004, p. 16) argued in Reframing Pilgrimage that a mobilities approach afforded pilgrimage studies greater understanding of (1) movement as performative action; (2) movement as embodied action; (3) movement as part of a semantic field; and (4) movement as metaphor. As a consequence of pilgrimage research engaging with mobilities scholarship, it has become more effective in exploring pilgrimage as a dynamic embodied process and experience, whether focused at shrines or on pilgrimage routes. This has also facilitated a move away from often simplistic binaries, such as the designation of pilgrim/tourist and sacred/secular spaces and practices. This is exemplified by the concept of sacred mobilities (Maddrell et al. 2015a) which represents a specific form of experience and meaning-making through movement and travel or, perhaps more accurately, through a form of reflective journeying which centres on the exploration of intertwined material and virtual places, self and communities, beliefs and experiences, and the embodied practices and performances associated with these. Interrogating these complex and relational phenomena, which includes different spaces, scales, timeframes, actors, agencies and interests, frequently benefits from a mixed-methods approach. Mixed methods have long been established as a method for triangulating data in the social sciences and humanities, and this, coupled with the cultural turn in human geography and wider social sciences (Latham 2003), has fostered an appreciation for, and use of, more varied methods, including ethnographic, archive and visual methods. These often rich combinations of mixed methods have also reformulated their critical qualities and potential for (1) bringing quantitative-qualitative and qualitative-qualitative findings into dialogue; (2) empowering participant-centred research, especially for marginalised groups (see Meth 2003 on the use of solicited diaries); and (3) critical- and cross-readings of the formulation and uses of (auto)ethnographic data. Greater attention to the socially constituted nature of these sources, their framing and omissions (Meth 2003), combined 202

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Mixed mobile methods for a mobile practice  203 with strategies for critical readings of these sources (see Pink 2001; Rose 2001, 2008 on visual methodologies) has enriched understanding of personal situated experience, performance and meaning-making, and the wider phenomena of cultures, societies, issues and power relations of which they are a part, making such an approach well-placed for interrogating and understanding mobilities. While the concept of mobilities and associated meaning-making has become commonplace in pilgrimage studies, engagement with mobilities has tended to be conceptual instead of methods-focused (although, for an exception, see Dubsich 2004). Mobile methods are wide ranging, representing a continuum from long-standing ethnographic methods, such as participant observation, to observing participants via high-technology, and live-feed digital biometric data. This chapter explicitly addresses the nexus between studying mobile practices, using mobilities concepts and mobile methodologies in an interdisciplinary and international multiple case study pilgrimage project: just as sedentarist theories are inadequate to capture mobile practices, so too are sedentarist methods. Centred on a study of pilgrimage experience (Maddrell et al. 2015b), this chapter explores the mobile methods designed for an interdisciplinary research project; those innovated in the field; and those developed/co-produced subsequently with non-academic partners in knowledge exchange applications of the research findings. In this way the methods discussed are understood (1) in the context of the ideals of research plans, (2) the frequent need as a researcher to respond flexibly in the often messy and contingent realities of fieldwork and (3) the potential opportunities to carry forward both methods and data in applied contexts, and how these may prompt the adoption of further methods. The methods discussed range between low technology and high technology, and the chapter concludes with some reflections on the potential overlap between the two. First, a bit more of an introduction to the study, the opportunities and challenges in its different phases of fieldwork, and consequent implications for research methods.

PLANNED RESEARCH METHODS AND RESPONDING TO CIRCUMSTANCES IN THE FIELD From the outset, our multidisciplinary international project on the significance of landscape aesthetics on meaning and experience in Christian pilgrimage in Meteora, Subiaco and the Isle of Man was designed to be cross-cutting. As a team of four researchers, we were drawn from three disciplines (geography, history and theology); our disciplines were grounded in epistemologies which privileged different methods and forms of knowledge, and we were to study three different denominational and national settings. We needed a cross-cutting approach in order to find a common research agenda and methods suited to the case studies, and to our own varied discipline-based research training. How, then, to study a mobile practice such as pilgrimage, which varied in form across the case studies (including modes and distance of travel), the character of the focal point or destination (ranging from remote ruins to a shrine within the historic community and infrastructure of a religious order), and varied pilgrim practices (from the veneration of icons to long-distance walking)? Given the multidisciplinary nature of the research team, and the multifaceted character of pilgrimage in its varying forms across the three case studies, a multiple- and mixed-methods approach was devised that would investigate each

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204  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities pilgrimage, including those organising and those participating in the pilgrimages, historic records and contemporary experiences, local residents and those travelling for the pilgrimage. The research would be undertaken in two phases across the three case studies, each researcher completing the first phase, before moving on to the second, thereby allowing discussion, comparison and calibration between the research team within each phase, and to make any adjustments for the second phase. We knew from pilot-study work that the differences in historical contexts, as well as the nature of the differing contemporary sites and practices, meant that we could not expect uniform research materials from each case study: some had their own archives, others had few historic records; pilgrims were resident at some sites, fleeting visitors to others. A coherent methodology was needed across the case studies, and a mixed-methods approach was designed in order to capture local particularities, varied experiences and perspectives, and potentially comparative data. Phase 1 was devised to interrogate any archive sources relating to the given pilgrimage site (for example, archived visitor books, records, letters, newspapers and diaries capturing details of historic and recent pilgrimage mobilities), and to interview those responsible for sites and shrines, and/or those leading pilgrimages. Phase 2 was designed to focus on the experience of participants in the pilgrimages through short questionnaires and experiential photo-diaries. The additional cross-cutting element of our own participant observation/ observant participation (see Dubsich 2004) in the pilgrimage sites and practices we were studying is beyond the scope of this chapter, but I have reflected briefly on the role of my own situated mobilities in this research elsewhere (Maddrell 2009), and the role of mobile researchers working on mobilities represents a rich field of reflexive enquiry. Although there was some unevenness in the availability of research material (notably archive sources) or willing participants (especially when seeking to recruit photo-diarists), the real challenge proved to be what had been assumed to be the most straightforward element of data collection – the short participant questionnaire. Being the first of the team to undertake fieldwork, I was faced with a conundrum: we had devised a mixedmethods approach with participant questionnaires at its heart, but the organisers of the pilgrimage walks which I was researching ruled out the use of a questionnaire. It was felt that asking people to complete a questionnaire might be off-putting for those tentatively exploring their spirituality through the walks; the organisers wanted their participants to feel unconditionally welcome to these very open and informal weeks of prayer walks, not to run the risk of them feeling ‘collared’ by someone with a clipboard (field notes, May 2010). How then to access participants’ varied experiences? How to avoid privileging the organisers’ and photo-diarists’ views, or the researcher’s own participation-based interpretation? The solution needed to be needed to be immediate, actionable and replicable across the other case studies.

INNOVATING IN THE FIELD The result, after much rumination, was the idea of using a postcard to ask one or two core questions, coupled with a few key demographic questions in order to situate responses; stamped and addressed, this could easily be distributed, completed and returned, if and when participants wished to. Crucially, this would not impinge on the experience of the pilgrimage in the moment, nor any sense of privacy. The chair of the group immediately

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Mixed mobile methods for a mobile practice  205 welcomed the proposed research-postcards as in the spirit of their light-touch approach to the walks, and was happy to allow a few minutes at the beginning of a walk to introduce myself and the project, and to distribute the postcards. A local printer was able to produce the research postcards within 24 hours (in this instance, an advantage of doing research on home ground in the Isle of Man and being able to tap local knowledge). Over two-thirds of the postcards distributed were returned, resulting in sometimes brief but often rich responses. Subsequently, with a minor edit, the method was adopted in the project’s two other case studies, and the insights they provided constituted a core strand of the research data collected across the three international case studies (see Maddrell et al. 2015b). This is indicative of the method’s applicability in other international contexts, although across the different contexts, return rates were highest when the postcards were distributed either to a group with a brief introduction to the project, or personally given to individuals who were briefed on the project. Research tools need to be matched appropriately to research questions, context and sampling strategy. In this research project, familiarity with the tangible form and practice of writing postcards made this method a particularly appropriate method for inviting and gathering insights from participants: it was easy to complete, could be done at any time, and required only a pen and access to a post box. The suitability and ease of the postcard method was reflected in the relatively high return rate of 66 per cent in the original case study in the Isle of Man; furthermore, analysis of postcard respondents showed the age and gender of respondents to be broadly in proportion with participants on the walks (for example, circa two-thirds women and one-third men). However, was this simply a matter of a culturally appropriate method with a particular demographic cohort? Response rates in the other two European case studies of 45–55 per cent were also good, if a little lower, possibly reflecting the lack of opportunity for researchers there to introduce the project to a group of potential participants. In addition to the field diaries kept by researchers, research methods included participant photo-diaries. Recruitment of participants for this method was particularly effective in the Isle of Man case study which included an annual week of prayer walks and a weeklong, small-group pilgrimage, both of which allowed requests for volunteer diarists to be pre-circulated. Seven photo-diarists of varying ages were recruited including six women and one man (this ratio slightly underrepresented participants who identified as male). Recruits were provided with a pack including a participant information sheet and guidance, a disposable camera (36 photos), a notebook and a stamped addressed envelope to facilitate easy return. Some participants chose to use their own digital cameras and send the photographs and/ or accompanying text by email, indicative of a mixed economy of digital and non-digital communication and photography within this cohort.

RICH INSIGHTS FROM SIMPLE MOBILE METHODS Box 19.1 shows two research postcard responses from participants in the Isle of Man, which illustrate the amount and quality of both qualitative and demographic information that can be communicated on a 6 × 4 inch postcard. These examples, one from a woman, the other from a man, both of similar age and participating in the same mobile practice, evidence both converging interests and diverging world views/beliefs, highlighting

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206  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities BOX 19.1 TWO RESEARCH POSTCARD RESPONSES, PILGRIMAGE AND LANDSCAPE AESTHETICS PROJECT ‘As I stood on the beach at Niarbyl on Tuesday evening – gazing in awe at the towering cliffs and bubbling sea – our prayers seemed so much more meaningful than in a church building- surrounded by the restraints of man! (sic)’ (PC 7, Female, 56–65 years, Anglican) ‘Religion plays no part in my enjoyment of walking or in any of the other sports and recreations that I enjoy. It is the surroundings and the exercise that gives me satisfaction. I was interested to learn about the keeills and our ancestors but I also enjoy museums, stately homes and gardens. Agnostics and even atheists can enjoy walking and talking. Thanks, D.’ (PC 8, Male, 66–75 years, no religious affiliation)

­ ifferent motivations for and experience of their participation. While the sensual poetics d of a moment of stillness and landscape-inspired spiritual experience comes to the fore in the former; the latter emphasises relationship to the past, and the pleasure of the embodied kinetics of walking coupled with the social interaction of talking, largely outside the explicit religious practices during the walk. The ability to contextualise participant responses in relation to aspects of positionality (here indicated by age, gender and (non-) affiliation) is particularly helpful, especially when identifying empirical and analytical themes within qualitative research material. Hence, the research postcard method has subsequently been used to good effect in a wide range of research projects by myself and others, including for further data collection, research feedback and public engagement activities. However, in some contexts there are issues when relying on written text, notably, lack of confidence in literacy may deter potential participants. This needs to be handled sensitively, but a researcher offering to fill in answers on behalf of a potential contributor can facilitate participation for those lacking textual confidence to share their views and experience. Those volunteers who agreed to keep photo-diaries were asked to take photographs of things that were meaningful to them during the pilgrimage-prayer walk, providing a brief written explanation of what was chosen and why they considered it meaningful. The qualities and quantity of the written accounts varied from brief descriptions to deep spiritual reflections. Figure 19.1 illustrates a page from an analogue diary, completed en route, and two accompanying photographs. Although a relatively compact entry was noted by diarist Kate on this particular day (compared with some other entries), it evidences a number of elements of her interests and beliefs. Further it illuminates aspects of the intersection between her personal embodied walking experience, interest in nature and the particularities of the Manx landscape, the significance of the collective, and the way in which she read the landscape and pilgrimage experience through the lens of her faith. Of particular note is (1) her spiritual experience catalysed by her experience of nature, and (2) her interpretation of the landscape and journey as a series of insights and metaphors which were illustrative of biblical teaching as her key discursive frame (see Maddrell 2011, 2013; Maddrell and della Dora 2013 for further discussion). The practice of linking personal experiences and observations to biblical quotes and/or chapter-and-verse citations was a refrain throughout her account,

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Mixed mobile methods for a mobile practice  207

Figure 19.1  I sle of Man Photo Diary extract (images and text), Kate (Evangelical Baptist)

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208  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities for example, seeing the trees overgrown with ivy (see Figure 19.1) prompted reference to Luke, chapter 8, verse 14, and the observation that: ‘God’s message can be crowded out by the cares and riches and pleasures of this life’. This comment is counterbalanced by her previous note about the beauty of the flowers at the keeill, which prompted another biblical reference to the glories of the ‘lilies of the field’, illustrating her pleasure in nature as part of God’s creation. This illustrates the coproduction of image, text and discursive frame, as well as the rich insights and resource that photo-diaries can represent for mobilities research, especially when successive experiences are recorded, thereby providing detailed insights and a bigger picture of the processual unfolding of narrative and reflection rather than only fleeting snapshots of experience. Interestingly, the only male photo-diarist (a retired scientist and occasional lay worship leader on the walks) provided a narrative that was more descriptive than reflective, and as a former resident who now travelled to the island each year to participate, his account centred on renewed relationality – to the social assemblage surrounding the event and the island itself. The role of gender and other forms of intersectional identity merit careful attention in mobilities research method design and analysis (see Maddrell 2016).

GIVING SOMETHING BACK For many researchers, giving something back to researched communities and participants in research is a key element of good research practice/praxis. This principle sits squarely at the heart of feminist research, although the nature of what can be ‘given back’ varies and can be challenging as regards time, feasibility and power relations (Gupta and Kelly 2014). For the research project discussed here, there were a number of modest but tangible examples of shared knowledge exchange and mutual benefits from the research, including an applied digital follow-on project, discussed in the next section. Despite wariness about questionnaires, the organisers quickly saw the benefits of potential insights from participant responses on the research postcards and requested a copy of findings for their committee. A summary of responses, coupled with some field observations and analysis formed the basis of a feedback report to the group, and subsequently most of the suggestions were incorporated into the programme the following year. Photo-diarists are often generous participants, sharing something of their emotional, psychological and, in this project, spiritual experiences, as well as more descriptive accounts. Having already agreed to send a print copy of the photographs to each photo-diarist as a token of thanks for their contribution to the project, I also returned the originals of material diaries which were sent to me. I did this because several diarists commented on how much their experience had been enriched by keeping the diary, giving the diary personal as well as research value for those participants. In that context it seemed only right, to return the originals after copying, a small gesture in relation to the wealth of their contribution through this peripatetic research method. In this project, follow-up questions or clarifications were typically only possible by email; but in more localised photo-research and other forms of research, diaries can be usefully followed up by in-depth interviews (see Wigley 2018), when participant-generated photos can be used as a basis for photo-elicitation, linking mobile and sedentarist methods.

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Mixed mobile methods for a mobile practice  209

DIGITISING METHODS The methods discussed so far have predominantly been low technology and non-digital, although the blending of digital and manual photography and correspondence modes across the cohort of participants was noted above. However, there are ways in which these methods can be, and/or are already, translated into digital mobile methods. For research postcards, a simple VoxBox arrangement via a voice recorder, video camera or even a mobile-phone camera can also be used to gather short oral responses where participants are willing, and/or an oral contribution is preferred to writing, but these are typically less anonymous than the postcard or traditional questionnaire method, and need formal consent processes to be put in place regarding anonymity, permission to make a recording, and the use, storage and longevity of this data. The now widespread ownership of mobile phones with cameras, and the ease of uploading images and text to online platforms could be used as a digital version of this method; in the age of Instagram and Snapchat, this method could increase participation by those making even short visits to pilgrimage shrines or similar mobile practices. However, while accommodating and engaging those familiar with social media posts, ethical issues associated with photograph uploads require careful oversight and management, and data collection which is completely transferred to digital methods will exclude some participants. Thus it is important to offer cohort-appropriate mixed-medium research tools to ensure representative participation, for example, a combination of disposable cameras and paper-based accounts, digital images and text submitted by email or direct upload to a blog, vlog or nominated (and moderated) online platform. A follow-on funded project working with Manx National Heritage, Cathedral Isle of Man and the Praying the Keeills group resulted in the designation of a virtual pilgrimage trail in the Isle of Man using co-produced digital interpretation and reflection materials accessed via a designated website and tab on a locally produced heritage walking application (app).1 Grounded in the original set of sacred mobilities and associated mobile methods, these digital platforms and supporting print version materials are intended to increase public engagement with the island’s faith heritage from varied perspectives through embodied and virtual mobilities. This, in turn, offers new opportunities for further mobilities research, including mixed digital, biometric, reflective and reflexive methods.

CONCLUSION The discussion in this chapter on pilgrimage as a form of sacred mobility highlights nine key points for wider current and future mobilities research and associated methods: 1. Complex sociocultural practices which are situated in varying contexts, with differing relationships to institutional structures, as well as being peopled and engaged with in very different ways, benefit from several tailored research methods which approach that complexity from a number of different perspectives and methods. 2. Where there is sufficient core common data, but there are challenges to collecting or accessing identical data-sets or research material across multiple case studies, there

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3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

are creative ways of bringing different but complementary data to bear on common research questions. Research postcards are suited to both mobile subjects and sensitive research: participants chose whether or not to opt in, they are portable, can be completed and returned in situ, or after the event from a distance, and avoid impinging on the experiential moment. Despite being compact, research postcards can produce rich insights to participant experience. This method easily translates to digital platforms such as feedback on a mobile phone app used by participants, although ethical data collection and the moderation of posts require care. Collecting key relevant demographic details from participants situates individual experience within some demographic context, such as gender, ethnicity and age, which strengthens the analytic purchase of qualitative mobile methods. Photo-diary methods allow mobile participants to engage with the research in varying ways and depths, and can produce something of value to the participants themselves, enhancing their experience. Digital technologies offer many opportunities for increasing participation in and knowledge from mobile methods, witness the use of virtual and biotechnology. To be inclusive, research methods need to suit the nature of the research, such as mobility-friendly methods, but also the capabilities of participants (notably, basic literacy, as well as access to, training in, and confidence with, information technology), which may necessitate not only multiple methods to triangulate findings, but also multiple approaches to collecting the same data from different participants.

NOTES * With sincere thanks to participants who generously shared their experiences. The research underpinning this chapter was funded by the AHRC and ESRC: ‘Landscape aesthetics, meaning and experience in Christian pilgrimage’ (AHRC-ESRC HOO9868/1), and ‘Creating a virtual pilgrimage trail in the Isle of Man: faithscape, landscape and heritage’ (AH/N00289X/1). 1. See http://www.pilgrimageisleofman.im/ (accessed 23 March 2020).

REFERENCES Coleman, S. and J. Eade (eds) (2004), Reframing Pilgrimage. Cultures in Motion, London: Routledge. Dubsich, J. (2004), ‘“Heartland America”. Memory, motion and the (re) construction of history on a motorcycle pilgrimage’, in S. Coleman and J. Eade (eds), Reframing Pilgrimage. Cultures in Motion, London: Routledge, pp. 104–32. Gupta, C. and A.B. Kelly (2014), ‘The social relations of fieldwork: giving back in a research setting’, Journal of Research Practice, 10 (2), art. E2. Latham, A. (2003), ‘Research, performance, and doing human geography: some reflections on the ­diary-photograph, diary-interview method’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 35 (11), 1993–2017. Maddrell, A. (2009), ‘A place for grief and belief: the Witness Cairn at the Isle of Whithorn, Galloway, Scotland’, Social and Cultural Geography, 10 (6), 675–93. Maddrell, A. (2011), ‘“Praying the keeills”. Rhythm, meaning and experience on pilgrimage journeys in the Isle of Man’, Landabrefið, 25, 15–29.

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Mixed mobile methods for a mobile practice  211 Maddrell, A. (2013), ‘Moving and being moved. More-than-walking and talking on pilgrimage walks in the Manx landscape’, Journal of Culture and Religion, 14 (1), 63–77. Maddrell, A. (2016), ‘Gendered spaces, practice, emotion and affect at the Marian Shrine of Ta Pinu, Malta’, in L. Gemzöe, M. Keinänen and A. Maddrell (eds), Contemporary Encounters in Gender and Religion. European Perspectives, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 219–40. Maddrell, A. and V. della Dora (2013), ‘Crossing surfaces in search of the holy: landscape and liminality in contemporary Christian pilgrimage’, Environment and Planning A, 45 (5), 1104–26. Maddrell, A., V. della Dora, A. Scafi and H. Walton (eds) (2015b), Christian Pilgrimage, Landscape and Heritage. Journeying to the Sacred, London: Routledge. Maddrell, A., A. Terry and T. Gale (eds) (2015a), Sacred Mobilities, Farnham: Ashgate. Meth, P. (2003), ‘Entries and omissions: using solicited diaries in geographical research’, Area, 35 (2), 195–205. Pink, S. (2001), Doing Ethnography: Images, Media and Representation in Research, London: Sage. Rose, G. (2001), Visual Methodologies. An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials, London: Sage. Rose, G. (2008), ‘Using photographs as illustrations in human geography’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 32 (1), 151–60. Wigley, E. (2018), ‘Constructing subjective spiritual; geographies in everyday mobilities: the practice of prayer and meditation in corporeal travel’, Social and Cultural Geography, 19 (8) 984–1005.

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20.  Mobile visual methods

Phillip Vannini and Martin Trandberg Jensen

INTRODUCTION The use of visual methods has been on the constant rise across all disciplines for the past two decades. As visual communication tools become more pervasive in daily life, as the production of audio-visual content becomes easier with more user-friendly innovations entering the market every month, and as the distribution and consumption of such content becomes more widespread, audio-visuality is inevitably bound to acquire greater and greater socio-cultural and historical importance as a mode of knowledge generation and acquisition. From this it follows that visual applications of mobile methods will inevitably continue to grow quantitatively and qualitatively, and it will be ever more necessary for all researchers to understand their potentials and limitations. It would be too convenient to simply state that we should all care about visual methods simply because our lives are becoming more reliant on mediated images. The true reason why we ought to practice visual applications of research methods we believe is instead twofold. First, evolving technologies and their concurrently developing research traditions have now opened up avenues for understanding mobile phenomena that otherwise would be difficult or impossible to study. Secondly, a greater audio-visual literacy on the part of researchers is now making it possible for researchers to eclipse the boundaries that for so long have limited research consumption to academic audiences. Visual method applications are more diverse and more effective than ever before and it behoves us all to take advantage of the possibilities they constantly open up. In this chapter we focus on both the value of visual methods and their concrete applications and challenges. We begin by focusing on the recent development of visual methods in the applied study of mobilities and we survey their diverse approaches and styles. We tackle visuality by reflecting upon the multimodality inherent in working critically with visual methods. Thus we will reflect on how video and photography (crafted as either films/documentaries, exhibits and collections, or as ethnographic snippets) as well as arts-based approaches, such as painting, drawing, mapping, diagramming and design, are part of a broader movement to transcend the modal limitations of writing. Subsequently, our chapter examines the reflexivity and performativity of visual research by discussing the significance of the regular failures, ruptures and unexpected outcomes of visual fieldwork. Next, we reflect critically on the tools and agents of production; we examine who is typically responsible for generating visual knowledge and with what tools this knowledge about mobile phenomena is created. Finally, we reflect on the public dissemination of that knowledge, by concentrating in particular on the application of visual methods in the context of ethnographic film and video. Both of the authors of this chapter have utilized visual mobile methods in ways that could be labelled as creative and non-traditional. Phillip, for example, has been involved with the use of photography, video and sound to expand the audiences of his 212

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Mobile visual methods  213 research. Martin has worked with visual mobile ethnographies to explore a range of under-researched visualities. Throughout our ongoing work, and therefore with this chapter, we both aim to encourage the development of visual mobilities research through experimental, multimodal and reflexive engagements with the visual and other sensorial domains by drawing from various arts-inspired approaches and exploring the possibilities of working with new digital platforms and tools, and with participatory research.

VISUAL METHODS IN MOBILITIES RESEARCH For a field characterized by the study of flows, movements and the circulation of images and mobile experiences, the use of mobile methods has been pivotal in advancing mobilities research (Büscher et al. 2010; Fincham et al. 2010). In particular, the adoption and adaptations of visual methods have helped push contemporary understandings of mobilities towards new exciting domains. For the sake of brevity, we outline three prominent strands of visual research in mobilities research. The first, and perhaps most traditional, use of visual methods within mobilities research is the use of photographs as descriptive supplements, that is, representational snapshots, which are meant to enrich written analytical accounts (Halgreen 2004; Sharpley 2004; Watts and Lyon 2011). Photographs are used with a representational aim in order to provide a visual glimpse into the research matter. When used this way photographs often come with limited analytical significance. In the attempt to place visual knowledge forms more centrally in analytical discussions, other visual scholarship has experimented with the power of the visual to add to or infuse traditional methods, such as the interview, with new visual cues and empirical openings that reinvigorate the potential of conversations. For example, in an attempt to understand the everyday commuting practices of local people in Santiago, Jirón (2011) accompanied travelers, took photographs of their everyday routines and, subsequently, used the photographs to accompany her photographic interviews. This led to in-depth discussions and spatial revelations that would otherwise have been constrained by the conventional question-and-answer format. Another emergent school of visual mobilities research is inspired by the fields of arts and design. Within this subfield new visual methods and visual material forms are being constantly developed. Common forms consist, for example, of the use of diagrams, sketches, drawings, mappings, art installations and visual interventions. For instance, in an attempt to understand the bag-packing practices of tourists, Barry (2017) utilizes the power of participatory drawing to synthesize the practical process, spatial experience and materiality of mundane bag packing. On a different note, Keller (2016) develops photographic diagrams of movements to animate mobile perceptual experiences. Works such as these take part in forming and inspiring experimental and creative approaches to the study of the often indiscernible, fleeing and mundane practices of mobility, and have worked to push the traditional applications of visual methods into new arts-inspired and experimental domains. Finally, numerous phenomenological attempts have used visual methods to invigorate the feel of mobility. These studies examine the embodiment of mobility and how people, viscerally, engage with movement as it unfolds. For example, video recordings have been used to explore the ongoing character of urban biking in London (Brown and Spinney

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214  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities 2010), collective biking practices (Mcilvenny 2015) and to discuss the ordinary practices and social life in cars (Laurier 2010). Common to these accounts is the inherent multisensoriality that shapes visual mobile experiences (for example, the auditory, the kinesthetic, the olfactory and the tactile). In this respect, the proliferation of non-representational theory within mobilities research has rejuvenated the use and experimentation with visual methods (Latham and McCormack 2009; Vannini and Taggart 2013; Jensen et al. 2015). Visual researchers inspired by non-representational theory pay homage to the non-visible (which may seem strange), the non-verbal, the atmospheric, the inconspicuous and the inherent multimodality of visual culture and experiences. Working in the ethos of non-representational thinking means seeing visual research as much more than the application of photographic recordings devices, and therefore as an epistemological turn and a way of feeling fieldwork, which entails being receptive for the sensuous intensities, embodied reflexivities and social encounters mediated through visuality (Vannini 2017). Importantly, non-representational theory has also helped push the boundaries for what counts as visual knowledge and has helped trigger a much needed debate on how visual research can be communicated, disseminated, distributed and made meaningful for new audiences. To discuss this further, this chapter highlights how visual scholarship supports making things public in ways that traditional modes of research dissemination (reports, text, theoretical argumentation and journal distribution) may be less suited for. Visual research, we argue, has the potential to rejuvenate the outreach, impact, and applied values of social sciences through the making of public ethnographies, phronetic social science (Flyvbjerg 2005) and research that works to bring people and communities together, drive change, confront existing knowledges, stir up debate and, importantly, entertain and surprise people along these processes. However, as argued by several researchers, there remains, still, a lingering irony in utilizing video as an innovative research method, only to reduce the richness of the actual video recordings to stilled and disembodied pictures in journal articles (Garrett 2011). Despite recent attempts to incorporate actual video footage in online articles (Jensen 2017; Vannini 2017) there remains a great potential in pushing the dissemination capacities of visual knowledge further. To reach this aim, the following addresses the role of the researcher in critically and reflexively working with visual mobile methods.

RESEARCHER POSITIONS Now that we have briefly discussed some of the ways in which visual research has informed and contributed to mobilities research, we use this section to reflect more specifically on the performativity of visual scholarship. Visual research, we argue, should not be reduced to ocular-centric research, that is, research that privileges vision over the other senses (Crang 1997). Instead, we understand visual research as both the practice of applying various forms of visual methods, and as a more profound reflexive and multisensorial engagement with visual fieldwork. This type of approach recoils from reducing visual knowledge to the type of dead evidence often seen as supplementary visual examples resting below the textuality of academic writing. The critical visual practice that we envision, works with visuals as a central part of a more-than-representational strategy

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Mobile visual methods  215 to enliven the immanent multisensory experience of places and practices (Latham and McCormack 2009). Accordingly, a reflexive visual practitioner works to acknowledge the more-than-visual elements in doing visual research, and should work to make every snapshot, photograph, drawing, or video an expressive concatenation of sensuous forces. This argument relates to the work undertaken by the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who on behalf of a great impressionistic artist declared that: ‘Cézanne said that you should be able to paint the smell of trees’ (Merleau-Ponty 2004, p. 62). Similarly, the most exciting opportunities (and challenges) in the use of visual methods in mobilities research is the ability to engage with photographs, videos, drawings or any given visual expression in ways that hint at that which cannot be seen, but must be felt, heard or touched (for example, atmospheres, sensuous geographies, emotions, tensions, human impulses and desires). To fully embrace the power of the visual, researchers must strive to invigorate this more-thanvisual eventfulness of visual fieldwork. To exemplify this eventfulness, try to think of the failures commonly experienced in doing visual fieldwork. While too often suppressed, most (honest) visual researchers will acknowledge that the practice of visual scholarship is seldom smooth and unproblematic. Visual fieldwork is filled with situational ruptures, frustrations, technical calamities and unexpected encounters. These are not damming conditions of visual fieldwork (Dewsbury 2010), but interesting openings to engage reflexively and creatively with new visual knowledge forms. To exemplify this, Martin remembers a specific methodical frustration during his doctoral research: To this day I still sense the pressing disappointment and irritation . . . I had been undertaking visual fieldwork for almost two months, photographing the life of interrailers on board European trains as part of my PhD thesis . . . and yet, upon returning home, there I was, sitting in my university office scrolling through hundreds-upon-hundreds of photos many of which were blurred, underexposed and shaken. I remember the first early thoughts about giving up the use of visual methods all together (‘they don’t work for the purpose’; ‘they are not relevant anyway’; ‘they are too inconvenient’) . . . yet slowly, together with the rich embodied recalls of the cramp and warm train compartments; the bumpy rhythms of the train journey and the hassles of doing extended fieldwork in confined train spaces, the scrapped photos reemerged to my academic attention, and later laid the foundation for a publication on visual knowledges in tourism research. (Fieldwork recalls)

Relatedly, in Jensen (2016) the term distorted representation is developed to remind visual researchers that what may easily be discarded as irrelevant, unnecessary, trivial or otherwise simply bad photographs, may have impressionistic abilities to convey the practical and sensuous entangledness of visual fieldwork and ‘redirect attention from the posited meaning towards the material composition and conduct of representations’ (Dewsbury et al. 2002, p. 438). Visual work becomes a double-barreled process revealing both photography as a process of mere documentation and an expression of the embodied practice, affective atmosphere and spatial conditions of the research field (Bruttomessoa and Vic 2017). There is thus a lingering, yet remarkably potent, analytical value in staying with the more-than-representational uncertainties of visual fieldwork. In working with alternative visualities, reflexive visual practitioners also question the visual tyranny of conformity imposed by publishers, distributors and journal editors, and most distinctively imposed upon researchers through strict technical image requirements

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216  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities and photograph enhancement services during the publication process. The time is ripe for progressive visual mobilities research that explores the ongoing and unsettled becoming of mobility through different types of visualities, for example, as seen through oblique perspectives, alternative angles, unforeseen encounters and from within under-researched contexts. To reach these aims, visual research is currently drawing on new technologies and participatory research strategies, which the following section explores.

TOOLS AND ACTORS The most traditional and simplest execution of visual methods requires a minimum of just three actors: a researcher, a visual tool of some kind (for instance, a camera) and a research subject. In this process, for example, the researcher may direct a video or photographic camera toward a research subject (who may or may not be aware of being researched) and the study carries on. While these procedures are still common in some large-scale observation studies, this process now has become more diverse and complex: new tools and multiple tool configurations are used, new roles for researcher and researched are constantly developed, and new outcomes are produced. Over the past decade two trends in particular have been growing in both popularity and effectiveness. The first trend consists of a blurring of the lines between the researcher and the research subject owing to an increase in both the intensity and variety of collaborative and participatory approaches. For example, in a study on the independent mobilities of children Christensen et al. (2011) asked the participating children for their reflections on the research process, and implemented many of their suggestions into both the study’s procedures and the subsequent evaluation of the technologies utilized. The research entailed a systematic mapping of children’s mobility patterns through the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) and mobile phones, which led to the co-creation of maps. The collaboration of researchers and researched democratized the applied research process and generated knowledge that is more inclusive, multi-perspectival and reflexive. Relatedly, in a wheel-along interview study conducted by Parent (2016) the researcher, herself a wheelchair user relied on the collaboration of her research participants to mount cameras on wheelchairs and continuously tend to their functioning. While at first the process of mounting cameras and holding microphones stood out as an inconvenience, over the research process, Parent (2016, p. 530) realized that by collaborating together in dealing with the constant demands of technology she and the participants ‘co-created a method in response to the multiple barriers and difficulties that were – often literally’ – in their way. ‘Assembling the equipment and talking on the move,’ Parent (2016, p. 530) writes, ‘were two critical performances of the wheeling interview that pushed me to engage with the notion of affordances and reflect on the reproduction of ableism in mobilities research.’ The second trend we have noted pertains to the growing multimodality of research studies as the direct result of the growth in complexity of the technological assemblages utilized to collect data. Whereas in earlier studies researchers might have commonly relied on fixed-angle cameras to observe mobile actors, it is now increasingly common to rely on multiple cameras, point-of-view (POV) cameras, wearable sound recorders and, even, various assemblages comprising of GPS, mobile phones, and much more. Point-of-view

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Mobile visual methods  217 cameras have become especially common. Spinney (2011) has convincingly argued that at times it is simply impossible for a researcher to be present to observe the unfolding of a mobile practice. Owing to the physical challenges inherent in being there, POV cameras installed on, for example, bicycles and helmets, can allow an absent researcher to see there and feel there, and thus to apprehend fleeting moments from a distance (Spinney 2011, 2015). Point-of-view action cameras offer the distinct advantages of being inexpensive, easy to use and are convenient to wear and mount. Moreover, they produce high-quality images, making them a favorite tool for researchers keen on capturing an ever-increasing variety of mobile phenomena, including walking dogs (Brown et al. 2008; Brown and Dilley 2012), outdoor adventurers (Vannini and Stewart 2017) and wheelchair users (Parent 2016), just to name a few. Nevertheless POV cameras have unsurmountable limitations as well: their soundrecording capability is atrocious, and their point of view is limited to an extremely wide angle. This means that researchers often need to use POV cameras as elements of wider and increasingly more complex ensembles of tools, and this is symbolic of a notable challenge that all practitioners of visual methods need to contend with. Visual mobile methods have grown in both diversity and complexity over the years (Garrett 2011) and these ever-expanding assemblages of audio-visual tools are making research more expensive, time-consuming and overall demanding. To solve this challenge, researchers keen on witnessing the ongoing development of visual mobile methods need to endeavor to find ways to lower the barriers preventing wider access to their field, lest this type of research becomes the exclusive domain of those with growing quantities of time, research funds, and physical and technical skills.

AUDIENCES Typically, applied research methods have two kinds of audiences: specific and general. Specific audiences are comprised of the most immediate stakeholders and direct beneficiaries of a particular research project. Specific audiences are generally small to medium sized and include all the research participants who have collaborated in the study process. General audiences are broader groups of people not directly involved in a research study or directly affected by the implementation of the change initiated by applied research. General audiences include groups as large as the general public: people who are the final consumers of knowledge created and disseminated beyond academic channels in order to raise awareness, educate, and promote social and cultural change. Mobile methods in general are useful to connect researchers with both specific and general audiences, but, thanks to the wide appeal of images as a mode of communication, visual methods are especially valuable tools for reaching out to general audiences. In particular, we believe that video/film is in a uniquely advantageous position to do so. Video, as countless writers have noted, is especially valuable for portraying the richness and complexity of the practice and experience of (more than) human movements of all kinds. Moreover, when combined with narrative, video is capable of provoking multiple kinds of affect among viewers. The affective power of video can then be a very effective tool to change minds, motivate action and drive social change. Over the past decade, an increasing number of documentary filmmakers have begun

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218  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities to pay direct attention to mobilities. Some of these filmmakers are based full-time in a university and are directly invested in the study of mobilities, whereas others have looser affiliations with academia and a more diffuse understanding of the field. Regardless of professional backgrounds and affiliations, both groups of filmmakers have generated intellectually and emotionally compelling works from which general audiences can learn a great deal. Filmmakers have also been able to examine unique mobility contexts through films that have pushed further the imagination of audiences worldwide. For example, in a 2013 documentary Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez shed light on the experiences of Nepali ­pilgrims traveling on the Manakamana cable car. Filmed in the observational style of classic ethnographic film, Manakamana consists of fixed, long takes of individuals experiencing the long cable-car journey up and down a Nepali mountain. Passengers at times talk with one another, and at times simply gaze at the landscape, play music, take selfies and snack. While observational films such as Manakamana are great tools for generating vicarious experiences, expository films are ideal for presenting complex arguments and persuading audiences. One of this type of film is Freightened: The Real Cost of Shipping, by Denis Delestrac. Presenting the ships crisscrossing the world’s oceans as the true agents of globalization, Freightened takes us on journeys alongside containers filled with often unknown goods, and introduces us to international seamen filled with hopes and aspirations for a better life at sea. Not only is shipping the backbone of globalization, Delestrac argues, but also a key player in the global rise in pollution from transportation sources, and yet it is an industry often forgotten in the realm of current affairs and public discourse. Audiences interested in transportation are also likely to find much of interest in renowned filmmaker Albert Maysles’s final film, released just before his death. Maysles’s In Transit shows us ethnographic vignettes captured onboard Amtrak’s ‘Empire Builder’, the busiest long-distance train in the USA. The vignettes reveal overheard conversations, moments of intimacy, fleeting interactions and passengers’ experience aboard the famed train and along the many different stations dotting the trip. As the train moves along, it becomes clear that travel for some is a form of flight and salvation, while for others it stands for loss, rupture and renewal. In this way the train becomes a vessel for a journey through time and place within contemporary America. With international migration and the refugee crisis increasingly presenting itself as the defining issue of our times, it is no accident that increasingly more ethnographic films shot on the move are focused on migrants and their plights. Remarkably, many of these films also show the most challenging side of conducting mobile research: the struggle to collect information in the face of threats to personal safety and security. The 2009 film Which Way Home is a great example of this. Which Way Home follows South and Central American children attempting to illegally cross the US border as they make their way by train through Mexico. The journey on the aptly-nicknamed train La bestia, the beast, depicts the children’s struggles as they attempt to stay a step ahead of thieves, gangsters, murderers, rapists and corrupt police. As they hop on and off trains some of the children are caught and victimized, while others encounter injury and death on the tracks. Making a film, striking a distribution deal and gaining international popularity among theatre or television audiences probably might seem like a far-fetched proposition to most of our readers, and that is fair enough: films can be prohibitively expensive and difficult

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Mobile visual methods  219 to make for anyone, let alone the uninitiated student or busy professional academic. Nonetheless, making ethnographic videos to expand the audiences of your research can be less daunting than it seems. To test this, in 2015 Phillip shot and edited Low and Slow, a 26-minute film about seaplane pilots. Recorded with just a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) and a GoPro, and sound-recording gear far less expensive than the average bill of a conference trip, Low and Slow was later broadcast on television across Canada and was seen by vastly broader audiences than its peer-reviewed counterpart. The applied power of ethnographic film and video is undeniable: few communication tools can allow academics to spread their research further and in the process become more impactful. However, still not enough researchers are taking advantage of the potential of mobile video methods and the growing opportunities to reach wide audiences through them.

CONCLUSION Point-of-view cameras, smartphones, eye-tracking devices, drone technologies and 360degree cameras – the options seem endless now. Clearly, the development of new visual technologies are paving the way for new interesting opportunities for visual scholarship, and within mobilities research these breakthroughs beckon innovative visual fieldwork to come. We have used this chapter to outline the contours of existing visual research within mobilities research, and have used this as a background to discuss the future potentials of using visual methods to tell new stories and reach new audiences in the work we make. In the current era of rapid technological development we have also used this chapter to remind mobilities researchers that the dazzle of technical opportunities must be complemented with a critical and reflexive stance towards the inherent multimodality of visual research. We have used this chapter to exemplify how visual fieldwork carries a sensuous capaciousness that we must strive to enliven if we are to more fully unpack the multisensoriality of everyday life and thus the ordering of visual culture and experiences. In working towards this aim, visual researchers must constantly grapple with a range of central questions: what is the position and role of the researcher in the creation of visual research? What tools and technologies are available to best reach visual intentions? What audience is targeted? What significances, for example, feelings, atmospheres or human desires, are sought to be evoked through our visual stories? In this process, state-of-the-art visual research and dissemination does not need to entail expensive equipment and advanced editing and production skills, but may as easily emerge from reflexive, critical and creative engagements with visual methods. In light of this, we hope that more critical visual practitioners will use the current opportunities of digital publishing, access to visual technologies and growing research insights to push the boundaries for visual mobilities research in years to come.

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220  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Brown, K. and J. Spinney (2010), ‘Catching a glimpse: the value of video in evoking, understanding and representing the practice of cycling’, in B. Fincham, M. McGuinness and L. Murray (eds), Mobile ­ Methodologies, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 130–151. Brown, K., R. Dilley and K. Marshall (2008), ‘Using a head-mounted video camera to understand social worlds and experiences’, Sociological Research Online, 13 (6), 31–40. Bruttomessoa, E. and J. Vic (2017), ‘Intentional camera movement: a multisensory and mobile photographic technique to investigate the urban tourism experience’, Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography, 2 (6), 71–82. Büscher, M., J. Urry and K. Witchger (2010), Mobile Methods, New York: Routledge. Christensen, P., M. Mikkelsen Romero, T.A. Sick Nielsen and H. Harder (2011), ‘Children, mobility, and space: using GPS and mobile phone technologies in ethnographic research’, Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 5 (3), 227–46. Crang, M. (1997), ‘Picturing practices: research through the tourist gaze’, Progress in Human Geography, 21 (3), 359–73. Dewsbury, J.D. (2010), ‘Performative, non-representational and affect-based research’, in D. DeLyser, S. Aitken, M. Crang, S. Herbert and L. McDowell (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Human Geography, London: Sage, pp. 321–34. Dewsbury, J.D., P. Harrison, M. Rose and J. Wylie (2002), ‘Enacting geographies’, Geoforum, 33 (4), 437–40. Fincham, B., M. McGuinness and L. Murray (eds) (2010), Mobile Methodologies, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Flyvbjerg, B. (2005), ‘Social science that matters’, Foresight Europe, 2 (October 2005–March 2006), 38–42. Garrett, B. (2011), ‘Videographic geographies: using digital video for geographic research’, Progress in Human Geography, 35 (4), 521–41. Halgreen, T. (2004), ‘Tourists in the concrete desert’, in M. Sheller and J. Urry (eds), Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play, London: Routledge, pp. 143–54. Jensen, M.T. (2016), ‘Distorted representation in visual tourism research’, Current Issues in Tourism, 19 (6), 545–63. Jensen, M.T. (2017), ‘Urban pram strolling: a mobilities design perspective’, Mobilities, 13 (4), 584–600. Jensen, M.T., C. Scarles and S.A. Cohen (2015), ‘A multisensory phenomenology of InterRail mobilities’, Annals of Tourism Research, 53 (July), 61–76. Jirón, P. (2011), ‘On becoming “la sombra/the shadow”’, in M. Büscher, J. Urry and K. Witchger (eds), Mobile Methods, New York: Routledge, pp. 36–53. Keller, C. (2016), ‘Physics of images – images of physics + “Rundum” photography’, in S. Witzgall, G. Vogl and S. Kesselring (eds), New Mobilities Regimes in Art and Social Sciences, London: Routledge, pp. 253–62. Latham, A. and D.P. McCormack (2009), ‘Thinking with images in non-representational cities: vignettes from Berlin’, Area, 41 (3), 252–62. Laurier, E. (2010), ‘Being there/seeing there: recording and analysing life in the car’, in B. Fincham, M. McGuinness and L. Murray (eds), Mobile Methodologies, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 103–17. Mcilvenny, P. (2015), ‘The joy of biking together: sharing everyday experiences of vélomobility’, Mobilities, 10(1), 55–82. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2004), The World of Perception, New York: Routledge. Parent, L. (2016), ‘The wheeling interview: mobile methods and disability’, Mobilities, 11 (4), 521–32. Sharpley, R. (2004), ‘Islands in the sun: Cyprus’, in M. Sheller and J. Urry (eds), Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play, London: Routledge, pp. 22–31. Spinney, J. (2011), ‘A chance to catch a breath: using mobile video ethnography in cycling research’, Mobilities, 6 (2), 161–82. Spinney, J. (2015), ‘Close encounters? Mobile methods, (post)phenomenology and affect’, Cultural Geographies, 22 (2), 231–46. Vannini, P. (2017), ‘Low and slow: notes on the production and distribution of a mobile video ethnography’, Mobilities, 12 (1), 155–66. Vannini, P. and L.M. Stewart (2017), ‘The GoPro gaze’, Cultural Geographies, 24 (1), 149–55. Vannini, P. and J. Taggart (2013), ‘Doing islandness: a non-representational approach to an island’s sense of place’, Cultural Geographies, 20 (2), 225–42. Watts, L. and G. Lyons (2011), ‘Travel remedy kit: interventions into train lines and passenger times’, in M. Büscher, J. Urry and K. Witchger (eds), Mobile Methods, New York: Routledge, pp. 104–18.

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21.  Fostering discursive mobilities in sustainable mobility policymaking Chelsea Tschoerner-Budde

Climate change and the impact of the transport sector on the environment have driven political actors over the past decade to develop guidelines and measures to promote more sustainable transport systems and patterns of mobility. This trend can especially be seen in urban areas, which are often more strongly impacted by the negative effects of transport than rural areas. Sustainable mobility policies generally look to improve quality of life through reducing the amount of motor traffic, promoting alternatives to car use (such as cycling, walking and the use of public transport) and promoting new kinds of car use, such as technological developments in vehicles, carpooling and car sharing. Topics such as traffic, parking or mobility management also fall under the guideline of sustainable mobility policies. These policies not only reflect changes in transport policymaking; they also represent changes in how political actors make sense of transport systems as well as how we, as a society, move on an everyday basis. How to make sense of these new approaches to governance in the transport sector though? Furthermore, how can these changes be analysed with the goal of forming relevant research insights and policy recommendations? This chapter discusses the relevance of a discourse analytical approach that utilizes the ontology of the mobilities paradigm for making sense of these larger changes in the transport and mobility policymaking. I begin by elaborating why discourse analytical approaches can be useful for problematizing processes of sustainable mobility policymaking as well as forming concrete policy solutions. I introduce and define the concept of discourse for the purpose of this work, referring to its roots in interpretive traditions to social science research as well as its relevance for studying politics and policymaking. Following this, I discuss the relevance of a mobilities ontology for analysing discourse in transport policymaking. Discourses are not only produced and reproduced over time by constellations of actors (Hajer 1995); they reflect specific mobilities and stabilities in their production and materialization in policymaking contexts. By recognizing this dimension of discourse production, both researchers and practitioners in the transport sector can begin to identify the mobile, that is, lived and experienced, dimension of policymaking discourse. Particularly when attempting to better understand why policy change has not come about, this type of approach opens the framework of analysis to include both non-political and mobile dimensions of social interaction, meaning making and action. Practically, it enables a more thorough identification of potential barriers as well as opportunities to not only policy change, but also changes in how transport systems and everyday mobility patterns are governed. After discussing the discursive dimension of sustainable mobility policymaking and the benefit of considering the mobilities and stabilities of policymaking discourses, I begin to describe what a discourse analytical approach through a mobilities lens could look 221

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222  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities like as a tool to better understand policymaking. What kind of methodology is required for assessing the mobilities and stabilities of policymaking discourse? Furthermore, how and why is this approach useful for explaining processes of change, and for identifying potential measures and actions for recommendation? I call upon the case of sustainable mobility policymaking in the German city of Munich in order to show the application and benefit of this type of approach. Referring to my doctoral research, I summarize some key processes and contextual factors that have affected sustainable mobility policymaking in Munich. In the context of Munich, a mobilities lens helps to make sense of and describe how new approaches to planning urban space and thinking about transport developed, especially in the 2000s. In sum, the case reveals the diversity of dynamic contextual factors that, in interaction with each other and in motion, shifted the policymaking context and therefore discourse on sustainable mobility in Munich. The chapter closes with a brief reflection on the importance of a mobilities-driven discourse analytical approach for both policy studies and policymaking practice.

THE DISCURSIVE DIMENSION OF SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY POLICYMAKING Discourse is much more than discussion on a specific political issue. Discourses are intricately connected to how we make sense of the work and how we physically engage and experience it (Hajer 1995; Fischer 2003; Wagenaar 2011). They reflect societal structures and norms, while also providing a mirror for our often unstated assumptions, opinions and beliefs concerning how things should be done and who is responsible for them. Discourse has as much to do with speaking as with action. As Howarth (1995, p. 115) wrote, discourses ‘shape the way people understand their roles in society and influence their political activities’. Political discourses therefore reflect not only policy issues or popular topics of discussion, but also deeply imbedded cultural structures and related actions. Discourses also represent power struggles among societal actors. Therefore, a given predominant discourse in transport policymaking is often a reflection of who and what exerts power. The topic of sustainable mobility, as with any issue in the field of transport and mobility policy, is therefore much more than a result of policy recommendations, trends or even broader political visions. On the surface, it reflects a growing political will to promote alternative modes of transport to private car use and to develop new, more sustainable forms of everyday mobility. Yet, when analysing discursive dimensions of policymaking, it becomes clear that sustainable mobility policymaking also reflects fundamental societal perspectives and practices concerning how and why we move on an everyday basis. Policymaking is therefore not only an arena for identifying the best solution, but is also an arena where power struggles among contending and contradictory visions for a sustainable future take place. In sustainable mobility policymaking, political actors are not only attempting to identify new solutions in the transport sector; they are also attempting to change (or maintain) underlying societal structures, norms and practices related to the functioning of transport systems and the everyday patterns of movement. Transport policy has historically focused on organizing motor transport systems, particularly car systems, as the key enabler of individual mobility. As a consequence,

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Fostering discursive mobilities in sustainable mobility policymaking  223 individual mobility currently is in most parts of the western world organized around the private ownership and use of a car. For economically developing and developed countries, private car use is often connected to ‘the good life’ and perceived as a status symbol and representation of success. These ideals continue to foster car ownership in the western world and hinder the development of new forms of mobility, such as carsharing or the use of public transport or a bike. They furthermore hinder the potential to develop attractive alternative forms of everyday mobility. Sustainable mobility promotion often looks to foster the latter: that is, a switch away from traditional approaches to individual mobility and towards new mobility cultures and new, more collective and inclusive transport systems. However, there are often struggles to maintain the embedded understandings and practices related to mobility. Fostering a new kind of mobility system – away from the use of a private car for individual, daily movement – is therefore tied to larger societal struggles concerning what is the right, fair and efficient way to move. A discourse analytical approach can therefore provide a new lens for analysing the traditionally technological and rational field of transport policymaking. Discourse analyses do not only focus on social dimensions of policymaking. They more importantly shed light on how policymaking unfolds and takes place in its entirety. Discourse analytical approaches therefore highlight not only how and why, for example, technical structures and norms become seen as legitimate in policymaking processes; they also highlight how they become embedded in political and planning processes.

ON MOBILITIES AND STABILITIES IN POLICYMAKING DISCOURSE Discourses reflect both how we make sense of the world as well as how we act upon it. Although they are often described as relatively stable, predominant frameworks, they too can be fluid and mobile in processes of policymaking. In this way, policymaking discourse can exibit forms of mobility as well as forms of stability. As with the everyday realities of policymaking, political actors, the institutional structures driving policymaking processes and the central narratives and storylines of policy exert some form of fluidity and movement in their production or materialization. Here, the term mobility as used in transport and mobility policymaking is distinct from ontological term mobilities described here. Whereas the former represents the policy surrounding everday movement of individuals and collectives – how and why we commute, go shopping or get from A to B – the latter represents dynamic processes of fluidity (mobility) and stability within and through policymaking discourse. As Hannam et al. (2006, p. 3) describe, policymaking discourses also reflect ‘the necessary spatial, infrastructural and institutional moorings that configure and enable [the] mobilities’ of how political actors collectively make sense of and govern transport and mobility systems (Urry 2000). Policymaking discourses are therefore mobile because they are lived and experienced. They are produced in everyday circumstances and therefore reflect changing societal, political, economic and even technological circumstances. Discourses might reflect specific societal structures, such as ideologies of car use and the flow of motor traffic systems. These structures are only generally stable though. They potentially bend and change with the changing of other processes (Sheller 2012). Climate change and the need to reduce

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224  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities greenhouse gases, for example, has affected how individuals perceive motor vehicles. Even more influential has been the changing context of urban transport systems, particularly through congestion and the overuse of limited urban space. In many cases, these dimensions have had more of an impact on policymaking and perceptions of attractive modes of transport in urban space than on new policy goals or overarching visions. A discourse analytical perspective is useful for sustainable mobility policymaking because it assesses these social dimensions in the traditionally technical field of transport policymaking. Yet, when paired with a mobilities lens, it allows for a mobile understanding of policymaking and of discourse on transport and everyday mobility. The benefit of a more mobile and fluid ontology of discourse production has to do with its representation and relevance for everyday, real contexts. Through such an approach, political actors at all levels of policymaking (from research and planning expertise to non-professionals) are able to assess everyday policymaking contexts. Reflection (Healey 1997; Voß and Kemp 2006) is a key process of analysis; it entails a structured analysis of the social, physical, institutional and actor context, or otherwise, in which discourses are produced (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002; Keller 2013). From a discourse analytical perspective, for example, policy frameworks and institutional dimensions are not seen as fixed objects. Instead, they are analysed as the production of specific social norms and cultures. A mobilities perspective goes a step further, though, and reflects on the fluidity and stability of these social dimensions central to discourse production. For example, policies that focus on the organization of traffic flow are, from a discourse analytical perspective, seen as a product of specific perspectives concerning how mobility functions and how it should be organized. These dimensions affect how policies historically have been developed. If policy change is the goal, then it is necessary to reflect on the relevance of, for example, the concept of traffic flow for fostering improved conditions for pedestrians and cyclists. Yet, traffic flow as a discourse is in itself not fixed; it reflects temporally and contextually driven dynamics of policymaking, such as the functioning of institutional structures, the constellation of political actors or the central narratives of policymaking (Tschoerner-Budde 2019). All these dimensions are themselves produced and reproduced over time and thus reflect specific stabilities and mobilities. In attempting to identify how to step away from a traffic flow perspective in policymaking and towards a more social-driven or people-orientated approach, it is necessary to assess the relationship of these various discursive dimensions in policymaking processes. How can an increased fluidity or mobility in terms of institutional structures and practices affect policymaking and promote discursive change in transport planning? How can new constellations of political actors foster change? These and other questions are central to a mobilities driven discourse analysis of transport policymaking. The analysis of discourse through the ontology of the mobilities paradigm can therefore be seen as a tool or framework for linking the social dimensions of everyday mobility with the politics and ultimate functioning of transport systems. Transport policy and planning are often perceived by non-professionals as very technical and separated from the everyday realities of mobility systems. In many instances they must learn to speak the language before he or she can even begin to understand transport planning frameworks, decisions and processes. Despite these boundaries, social science approaches are increasingly revealing the interconnection of transport policy to how we make sense of and move on an everyday basis. Currently, transport research recognizes in large part the

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Fostering discursive mobilities in sustainable mobility policymaking  225 importance of integrating the social dimensions of transport systems in policy analysis and policymaking (Busch-Geertsema et al. 2015). Although this initial integration in transport planning has contributed to more multi-modal policies, it has not yet produced a larger transition in the sector. The mobilities paradigm contributes to this gap by revealing the dynamic fluidities and stabilities in how policymaking takes place and how mobility systems are governed. It is a dramatic shift from a transport systems approach to planning, which focuses on the organization, development and management of systems of modes of transport. That is, it is a new approach that attempts to build upon a fundamentally different understanding of mobility – beyond a motor-traffic system. As Shore and Wright (2011, p. 3) wrote, ‘policies reflect the rationality and assumptions prevalent at the time of their creation’. In sum, a discourse analytical approach, when applied through a mobilities lens, enables the critical assessment of transport policymaking with the changing social systems, norms and values related to everyday mobility and movement.

ANALYSING DISCOURSE THROUGH THE ONTOLOGY OF THE MOBILITIES PARADIGM What does a discourse analytical approach look like though, in its application as a tool to better understand policymaking processes? Durnova et al. (2016, p. 35) state that a discursive approach at a general level ‘pays particular attention to the subjectivity of actors; the forms of knowledge these actors assemble; and, in particular, the multiple interpretations they deploy to create meaning’. These dimensions have to do not only with discourses, but also the situative or social and institutional context in which discourses are produced (Hajer 1995; Keller 2013). This context, though, is not in itself a variable for analysis; through a mobilities perspective, these ‘spatial, infrastructural and institutional moorings’ (Hannam et al. 2006, p. 3) are also dynamically mobile or immobile as discourses are produced and change over time. Thus, developing a case study means not only studying specific policies; we must also analyse these multiple processes through which policy discourses develop, are implemented and change over time. A mobilities lens in the analysis of discourse enables the analyst to identify the realworld, dynamic conditions of policymaking. Discourse analyses often aim to better understand the larger social context, including power relations (Flyvbjerg 1998; Cresswell 2006), institutions (March and Olsen 2006; Schmidt 2008) and practices (Reckwitz 2002; Shove et al. 2010). Durnova et al. (2016, p. 35), furthermore, state that discursive approaches ‘seek to grasp how meaning is produced, analyse the processes through which this meaning shapes actions and institutions, and to identify the particular context of the situations in which these meanings evolve’. A mobilities paradigm enriches discourse analytical approaches, in that it also aims to identify the roots and dynamics of societal processes. A mobilities approach goes beyond developing standardized best-case scenarios or discussing fixed power structures of policy contexts though. It allows for a more nuanced analysis of how change is potentially hindered, as well as how it is brought about in specific political contexts. As discourses are lived and produced in everyday contexts, they are also susceptible to shifts and changes in these everyday contexts. Changes in actor constellations, or policymaking practices, or the formation of new narratives to problematize a given issue, are all contextual factors that, in interaction with each other,

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226  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities can affect policy change. The content of policies, such as including alternative modes of transport in transport development plans, should be seen as playing a second (yet also important) role in the social and cultural context within which policies are developed. That is, even though changing the wording might sound good, it will not be understood as more than a new way to phrase the same issue. The context matters, that is, the political actors, their narratives and their practices that, as constantly in motion, envelop the formation and change of policies.

AN EXAMPLE OF POLICYMAKING TO PROMOTE CYCLING IN MUNICH, GERMANY It all becomes a clearer with a case study of policymaking for sustainable mobility. This chapter uses the City of Munich as a case of sustainable mobility policymaking. Munich is an interesting example because it encompasses a number of dynamic factors in policymaking. It is one of the largest and densest cities in Germany, with around 1.5 million citizens (and 2.5 million in the region). The headquarters of the multinational automobile producer BMW are within Munich’s city limits, and the producer Audi is located close by in the town of Ingolstadt. Like most German cities, it was physically devastated at the end of the Second World War and had to be rebuilt and re-planned. It relatedly has a rich planning culture and extensive resources for urban development and transport planning. It is also a city that exhibits a strong car culture, and has struggled for decades to define the role of car use in the city. Interestingly, cycling has also played an important role in the image of a Münchner (a local of Munich). Finally, as have many German cities, it has exceeded legal limits for air pollution for almost a decade, and has struggled for even longer to come to terms with negative effects of car use on urban quality of life and mobility. This section summarizes very briefly a number of complex political processes that took place in Munich in the postwar years. For more information, please refer to Tschoerner-Budde (2019). Sustainable mobility policymaking is a rather new phenomenon. Although the Brundtland Report in 1987 (WCED 1987) brought the issue of sustainability to the table of global politics, the issue of sustainability in the transport sector was first elaborated in the 1990s and early 2000s. To understand current sustainable mobility policymaking, though, it is necessary to consider the history of transport policymaking, specifically the political and social context in which sustainable transport became relevant. In the context of Munich, this requires going back to the end of the Second World War. In the first decades of the postwar era (the late 1940s, and the 1950s and 1960s), Munich pursued a car-centric approach to planning. This approach encompassed not only a set of policies; it also reflected specific regulatory and operative frameworks, administrative officials and experts, and overarching visions and goals steering transport policy. For example, a car-centric approach to transport planning required technical expertise, and therefore delegated transport engineers and economists as those capable of making rational decisions concerning how to develop transport and public space in Munich. Concepts such as ‘predict and provide’, improving the efficiency of traffic flow and addressing traffic demand were central themes driven by the policymaking context at this time. Many processes specific to the context of Munich took place in the following decades

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Fostering discursive mobilities in sustainable mobility policymaking  227 and affected how transport policy developed. These processes also paved the way for the larger changes that came about in the growth of sustainable mobility policy in the 2000s. Munich’s postwar period was not only defined through a car-centric approach to planning. Beginning in the 1950s, citizens protested against the political decision to prioritize traffic flow over urban quality of life. A younger generation of experts took to the streets and proposed alternative directions for urban development. Ultimately, these practices strongly weakened the extent to which Munich developed a car-centric city. In these early years, alternative political actors argued for the recognition of social issues related to everyday mobility. Groups such as ‘Right of Way for People’ (Vorfahrt für Menschen) perceived cycling as a ‘meaningful alternative to the destructive nature of automobile traffic’ and stated that car traffic: caused too many accidents, noise and air pollution; negatively affected public health; used too much energy; and strained the state budget for infrastructure (Schmucki 2001, pp. 348–9). These groups not only argued for a different set of policies. Their narratives affected how urban and transport development plans in Munich were drafted, voted upon and implemented in the future. Despite large-scale protests, the postwar period marked the larger institutionalization of a transport systems approach that was orientated towards private car use in Munich. The approach to planning transport systems was highly dynamic though; it was continuously adjusting and moving to new circumstances. The 1950s and 1960s saw wide-scale protests against a car-centric approach to planning. This affected, for example, the structure of transport policymaking and paved the way for the institutionalization of a platform that provided an exchange between citizens, politicians and other experts over transport-related issues. In the 1970s and 1980s, the environmental movement and other international events, such as the oil-price shocks and the global recession, affected the structure and eventual transport policies in Munich. Cycling and walking gained relevance for the first time as environmentally friendly alternatives to car use, and public transport was defined as the backbone of urban mobility in Munich. A new generation of planners and policymakers, who recognized the importance of urban quality of life and the need to reduce the impact of motor traffic on urban life, began to develop new overarching guidelines and frameworks in the 1990s and 2000s. Political changes in the City Council, including the integration and future coalition of the Green Party with the ruling Social Democrats, fostered a new platform for green ideas and new narratives in political discussions and decision-making. The urban development concept ‘Perspective Munich’ replaced the more expert-driven development of urban plans, and marked the start of more citizen-driven transport policymaking in Munich. These contextual factors provide only a few examples of the development of transport policymaking in the postwar period in Munich. Yet they reveal a first glimpse of the dynamic and mobile context in which transport policy discourse was produced and changed over time in the city. In the early 2000s, the topic of sustainable mobility gained a foothold owing to the growing popularity of the term in planning, academia and, later, political contexts. Sustainable mobility represented new approaches to planning urban space and to thinking about transport. It reflected a growing societal desire to improve conditions for, and enable the use of, alternative modes of transport. In Munich, it was a term that reflected the larger shifts and changes that were taking place in transport policymaking, as described above. Further, it reflected the need to integrate citizens’ perspectives and the lived dimensions of everyday mobility in planning. New practices,

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228  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities such as more participative approaches to planning and implementing measures, new overarching guidelines and goals of transport policy, and a new, more diverse constellation of transport experts that increasingly reflected non-professionals in transport planning, all played a role in the larger shifts and changes that took place in transport policy in the 2000s and 2010s. Over the past decade, a new approach to policymaking has developed in Munich. Political actors are increasingly calling upon a new set of policy practices, narratives and expertise for planning, forming policies and implementing measures to affect urban mobility. This was especially seen in the field of cycling promotion, where political actors transformed policymaking practices in order to foster a switch from an automobility culture to a sustainable mobility culture centered on walking, cycling and using public transport, and other sharing forms of mobility. Many of the central actors in a new politics of cycling promotion from the 2000s onward derived from citizen initiatives, other forms of expertise and from new actors in both politics and local administration. These groups advocated for the need to consider the everyday context of cycling in planning and to address the mobility dimension of transport systems, with the goal to foster change in everyday mobility patterns and norms. Not surprisingly, the policymaking practices carried out and advocated by the latter constellation of actors reflected a socially and contextually driven understanding of transport. This included developing a marketing campaign to foster a cycling culture in Munich, and to develop transport systems to enable cyclists’ mobility, visibility, safety and integration in traffic. Furthermore, a key element of policymaking itself – the institutional structure through which policies are debated, decided upon and implemented – significantly changed over the years. Whereas the Planning Department was primarily responsible for developing cycling policies in the 1980s and 1990s, the Department of Public Order and the Construction Department played a more influential role in the 2000s. Furthermore, different working groups were formed which enabled a broader consensus on measures to promote cycling and integrated interest groups such as the ADFC (German National Cyclists’ Association) into the decision-making process.

ON OPPORTUNITIES AND BARRIERS FOR DISCURSIVE CHANGE IN POLICYMAKING The example of Munich reveals that policy change developed owing to a number of dynamic contextual factors, including the formation of new actor constellations, practices and narratives on everyday mobility. It was not the implementation of a new policy framework, nor the introduction of new political actors, nor even the institutionalization of a new discourse that affected change though. Instead, it was a diversity of dynamic contextual factors that, in interaction with each other and in motion, shifted the policymaking context and therefore discourse on sustainable mobility. Munich provides an example of various influential factors for fostering discursive mobilities for sustainable mobility, such as local administrative processes, the engagement of the public in decision-making, targeting the social dimensions of mobility in planning and identifying new forms of nonprofessional expertise on everyday mobility. It is within and through these processes that discursive mobilities took place and that policy change was ultimately fostered.

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Fostering discursive mobilities in sustainable mobility policymaking  229 What does a discourse analysis of transport policymaking through the ontology of the mobilities paradigm offer for fostering sustainable mobility? That is, how can it provide research insights and policy-relevant recommendations for changing the political and governance structure of transport systems and mobility patterns? This chapter has argued that policy change is fundamentally a societal change, which is necessary and a prerequisite for engaging in more practical debate on the technical configuration of future transport and mobility systems. The case study showed that methods which can identify and analyse ‘the complexity of mobility systems and the inter-relational dynamics between physical, informational, virtual and imaginative forms of mobility’ (Hannam et al. 2006, p. 15) are necessary for making sense of complex shifts in governance, such as a transition to sustainable mobility. Discourse analytical approaches take the first step; they promote the critical assessment of transport policymaking with the social systems, norms and values related to everyday mobility and movement. A mobilities ontology goes a step further and reveals how discourses mobilize and/or stabilize in their everyday contexts, allowing for a mobile understanding of policymaking and of discourse on transport and everyday mobility. Paired together, the analysis of discourse through the ontology of the mobilities paradigm can empower policymakers and other political actors to form knowledge and critically reflect on the potential barriers and opportunities for transformation – two central processes necessary for promoting sustainable mobility and for fostering change in the transport sector.

REFERENCES Busch-Geertsema, A., T. Klinger and M. Lanzendorf (2015), ‘Wo bleibt eigentlich die Mobilitätspolitik? Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Defiziten und Chancen der deutschen Politik und Forschung zu Verkehr und Mobilität’ (‘Where’s the mobility policy? A critical examination of deficits and opportunities in German politics and research on transport and mobility’), Informationen zur Raumentwicklung, 2, 135–48. Cresswell, T. (2006), On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World, London: Taylor & Francis. Durnova, A., F. Fischer and P. Zittoun (2016), ‘Discursive approaches to public policy: politics, argumentation, and deliberation’, in P. Zittoun and B.G. Peters (eds), Contemporary Approaches to Public Policy, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 35–56. Fischer, F. (2003), Reframing Public Policy: Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flyvbjerg, B. (1998), Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Hajer, M. (1995), The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hannam, K., M. Sheller and J. Urry (2006), ‘Editorial: mobilities, immobilities and moorings’, Mobilities, 1, (1), 1–22. Healey, P. (1997), Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies, Vancouver: UBC Press. Howarth, D. (1995), ‘Discourse theory’, in D. Marsh and G. Stoker (eds), Theory and Methods in Political Science, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, pp. 115–33. Jørgensen, M.W. and L.J. Phillips (2002), Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method, London: Sage. Keller, R. (2013), Doing Discourse Research: An Introduction for Social Scientists, London: Sage. March, J.G. and J.P. Olsen (2006), ‘Elaborating the “new institutionalism”’, in R.A.W. Rhodes, S.A. Binder and B.A. Rockman (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–20. Reckwitz, A. (2002), ‘Toward a theory of social practices: a development in culturalist theorizing’, European Journal of Social Theory, 5 (2), 243–63. Schmidt, V.A. (2008), ‘Discursive institutionalism: the explanatory power of ideas and discourse’, Annual Review of Political Science, 11 (1), 303–26. Schmucki, B. (2001), Der Traum vom Verkehrsfluss: städtische Verkehrsplanung seit 1945 im deutsch-deutschen

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230  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Vergleich (The Dream of Traffic Flow: Urban Traffic Planning since 1945 in a German-German Comparison), Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Sheller, M. (2012), ‘The emergence of new cultures of mobility: stability, openings and prospects’, in F. Geels, R. Kemp, G. Dudley and G. Lyons (eds), Automobility in Transition? A Socio-Technical Analysis of Sustainable Transport, London: Routledge, pp. 180–202. Shore, C. and S. Wright (2011), ‘Conceptualizing policy: technologies of governance and the politics of visibility’, in C. Shore, S. Wright and D. Però (eds), Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Analysis of Contemporary Power, New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1–25. Shove, E., M. Pantzar and M. Watson (2012), The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How It Changes, London: Sage. Tschoerner-Budde, C. (2019), Sustainable Mobility in Munich: Exploring the Role of Discourse in Policy Change, Wiesbaden: Springer. Urry, J. (2000), Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-First Century, London: Routledge. Voß, J.-P., and R. Kemp (2006), ‘Sustainability and reflexive governance: introduction’, in J.-P. Voß, D. Bauknecht and R. Kemp (eds), Reflexive Governance for Sustainable Development, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, pp. 3–28. Wagenaar, H. (2011), Meaning in Action: Interpretation and Dialogue in Policy Analysis, Armonk, NY: Sharpe. World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (1987), Our Common Future, ed. G.H. Brundtland, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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22.  Mobilities policies: exploring momentums as urban tipping points in practice Nina Moesby Bennetsen and Katrine Hartmann-Petersen

INTRODUCTION The introduction of the mobilities paradigm (Urry 2000, 2007; Hannam et al. 2006; Sheller and Urry 2006) has fundamentally changed the ways research and practice intermingle within the field of urban planning. The transdisciplinary field of mobilities research challenges perceptions of urban development and allows knowledge about the social dynamics of everyday life to be part of urban planning (Urry 2007; FreudendalPedersen 2009; Büscher et al. 2016; Fjalland et al. 2018). In this chapter we argue that investigating links between dynamics in everyday life and mobilities planning processes offers an understanding of how new mobilities policies can create urban tipping points for innovation in strategic work with mobilities policies in practice. With inspiration from sociology of everyday life concepts, we suggest that displacements, shifts and ruptures (Bech-Jørgensen 1994) can be urban tipping points for mobilities policies (Urry 2007). By understanding the links between conditions of everyday life and planning practice, we argue that mobilities planning can gain from exploring new ways of organizing projects across structural, political boundaries and traditional planning arenas based on knowledge that is taken for granted. This chapter draws on examples from Danish planning practices. These examples are particular as they reframe mobilities planning in explorative ways. Through the examples, we highlight two issues. First, how mobilities issues have been raised through the momentum caused by a large infrastructure investment in the capital area. Secondly, we argue that smaller (un)certain events in the city may become a lever for new ways of developing future urban mobilities. Transitions in mobilities policies often occur in non-linear processes over time and at an unpredictable pace. Thus, visionary mobilities planning in practice calls for a variety of methods, and needs to acknowledge that the results of various initiatives cannot be measured or evaluated in the short term. Instead, it is a question of ‘many a little might make a mickle’.

THE CERTAINTY AND UNCERTAINTY OF EVERYDAY LIFE Politically initiated regulations intended to change mobilities behaviour at multiple levels and scales have an impact on everyday life, and, whether the regulations aim to reform existing patterns or establish new ones, they depend on the understanding of the importance of everyday life. Understanding the mobilities paradigm in relation to everyday life has been expanded by numerous mobilities researchers (for example, Kaufmann 2002; Freudendal-Pedersen 2009). Everyday life ‘is where we make our worlds and our worlds 231

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232  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities make us. Therefore everyday life is a context of human creativity, innovation and change, and a site where processes towards a sustainable future might be initiated and nurtured’ (Pink 2012, p. 5). Since everyday life is an arena for innovation and change as well as routines, we suggest that inspiration from everyday life research offers insights to how municipal planners can potentially gain much needed momentum when implementing transdisciplinary mobilities policies in practice. Before discussing how (un)certain occasions can be seen as urban tipping points, we introduce the dialectics of everyday life between societal and individual matters and between the certain and the uncertain. Everyday life is a complex dialectical arena: on the one hand, individually designed and based on individual values; on the other, formed and influenced by societal demands, needs and norms as well as commitments to others. This ongoing dialectical balancing makes it difficult to plan for changes in the otherwise mundane and repetitive nature of the life that we live every day: ‘everyday life is a processual, not a substantial concept. Everyday life is produced and reproduced. The dialectic between its changing and takenfor-granted conditions on the one hand and the ways in which these are handled on the other hand involves conceptual movements and development’ (Bech-Jørgensen 1994, p. 291). Everyday life is shaped by a subtle mixture of needs, practical issues, routines, expectations, duties, dreams, hopes and longings. The individual’s behaviour and mobile patterns are reflexively and unreflexively formed by the influence of these considerations, and they are not only individual matters. The wishes and requirements of others, inside and outside the household, are a crucial part of doing the everyday puzzle. As discussed by others, mobilities patterns are social, shared and relational, rather than individual (Manderscheid 2014; Murray and Doughty 2016), and everyday life is composed of complex relations. Urban researchers are examining what motivates change in routines and how thoughts of change transform from momentary ideas to real differences in the tasks and practices that we undertake in the same way every day, or almost every day. Everyday practice is ‘essentially neither resistant nor normative. Rather, it needs to be understood as open to being a source of potential for the production of change, for maintaining things apparently as they are or for simultaneously doing both in different ways’ (Pink 2012, pp. 2–3). Inevitably, we are all in everyday life. We have daily tasks, such as shopping for groceries, doing laundry or commuting to work, and we are, simultaneously with the daily tasks, navigating major changes such as choosing where to live, profession and lifestyle. However, we cannot foresee every element, and a degree of unpredictability and uncertainty is inevitable. Sometimes, this leads to changes. Bech-Jørgensen (1994) explores three types of changes in everyday life and distinguishes between displacements, shifts and ruptures. Displacements are imperceptible changes that occur all the time, perhaps every day – small changes in our repetitive practices which are never the same from day to day. The most encompassing and perceptible changes, or ruptures, de-structure the parts of everyday life that we are used to or even take for granted. Moving in with a partner, becoming a parent, starting a new job, getting divorced, and experiencing serious disease or a sudden death among close relatives are examples of ruptures that influence not only our daily routines, but perhaps also our mindset, priorities or values that form these routines. In between these archetypical changes are what Bech-Jørgensen defines as shifts: ‘Shifts are processes, extending in time and causing other displacements, new shifts and eventually ruptures. A shift in

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Mobilities policies  233 temporal taken-for-grantedness is a concept that represents changes in the experiences and perceptions of time. These changes are handled by unperceived adjustments and improvisations’ (Bech-Jørgensen 1994, p. 289). By developing different forms of changes that might lead to the transformation of routines, Bech-Jørgensen also highlights the importance of challenging the taken-for-granted activities in everyday life. In order not to feel forced to reflexively establish everyday life routines every day, we produce and reproduce taken-for-granted activities as constituent, fundamental elements: ‘The takenfor-granted activities are structured in time, space and intersubjectivity. They involve different forms of unperceived action, thoughts, feelings’ (Bech-Jørgensen 1994, p. 290). While Bech-Jørgensen’s concepts engage with changes in everyday life in general, Murray and Doughty have focused on the potentials for change in everyday mobilities practices through the concept of ‘disruptions’ (Murray and Doughty 2016). According to Murray and Doughty, disruptions to mobilities have the potential to break routines in everyday life. In addition, disruptions in mobilities are often not related to the transport itself, but to social relations and commitments. Thus, the numerous disruptions in everyday life mobilities reveal the great complexity of everyday life (Murray and Doughty 2016). This complexity intermingles with the political agendas that urban planners are expected to implement. At a time when climate change and sustainability are reforming the international political agenda, understanding the rationalities and irrationalities of everyday life becomes even more fundamental in order to integrate new knowledge and motivate sustainable mobilities in future urban life (Pink 2012; Egmose 2015).

OCCASIONS AND UNCERTAIN EVENTS IN PLANNING: HARNESSING THE SITUATION Everyday life is characterized by routines and ideas, concepts and activities that we take for granted. The same can be said about parts of the planning process, owing to its repetitiveness and systematic nature, and thus parts of planning processes rely on matters that are taken for granted, within the planning system or the local context. Another similarity between everyday life and the planning process is the absence of long-term decision-making. Uncertainty is currently, however, one of the – if not the only – constants in the planning process, and it challenges the taken-for-grantedness of planning processes. This uncertainty is part of the complexity of the planning process. Uncertainty in this context refers to the numerous parts of the planning process that are open-ended. This is a key understanding in the change from predict-and-provide planning to mobilities planning, or what has been termed the sustainable mobility paradigm (Owens 1995; Banister 2008). When planning moves towards increased collaboration and engagement of others in the process, the process becomes more complex and open-ended (Healey 1997, 2012). As regards mobilities policy planning, the uncertainty relates to, among other things, the level of engagement among actors involved in the process, the unknown outcome of discussions between participants, whether political parties can reach an agreement and how a policy or initiative will be received. These uncertainties are not new in planning, but the number of uncertainties may increase with a greater number of actors involved in the process. In a large mobilities project with many involved public and private actors,

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234  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities the result of the process might be unknown before and even throughout the development process, as the agreement of a project relies on many actors. Thus, during the process, the actors involved need to accept the uncertainty of the outcome. In a project, the actors involved will gather around an uncertain occasion. When the planning process is unpredictable and non-linear (Grunau and Schönwandt 2010), a momentum for change in the form of new approaches and methods can be created, if we transfer the concepts of change from everyday life research to the planning process. What everyday life research tells us about change in everyday life is that change often occurs in relation to displacements, shifts and ruptures; events that challenge what we take for granted, and thus become openings to change. We argue that this knowledge about change in everyday life can be an inspiration for how we might engage with uncertainty in planning practices when developing mobilities policies. John Friedmann (2011, p. 11) has described planning processes as constructive acts of balancing: ‘[Planning] seeks dynamic balances between the part and the whole, the technical and normative, the empirical and theoretical, the pragmatic and utopian, the near present and the distant future, exchange values and use values’. Understood this way, planners must balance their tasks in complex processes. Sometimes, during the planning of sustainable mobilities initiatives, this condition results in a pragmatic planning, or what can be called planning of the art of the possible rather than the best possible solution (Bennetsen and Magelund 2018). Others have noted the value of creating organizational spaces or intervals from the planners’ daily routines in order to make room or create space for new thoughts on future mobilities (Kjærulff, 2015). These are examples of how complexity in the planning process can be managed, either working towards pragmatism instead of utopianism, or, as in the latter, focusing on specifics by separating them from other tasks through creating organizational, spatial and temporal spaces. Using discussions on future mobilities as the occasion to create organizational changes away from daily routines can be a shift in the planning process that can create an opening for change, since what is taken for granted by the planners may be disrupted by such an organizational, spatial and temporal space. A planning process that is understood as continuous acts of balancing, calls for flexibility within the planning system and planners who can harness situations and look for uncertain occasions that might be openings to new mobilities policy developments. These new requirements in this type of planning process have been described elsewhere (for example, Healey 1997; Hartmann-Petersen 2015). In the following we describe an example from the Danish planning practice to discuss how an uncertain occasion has provided the momentum to open up mobilities issues.

SMART MOBILITY IN LOOP CITY: AN EXAMPLE OF THE USE OF UNCERTAIN OCCASIONS Smart Mobility in Loop City (SMIL) is a large-scale example of a project where an uncertain occasion was the starting point of the development of new mobilities policies and initiatives, based on new forms of collaboration. Smart Mobility in Loop City is a mobility management project initiated based on a vision of a light rail project in the outskirts of Copenhagen in Denmark.

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Mobilities policies  235 In Denmark, as in other comparable countries, large infrastructure projects are increasingly developed through partnerships between public and private actors. However, these partnerships are often concerned with the physical implementation of an infrastructure project and matters that are based on a traditional understanding of transport planning (for example, Hartmann-Petersen 2015). Many mobilities researchers agree that mobilities policies and planning must encompass not only rational and technical matters, but also intangible matters concerning everyday life (Cresswell 2006; Sheller and Urry 2006; Freudendal-Pedersen et al. 2016; Freudendal-Pedersen and Kesselring 2016). The following example shows how municipal planners and private companies have collaborated on mobilities experiments initiated by an uncertain occasion, and how a procedural focus on mobilities projects might lead, through what could be defined as shifts in Bech-Jørgensen’s terminology, to cohesive mobilities policies. Using a Vision as an (Uncertain) Occasion for Procedural Work The public transport infrastructure network around Copenhagen is based on principles from the Copenhagen Finger Plan from 1947 (Egnsplankontoret 1947; Illeris 2010) that outlined the development of Greater Copenhagen. The Finger Plan visionary sketched green structures, countryside preservation and public infrastructures in the urban landscape (Vejre et al. 2007). The network consists of five so-named fingers: suburban developments along regional rail routes between central Copenhagen and the suburbs. This principle for suburban development secures public transport connections between suburban areas and central Copenhagen, but offers few possibilities for movement by public transport across, from one suburban area to another. The future light rail project creates this connection. The light rail project aims to make transport across the metropolitan area easy, fast and comfortable, and its inauguration is planned for 2025 (Hovedstadens Letbane 2018). The project is a result of collaboration among 11 municipalities, the Capital Region of Denmark and the Danish Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing. In 2010, years before the plan for this large infrastructure project was politically agreed, a vision for urban development along the light rail route, the so-called Loop City, was formed. Later, actors from the public and private sector have joined together – exploring the momentum – to address mobilities challenges and develop smart, green solutions for a cohesive network of mobilities for commuters, in the SMIL-networks (Loop City 2018). Loop City, a collaboration among ten municipalities, more than 50 companies and the public–private partnership Gate 21, initiated the SMIL-networks to create a platform for companies to take part in the work with future mobilities challenges (Moving People 2018b). Gate 21 is a partnership among municipalities, companies and knowledge institutions around Copenhagen, a so-called triple helix organization, which works with the common goal of accelerating the green transition. Gate 21’s vision is to make Greater Copenhagen the leading region in the world for green transition and growth (Gate 21 2018a). The SMIL initiative consists of a large network for all participants along the route of the planned light rail and four local networks, each with companies from one or more municipalities. All networks are facilitated by officials from the local ­municipality

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236  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities and Gate 21 (Moving People 2018b). The networks aim to promote green and efficient mobilities during and after the construction of the future light rail that will be developed along the orbital road, Ring 3 (Gate 21 2018b). In these networks, possible future mobilities challenges are occasions for municipalities and companies to collaborate across political and organizational structures – challenges concerning increased congestion during and after the construction of the light rail, as well as sustainability. When the networks were initiated, the light rail project was still anticipated, but not politically agreed. Each municipality participates in cross-sectoral collaborations, accepting the premise of an unforeseeable and non-measurable outcome. Here, the premise of the collaboration is to explore new ways of addressing mobilities challenges and to collaborate on strategic urban development with the light rail as the – until 2017, uncertain – o ­ ccasion to collaborate on broader issues such as congestion and the development of the suburban belt surrounding Copenhagen (Gladsaxe Municipality 2016). The networks are platforms for municipalities and companies to debate existing challenges of congestion that will possibly worsen after the construction of the large infrastructural light rail project. Thus, the networks act as forums where companies can address challenges and take part in developing possible solutions for which municipalities traditionally have been responsible. The discussions concerning congestion issues are based on local experience of the companies and municipalities, and on everyday life experiences of mobilities challenges. Experimenting with Mobilities Initiatives: Local and Cross-Municipal Potentials Local collaboration in networks makes it possible for municipalities and companies to experiment with mobilities initiatives, based on demands and wishes from network participants, as well as local company employees. Experimental initiatives differ in the four networks, and include a collaboration with the conceptual shared city car Green Mobility (Green Mobility 2018), drone-based analyses of traffic flows and local congestion (COWI 2017), real-time communication about congestion using motion sensors (Moving People 2018c), a bicycle week for local companies (Moving People 2018a) and internal company initiatives at the company Novo Nordisk, such as better facilities for cyclists on the company site and the development of a company ride-sharing application (app), Novo Ride (Moving People 2018d). The extent of some of the initiatives that have come out of the collaboration are made possible owing to the mix of local and cross-municipal knowledge and power. One of the largest initiatives is a large mobilities survey that maps how employees in 25 public and private workplaces in the large network travelled to work and during working hours in 2015–16 (Warnecke and Christiansen 2017). The results have both local and crossmunicipal potential for developing mobilities policies and would not have been accessible knowledge without the participation of municipalities and companies. For each workplace, the results show leaders, the number of employees commuting by car, public transport and bicycle or on foot, through a mapping of transport modes. In addition, the survey includes employees’ qualitative explanations of their choice of mobilities modes. The results present potentials for changes that can promote greener mobilities and less congestion. Charlotte Hauerslev, SMIL senior project leader at Gate 21, explains:

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Mobilities policies  237 It is only recently that companies have begun working with mobilities, but this is gaining ground in Denmark. We have good experiences with companies that share their knowledge and experience of changing or reducing employee transport. This reduction can happen through accommodating facilities such as bicycles and showers on the company site, or by making use of virtual meetings or teleworking. The important thing is that the solutions are in line with the company’s goal, and that they benefit the company’s bottom line within economy, environment, CSR, health and job satisfaction. (Gladsaxe Municipality 2018, authors’ translation)

Participant experiences show that taken-for-granted activities (Bech-Jørgensen 1994; Freudendal-Pedersen 2009, 2015) that prevail within the collaboration are challenged and that new knowledge is integrated into existing procedures and structures. The survey’s cross-municipal potential involves knowledge of mobilities patterns across a large number of municipalities and companies. The mapping of commuter patterns and flows functions as a baseline prior to the possible construction of the light rail. This knowledge is important to the strategic work on mobility management. Through the networks, municipalities and companies have a platform to debate challenges collectively, find solutions and collaborate on strategic mobility management based on the results from the survey. The local networks facilitate companies to take part in mobilities challenges, for instance, by accommodating flexible working hours, or reducing the need for transport during working hours (Warnecke and Christiansen 2017). Even though understanding the complexity of employees’ everyday life is not addressed as a direct, specific target in the strategy behind SMIL, the project acknowledges that it is crucial to explore and discuss everyday life choices and values if changes in mobilities patterns are to be achieved. Addressing mobilities patterns of employees in the area, workplace leaders across the collaboration have the opportunity to take part in a larger collaboration on mobilities-related challenges that are common to the municipalities and companies along the line of the future light rail. Seen in the light of the concepts of everyday life research, the survey is a way of mapping specific behaviour as a starting point for identifying potentials in possible displacements, ruptures and shifts in the everyday life of the employees. This transdisciplinary approach is inspired by experiences from the Formula M project 2011–14 (Hartmann-Petersen 2015; Kjærulff 2015; Fjalland et al. 2018), the largest mobility management project in Denmark until now, where Gate 21, municipalities, and universities collaborated on exploring and implementing mobility management through pilot projects and research in future planning of mobilities (Warnecke and Christiansen 2017). One of the conclusions was that experimenting with different types of mobility management approaches at several organizational levels resulted in reduced mobilities and highlighted the value of time and qualitative measures in knowledge production in practice (Hartmann-Petersen et al. 2014). Both the examples of SMIL and Formula M support the argument of combining the understanding of everyday life as a fundamental cornerstone in the planning process of sustainable mobile futures. The examples also indicate that merging the mobilities agenda with related urban agendas in the light of events and occasions is fruitful. Both the Formula M project and SMIL are initiatives acknowledging a planning process that entails great complexity, and thus calls for methods and approaches that are more flexible and open ended than have been the case in the rational planning tradition (Friedmann 2011). Understanding mobilities in everyday life as a crucial part of urban planning calls for new ways of organizing projects across structural, societal and political

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238  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities boundaries based on taken-for-granted knowledge (Bech-Jørgensen 1994; FreudendalPedersen 2009; Freudendal-Pedersen and Kesselring 2016). The example of SMIL shows that gaining from the momentum of the political awareness around a huge infrastructure planning process allows planners at multiple scales to integrate mobilities agendas in the political practices. This approach also implies an acceptance among stakeholders and politicians that not all mobilities projects can be based on a predict-and-provide rationality (Vigar 2002). Smart Mobility in Loop City is an example of an uncertain event that, in the light of a big infrastructure project, formed the basis of a cross-institutional and cross-actor initiative within the mobilities field. It is important to emphasize that planning urban space involves continual occurrences and occasions that potentially create political momentum to explore and investigate developments that might lead to sustainable mobilities futures in urban planning. Some of these are known by planners years, or at least months, in advance; for example, major urban sports events that close the central part of a city temporarily, road infrastructure investments, counter-terrorism security, or climate change adaptation projects. Occasions that open up the use of urban space by changing, or displacing, the routines and rhythms of the urban flow that might lead to changed mobilities patterns. Others, such as unexpected events such as rainstorms, accidents and unanticipated use of urban spaces for leisure, are examples of ruptures that cause great political interest at the time, paving the way for mobilities agendas.

MANY A LITTLE MAKES A MICKLE: CONCLUDING REMARKS Making mobilities policies that bridge the theoretical understanding of the field of mobilities research and mobilities in practice requires, among other factors, political courage and momentum. As a mobilities planner, an understanding of everyday life complexities is crucial if the societal goal is to develop sustainable mobilities patterns at multiple scales. Inspired by concepts from the sociology of everyday life, we suggest that identifying displacements, shifts and ruptures and the taken-for-granted activities that (in)form everyday life practices (Bech-Jørgensen 1994; Freudendal-Pedersen 2009; Freudendal-Pedersen et al. 2017) and planning practices can be tipping points for the implementation of urban mobilities policies. In this chapter we have argued that political momentum for mobilities planning can be achieved through strategic exploitation and experimentation of the numerous events and occasions that are an inevitable part of urban planning. When the city becomes an arena for large events and occasions, momentum for new ways of thinking and implementing mobilities policies may be generated. Structural barriers are expected, but future mobilities research need to engage in exploring examples that show how these can be a lever for future urban mobilities transitions. The main argument of the chapter is that transitions in mobilities policies happen in non-linear processes over (a long) time and often at an unpredictable pace. Thus, mobilities planning in practice calls for a variety of methods and an acknowledgement that the results of various initiatives cannot be measured or weighed in the shorter term. Instead, it is a question of ‘many a little makes a mickle’. Changes in urban mobilities should be implemented through networks and collaborations

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Mobilities policies  239 across political and societal structures exploring and experimenting with new ways of understanding urban mobilities.

REFERENCES Banister, D. (2008), ‘The sustainable mobility paradigm’, Transport Policy, 15 (2), 73–80. Bech-Jørgensen, B. (1994), Når Hver Dag Bliver Hverdag (When Every Day Turns into Everyday), Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. Bennetsen, N.M. and J.O. Magelund (2018), ‘Planning for sustainable mobilities – creating new futures or doing what is possible?’, in M. Freudendal-Pedersen, K. Hartmann-Petersen and E.L.P. Fjalland (eds), Experiencing Networked Urban Mobilities: Practices, Flows, Methods, New York: Routledge, pp. 152–7. Büscher, M., M. Sheller and D. Tyfield (2016), ‘Mobility intersections: social research, social futures’, Mobilities, 11 (4), 485–97. COWI (2017), ‘Trafikanalyse af erhvervsområdet Gladsaxe Ringby – Videoanalyse i Gladsaxe’ (‘Traffic analysis of the business area Gladsaxe Ringby – video analysis in Gladsaxe’), accessed 23 October 2018 at https:// movingpeople-greatercph.dk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Smart-Mobility-07.06.2017_Trafikanalyse.pdf. Cresswell, T. (2006), On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World, London: Routledge. Egmose, J. (2015), Action Research for Sustainability: Social Imagination Between Citizens and Scientiests, Farnham: Ashgate. Egnsplankontoret (Regional Planning Office) (1947), ‘Skitseforslag Til Egnsplan for Storkøbenhavn’ (‘Outline proposal for area plan for Greater Copenhagen’), Regional Planning Office, Copenhagen. Fjalland, E.L.P., M. Freudendal-Pedersen and K. Hartmann-Petersen (2018), ‘Networked urban mobilities: practices, flows, methods’, in M. Freudendal-Pedersen, K. Hartmann-Petersen and E.L.P. Fjalland (eds), Experiencing Networked Urban Mobilities, New York: Routledge, pp. 1–9. Freudendal-Pedersen, M. (2009), Mobility in Daily Life, between Freedom and Unfreedom, Farnham: Ashgate. Freudendal-Pedersen, M. (2015), ‘Cyclists as part of the city’s organism: structural stories on cycling in Copenhagen’, City & Society, 27 (1), 30–50. Freudendal-Pedersen, M. and S. Kesselring (2016), ‘Mobilities, futures & the city: repositioning discourses – changing perspectives – rethinking policies’, Mobilities, 11 (4), 575–86. Freudendal-Pedersen, M., K. Hannam and S. Kesselring (2016), ‘Applied mobilities, transitions and opportunities’, Applied Mobilities, 1 (1), 1–9. doi:10.1080/23800127.2016.1150562. Freudendal-Pedersen, M., K. Hartmann-Petersen, A.A. Kjærulff mand L.D. Nielsen (2017), ‘Interactive environmental planning: creating utopias and storylines within a mobilities planning project’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 60 (6), 941–58. Friedmann, J. (2011), ‘Introduction’, in J. Friedmann (ed.), Insurgencies: Essays in Planning Theory, Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, pp. 1–14. Gate 21 (2018a), ‘Gate21’, accessed 23 October 2018 at https://www.gate21.dk/?lang=en. Gate 21 (2018b), ‘Smart mobility in LOOP CITY – Gate21’, accessed 23 October 2018 at https://www.gate21. dk/project/smart-mobility-in-loop-city/?lang=en. Gladsaxe Municipality (2016), ‘Miljøudvalget: CO2- og Miljøplan. Planlagte aktiviteter i 2016’ (‘The Environmental Committee: CO2 and environmental plan. Planned activities’), accessed 23 October 2018 at http://www2.gladsaxe.dk/ProFile/ProfileWebMeeting.nsf/webda/272A4C0A84983D0BC1257F720043F0D1 ?opendocument. Gladsaxe Municipality (2018), ‘Letbane: Kommuner vil sikre god information til virksomheder under byggeriet’ (‘The light rail: municipalities aim to ensure good information to companies during the construction’), accessed 23 October 2018 at https://www.gladsaxe.dk/kommunen/borger/nyhedsvisning_alle/letbane_​ kommuner_vil_sikre_god_information_til_virksomheder_under_byggeriet. Green Mobility (2018), ‘GreenMobility – your city car’, accessed 23 October 2018 at http://greenmobility.com/ dk/en/. Grunau, J.P. and W.L. Schönwandt (2010), ‘Dealing with society’s “big messes”’, in G. de Roo and E.A. Silva (eds), A Planner’s Encounter with Complexity, Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 41–62. Hannam, K., M. Sheller and J. Urry (2006), ‘Editorial: mobilities, immobilities and moorings’, The People, Place, and Space Reader, 1 (1), 1–22. Hartmann-Petersen, K. (2015), ‘Netværkssamfundets byplanlægning – Udvikling af kundskab gennem relationer’, PLAN, 4, 18–21. Hartmann-Petersen, K., L.D. Nielsen, M. Freudendal-Pedersen, et al. (2014), ‘Formel M. Demonstration og forankring af Mobility Management 2011–2014’, Albertslund. Healey, P. (1997), Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

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240  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Healey, P. (2012), ‘Performing place governance collaboratively: planning as a communicative process’, in F. Fischer and H. Gottweis (eds), The Argumentative Turn Revisited: Public Policy as Communicative Practice, Durham, NC and London, pp. 58–82. Hovedstadens Letbane (2018), ‘Din Letbane’ (‘Your light rail’), accessed 22 October 2019 at https://www.dinlet​ bane.dk/in-english/see-the-vision/. Illeris, S. (2010), Regional Udvikling: Regionplanlægning Og Regionalpolitik i Danmark Og Europa, K. DirckinckHolmfeld (ed.), Copenhagen: Bogværket. Kaufmann, V. (2002), Re-Thinking Mobility: Contemporary Sociology, London: Routledge. Kjærulff, A.A. (2015), Mobiliteter i Planlægningen, Roskilde: Institut for Miljø, Samfund og Rumlig Forandring, Roskilde Universitet. Loop City (2018), ‘About Loop City’, accessed 23 October 2018 at http://loopcity.dk/en/about-loop-city/. Manderscheid, K. (2014), ‘Criticising the solitary mobile subject: researching relational mobilities and reflecting on mobile methods’, Mobilities, 9 (2), 188–219. Moving People (2018a), ‘Cykeluge Avedøre Holme’ (‘Cycling week Avedøre Holme’), accessed 23 October 2018 at https://movingpeople-greatercph.dk/virksomheder-2/smart-mobility-in-loop-city-netvaerk/cykelugeavedo​ reholme/. Moving People (2018b), ‘Hvem deltager i Smart Mobility in LOOP CITY’ (‘Who is participating in Smart Mobility in LOOP City?’), accessed 23 October 2018 at https://movingpeople-greatercph.dk/virksomheder-2/ smart-mobility-in-loop-city-netvaerk/hvemdeltagerismilc/. Moving People (2018c), ‘Information til dine medarbejdere når letbanearbejdet er i gang’ (‘Information to your employees while the construction of the light rail is taking place’), accessed 23 October 2018 at https:// movingpeople-greatercph.dk/nyhed-fra-gate21/?gate_post=information-til-dine-medarbejdere-naar-letbane​ arbejdet-er-i-gang. Moving People (2018d), ‘Virksomheder ruster sig til øget trængsel i anlægsfasen’ (‘Companies are preparing for congestion during the phase of construction’), accessed 23 October 2018 at https://movingpeople-greatercph. dk/nyhed-fra-gate21/?gate_post=virksomheder-ruster-sig-til-oeget-traengsel-i-anlaegsfasen. Murray, L. and K. Doughty (2016), ‘Interdependent, imagined, and embodied mobilities in mobile social space: disruptions in “normality”, “habit” and “routine”’, Journal of Transport Geography, 55 (July), 72–82. Owens, S. (1995), ‘From “predict and provide” to “predict and prevent”? Pricing and planning in transport policy’, Transport Policy, 2 (1), 43–9. Pink, S. (2012), Situating Everyday Life: Practices and Places, London: Sage. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2006), ‘The new mobilities paradigm’, Environment and Planning A, 38 (2), 207–26. Urry, J. (2000), Sociology beyond Societies – Mobilities for the Twenty-First Century, London: Routledge. Urry, J. (2007), Mobilities, London: Polity. Vejre, H., J. Primdahl and J. Brandt (2007), ‘The Copenhagen Finger Plan: keeping a green space structure by a simple planning metaphor’, in B. Pedroli, A. van Doorn, G. de Blust, M.-L. Paracchini, D. Wascher and F. Bunce (eds), Europe’s Living Landscapes: Essays Exploring Our Identity in the Countryside, Zeist: KNNV, pp. 310–28. Vigar, G. (2002), The Politics of Mobility: Transport, the Environment, and Public Policy, London: Spon Press. Warnecke, M.-L. and H. Christiansen (2017), Mobilitetsundersøgelse for arbejdspladser i LOOP City. (‘Mobility study for work places in Loop City’), consultancy report, DTU Management, Lyngby, Denmark.

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23.  The transformation of mobility: AI, robotics and automatization* Anthony Elliott and Ross Boyd

INTRODUCTION Technological innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), advanced robotics and accelerating automation, have profoundly impacted the movement of people, information, ideas, communications and objects. Artificial intelligence, as both techno-scientific development and political-economic imperative, is the central element of these disruptive effects on mobilities systems and practices. For our purposes here, AI refers to computational systems which can sense their environment, and process, learn and react in response to this data-sensing, including coping with surprises (Elliott 2019a; Holton and Boyd, 2019; Urry 2016). Rapid advances in data-driven computing have facilitated the development of new generations of physical robots, soft bots, social robots and a host of robotic technologies that collect, interpret and learn from big data (Boyd and Holton 2018). Given an unprecedented surge in the number of mobilities systems and operations now undergoing automatization (Kellerman 2018), a sustained and creative engagement with AI on behalf of mobilities researchers is both timely and germane. For instance, AI supports everything from daily travel paths through Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation to the circulation of money via check-scanning machines at automated teller machines (ATMs). Everyday life is becoming digitally embedded in new ways of interacting and communicating on the move. Each of the five interdependent fields of mobility identified by Urry (2007) can be witnessed as undergoing deep and rapid transformation through intensive automation. Innovations in camera technology, GPS, accelerometers and gyroscopes, coupled with smart transportation development blueprints and new business models, are reshaping forms of corporeal travel. An estimated 10 million self-driving cars, for instance, will be rolled out across the globe by 2020, with one-quarter of all cars being self-driving by 2030, while driverless trucks are already operational in enclosed and off-road sites (ports and mines), with truck platooning and advanced exit-to-exit highway automation systems nearing deployment, subject to regulatory and business model innovation (Lipson and Kurman 2016). In addition, AI has enabled a rapid expansion of the Internet and social media, significantly impacting the fields of communicative and virtual mobilities, including novel blendings of online and offline social worlds, while new developments in networked intelligent machines are now re-grooving institutional life and practices in the global economy (Arthur 2011). A host of innovations are playing a crucial role here, ranging from cloud computing, supercomputers and machine-learning algorithms through to various smart devices, three-dimensional printing, the Internet of things, intelligent ecosystems and virtual reality (Elliott 2019b). Where earlier phases of automation entailed technologies that were fixed in place and programmed for specific repetitive tasks, new-generation digital technologies i­ ncorporating 241

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242  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities deep machine-learning, big data and machine decision-making, together with advanced sensors and actuators, mean forms of automaticity are increasingly mobile, situationally aware and capable of adapting to and communicating with their socio-technical surrounds. Yet, while recognizing the often formidable capabilities these technologies possess to actualize anticipated and unanticipated possibilities, and in so doing spur imaginations on towards further possibilities, we do not hold with the designer fallacy (Ihde 2008); that is, the attribution of strong linear-causal relationships between designer intention and subsequent technology uses, with little regard for intervening social, cultural, economic or political factors. For example, one key element in the ways the diffusion of technological innovations play out is the discursive organizing power of techno-narratives, ‘because stories about technological change do not simply sit above technological innovation and diffusion but help to constitute and direct or re-direct change itself’ (Boyd and Holton 2018, p. 341). Accordingly, how AI-enabled technologies impact on the future production, reproduction and transformation of mobilities will depend on decisions made now, and here much will depend on the development of fresh styles of thinking and frameworks for understanding these impacts (Elliott 2019a). In this chapter we argue that while the mobilities paradigm provides sophisticated conceptual and methodological tools for grasping socio-technical transformations for both complex adaptive systems and key features of everyday living, the scope, speed and intensity of smart-technology innovation is so great that a significant rethinking of mobilities research is required. In the next section, we rough out an analytic approach to the emergent contours of what we refer to as mobilities 3.0 through reference to key aspects of complex automated systems, particularly the advent of AI, advanced robotics and accelerating automation. In the subsequent section, this approach is applied to one instance of automated mobilities, namely, AI military technology and weapons systems. In the closing section, we identify further challenges for the development and application of mobilities 3.0.

MOBILITIES 3.0: RETHINKING MOBILITIES IN THE AGE OF AI AND AUTOMATIZATION If mobilities 1.0 emphasized complex systems, assemblages and practices of mobility (automobility, aeromobility, and so on), and mobilities 2.0 addressed the intersections of institutional mobility systems and the mobilizations of everyday, ordinary lives (Elliott and Urry 2010), what are the defining concerns of the emergent mobilities 3.0? How might we best understand current worldwide mobilization of advancing AI, robotics, massive data and code, blockchain technology, transactional interoperability across networks, protocol leverages and the Internet of things? Artificial intelligence establishes a new protological infrastructure; emergent codes, standards and logics (Galloway and Thacker 2007) that facilitate, shape and direct the global networked relations among, and movements of, people and machines. This, in turn, triggers the contactless contact that is mobilizing the complex of human-tomachine and machine-to-machine connections; the ubiquitous wireless and embedded sensor technologies together with novel interfaces, either currently available (Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home) or in various stages of development – from augmented and

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The transformation of mobility  243 virtual reality, interactive holograms, radio-frequency identification (RFID) implantation and wearables, through to experimental interfaces including immersive haptics, implantable electroencephalogram (EEG) or electrocardiogram (ECG) and human augmentation (Warwick 2018). It has often been assumed that the various forms of technological mobility are relatively discrete, meaning that new information technologies are fostering virtual or communicative mobilities as alternatives to, or substitutes for, physical mobility. The age of AI, we suggest, significantly challenges this assumption and requires a consideration of how AI-enabled additive interactions between physical, communicative and virtual mobility may have profound and long-term impacts on sociospatial structures and activities. In what follows we briefly touch on four socio-technical tendencies, increasingly evident over the past 30 years or so, which outline some of the key entailments of this shift, and which, taken together, identify necessary revisions of mobilities research. The first, and most obvious, tendency is the sheer extensity of the political-economic dimensions of AI. Reflecting its origins in geopolitics, AI is now inextricably bound up with contemporary globalization and the global economy. In this context, AI is understood in relation to the power to shape and steer research and development and lead the world in AI-driven economic growth to secure first-mover competitive and other strategic advantages. Globally the most important AI hubs are in Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, London, Berlin, Beijing and Shenzhen, in many ways reflecting national commitments to monetary investment and innovation policy initiatives. In 2015, for example, the US, spent $1.1 billion on unclassified AI and the 2017 unclassified Pentagon budget directed a further $7.4 billion towards research on AI and cognate fields (classified expenditures are assumed to dwarf these). Elsewhere the UK has committed $1.3 billion over ten years, France $1.8 billion over five years, while the European Union calculates its investments will amount to around $20 billion by 2030 and China $209 billion by 2030. It is estimated that AI could contribute approximately $16 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Second, automaticity is increasingly involved in the production and performance of human-to-machine and machine-to-machine interrelations, and large tracts of everyday life more generally. Brian Arthur (2011) describes how software-based, AI-driven automation provides a neural layer that runs much of the physical economy: ‘helping architects design buildings . . . tracking sales and inventory, getting goods from here to there, executing trades and banking operations, controlling manufacturing equipment, making design calculations, billing clients, navigating aircraft, helping diagnose patients and guiding laparoscopic surgeries’. As Thrift (2014, p. 9) notes, ‘half of internet traffic now comes from nonhuman sources’, underscoring the rise of chatbots masquerading as flesh-and-blood human agents. Third, AI-enabled systems are now transferring, sorting and re-sorting massive volumes of digital information in real time across global networks. Here things and objects become coded, tagged, scanned and locatable, as AI becomes the pervasive architecture of our densely networked environments, and complex automated systems emerge as the surround to both everyday life and modern institutions. These systems, Greenfield (2006) suggests, are both everywhere and ‘everyware’. These complex, interdependent systems form an operational backcloth through which airport doors automatically open, credit card transactions are enabled, short message service (SMS) is enacted and big data is accessed. As Greenfield (2006, p. 26) contends, this increasingly pervasive digital

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244  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities s­ urround scoops up ‘all of the power of a densely networked environment, but refining its perceptible signs until they disappear into the things we do everyday’. This idea of disappearance echoes Mark Weiser’s (1991) famous claims about ubiquitous computing and gives rise to questions about changing relations between the visible, the hidden and power in relation to systems of digitalization. Complex digital systems, we argue, generate new forms of invisibility interwoven with (im)mobility, these linked to the protocological infrastructure’s ordering and reordering of the myriad connectivities, calculations, authorizations, registrations, taggings, uploads, downloads and transmissions infusing everyday life. Here the mobility of AI leads, to follow just one direction, to the notion of the algorithm itself – mobilizing (as much as it reveals) a cultural trust in ostensibly neutral technological systems as efficient, precise, dispassionate and objective (Beer 2017). Beneath the high-flying rhetoric around AI and advanced robotics, rests fundamental, mundane but by no means inconsequential, social processes of algorithms charged with finding and assessing worth: classifying, sorting, ranking and otherwise rendering manageable today’s mass of data, conditioning understandings of what is or is not of significance, relevance or value. Beyond this are the forms of algorithmic opacity that Burrell (2016) describes, some associated with corporate intellectual property strategies, others technical illiteracy and others still arising from problems of complexity and scale unique and unavoidable to machine-learning algorithms. Artificial intelligence creates a new form of mobility, touching on and tracking identities and bodies, constituting and reordering our social interactions through ubiquitous contactless technologies, smart objects, data-gathering technologies and smart environments. A final tendency concerns the increasingly complex and complicated character of these systems which are ordering and re-ordering socio-technical life. Complexity drives the continuing ascent of ubiquitous computing and AI, technologically underpinned by exponential rates of computing power and speed. Since 1965, the guiding maxim of computer science has been Moore’s law, projecting a doubling of computing power every two years as a function of transistors shrinking and hence being able to be packed more densely onto computer chips. While recent reports of limits to technological miniaturization has led to questioning as to whether Moore’s law has ended, some analysts argue that quantum computing, along with greater exploitation of cloud computing, will provide for the continued expansion of computing processing power (Pratt 2015). Other possibilities are shifting away from brute computing power and towards probabilistic generative models of machine learning more closely resembling the data-efficiencies of human inductive reasoning (George et al. 2017). When viewed in a wider context of AI convergence with nanotechnology, biotechnology and information science, sound reasons exist to consider current rates of technological complexity – and consequent socioeconomic innovation and social transformation – will continue, thus placing considerable stress on extant regulatory and governance systems while underwriting increasing dependency on technical specialization and complex expert systems. In calling for a mobilities 3.0, we are not suggesting that mobilities researchers are unaware of these transitions and the importance of AI-enabled technologies for the remobilization of social life. Kitchin (2014), for example, elaborates on his earlier studies of coded infrastructures in the context of smart systems, while de Souza e Silva (2013) explores the impacts of location-aware technologies on spatiality and sociality. It is, however, the emergence of automated automobilities which has attracted perhaps greatest

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The transformation of mobility  245 attention from mobilities scholars (Bissell et al. 2018; Kellerman 2018). Some studies speculate on new possibilities for human-to-human and human-to-machine interaction, together with a new social and cultural life in and of the car (Laurier and Dant 2011 [2016]), the unplanned and improvisatory character of many human–machine interactions as a check on any temptation towards technological determinism (Pink et al. 2018), or accidents involving self-driving vehicles providing opportunities for social-learningabout-technology and machine-learning-about-society (Stilgoe 2018) and empirical sites to explore the multiple and dispersed material politics of automation (Bissell 2018). Others focus on the intelligent infrastructures and infostructures underpinning the development of seamless, safe, efficient and sustainable multimodal transport systems (Canzler and Knie 2016), including redistributions of agency among people, system hardware and software (Sheller 2007), or possibilities for productively integrating human sense-making practices with smart transport technologies (Büscher et al. 2016). There is evidence here of a clear understanding of the transformative potentials of AI, robotics and accelerating automation on mobilities systems and practices, together with a nascent grasp that this entails a merging of evermore networked and global physical, virtual and communicative mobilities. Yet, in many respects these analyses entail a stretching of conceptual, methodological and, indeed, topical repertoires already well established in mobilities research, raising questions as to whether the scope, intensity, speed and long-term consequences of the AI-enabled automated mobilities identified above might stretch mobilities 2.0 research to breaking point. The tentative nature of research to this point is understandable, the disruptive impacts of automated automobilities on social and political relationships remain in the early stages with the first genuine rollout of driverless vehicles not anticipated to occur until the early 2020s, with full deployment at least ten years later. There is, nonetheless, one area where AI-enabled automated mobilities are well established and which, accordingly, can provide valuable insights into the applicability of an emergent mobilities 3.0 analytic approach.

AI AND NEW WARFARE: A LEADING EDGE APPLICATION OF MOBILITIES 3.0? The rise of AI has been especially consequential, in recent decades, to the prosecution of new wars (to borrow Mary Kaldor’s term) and new developments in sophisticated weaponry. Militarized drones and the algorithmic capture and organization of information are now well-established means of waging war. A large amount of research on new military technologies centres on drone operating teams (Asaro 2013), from the human programming of code to algorithms used to ensure that targets are accurately identified on kill lists. The restructuring of warfare via AI and algorithms links, causally and consequentially, to fundamental shifts in the social and political character of organized violence. Key aspects of these transformations can be captured through reference to four interrelated developments consistent with the mobilities 3.0 approach outlined previously. First, a raw (and sobering) measure of the political and social changes fostered by AI imperatives is the huge scale of military expenditure on autonomous weapons systems. Taking officially published statistics in the US alone, the Department of Defense possesses nearly 11 000 unmanned weapons systems of many different types and capabilities,

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246  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities including aerial, surface and underwater vehicles. In 2012, the Guardian identified 56 different types of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) used in 11 different countries. A more complete picture of the influence of AI in the current global military order can be gained by considering armed drones, on which there are more comparative figures. Dillow (2016) reports that there are more than ten countries now deploying armed drones, including the US, the UK, China, Israel, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and South Africa, as well as two non-state organizations – Hamas and Hezbollah. Cheaper Chinese technology has swollen membership of the weaponized drone club to double digits. In 2017, it was estimated that the military UAVs market will reach $13.9 billion by 2026. Other military drone markets are anticipated to reach $11 billion by 2021. Second, this massive investment of resources may be understood, in part, through reference to the perceived imperative for nation-states to preserve or enhance strategic advantages over adversaries on global or regional scales, in conjunction with security cultures rooted in popular perceptions of near chronic existential threat (Weber 2016). The socio-technological entailments of these weapons systems, especially affinities between military simulation and/or operating and gaming systems, has led theorists to develop the concepts of a ‘military-entertainment complex’ (Lenoir and Caldwell 2018) or the more extensive ‘security-entertainment complex’, an ‘era of permanent and pervasive war and permanent and pervasive entertainment’ (Thrift 2011, p. 10). This melding of the security and entertainment sectors is evident in AI, data-driven modes of waging war, rich in visualization through an array of cameras, screens and surveillance, and in which computer programmers, sensor operators, mission intelligence coordinators and drone pilots, based at computer consoles, work together on precision targeting as part of a team kill-chain. That is, these emergent systems rework human–machine relations in ways that render communicative, physical and virtual mobilities co-extensive. Third, as technological developments enable the shrinkage, variety and sophistication of drones, their impact on organized violence is bound to be considerable. One popular smaller drone is the Raven, a remote controlled 3-foot long plane designed for the US military, used extensively in battlefields across Afghanistan and widely adopted by ­ defence departments throughout the world. Some newer micro-drones have become so small that they resemble children’s toys, while others have been compressed to such tiny sizes that their functioning now mimics insect flight. Efforts to model drones on the dragonfly or wasp, with the aim of getting up close and personal to enemies with tiny sensors and video cameras, have guided the direction of recent research developments. New ‘parasite’ UAVs, such as the Wasp and Wing-store UAV, are creating ‘the most sensitive installations for processing, exploiting and disseminating a tsunami of information from a global network of flying sensors’ (Bumiller and Shankerjune 2011). This is rightly considered a data-deluge because, while algorithms process this information, there is simply too much of it, with defence and security forces now overloaded. Paradoxically, military commanders now possess an AI-enabled and enhanced capability to oversee battlefields far more distributed, dynamic and diffuse than ever before, yet precisely because of the ways this enabling technology collates, analyses and fuses the data that constitutes this field of vision these commanders find their decision-making autonomy compromised (Freedberg 2018). Gregory (2011, p. 193) argues that drone warfare inaugurates ‘a militarized regime of hypervisibility’, in which the extraction and archiving of data underpins the identification, targeting and execution of combatants. In the US, for example, a key

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The transformation of mobility  247 database, the disposition matrix, aggregates and harmonizes the various kill-and-watch lists generated by diverse government agencies. For Weber (2016) the development of this database signals a step change in prevailing techno-rationality, which is increasingly geared to anticipating unknown unknowns by shifting analysis away from calculations of probabilities towards using advanced data-mining algorithms to array all conceivable possible dangers. This represents, she argues, the emergence of a new cultural logic of warfare, ‘not one of cause-and-effect but rather one of pre-emption and possibility’ (Weber 2016, p. 120) wherein anyone and everyone is a possible threat. As miniaturized weapons systems come to be treated as automated instruments of warfare, the parameters of military mobilities are being reconfigured in complex ways. In early 2017, for example, it was widely reported that the US military had dropped approximately 100 Perdix micro-drones from three F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets over California, and these 16-centimetre machines demonstrated, according to a statement issued by the Pentagon, ‘swarm behaviours such as collective decision-making, adaptive formation flying and self-healing’. These UAVs are able to operate as a type of c­ ollective organism, communicating with each other and swarming throughout designated ­environments without being monitored or attacked. The strategic military objective is to overwhelm the defence capabilities of opponents with the sheer numbers of AI-enabled micro-drones. In turn, the spatial intelligibility of war is reconfigured through influencing what is possible, and hence meaningful, in relation to presence and absence, near and far. Finally, AI-enablement has led to the further expansion of weapons development in the form of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), or killer robots. These weapons, mediated by AI, can autonomously select, target and strike (potential) enemies without human intervention. Although there have been significant levels of investment in the research and development of killer robots in the main centres of the arms industry (most notably in the US and Europe), this development has also affected a growing number of nation-states as well as non-state actors. Automatic military defensive systems, such as the German AMAP-ADS, the Russian Arena and the Israeli Trophy, can autonomously identify and strike oncoming missiles, rockets, artillery fire, aircraft and surface vessels. China, according to various reports, is exploring the use of AI weaponry in its next generation of cruise missiles, and a South Korean arms manufacturer has designed and built a gun turret which can identify, track and shoot targets, ostensibly without any need for human intervention. The diffusion of automated weaponry from the advanced societies to a growing number of other states, and non-state actors, has unfolded more recently. Weaponized AI is now the focus of a massive global debate, with prominent scientists, industry leaders and non-governmental organizations all pressing for pre-emptive bans on the technology. The application of AI-enabled automaticity to the delivery of military weapons is outstripping the legal frameworks that render state violence accountable; there is, in effect, no agreed international framework regulating how these weapons might be developed and deployed in conflict zones. In this context, AI-enabled dataveillance and weaponry is rewriting the mobilities of contemporary warfare. For Der Derian (2013, p. 575) war is now taking on ‘a multispectral, densely entangled, phase-shifting character’ that defies ‘fixed definition (Syria: civil or international?), empirical verification (Yemen: open or secret?) and normal legal standing (drones: sub- or extra-judicial?)’.

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CONCLUSIONS The emerging mobilities 3.0, we suggest, focuses on the intricate interconnections among intelligent machines and digitalized subjects which are on the move in ever-increasing mobile combinations. Our concluding comments are, of necessity, partial and provisional, given that the socio-technical changes entailed are still in the early stages. We make three basic comments, one sociological, one theoretical and one methodological, intended as contributions to an ongoing mobilities 3.0 research programme. These ideas necessarily require further development and incorporation into a more systematic theoretical account of automated mobilities. First, the mobilities paradigm must empirically engage with the sheer dynamism of human–machine relationships that are integral to the production, reproduction and transformation of mobile social life. We refer here, above all, to the complex ways new AI-enabled socio-technical systems radically shift humans and machines around in spatial and temporal configurations and relative to one another. We also refer to how all this redistributing, reconfiguring and remodelling of human–machine relations, together with their multiple feedback loops and indirect relationships of cause and effect playing out at different speeds and timescales, are profoundly recomposing the relation between self and system, agency and automation (Elliott 2019a; Holton and Boyd 2019). Mindell (2015, p. 198) for example, details novel forms of experience emerging as new co-active human–machine systems, ‘delicately switching in and out of automatic modes’, distribute human and machine presence and co-presence across space – at once physically, communicatively and virtually. There are also new forms of distributed and dynamic co-presence across time; for example, ongoing user engagements with designers and programmers whose traces remain inside machine systems, framing their operations for months or years. While the residuum of human decisions in non-human material frameworks and architecture has been well documented in the tradition of infrastructure studies (Howe et al. 2016), what is new about these traces, as the internal decision logics of machinelearning algorithms, is the way they also evolve, according to their own inclinations, through learning in interaction with large data-sets (Burrell 2016). A more critical focus on this reconfiguration of human–machine relationships allows for more nuanced views of the disruptive impacts of these new technologies. Ekbia and Nardi (2017), for instance, demonstrate how microwork or crowdsourcing applications, social media or online video reposition people as indispensable system mediators, while rendering them, ‘hidden, poorly compensated, or uncompensated, and naturalized as part of what it means to be a “user” of digital technology’ (Ekbia and Nardi 2017, p. 1). Second, mobilities research must account for the patterns of smart-technology interactions and automated systems forming the protological infrastructure for increasingly more areas of social, economic and political life. Central to the processes and structures of contemporary automated mobilities are the non-linear dynamics of smart technologies interacting with each other, regardless of the involvement of human subjective judgements. Galloway and Thacker (2007, pp. 25–47), for example, capture how non-human things shape, enable and interfere with networks engendered by new software. Developing this insight further, Ash (2018, pp. 36–48) contends that smart devices possess both intentionality, defined as the ability to actively perturb other smart devices, and protentionality, the capability to await and respond to the perturbations of other devices. Ash

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The transformation of mobility  249 (2018, p. 65) claims that through this capacity (or incapacity) to perturb one another, smart devices generate new, multiple spatio-temporal logics (near and far, now and then), in so doing modulating the ways space and time become intelligible to both humans and other non-humans. Moreover, through framing space-times these technologies organize mobilities and shape potentials for action in ways not anticipated by their designers (Ash 2018, pp. 38–9). Through these shaping effects, intelligent machines – without human ­operators  – are implicated in the production of mobile life in the form of, following Patricia Clough’s a ‘technological unconscious’ (Thrift 2004). Finally, there needs to be a continuation of the tradition of radical methodological innovation and adaptation that characterizes mobile methods, to better render AI-enabled automated mobilities and their long-term consequences researchable (Elliott et al. 2019). As previously indicated, a particular challenge concerns the development of methods attuned to the productive powers of smart technologies independent from subjectivity. Thacker and Galloway’s, as well as Ash’s, dynamic adaptation of the new materialist approaches associated with Jane Bennett and Graham Harman represent significant early moves in this regard, as does – in a different register – Mark Hansen’s work on the mediation of sensibility through micro-sensing technologies (de Freitas 2017). Another challenge concerns the problems of scale or, more precisely, the multi-scalar redistributions and reconfigurations of human–machine relations, simultaneously entailing vast spatial (and temporal) extensions of mobilities systems and the most personal aspects of mobile lives. Here approaches such as ‘ethnography of scaling’ (Ribes 2014) or process-orientated multi-site research (Hautala 2017) can provide useful starting points for the considerable work still required to respond to the new realities of automaticization.

NOTE *

This chapter is developed from research funded by the Jean Monnet Network, ‘Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility’ (599662-EPP-1-2018-1-AU-EPPJMO-NETWORK) and the Jean Monnet Project, ‘Digital Technologies, Transformations and Skills’ (587082-EPP-1-2017-1-AU-EPPJMO-PROJECT) funded under the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

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24.  Researching transnational family life in a mobile era Earvin Charles Cabalquinto

INTRODUCTION A large number of studies in the new mobilities paradigm have focused on how the mobility of people, objects, technologies, capital and resources has impacted personal, social and professional life (Adey 2006; Cresswell 2010; Elliott and Urry 2010; Sheller 2015). Various mobile methods have been deployed to identify, map out and analyse the formation of a social world through corporeal and non-corporeal mobilities (Büscher and Urry 2009; Büscher et al. 2011; Sheller 2014). To date, few studies have been done deploying a mobilities perspective to examine how a transnational family life has been engendered and undermined by the widespread uptake of mobile communication technologies and online platforms. This chapter presents the methods used and the critical approach deployed in investigating how 21 Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Melbourne, Australia and their left-behind family members in the Philippines use mobile communication technologies in forging and sustaining transnational relationships. Qualitative methods were chosen to primarily address the key objectives of the research project, including: to identify the motivations behind the use of mobile devices; locate the diverse and interconnected factors that impact mobile practices; expose the outcomes of transnational connections; and critically reflect on what technologically mediated mobilities reveal about the inequalities that persist in a digital era. The chapter showcases the study’s deployment of a wide range of qualitative methods, including multi-sited in-depth interviews, photograph elicitation, photographic documentation, a simple participant observation, and an analysis of field notes. According to Lindlof and Taylor (2002), qualitative research studies analyse the discourses, actions, motives and understandings of the people who live in a particular social setting. Further, as Berg (2007) suggests, it is through qualitative methodologies that the researcher is able to access the subject’s perception and subjective apprehension, therefore uncovering the meanings given by individuals to certain phenomena and behaviour. In this chapter, I showcase the instrumental role of deploying qualitative methods in eliciting a deeper and nuanced understanding of a transnational family life as shaped by mobile device use. The collected data was analysed by extending the mobilities lens (Urry 2007) in the field of media studies and communication (Keightley and Reading 2014) as well as in a transnational sphere. Special attention is given to the impact of social, economic, political and technological forces in enabling and curtailing mobile communication (Keightley and Reading 2014). Through this approach, the study uncovered the benefits, asymmetries and disruptions in integrating mobile communication technologies in maintaining family life from a distance. In so doing, the research study opened a nuanced way of approaching 251

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252  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities and articulating the lived conditions of dispersed family members who rely on ubiquitous smartphones, social media and mobile applications to do family activities together. This chapter attempts to contribute to the growing body of literature on mobile methods (Büscher et al. 2011). It does not simply showcase the utilisation of diverse methods to compare and contrast the living conditions of those who move overseas and those who are left behind. Significantly, it highlights a critical standpoint in analysing how transnational connectivity may reinforce social inequalities in a mobile and global society. Emotional stories, stored mobile images and affective exchanges were used as a point of departure during the conduct of the fieldwork to problematise how people from marginalised sectors of our society may benefit from virtual connectivity, yet also be immobilised in a painful, unstable and precarious condition. The latter outcome was salient especially in studying the conduct of transnational households which is produced by uneven, broader and highly discursive social structures (Sheller and Urry 2006). Ultimately, I contend that utilising a critical mediated mobilities lens (Keightley and Reading 2014) in collecting and analysing the data can provide a robust, diverse and critical way of researching transnational family life in a networked era. In the next sections, I provide a brief background of the research study’s case. This is followed by a provocation of the conceptual and methodological frames. I then present how a critical approach has contributed to identifying differential mobile practices as a focal point in further re-examining a mobile family life. I conclude this chapter by reflecting on emphasising the need to discuss differential movements and communicative ruptures in transnational households, positioning concepts and methods as tools for discovering the contradictory outcomes of interconnected – virtual and corporeal – mobilities.

THE CASE OF THE TRANSNATIONAL FILIPINO FAMILY In a developing country such as the Philippines, it has now become common for some family members to move elsewhere and find work to support their left-behind loved ones. Migration is not only considered to be an individual sojourn. Instead, it has been relied upon as a key strategy for the survival of the family (Yeoh et al. 2005). In a report released by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, 2.5 million Filipino workers were deployed overseas in 2016 (POEA 2019). Historically, high levels of human migration was promoted in the 1970s when former President Ferdinand Marcos issued the Labor Export Policy (LEP) with Presidential Decree 422 in 1974 (Aguilar 2014). It was also during the administration of Marcos that the signing of the 1974 Labor Code promoted overseas contract workers as its main method of addressing the country’s economic problems, such as unemployment, underemployment and foreign debt (Rodriguez 2010). Nonetheless, migration is result of the limited, or lack thereof, access by ordinary individuals to job opportunities, social welfare system, and public services. Notably, outward migration is promoted by the Philippine government (Rodriguez 2010) because remittances sent by Filipino migrants to support their loved ones back home keep the Philippine economy afloat. Dollars remitted through formal and informal channels contribute 10 per cent of the Philippines’ gross domestic product (Asis 2017). Australia is one of the countries of destination for Filipinos. The steady influx of Filipino migrants into Australia is influenced by the diverse opportunities afforded by

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Researching transnational family life in a mobile era  253 employment, business opportunities, education and tourism. According to a report released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in 2016, there were 232 284 Philippine-born in Australia, of whom 155 680 had Australian citizenship and 73 364 were non-Australian citizens (ABS 2018). The statistics showed that, of these, 89 985 were male and 142 399 were female (ABS 2018). It is also recorded that 67.0 per cent were Australian citizens and 31.6 were non-Australian citizens (ABS 2018). The research study engaged temporary migrant (skilled) or Subclass Visa 457 holders. Subclass Visa 457 holders were considered OFWs by the Philippine embassy in Canberra, Australia, given their short- and long-term contracts. These OFWs, as well as their family members, were often not entitled to social welfare benefits provided by the Australian state to permanent residents and citizens (Larsen 2013). While they were entitled to bring their family to Australia through the family reunification scheme, they opted to obtain permanent residency or citizenship owing to the benefits that then become available to them and to their families. Given their limited access to a wide range of resources and services, they opted for a transnational arrangement. Here, mobile devices and networked communications platforms were utilised to sustain familial ties. I recruited 21 OFWs in Melbourne, and their left-behind family members in the Philippines. The informants’ age ranged from 26 to 74 years old, with levels of education ranging from high school, through technical/vocational to postgraduate qualifications. Only one informant, who was based in the Philippines, was unemployed and the rest had skilled and professional jobs. The informants were recruited through snowball sampling. In Melbourne, Filipino-based organisations and media outlets were approached to also assist in the recruitments of informants. Meanwhile, it was suggested by the ethics committee of the research study that the Melbourne-based informants should contact their left-behind families in the Philippines to reduce the risk of any perceived pressure to participate. I followed this approach, letting the Melbourne informant talk to their left-behind family members. After they talked to their left-behind family members, I was notified by the informants in Melbourne to contact their loved ones instead, which was also their preferred approach because it was cheaper for them. In the end, I spoke to the left-behind family members via an overseas telephone call. Through the initial call, I discussed the research. The schedule of interviews among left-behind family members was then set. In some instances, I found myself being introduced to a left-behind loved one in the Philippines to discuss the research project (see Figure 24.1). In summary, the informants were informed that participation in the research project was voluntary and they could withdraw at any stage. The details of data collection are elaborated in the following sections. I opted to recruit a small number of informants. Twelve OFWs and nine left-behind family members participated in the study. The intention for this study was not to provide causal data, but to derive contextualised insights (Lim 2006; Lim and Soon 2010) that contribute to future studies in the same field (Wimmer and Dominick 2011). Paying special attention to the personal histories, technological practices and transnational communicative experiences of each informant unpacked a rich historically and culturally situated discussion (Lindlof and Taylor 2002). The 21 informants, who comprised eight transnational families, provided a useful sample to illustrate transnational Filipino family life in a networked society.

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Source:  Photograph printed with permission.

Figure 24.1  I was introduced by one of the informants to the left-behind wife, whom I also interviewed for the study

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Researching transnational family life in a mobile era  255

THEORETICAL FRAME: MEDIATED MOBILITIES PERSPECTIVE In this chapter, I describe how I deployed various qualitative methods and examined the generated data through a mediated mobilities perspective. As proponents of extending the mobilities lens in the context of media and communications, Keightley and Reading (2014) emphasised how technologically mediated mobilities are informed by social, political, economic and technological forces. For them, mediated mobilities can be used as a way to democratise and control movement (Keightley and Reading 2014). Yet, the systems and infrastructures that enable movements also favour certain individuals, groups and social schemes (Keightley and Reading 2014). I extended Keightley and Reading’s (2014) theorisation in a transnational modality, looking closely at the social, economic, political and technological dimensions that mould mobile device use. Notably, I considered a polymedia environment (Madianou and Miller 2012) as a context where the transnational family members convene, interact and embody a sense of familyhood. Moreover, I located how sociocultural (gender norms and family values), socio-economic (financial resources and conditions), socio-political (migration regimes and employment), as well as socio-technological factors (features and affordances of devices and platforms as well as digital literacy) impact transnational connections. Referring to how the new mobilities paradigm inquires on the reinforcement of hierarchy and divide in a mobile society (Sheller and Urry 2006), I engaged with the ways through which mobile device use may reinforce inequalities in a contemporary era. I did not only identify asymmetrical mobile communication, as enforced by uneven access, financial capacity and technological literacy (Madianou and Miller 2012; Lim 2016), but also foregrounded the contradictory experiences embodied and constantly negotiated by transnational family members. The main premise is that digital communication technologies bring geographically separated family members together. Yet, communication at a distance tends to immobilise transnational family members in a frustrating, painful and vulnerable state, as evinced in the burden of staying connected despite the lack of access to a stable Internet connection or constantly negotiating the pains of physical separation. These contentions are uncovered through the deployment of methods as informed by employing a mediated mobilities lens in a transnational context.

RESEARCHING A FAMILY LIFE ON THE MOVE I adopted different qualitative methods to examine the role of digital communication technologies in mediated transnational family life, including multi-sited in-depth interviews, photograph elicitation, photographic documentation, a simple participant observation, and writing and analysing field notes. I particularly chose visual methods in consideration of the widespread uptake of broadband-based, networked and visual-based devices and platforms (Goggin 2011; Hjorth et al. 2012). Engaging with the methodological approach of Hjorth and Pink (2014) was helpful in my study, inspiring me to gather data by combining in-depth interviews, participant observation and visual methods. In their study, Hjorth and Pink (2014) primarily generated interview transcriptions, images and field notes to showcase how the entanglement of locative-based and visual features

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256  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities stirred a sense of intimate co-presence among non-proximate individuals. In my study, combining multi-sited in-depth interviews, visual methods, participant observation and using field notes contributed to unpacking how transnational family members perform, embody and negotiate transnational connections and relationships. Significantly, the narratives and photographs shared by the informants did not only convey imagined mobilities (Urry 2007). They also served as a platform for illustrating and examining differential mobility, mobility burden (Urry 2007) and ambivalent affects (Madianou 2012) in a transnational sphere.

MULTI-SITED IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS A significant methodological approach in investigating the conduct of family life at a distance are the multi-sited in-depth interview sessions. A researcher often has to move and embed himself or herself across different places to study a phenomenon. Interviewing people, examining cultural objects and experiencing a particular place are some methodological approaches in a multi-sited setting (Madianou and Miller 2012; McKay 2012). For instance, Madianou and Miller (2012), conducted extensive interviews of migrants in the UK (London and Cambridge), and their left-behind family members in the Philippines and in Trinidad. The completed three-year (2007–10) project of Madianou and Miller (2012) showcased the diversity of mobile practices by family members living across countries. This methodological approach enabled the research to not only generate data that may expose a social world or meaning-making of individuals, but also provided a vantage point in examining the role of various mobilities – corporeal and non-corporeal – in shaping the different aspects of an individual’s everyday life (Elliott and Urry 2010). In the new mobilities paradigm, a multi-sited approach complements diverse methodological styles that present how a particular work is made in and through movements (Büscher et al. 2011). In my study, I interviewed 12 Filipino migrants from December 2013 to April 2014. The interviews were conducted in the rented room in a shared apartment or a house of the Filipino migrants. A few sessions were conducted in a café or in a shopping complex. I also interviewed nine left-behind family members in the Philippines. From May to June 2014, I conducted the interviews in Manila as well as in regions outside Manila, ­including Cavite and Pampanga. Some informants from the Philippines were interviewed face to face. One informant was interviewed in a café. Four informants opted for a telephone interview. The interviews facilitated the informants’ exposition and critical reflection on their familial relationships, as well as the benefits and obstacles in using mobile devices to sustain family life at a distance. The interviews each lasted for 45 minutes to an hour. The interview sessions were helpful in unpacking the diverse experiences of the informants. The follow-ups and on-site clarifications (Berg 2007) enriched the data collection. Importantly, it was during the interviews when the research study provided a space for the informants to speak and reflect on their experiences (Saldaña 2011), avoiding the imposition of the researcher’s assumptions (Markham and Couldry 2007). This approach captured the meaning that the informants attach to the phenomenon being studied (Holstein and Gubrium 1995). Ultimately, multi-sited in-depth interviews paved the way

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Researching transnational family life in a mobile era  257 for an access and analysis of the diverse and differential mobile exchanges and experiences performed, embodied and negotiated at both sides of a transnational arrangement.

VISUAL METHODS The in-depth interviews were paired with two visual methods, such as photographic documentation and elicitation (Emmison and Smith 2000). These particular qualitative methods were key in exposing how the mobility of devices and digital information delivered benefits and triggered tensions among geographically separated family members. In addition, using images as a prompt in interviews articulated the outcomes of communicative mobilities (Urry 2007). The application of visual methods was organised by obtaining the consent of the informants to be photographed or to provide images stored on their mobile devices. I briefed the informants that they could decline to provide photographs or be photographed. I emphasised to them that they may opt to blur photographs for publication to protect their privacy. This approach facilitated the successful collection of visual-based data. I produced 109 images through photographic documentation. Three hundred and forty-one photographs were obtained through photograph elicitation. No photographs of children appeared in this study without the explicit consent of parents, and their faces were blurred after collection. Photographic documentation was administered to document the different online and offline spaces where mediated family interactions occurred. During my fieldwork in Melbourne as well as in some regions of the Philippines, I photographed the particular places where members of the transnational Filipino family would regularly convene and interact. In Melbourne, Filipino migrants, who typically rent rooms in a shared house, set up their laptop in their bedrooms (see Figure 24.2a). Back in the Philippines, the laptop is located in the common room, such as the living room (see Figure 24.2b). The captured images were reflected upon by the informants. They considered these spaces as a form of digital hub where family members could interact at a scheduled time. Significantly, I also captured the online spaces where transnational family members would normally congregate and exchange messages. As revealed, messaging applications were utilised by the informants (see Figure 24.2c). Nevertheless, probing the informants to talk about the spaces they inhabit to connect with their loved ones presented the significant and emotionally charged aspects of the informants’ cultural world (Saldaña 2011) on the move. Nevertheless, as Pink (2007) suggests, visual explorations produce an understanding of how people experience social and material environments, such as the home. Photograph elicitation (Emmison and Smith 2000; Harper 2002) is the other visual method that was employed in the study. I requested that informants provide four or five significant photographs stored on their mobile device. Many of them had difficulty choosing photographs to provide. To make it easier for them, I told them to provide photographs that are indicative of their everyday exchanges with their loved ones. After such probing, the informants began providing more than five photographs. These ranged from the everyday, random things they miss about the Philippines, celebrations and, even, crisis-related images. The photographs were used as prompts during the in-depth interviews, enabling a complete and often emotional portrait of a transnational household.

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(a) The bedroom of a Filipino migrant

(b) The living room of a left-behind family

(c) A family group chat on Viber

Source:  Photographs printed with permission.

Figure 24.2  Captured spaces for transnational communication

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Researching transnational family life in a mobile era  259 In summary, personal images were used as point of departures (Lindlof and Taylor 2002) in conversational interviews (Holstein and Gubrium 1995) to examine the lived experiences and access contextualised historical information (Creswell 1994, 2013) of the informants. Visual methods also opened discussions about imagined and intimate co-presence. More importantly, they assisted in accessing stories about affective experiences, often contrasting and ambivalent, via mobile devices use in the negotiation of long-distance relationships. As uncovered in the study, transnational family members felt a sense of connection through visual images. Yet, the images also reminded them of the parameters of technology, such as not being able to hug or physically care for distant loved ones.

OBSERVATIONS AND NOTES IN THE FIELD According to Lindlof and Taylor (2002), field notes are short descriptions written to articulate key observations in the fieldwork. During my fieldwork in Australia and in the Philippines, I kept notes on my observations about the informants’ language, emotions and bodily movements. This process captured the contradictions of expressions during the interviews. For instance, in several interviews, narrated frustrations about mobile device use was delivered with a hopeful and gleeful tone. By closely examining the responses of the informants, remaining positive and even jovial in dealing with difficult situations signalled as a form of emotional labour (Hochschild 2003) or suppressing negative emotions (Parreñas 2005). Another striking observation was the intensity of ambivalent feelings (Madianou 2012) that the informants had to bear. Ultimately, the study determined the frustrating and painful conditions of the informants as a take-off point to discuss marginalisation in a mediated world.

WORKING WITH THE DATA The data analysis was based on a thematic coding technique. This process involved de-contextualising raw data through coding and labelling, reconstituting it into patterns, themes, concepts and propositions (Lindlof and Taylor 2002). I used this coding technique to identify recurrent and emerging themes, and similarities in the data. I coded and categorised the collected data from the in-depth interviews, visual methods and fieldnote taking. Through close and repeated analysis of the data, I refined the categories and linked the relationships between mobile device use and sustaining family life at distance. Notably, building on the approach of Madianou and Miller (2012), I deployed a compareand-contrast approach in examining the data. According to Hodkinson (2008), the process of combining codes into a smaller number of broader concepts provides the beginnings of a theoretical application of the data. Following this approach, I mapped out the different forces that shaped the mobile device use of the informants, as reflected in the interview transcripts, photos and my field notes. I brought in the mediated mobilities perspective (Keightley and Reading 2014) to identify the diverse factors that impact mobile practices. I then highlighted the fundamental role of sociocultural (gender norms and familial expectations), socio-economic (financial

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260  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities status), socio-political (visa and employment conditions), as well as socio-technological (affordances and literacy) dimensions in engendering or undermining a mobile family life. Taking into account the impact of hierarchical social structures and technological asymmetries in mobile practices paved the way for discussing differential mobilities. Asymmetries and disruptions in transnational communication are then articulated as a starting point for mapping out the politics of mobilities (Cresswell 2010). As I presented elsewhere in identifying the politics of mediated mobilities (Cabalquinto 2019), ­transnational families constantly manage the dimensions of communication at a distance, including access, socio-technical competency, quality of connectivity, rhythms, affective experience and communicative space. These key points were reflected as pivotal in fuelling the machinery of a labour-exporting Philippine state (Rodriguez 2010), as manifested in the influx of remittances or care packages, and mobile device use. Nevertheless, analysing mobile practices, as informed by the entanglement of sociocultural, socio-economic, socio-political and socio-technological forces, allowed the study to conceptualise differential co-presence (Cabalquinto 2018a), mobile intimacy (Cabalquinto 2017) and caregiving from afar (Cabalquinto 2018b). I contend that this conceptualisation offered a nuanced standpoint in investigating the conduct of family life at a distance in a digital era.

A CRITICAL OUTLOOK This chapter has presented a spectrum of methods to investigate how members of the transnational Filipino family use mobile devices and networked communications platforms in forging and maintaining long-distance relationships. It specifically highlights how multi-sited in-depth interviews, visual methods, a simple participant observation and field note taking were used to unpack the paradoxical consequences of mobile device use in mediating a transnational household. I have emphasised that the data were approached through a critical mediated mobilities perspective, taking into consideration the role of social structures and technological affordances in engendering and undermining mobile device use. This approach has unlocked the contradictory outcomes of the interdependence of corporeal and non-corporeal mobilities (Urry 2007) in a transnational household. It is through this approach that my own study (Cabalquinto 2017, 2018a, 2018b, 2019) has articulated how virtual connectivity can reinforce inequalities in a digital and transnational sphere. In conclusion, researching the impacts of digital communication technologies in shaping family life at a distance necessitates the deployment of diverse methods and critical approaches. This is highly important, especially in interrogating the living conditions of dispersed family members who often bear the burden of a limited, or lack thereof, access to the nation-state’s social welfare systems, public services and offered job opportunities (Rodriguez 2010). Ultimately, mobile devices and networked communications platforms provide the connectivity in mobilising family life from a distance. Yet, behind the clicks, the streaming of happy smiles and the constant flows of personalised messages lie the limits and, even, ruptures of transnational connectivity. As such, to determine and write about displacement, mobility burdens and paradoxes in transnational family life, needs a critical lens. In doing so, empirically grounded research can be utilised as a springboard for assessing accountability, development and equity in the digital age.

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Researching transnational family life in a mobile era  261

REFERENCES Adey, P. (2006), ‘If mobility is everything then it is nothing: towards a relational politics of (im)mobilities’, Mobilities, 1 (1), 75–94. Aguilar, F. (2014), Migration Revolution: Philippine Nationhood and Class Relations in a Globalized Age, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Asis, M.M.B. (2017), ‘The Philippines: Beyond labor migration, toward development and (possibly) return’, accessed 20 Janury 2019 at https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/philippines-beyond-labor-migration-towa​ rd-develop​ment-and-possibly-return. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (2018), ‘2016 Census QuickStats Country of Birth – Philippines’, accessed 15 January 2018 at http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quick​ stat/5204_036. Berg, B. (2007), Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences, Boston, MA: Pearson Education Allyn & Bacon. Büscher, M. and J. Urry (2009), ‘Mobile methods and the empirical’, European Journal of Social Theory, 12 (1), 99–116. Büscher, M., J. Urry and K. Witchger (2011), Mobile Methods, New York: Routledge. Cabalquinto, E.C. (2017), ‘“We’re not only here but we’re there in spirit”: asymmetrical mobile intimacy and the transnational Filipino family’, Mobile Media & Communication, 6, 1–16. Cabalquinto, E.C. (2018a), ‘Home on the move: negotiating differential domesticity in family life at a distance’, Media, Culture & Society, 40 (2), 795–816. Cabalquinto, E.C. (2018b), ‘“I have always thought of my family first”: an analysis of transnational caregiving among Filipino migrant adult children in Melbourne, Australia’, International Journal of Communication, 12 (September), 4011–29. Cabalquinto, E.C. (2019), ‘Digital ties, disrupted togetherness: locating uneven communicative mobilities in transnational family life’, Migration, Mobility & Displacement, 4 (1), 49–63. Cresswell, T. (2010), ‘Towards a politics of mobility’, Environment & Planning D: Society and Space, 28 (1), 17–31. Creswell, J.W. (1994), Research design: Qualitative & Quantitative Approaches, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Creswell, J.W. (2013), Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Approaches, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Elliott, A. and J. Urry (2010), Mobile Lives, Hoboken, NJ: Taylor & Francis. Emmison, M. and P. Smith (2000), Researching the Visual: Images, Objects, Contexts and Interactions in Social and Cultural Inquiry, London: Sage. Goggin, G. (2011), Global Mobile Media, Abingdon: Routledge. Harper, D. (2002), ‘Talking about pictures: a case for photo elicitation’, Visual Studies, 17 (1), 13–26. Hjorth, L. and S. Pink (2014), ‘New visualities and the digital wayfarer: reconceptualizing camera phone photography and locative media’, Mobile Media & Communication, 2 (1), 40–57. Hjorth, L., J. Burgess and I. Richardson (2012), ‘Studying the mobile, locating the field’, in L. Hjorth, J. Burgess and I. Richardson (eds), Studying Mobile Media: Cultural Technologies, Mobile Communication, and the iPhone, New York: Routledge, pp. 1–10. Hochschild, A. (2003), The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hodkinson, P. (2008), ‘Grounded theory and inductive research’, in G.N. Gilbert (ed.), Researching Social Life, 3rd edn, Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pp. 80–100. Holstein, J.A. and J.F. Gubrium (1995), The Active Interview, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Keightley, E. and A. Reading (2014), ‘Mediated mobilities’, Media, Culture & Society, 36 (3), 285–301. Larsen, G. (2013), ‘The subclass 457 visa: a quick guide’, accessed 20 June 2015 at http://www.aph.gov.au/ About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1314/QG/Subclass457​ Visa. Lim, S.S. (2006), ‘From cultural to information revolution. ICT domestication by middle-class Chinese families’, in T. Berker, M. Hartmann, Y. Punie and K. Ward (eds), Domestication of Media and Technology, Maidenhead and New York: Open University Press, pp. 185–204. Lim, S.S. (2016), ‘Asymmetries in Asian families’s domestication of mobile communication’, in S.S. Lim (ed.), Mobile Communication and the Family: Asian Experiences in Technology Domestication, London: Springer, pp. 1–9. Lim, S.S. and C. Soon (2010), ‘The influence of social and cultural factors on mothers’ domestication of household ICTs – experiences of Chinese and Korean women’, Telematics and Informatics, 27 (3), 205–16. Lindlof, T.R. and B.C. Taylor (2002), Qualitative Communication Research Methods, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Madianou, M. (2012), ‘Migration and the accentuated ambivalence of motherhood: the role of ICTs in Filipino transnational families’, Global Networks, 12 (3), 277–95.

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262  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Madianou, M. and D. Miller (2012), Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia, Abingdon: Routledge. Markham, T. and N. Couldry (2007), ‘Tracking the reflexivity of the (dis)engaged citizen: some methodological reflections’, Qualitative Inquiry, 13 (5), 675–95. McKay, D. (2012), Global Filipinos Migrants’ Lives in the Virtual Village, Bloomington, IN: University Press. Parreñas, R.S. (2005), ‘Long distance intimacy: class, gender and intergenerational relations between mothers and children in Filipino transnational families’, Global Networks, 5 (4), 317–36. Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) (2019), ‘Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, 2015–2016 overseas employment statistics’, accessed 21 July 2019 at www.poea.gov.ph/ofw​ stat/compendium/2015-2016%20OES%201.pdf. Pink, S. (2007), Doing Visual Ethnography, London: Sage. Rodriguez, R.M. (2010), Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers to the World, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Saldaña, J. (2011), Fundamentals of Qualitative Research, New York: Oxford University Press. Sheller, M. (2014), ‘The new mobilities paradigm for a live sociology’, Current Sociology, 62 (4), 789–811. Sheller, M. (2015), ‘Uneven mobility futures: a Foucauldian approach’, Mobilities, 11 (1), 1–17. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2006), ‘The new mobilities paradigm’, Environment and Planning A, 38 (2), 207–26. Urry, J. (2007), Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity. Wimmer, R.D. and J.R. Dominick (2011), Mass Media Research: An Introduction, Boston, MA: Wadsworth. Yeoh, B.S.A., S. Huang and T. Lam (2005), ‘Transnationalizing the “Asian” family: imaginaries, intimacies and strategic intents’, Global Networks, 5 (4), 307–15.

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25.  Family mobilities Lesley Murray

INTRODUCTION Many of our mobilities take place in relation to family; our mobility practices are often determined at an early age within families and continue with reference to family throughout our lives. Invariably considered as the bedrock of society in different cultures across the globe, family is the starting point for a wide range of social policies, including those relating to mobilities and transport. It makes place, for example, the ‘family home’ and the ‘family holiday’, and creates mobilities through space. Family is a fundamental aspect of mobility imaginings, the dominant social unit in books, films and television. It is integral to the, often anxious, moment-to-moment mental mapping of the movements of those close to us. Family can mean many things to different people in different contexts. Hence, as well as acknowledging the importance of applying mobilities research to family, it is equally imperative to approach ‘family’ critically, with an understanding of its varied forms and practices. A mobilities perspective contributes to understanding family. Family is mobile in both its conceptualisation and its lived experience (Murray et al. 2019). As Holdsworth (2013, p. 3) argues ‘static or immobile reading of family’ conceal the ‘ongoing project of mobility in maintaining, sustaining and dissolving family’. A mobilities reading of family highlights the interdependencies, relationalities, materialities and imaginings that make sense of its varied forms and practices (Murray and Cortés-Morales 2019). In the mobilities field there has been a great deal of research on families, and some research that has taken family as the methodological point of departure, in seeking understandings of wider mobilities. However, due attention has not always been paid to critical scholarship that has, for a number of years, looked beyond normative constructions (for example, Williams 2004) in disrupting the notion of family as a static category. With that in mind, in this chapter, I consider family from a critical, mobile methodological perspective before highlighting some of the research on and with families in the mobilities field, and moving towards thinking about what methods can best be used in research applied to family mobilities and how we can move forward in applying mobilities research in illuminating family.

RESEARCHING MOBILE FAMILIES There has been much researching of families as mobile sets of relations within the mobilities field in recent years. This has looked across different contexts and scales of family. For example, Jensen et al. (2015, p. 363) set out to study the ‘the affective, emotional, and familial dimensions of urban everyday mobility using a mixed qualitative approach that draws from phenomenology and non-representational theory’. Their approach 263

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264  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities a­ cknowledges the relationality of family, the interrelations of ‘the body-in-motion’ as well as the ‘wider sensuous geography of movement, affect, and dwelling’ (Jensen et al. 2015, p. 364). Like other recent research on family (Mikkelsen and Christensen 2009; Jirón and Iturra 2014; Murray and Doughty 2016) they draw out the relationalities and interdependencies of family mobilities, and the ways in which different family members’ movements are co-constituted with the mobilities of others. That is, mobilities are more than individual. In researching family, Jensen et al. (2015, p. 367) discuss mobile methodologies explicitly, calling for ‘more sensitive methodologies to get at the underlying forms of sense making and decision-making that inform mobility behaviour’. Their theoretical frame is well explicated in relation to their methodology as they seek to emphasise ‘the influence and importance of the affective and relational dimensions in everyday household mobilities’ (Jensen et al. 2015, p. 367). They argue that current methods do not capture the ‘embeddedness of negotiations of mobility in familial contexts and affective networks’ and that their combination of methods, including group interviews, Global Positioning System (GPS) – visualisation and maps (drawn by participants) used for elicitation would contribute to transport modelling around household behaviour (Jensen et al. 2015, p. 367). However, they acknowledge biases in their research. Most notably, they recognise that their sample was biased towards middle and upper middle-class households, perhaps the ‘usual subjects’ of research. In addition, their families were defined in terms of ‘the presence of one or more children’ (Jensen et al. 2015, p. 367) rather than considering family in its wider forms. The relationships were of particular kinship connections, which depict particular groupings of family but significantly exclude many others. These limitations do not necessarily weaken the findings on the mobility of families but they may narrow its application. Although the research claims to be sensitive to the temporalities of family and of the lifecourse, there is, perhaps, a lack of attention to the ways in which families move in time – adapting, evolving, transforming, mutating, modifying and recasting. Adopting a longitudinal ethnographic approach in exploring the relationality and rhythms of the family holiday, Hall and Holdsworth (2016, p. 292) foreground time in their research. Using a ‘mixture of traditional and innovative ethnographic techniques’ they look beyond what might be seen as traditional movements of people to broader social practices of shopping and eating. They investigated these practices over a period of time – between four and 24 months – using individual and group interviews, and participatory tasks such as shopping receipt analysis, tours of kitchens and kitchen cupboards, and participant-led photo diaries. Their ‘multi-method approach’, which included analysis of participant’s holiday photographs ‘revealed the connectivity between talking about and practicing holiday’ (Hall and Holdsworth 2016, p. 292). Although they do not explicitly reference mobile methods, the methods they adopted are clearly mobile. However, similar to Jensen et al. (2015), they begin with a definition of family that is limited in determining who is included and who is not. For them, families were defined as ‘two or more people living together and related by kinship’ (Hall and Holdsworth 2016, p. 291). This rules out the family holidays that might well be made up of close-knit groups of people with a range of intimate relationships unconnected with kinship. Both of these studies produce insightful and original findings that contribute to understanding of family mobilities. The researchers are often careful to acknowledge the limitations of their research. However, they both reflect a tendency to immobilise family as a concept. Looking across disciplines

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Family mobilities  265 uncovers bodies of work that have sought to critique the underlying assumptions of family that lead to this immobilisation. Incorporating this work in interrogating family opens up more possibilities for mobilities research to contribute to wider debates.

CRITICALLY MOBILISING FAMILY Scholars of family have long critiqued it as a stuck category that gives rise to normative understandings of what family should be. Instead families are ‘what families do’ (Silva and Smart 1999, p. 5) and these doings are both mobile and placed. Family is not fixed; it is always in transition, moving between different expressions of familial relations (Murray et al. 2019). Family is a broad social grouping that encompasses a wide range of social and caring relationships, involving both kin and non-kin (Gubrium and Holstein 1990; Williams 2004), humans and non-humans and, importantly, is not necessarily based on the traditional set of relationships between parents and children. Families can be made up of myriad forms and practices: they are multi-generational; they are groups of friends; they can include friends and pets; they can be looked after children and their carers; and they can be relationships of care with children, siblings, friends, neighbours, older people, and so on. Families take on these different forms and have particular practices that distinguish them at one moment in time, but they can be different in the next. Methodologies that are mobile need to include and take account of these diverse manifestations. Family is not only constructed in different ways in different spatial contexts, but is part of the making of mobile space. Family is not static, but instead always in motion. The workings of family mobilises spaces that are more often thought of as motionless, such as the family home. The home is a contested space of both confinement and freedom, and the context for a ‘mobility of roles and identities’ (Hockney and James 2002, p. 175). Although situated at the micro scale, the mobilities of family in the home range from micro-level intimate relationships to connections that stretch over multiple scales, to broader practices of transnational movements that both sustain and dislocate family. This scope of movement necessitates a range of methodological approaches that are premised on the mobilities and placedness of family and its contingent interdependencies and relationalities. As well as researching in place (Fincham et al. 2010), mobile methodological considerations must encompass the out-of-placeness of family, both in time and space. Families may be more dispersed geographically – which has been researched in various ways, in the geographies of family (for example, Duncan and Smith 2002; Hallman 2010) and as families living apart together (Duncan et al. 2013; Stoilova et al. 2014). However, they are not necessarily more mobile, but differently mobile. For example, families are differently mobile not only in physical space but also in virtual space, with family practices mediated through technology. This demands a particular methodological strategy. In Cycil’s (2016) research, which considers how family life is mediated through the parallel technologies of the car and mobile technology, she adopts an ethnomethodological approach. This allows a focus on the micro practices of family interactions and the ways in which parents and children co-produced mobile practices. The research shows ‘how family life unfolds in the accomplishment of activities in which interactions are situated, orderly and observable. The production of family life within the car involves talk and embodied action that is artfully placed within interactions between parents, children

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266  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities and ­technology’ (Cycil 2016, p. 1). Cycil’s methods are ethnomethodological with the use of video ethnographic methods with families. She collected visual data on social interactions between family members in relation to their use of mobile technologies, which could be interrogated again and again, placing micro practices in time and space. Using this methodology Cycil (2016, p. 2) demonstrates how ‘negotiation, collaboration and coordination’ of mobile technologies by families mediates car driving practices. She was able to gather rich data on what makes family in relation to particular materialities and technologies without the conceptual foreclosure that follows on from adopting normative assumptions. Disrupting these normative assumptions about family mobilities is key to researching critically. Although not originating in the mobilities field and not necessarily adopting mobile methods, Bostock’s challenge to some entrenched assumptions around sustainable family mobilities has remained one of the most influential in my own research. It takes on what was, particularly then, a strongly emerging discourse around walking as a sustainable or active mode of travel. Bostock (2001, p. 11) set out to challenge a health agenda in which walking was necessarily positive, and instead argued that ‘for some segments of the population, walking is compulsory and a source of both physical fatigue and psycho-social stress’. Although the research was carried out 20 years ago when there was the ‘segregation of the poorest families in the most deprived areas . . . compounded by the relation of services’ (Bostock 2001, p. 12) this could also describe the social context in the UK today and is therefore still highly relevant. She used interviews with low-income mothers, exploring their everyday travel, which was predominantly carried out on foot. Her participants were unable to afford bus fares and were therefore forced to travel that way, resulting in high physical and psychological burdens. Her methods were ‘based on principles of anti-discriminatory practice’ and so she ensured that her sample included ‘a disproportionate number of mothers from minority ethnic groups’ to reflect ‘the increased likelihood of experiencing poverty as a Black or Asian mother’ (Bostock 2001, p. 13). She sought to include groups that are often missed within mainstream research agendas. The static interviews with mothers, although not in the context of the practices that she was interrogating, created a respite for the mothers in her research for whom walking was a burden and who would presumably have been caring for their children during the research.

GETTING BEYOND FAMILY In the introduction, I rationalised the emphasis on family by arguing that much of our social and mobile lives are organised around families and we therefore need to find mobile methodological approaches that help us understand this. However, families are restrictive institutions, and therefore it is crucial also that methodological approaches allow us to move beyond family, to take subjects out of their family context in order to reveal its constraints. A number of studies have done just this. McEvoy et al. (2012) researched the altered mobilities of women in families following male labour out-migration in Mexico. Using a range of methods, including a focus group session, a household survey, in-depth interviews, participant observation and contextual analysis, they sought to understand gendered mobility and the moral landscape that women left behind had to navigate. In

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Family mobilities  267 particular, they used methods that allowed them to focus on women with different mobility practices in different contexts: ‘Accompanying the women to their parcela (agricultural plot) for the day, allowed for observation of what tasks were done in the fields and by whom. Attending the asamblea meeting allowed for the observation of women’s role as representatives of their absentee husbands or as ejidal rights holders’ (McEvoy et al. 2012, p. 375). In their multi-context analysis, they emphasised the importance of researching women outside their usual family context. Again, although they are not referencing mobile methods, the research design here was mobile in that they are moving with their participants. In contrast to the necessary immobilising of Bostock’s subjects in facilitating their participation, here the mobilisation of the research revealed the different aspects of the women’s lives that can often be excluded or go unseen. For McEvoy et al. (2012, p. 370) the focus remained on ‘the impact on women left behind and their mobility, and associated empowerment’ as this ‘remains empirically under-examined and inconclusive’. This echoes other studies that have illustrated the importance of family power relationships in producing mobilities and the processes of social reproduction that are dependent on mobilities (Murray 2008; Barker 2011; Waitt et al. 2017). Similarly, in Ma and Kusakabe’s (2015) ethnographic study of gendered mobilities and risk in ethnic conflict in Kayah State, Myanmar, their methodological approach acknowledged the constricting practices of family. They aimed to understand the role of families in their particular cultural context, and their methods allowed them to illustrate the extent of the mobility restrictions placed on women, both physically and coercively. Ma and Kusakabe’s study was premised on the intersection of conflict and restricted mobility, and highlights the gendered constraints that families can impose on individual member’s mobilities. Both studies show the ways in which the context of family can be so determining of power relationships it can overshadow other social markers, such as gender. They argue that it is necessary to take women out of the family context in order to concentrate on issues of gender. These studies also illustrate the importance of researching in place, while being open in mobilising the research methods so as to highlight the widest possible range of mobilities and aspects of immobilisation or mobility constraints. Researching across cultures requires this particular methodological consideration of placedness and mobility. Some issues take on particular meanings in their cultural context. For example, research with children moving between parents in Sweden (Blomqvist and Heimer 2016) and Norway (Skevik 2006) is unlike research with children in a UK context, as there are significant differences between gendered norms in parenting. Researching cross-border families in China-Hong Kong (Chee 2017) is situated in their particular geopolitics and familial cultures. These differences require specific methodological sensitivities. In addition to particular methods not being culturally acceptable, it may also be problematic to export particular conceptual framings (Murray et al. 2016). McEvoy et al. (2012) illuminate this well in their study, in giving explicit attention to the mobility of the concepts of ‘public’ and ‘private’ in relation to place. Some concepts travel better than others. Although contested (for example, Sheller and Urry 2003), they found the dichotomy of public and private, or their interpretation of it, ‘casa/calle’, useful in making sense of women’s mobilities. With a little modification, in their view, these concepts travelled well. As they suggest: ‘Although the concept of separate spheres was based on white, middle-class ideals of

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268  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities femininity in the Victorian era, the concept also reflects the experience of women across much of Latin America’ (McEvoy et al. 2012, p. 371). Mobilising this conceptual frame, they argue, allows them to view the ways in which gendered normative notions of public and private were maintained, with women expected to occupy the domesticated space of the house, and that this is the underlying cause of women’s subjugation.

APPLYING MOBILE METHODS Thus far, I have highlighted a number of different mobile methodological strategies and referred to their methods. This brings me to the central concern of this chapter – the critical application of mobile methods in researching family. Although neither McEvoy et al. nor Ma and Kusakabe’s research studies specifically referenced mobile methodologies literature, both are methodologically mobile. The ethnographic studies were premised on researching in place and on the move, using methods that are relatively static, that is, interviews and focus groups, but doing so in different contexts and with approaches that were mindful of the specificities of these contexts. Importantly, their methods are sensitive to their participants and to a critical reading of family. As discussed, family takes on different forms and practices. Families are made up of diverse groups of people, of different generations, entwined in a range of familial practices that take place across time and space. Applying mobile methods, using the appropriate blend of the methods that Urry (2007) introduces in Mobilities based on the particular configuration, situation and practice of family being researched, gives rise to the potential for knowledge creation on family that is not otherwise revealed. This means approaching both mobile methods and family critically. A range of researchers have designed mobile research based on a critical reading of family. For example, Ross et al.’s (2009) research focused on a group of young people in care, a social grouping that sits outside normative assumptions of family form, but nevertheless interrelates as family and practice family. They were careful to reflect critically on their use of mobile methodologies in their choice of methods; the methods needed to move with the participants. They collected data through guided walks and car-journey interactions focusing on the ‘possibilities and challenges of enabling the active participation of their subjects in the research process, from design through to dissemination (Ross et al. 2009, p. 607). They set out to ‘enable the young people involved to set the limits on their own involvement in the research project and facilitate the co-generation of meaningful representations of their everyday lives’ (Ross et al. 2009, p. 607). Their methods, they argue, allowed the research to be ‘rooted’ in the present while at the same time creating ‘avenues for memories and imagined futures to be aired and explored’ (Ross et al. 2009, p. 608). In particular, they discuss methods to capture the multi-sensory experiences. Ross et al. found that the guided walks gave them the level of flexibility they needed to enable the young people to take the lead, while recognising that in imposing particular constraints on the research, the researchers were an integral part of the co-generated methods. Their methods thus moved with both the research participants and the researchers. As with all methods that are either partly or fully self-generated, there are always restrictions; for example, of focus, of safety, of ethics and of practicality. Ross et al. found that their methods allowed meaningful understandings and produced rich accounts of the

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Family mobilities  269 young people’s everyday lives. They drew from Ingold (2006) in attaching importance to the act of walking with, instead of the walk itself. In particular, they used Ingold’s notion of ‘attunement’ during the walks and during the car journeys, which enabled meaningful co-creation of knowledge. This was made possible through the mobility of the methods. It is therefore the ways in which families are different and differently mobile that necessitate methods that are im/mobile, able to research in place and out of place. As families become more mobile, we need mobile methods that allow exploration in context (Murray 2010). In my own research with families I have used a toolkit of methods to good effect. In research on reducing carbon emissions from transport that included ethnographies of mobilities, family was placed at the centre of the data collection and we remained mindful of the fluidity of form and practices (Murray and Doughty 2016). The toolkit included a range of mobile and self-generated methods, including: drawings, photographs and video; collating content of directed social networking activities such as Twitter, blogs and Facebook; and GPS tracking of travel behaviour of family members over set periods. These were used in various combinations, tailored to the needs of families. In contrast to methods that are more prescribed, the methods in the toolkit could be adapted in different circumstances and with different arrangements of family. Methods need to be adjustable to practices that are spontaneous, and research should be capable of dealing with the unexpected. Researching family, as with researching any particular group, requires researcher reflection and reflexivity. Framed as a ‘rethinking’ of mobile methods, Merriman (2014, p. 168) calls for a ‘range of performative, participative and ethnographic techniques that enable researchers to more effectively move, be or see with their research subjects and objects’. Although I would suggest that this is the foundation of mobile methodologies rather than their rethinking, Merriman reminds us that we should always be considering and reconsidering our methodological perspectives, mindful of innovations in the past and present, and not only in social science, but in other disciplines too, such as the arts and humanities. This is key, for as well as taking a transdisciplinary approach in researching family, it is also crucial to be agile and to innovate, and this includes looking to creative approaches in the arts. A variety of methods have been appropriated from arts-based practices to contribute to research on family that illuminates aspects of mobilities. For example, Rose (2016) has written extensively on visual methodologies. She has also looked at the role of family photographs in gendered parenting (Rose 2010), exploring family critically through analysis of the conventionalisation of family photography. A similar process is described by Böck (2004, p. 281), who tells us how both new and already existing photographs in family albums: ‘can tell us – in a way that differs from a story, interview or a spoken account . . . about the family’s way of “being-in-the-world”, about the family members’. Research in the humanities (Merriman and Pearce 2017) has provided methods of life histories to understand wider temporal changes and literary analysis to examine representations of mobilities and mobile imaginations, which are a key factor in understanding family and families in motion. Family mobilities have been researched and represented in innovative ways, as integral to the research process and in illustrating familial mobilities in an ongoing process of knowledge creation. For example, Jirón and Iturra (2014, p. 170) used drawing and diagrams to illustrate the interdependent mobilities in families in Santiago, Chile, ‘as text became insufficient to explain what was beginning to unfold’. These types of approaches demonstrate the openness of mobilities

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270  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities research to inventive and experimental methods that emerge from transdisciplinary perspectives.

CONCLUSION Research on family and with families is imperative in understanding our world, and its past, present and future. In this chapter, I have highlighted research being carried out using mobile methodological approaches as applied to family in producing knowledge across disciplines. Some of the research has explicitly referenced the developments in mobile methodologies and some has adopted methods that are mobile without explicit reference to this literature. These methods can be applied to family across time as well as space, in researching generations and their intersections with different social identities in different social configurations. Mobilities research has the potential to draw from this methodological palette and apply fitting and mobile methods to a critical understanding of family. This scholarship contributes to an understanding of family mobilities and of mobilities through family. I have outlined the ways in which mobilities research can draw from more critical accounts of family, approaches that have disrupted normative accounts of family so that the broadest expressions of family are included in research. However, it is important to understand when it is necessary to move outside family, to research those who might be obscured within the institution of family. In order that mobilities research continues to contribute to ongoing scholarship on family, methodologies must be critical and methods agile, responsive to the ongoing project of family in its myriad forms and to the ways in which family is differently mobile. There are gaps in knowledge on family that remain unfilled, and future mobilities research can make a significant contribution, particularly in bringing together researchers from different disciplines and across different cultural contexts in a world that is on the move. However, this movement is uneven and particular efforts should be made in appreciating the wealth of mobilities research in non-western contexts in remaining open to multiple perspectives.

REFERENCES Barker, J. (2011), ‘“Manic mums” and “distant dads”? Gendered geographies of care and the journey to school’, Health and Place, 17 (2), 413–21. Blomqvist, P. and M. Heimer (2016), ‘Equal parenting when families break apart: alternating residence and the best interests of the child’, Sweden Social Policy and Administration, 50 (7), 787–804. Böck, M. (2004), ‘Family snaps: life-worlds and information habitus’, Visual Communication, 3 (3), 281–93. Bostock, L. (2001), ‘Pathways of disadvantage? Walking as a mode of transport among low-income mothers’, Health and Social Care in the Community, 9 (1), 11–18. Chee, W.C. (2017), ‘Trapped in the current of mobilities: China-Hong Kong cross-border families’, Mobilities, 12 (2), 199–212. Cycil, C.R. (2016), ‘Technology and the family car: situating media use in family life’, PhD thesis, Brunel University, London. Duncan, S. and D. Smith (2002), ‘Geographies of family formations: spatial differences and gender cultures in Britain’, Transactions of the British Geographical Society, 27 (4), 471–93. Duncan, S., J. Carter, M. Phillips, S. Roseneil and M. Stoilova (2013), ‘Why do people live apart together?’, Families, Relationships and Societies, 2 (3), 323–38.

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Family mobilities  271 Fincham, B., M. McGuinness and L. Murray (eds) (2010), Mobile Methodologies, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Gubrium, J. and J. Holstein (1990), What is Family, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Hall, S.M. and C. Holdsworth (2016), ‘Family practices, holiday and the everyday’, Mobilities, 11 (2), 284–302. Hallman, B. (ed.) (2010), Family Geographies: The Spatiality of Families and Family Life, Toronto: Oxford University Press. Hockney, J. and A. James (2002), Social Identities across the Lifecourse, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Holdsworth, C. (2013), Family and Intimate Mobilities, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ingold, T. (2006), ‘Rethinking the animate, re-animating thought’, Ethnos, 71 (1), 9–20. Jensen, O.B., M. Sheller and S. Wind (2015), ‘Together and apart: affective ambiences and negotiation in families’ everyday life and mobility’, Mobilities, 10 (3), 363–82. Jirón, P. and L. Iturra (2014), ‘Travelling the journey. Understanding mobility trajectories by recreating research paths’, in L. Murray and S. Upstone (eds.), Researching and Representing Mobilities: Transdisciplinary Encounters, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 170–88. Ma, A. and K. Kusakabe (2015), ‘Gender analysis of fear and mobility in the context of ethnic conflict in Kayah State, Myanmar’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 36 (3), 342–56. McEvoy, J., P. Petrzelka, C. Radel and B. Schmook (2012), ‘Gendered mobility and morality in a south-eastern Mexican community: impacts of male labour migration on the women left behind’, Mobilities, 7 (3), 369–88. Merriman, P. (2014), ‘Rethinking mobile methods’, Mobilities, 9 (2), 167–87. Merriman, P. and L. Pearce (2017), ‘Mobility and the humanities’, Mobilities, 12 (4), 493–508. Mikkelsen, M. and P. Christensen (2009). ‘Is children’s independent mobility really independent? A study of children’s independent mobility combining ethnography and GPS/mobile phones technologies’, Mobilities, 4 (1), 37–58. Murray, L. (2008), ‘Motherhood, risk and everyday mobilities’, in T. Priya Uteng and T. Cresswell (eds), Gendered Mobilities, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 47–64. Murray, L. (2010), ‘Contextualizing and mobilizing research’, in B. Fincham, M. McGuinness and L. Murray (eds), Mobile Methodologies, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 13–24. Murray, L. and S. Cortés-Morales (2019), Children’s Mobilities: Interdependent, Imagined, Relational, London: Palgrave Macmillan (e-book). Murray, L. and K. Doughty (2016), ‘Interdependent, imagined and embodied mobilities in mobile social space: disruptions in “normality”, “habit” and “routine”’, Journal of Transport Geography, 55 (July), 72–82. Murray, L., E. McDonnell, T. Hinton-Smith, N. Ferreira and K. Walsh (eds) (2019), Families in Motion: Space, Time, Materials and Emotion, London: Emerald. Murray, L., K. Sawchuk and P. Jirón (2016), ‘Comparative mobilities in an unequal world: researching intersections of gender and generation’, Mobilities, 11 (4), special issue, 542–52. Rose, G. (2010), Doing Family Photography: The Domestic, the Public and the Politics of Sentiment, Farnham: Ashgate. Rose, G. (2016), Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials, 2nd edn, London: Sage. Ross, N., E. Renold, S. Holland and A. Hillman (2009), ‘Moving stories: using mobile methods to explore the everyday lives of young people in public care’, Qualitative Research, 9 (5), 605–23. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2003), ‘Mobile transformations of “public” and “private” life’, Theory, Culture and Society, 20 (3), 107–25. Silva, E. and C. Smart (eds) (1999), The ‘New’ Practices and Politics of Family Life, London: Sage. Skevik, A. (2006), ‘“Absent fathers” or “reorganized families”? Variations in father–child contact after parental break-up’, Norway Sociological Review, 54 (1), 114–32. Stoilova, M., S. Roseneil, I. Crowhurst, T. Hellesund and A.C. Santos (2014), ‘Living apart relationships in contemporary Europe: accounts of togetherness and apartness’, Sociology, 48 (6), 1075–91. Urry, J. (2007), Mobilities, Cambridge: Polity Press. Waitt, G., T. Harada and M. Duffy (2017), ‘“Let’s have some music”: sound, gender and car mobility’, Mobilities, 12 (3), 324–42. Williams, F. (2004), Rethinking Families, London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

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26.  Supply chains and the mobilities of cargo Thomas Birtchnell and Tillmann Böhme

1. INTRODUCTION Standard accounts of cargo understand the term to mean ‘Goods, other than the personal luggage of passengers, carried by a ship or aircraft’ (Law and Martin 2009, n.p.). Given the term cargo denotes the movement of things rather than people, the notion has not been at the forefront of research in the mobilities paradigm, with many extant methodological challenges limiting empirical forays thus far (Birtchnell 2016). Consistently energizing the social sciences over the past decade, the study of mobilities signals a new framework for contemplating how societies move. The advocates of this paradigm were among the first to describe the social impacts of the automobile, the aeroplane, tourism and the mobile technologies of the city. The intention of this chapter is to consider the orderly disorder of cargo to explore an emerging domain of interest across business and the social sciences. Within social theory, cargo is a rich vein of activity, and efforts to research it qualitatively and in reference to social phenomena are now being made (Merriman 2016). With the maturation of mobile methods (Büscher et al. 2010), social scientists are now entering into critical examinations of cargo as an empirical undertaking, analysing the systems it is a part of, namely, the securitized and ‘forgotten’ (Sekula and Burch 2011) spaces of maritime and airborne freight. Despite the lacuna of research, cargo is now entering the lexicon in social science scholarship, owing to a spate of non-technical studies in this second decade of the twenty-first century that unpack the wider systems of containerization, logistics and ‘global production networks’ (Coe and Hess 2013). Crucial in this still nascent wave of research is the engagement with links to other social systems: neoliberal mass-consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and the environmental consequences of everyday waste. Cargo – both in supply and in demand – is now a seamless way of life where the consumption of large volumes of goods by consumers in the Global North (most of which goods are moved from the poor Global South) is normal and where states have operated in a global market economy through trade and financial deregulation. Cargo has become such an intrinsic part of contemporary life that the effort involved in bringing objects to consumers entails little more than the click of a button for an online order with a negligible charge for shipping, or a visit to the local mall where the item is held in stock (Birtchnell and Urry 2015). Many commentators argue that cargo in the twenty-first century is what makes societies and their economies tick, given the emphasis on economic growth across the political spectrum in the world’s dominating nation-states, defined as: ‘the growth of national income, or the output of goods and services per head of population, with output conventionally measured by the Gross National Product (GNP)’ (Scott 2015, n.p.). Goods is a synonym for cargo in modern economies, given that the majority of made commodities, or their intrinsic parts, are transported long distances from producer states to consumer states and services are more often than not the sale or trade of these goods to consumers. Yet, the future of cargo is not set in stone; there are developments underfoot in populist 272

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Supply chains and the mobilities of cargo  273 politics, consumer cultures and virtual assets (Birtchnell and Urry 2015). We return to these three foci at the end of this chapter when outlining the future of cargomobilities, a neologism denoting the non-technical and critical treatment of the movement of objects (Birtchnell et al. 2015). The word cargo has its roots in the seventeenth-century Spanish term to load, which shares an etymology with another contemporary popular term, car: a wheeled vehicle. Cargo, then, alludes to the bulk haulage of items, rather than those simply carried on the person as accoutrements, such as clothes, jewels, mementos, coinage and, these days, smartphones. In this regard, cargo often becomes possessions once separated and distributed. Indeed, accoutrements can become cargo once again, when thrown away as waste flows either for refuse or to landfill. Cargo is not really a thing, but a state of being, and even in the singular refers to a collection of objects contained together. As cargo departs from ports on container ships or takes off in the holds of freight planes, so they enter a realm that is offshore, invisible and over the horizon. Although, these secretive flows depend upon massive, immobile structures, with ports being some of the most surveilled entities within modern cities. Ports are vast and yet semi-secret, crucial elements in the reconfiguring of the global economy and society that commenced in the late twentieth century (Birtchnell et al. 2015). Cargo is experienced by most people in their everyday lives as the objects they exchange their incomes for and accumulate in their homes. For those without homes, cargo has a different meaning, being items they must transport around as baggage. An unfortunately common sight in the megacities of the world are shopping trolleys laden with a panoply of objects representing all of the possessions of a homeless person. Universities around the world now offer technical courses, usually at postgraduate level, in order to feed graduates into the systems that supply citizens with cargo, as supply chain managers and logistics experts. Supply chain management and logistics involve training people ‘to help businesses manage the production and delivery of products and services in an increasingly globalised marketplace’ as one supplier puts it on their website (University of Manchester 2019, n.p.). Interdisciplinary linkages between mobilities scholars and this new science of logistics offers fertile ground for methodological innovation.

2.  A BRIEF HISTORY OF CARGO It is an eccentric feature of our times that most citizens currently in the world experience a disconnection from the processes of making and moving the objects they covet, and make their own. Beyond couriers or shopkeepers there is little exposure to the innards of the cargomobility system. If we were to zoom back to the streets of 1900s London, we would find that cargo is distributed by individuals whose identities are tied to the objects they carry and sell, and who would have intimate knowledge of informal networks within Britain. Pioneer ethnographer and journalist, Henry Mayhew, co-founder of the satirical magazine Punch in 1841, published a popular ethnography of London titled London Labour and the London Poor in 1851 that topologizes, irreverently, the many different species of streetseller to be found at that time (Mayhew 1851). There is the long-song seller, who carries sheets of lyrics for drunken carousals; the seller of crockery-ware, carrying plates, pots and pans; the street-seller of dogs’ collars, literally adorned in the cargo of his trade; and, most

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274  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities endearingly, the lucifer match girl, with her bag of matches. These household items were not particularly sophisticated and the majority had their origins in local manufactories and cottage industries, in Mayhew’s time the northern city of Sheffield was the world’s leader in steelmaking for many of the items the street-sellers hawked. For those items that had their origins overseas, there was a system of different roles to unload and load cargo at the docks. In the mid-nineteenth century, at the time of Mayhew’s book, the port was a bustling place. Truckers, often young boys, moved cargo from quayside to the warehouse; port markers composed signs on boxes to guide the cargo to the correct ports; bedder outs and box knockers would pack and sort the cargo for custom inspection; and warehousemen did the heavy lifting and careful packing on the ships, barges and boats, item by item (Royal Museums Greenwich 2018). Human labour, strictly divided into tasks, was central to this system. Some aspects of this system remain currently, notably, securitized spaces, handling procedures, and customs routines all necessary to prevent accidents or corruption (Slack and Frémont 2009). However, the Second World War is the true root of the cargo system prevalent now (Merriman and Peters 2017). The need for speed in military conflict led to the innovation of roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) trucks and armour in order for the US military to deploy rapidly across transoceanic theatres of war (Cowen 2014). Another driver was the global trade imbalance at the cessation of conflict, which led to a paradoxical push by governments for a peacetime ‘war footing’ in the US and the UK in order to drive exports to balance consumer expectations for growing quantities of luxury cargo: the importation of luxuries such as tobacco, chocolate, fuel and cotton textiles had driven overwhelming accumulations of debt during wartime (Birtchnell 2013). The efficiency with which the ro-ro system operated inspired US transport magnate Malcom McLean, who had made his fortune in grocery trucking, to experiment with standard detachable truck containers that could stack onto purpose-built ships. Following the maiden voyage on 26 April 1956 of a retrofitted oil tanker, the SS Ideal X, and a pilot port system at Port Newark, New Jersey, McLean’s new company, Sealand, moved overseas to Asia in the next few decades following the advent of the Vietnam War (Cudahy 2006). The introduction of computer systems into ports radically unsettled the traditional stevedoring industry and saw a dramatic reduction in human labour, with the automation of handling and customs screening through sensors, bar codes, and other technologies (Levinson 2008). In the twentieth century, shipping became relatively costless. In 1961, ocean freight costs accounted for 12 per cent of the value of US exports and 10 per cent of the value of US imports. As the number of ports importing and exporting cargo grew exponentially throughout the late twentieth century, so did the complexity of the system. Nearly a decade after McLean’s first foray into containerization, came the proliferation of scholarship in the discipline of supply chain management, with the launch of the Journal of Supply Chain Management in May 1965, a harbinger of this movement. Next, we turn to the current system and the debates that encircle it.

3.  CURRENT DEBATES IN THE MOBILITIES OF CARGO In supply chain management, the circulation of objects is made abstract in order to plan and model flows of containers within a seamless system (Cowen 2010). The system

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Supply chains and the mobilities of cargo  275 is incredibly imbalanced owing to where cargo is produced and consumed, with places being shaped by their access to infrastructure, or lack thereof (Cidell 2012). Containers become simplified variables within operational procedures that frame mobilities as inventories and lead times (Monios and Wilmsmeier 2016). Concerns are driven by demand for reductions in haulage costs coupled with shorter delivery lead times. Yet, recent efforts in the social sciences privilege other factors, including the seamless vision of space that this worldview concocts (Martin 2013). A critical viewpoint is useful to tease out the political aspects that drive the development of ports in relation to their surrounding communities as ‘spatial fixes of mobile capital’ (Wilmsmeier and Monios 2015, p. 67). The box, more formally known as the twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU), which allows the entire containerization system to aspire to the seamless movement of cargo, has proven good to think with for social scientists (Parker 2012). A feature of this optic is the questioning of the shipping container’s inclusion within powerful regimes of capital and its movement across geopolitical terrains (Martin 2014). Another is critical accounts of immobility in supply chains at sea (Peters 2014). Despite the creeping removal of people from the processes of transport and logistics, notably in stevedoring and other handling roles within inventories, most trends in supply chains involve the regulation of bodies (Kanngieser 2013). Another major aspect of this scholarship is the uncontrollable turbulence that the system can be prone to, both environmental in the form of storms and wild seas that cause shipwrecks, and geopolitical, ranging from piracy to smuggling and larceny (Cresswell and Martin 2012). Friction and the holding together of logistical worlds is a core feature in mobilities research on cargo (Gregson et al. 2017). However, scholars around the world have also focused their attention on controllable turbulences in the form of supply chain systems uncertainty. Systems uncertainty can stem from the demand, supply, process and control site, and if present result in ad hoc firefighting practices and significant inventory and hence lack of material flow (Böhme et al. 2012). Scholars identified principles, tools and techniques to reduce systems’ uncertainty in order to pursue the objective of the seamless supply chain, consisting of material, information and cash flows. However, the latest findings show that the state of the seamless supply chain in practice remains an elusive dream (Childerhouse et al. 2011). A major barrier to material flow improvement along the supply chain is people and culture (Halldórsson et al. 2008). Labour is a crucially neglected area of research in supply chain, logistics and operations management, particularly the impacts of automation and lean management techniques on human experiences and lives. The movement of cargo through major urban environments involves a sophisticated foreknowledge of key arteries and choke-points, and interviews with truck haulers is a promising example of how cargo systems can be empirically appraised (Spinney et al. 2015). Containerization offered a dramatic solution to these crises by offshoring, at the expense of local labour and pre-existing industries and infrastructures. International containerization transformed the global economy through making objects much more affordable to ship, buy and dispose of.

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4.  M  ETHODS AND APPLICATIONS FOR CRITICAL CARGO RESEARCH In the past few years a sub-genre within this discipline of supply chain, logistics and operations management has seen a critical engagement with this science of circulation through decoupling logistics from the management of supply chains to issues of provenance and stewardship, particularly in three core commitments: (1) a rejection of the field’s self-depiction as an apolitical science of management, along with a commitment to highlighting the relations of power and acts of violence that underpin it; (2) an interest in exposing the flaws, irrationalities, and vulnerabilities of logistical regimes; and (3) an orientation toward contestation and struggle within logistical networks. (Chua et al. 2018, p. 617)

Mobilities research has a foothold in this genre, particularly in exposing offshoring practices (Urry 2014). Traditional supply-chain, logistics and operations management researchers tend to belong to the positivist paradigm and subscribe to this worldview (Eisenhardt 1989). For example, in the 1990s Mentzer and Kahn (1995) reviewed the articles published in the Journal of Business Logistics between 1978 and 1993 and identified that 50 per cent of all publications were quantitative survey-based studies, whereas qualitative case study research accounted only for 3.2 per cent. Kotzab (2005) followed up on Mentzer and Kahn’s study and found that little had changed in the twenty-first century. Fortifying this study, Carter and Ellram (2003) examined 35 years of publications in the Journal of Supply Chain Management. They identified that the dominant type of primary research design employed is mail survey (approximately 60 per cent), while case study research only accounted for approximately 18 per cent of empirical research (Carter and Ellram 2003). The dominance of surveys indicates that a positivist paradigm and, thus, mainly quantitative methods, are preferred by supply chain management scholars. However, the relevance of the theories developed using positivist approaches are often questioned by practitioners (Beer 2001). While the positivist approach is still prevalent in today’s management schools, there is much to learn from the critical methods found in mobilities research. In order to distance research from more positivist approaches to analysing the mobilities of cargo, some innovative and critical mobile methods are worth noting. The Logistical Worlds project, led by Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter, adopts a tricontinental focus across three nodal cargo points: Piraeus in Greece, Valparaiso in Chile and Kolkata in India. Through diverting from discourses found in supply chain management and operations management to a discourse that critically examines power and vulnerability, the project offers a rich perspective and a political analysis drawing on ethnographic observation of and in cargo container ports, thereby scrutinizing the operations of capital, ‘a privileged field of surveillance and control’ (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013, p. 15). Another notable, innovative and bespoke supply chain research method for the investigation of cargo and material flow improvements in practice is termed the quick scan audit methodology (QSAM). The method was developed by the Logistics Systems Dynamics Group at Cardiff University with the aim of assessing and auditing supply chain maturity in practice, and thereby bridging the so-named academia–practitioner relevancy gap (Böhme et al. 2008). The method was co-developed by the automotive industry, a consortium of consultants and Cardiff University’s Supply Chain 2001+ project team.

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Supply chains and the mobilities of cargo  277 Its origins go back to the early 1990s, since when the method has continued to be refined with assistance from many other academics around the world. The QSAM follows a core protocol and hence yields consistent results when investigating supply chains in context. Also, the QSAM uses an interdisciplinary team of researchers who are embedded in the real world in order to understand and document supply chain, logistics and operations management in practice. This applied field method includes various forms of triangulation (researcher, method and data) to strengthen research rigour. Improvement opportunities are presented to further integrate the supply chain and improve the flow of information and, ultimately, materials as cargo (Böhme et al. 2012). Over the past two decades the method has spread across Europe and Southeast Asia resulting in an in-depth understanding of supply chain maturity in practices including barriers, enablers and pathways to improvement. Supply chains can be described as complex systems that constantly evolve, change and adapt depending on external and internal forces. The focus on complexity in mobilities research offers a methodological common ground with supply chain management, for instance, in ‘qualitative comparative analysis’, partly inspired by Urry’s research in this area (Russo 2019). Another influence on methodological interdisciplinary collaborations between the two fields is proximity and social aspects of logistics networks (Houé and Murphy 2017). Recent efforts to integrate proximity networks into the study of logistics networks offers a model towards combining qualitative data with quantitative data (Houé and Murphy 2017). The social dimension in supply chain management also intimates the need for network capital to become a dimension in empirical research in key emergent areas of inquiry, and on sustainability in particular (Taylor and Vachon 2018). Mobile methods on cargo are also pivotal in research on the circular economy, which involve accounting for objects’ entire lifespans, including their disposal as waste. There are a number of points of interface between the disciplines. First, the mobilities optic does not discern between consumer and post-consumer perceptions of cargo, in the way supply chain management does, because the focus is not customers and clients but social actors and their value systems, in the former field. Understanding the meaning of waste to social actors is crucial for supply chains to aspire to be zero-waste and truly circular (Valenzuela and Böhm 2017). Second, mobilities research has concerns about transitions, particularly in response to calls for transportation systems to be socially inclusive as well as sustainable (Fratini et al. 2019). Low-carbon mobility futures involve contemplating passenger and freight movements and their social and political ramifications together with logistical and technical features via socio-technical transitions frameworks (Geels 2012). The overlap between transitions research and mobilities’ methods is palpable when applied to supply chains and the circular economy. Third, mobilities research also challenges the environmental and social impacts of freight, thereby affording a critical account of non-circular economic norms that imagine supply chains as frictionless, somehow outside of societies, and without consequence (Cidell 2019). The mobilities paradigm initiates a critical viewpoint on the transportation of cargo that takes a measure of power and meaning in freight transportation infrastructure.

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5. CONCLUSION The study of the movement of ideas and objects has, until recently, been a lacuna in the mobilities paradigm. Yet, there is no obvious reason for this state of affairs to continue into the future, given the tranche of critical research on containerization, seafaring, freight and logistics now heralding a fertile sub-genre of interest. In this chapter, we have summarized the potential for cross-pollination between the disciplines of supply chain management and mobilities, chiefly in methodological undertakings. The potency of mobile methods to inspire new methodological innovations is becoming apparent to practitioners in both fields. There are three major impetuses that are driving this hybridization: geopolitical shifts, alternative consumption cultures and the ­digitalization of cargo. In the 1990s it would have been inconceivable that there would be a surge in revanchist politics against the offshoring of manufacturing to Asia and other low-income countries from nation-states, such as the US and the UK, whose recent history is of offshoring of industry. Nevertheless, with the Brexit referendum for the UK to withdraw from the European Union and, in the US, the rise of President Donald Trump and his embargoes on cargo from China and Europe, there is the scope for a radical shift in the global cargo system through appeals for manufacturing to return to consumer nations and reductions in the free movement of workers. The dramatic uprising of populist politics in the twenty-first century and its impact on the supply chain, and hence cargo system, is yet to be fathomed and will undoubtedly create a space for new fusions of critical mobilities research and supply chain management. For instance, research on the loss of power from the public sector in the areas adjacent to port developments provides a bellwether for empirical studies if regionalism becomes consequential in high-income economies. Consumption cultures and the growing rejection of mass-manufacturing for bespoke, craft and creative products enabled by focused demand chains is also set to be disrupted by the digitalization of assets within consumption cultures. Regionalism, changes in consumption culture and digitalization are predicted to have drastic impacts on future supply-chain design. Who can foresee whether globe-spanning supply chains will be disrupted and replaced by close-knit local cluster supply networks? Developing a deep understanding of the dynamics of cluster networks and the enabling power of information is paramount in order to predict the future role of cargo. Finally, the raising of understanding about the human impact on the planet’s eco-­ system will draw even more attention to sustainability and the greening of the supply chain. With calls in government and industry for empirical research on the circular economy, there is a discernible turn towards collaboration between the science of logistics and critical social science. Given the recency of the system of containerization and its roots in the discovery of vast oil reserves in the mid-twentieth century, there are now questions ­emerging about whether the mobilities of cargo will endure in the twenty-first century in view of the potential for a low-carbon transition to alter how objects are made, moved and marketed. The chief benefit of mobile methods to the study of cargo is that it provides a space for ethnographically inspired observation and qualitative methods together with the a­ pplication of big data analytics and digital tools to social phenomena. The mobilities paradigm arises as a natural bedfellow with supply chain management in this endeavour.

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REFERENCES Beer, M. (2001), ‘Why management research findings are unimplementable: an action science perspective’, Reflections, 2 (3), 58–65. Birtchnell, T. (2013), ‘Fill the ships and we shall fill the shops: the making of geographies of manufacturing’, Area, 45 (4), 436–42. Birtchnell, T. (2016), ‘The missing mobility: friction and freedom in the movement and digitization of cargo’, Applied Mobilities, 1 (1), 85–101. Birtchnell, T. and J. Urry (2015), ‘The mobilities and post-mobilities of cargo’, Consumption Markets & Culture, 18 (1), 25–38. Birtchnell, T., S. Savitzky and J. Urry (eds) (2015), Cargomobilities: Moving Materials in a Global Age, London: Routledge. Böhme, T., P. Childerhouse, E. Deakins and J. Corner (2008), ‘Balancing power and dependency in buyer–­ supplier relationships’, International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management, 2 (2), 120–39. Böhme, T., Childerhouse, E. Deakins and D. Towill (2012), ‘A method for reconciling subjectivist and objectivist assumptions in management research’, Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 19 (3) 369–77. Büscher, M., J. Urry and K. Witchger (2010), Mobile Methods, Abingdon: Routledge. Carter, C.R. and L.M. Ellram (2003), ‘Thirty-five years of the Journal of Supply Chain Management: where have we been and where are we going?’, Journal of Supply Chain Management, 39 (1), 27–39. Childerhouse, P., E. Deakins, T. Böhme, D.R. Towill, S.M. Disney and G.R. Banomyong (2011), ‘Supply chain integration: an international comparison of maturity’, Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 23 (4), 531–52. Chua, C., M. Danyluk, D. Cowen and L. Khalili (2018), ‘Introduction: turbulent circulation: building a critical engagement with logistics’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36 (4), 617–29. Cidell, J. (2012), ‘Flows and pauses in the urban logistics landscape: the municipal regulation of shipping container mobilities’, Mobilities, 7 (2), 233–45. Cidell, J. (2019), ‘Secessionist automobility and freight railroads: fear of the “urban” in Chicago’s suburbs’, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 126 (August), 58–66. Coe, N.M. and M. Hess (2013), ‘Global production networks, labour and development’, Geoforum, 44 (January), 4–9. Cowen, D. (2010), ‘A geography of logistics: market authority and the security of supply chains’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100 (3), 600–620. Cowen, D. (2014), The Deadly Life of Logistics, Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Cresswell, T. and C. Martin (2012), ‘On turbulence: entanglements of disorder and order on a Devon beach’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 103 (5), 516–29. Cudahy, B.J. (2006), Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World, New York: Fordham University Press. Eisenhardt, K.M. (1989), ‘Building theories from case study research’, Academy of Management Review, 14 (4), 532–50. Fratini, C.F., S. Georg and M.S. Jørgensen (2019), ‘Exploring circular economy imaginaries in European cities: a research agenda for the governance of urban sustainability transitions’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 228 (August), 974–89. Geels, F.W. (2012), ‘A socio-technical analysis of low-carbon transitions: introducing the multi-level perspective into transport studies’, Journal of Transport Geography, 24 (September), 471–82. Gregson, N., M. Crang and C.N. Antonopoulos (2017), ‘Holding together logistical worlds: friction, seams and circulation in the emerging “global warehouse”’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 35 (3), 381–98. Halldórsson, Á., P.D. Larson and R.F. Poist (2008), ‘Supply chain management: a comparison of Scandinavian and American perspectives’, International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 38 (2), 126–42. Houé, T. and E. Murphy (2017), ‘A study of logistics networks: the value of a qualitative approach’, European Management Review, 14 (1), 3–18. Kanngieser, A. (2013), ‘Tracking and tracing: geographies of logistical governance and labouring bodies’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 31 (4), 594–610. Kotzab, H. (2005), ‘The role and importance of survey research in the field of supply chain management, in H. Kotzab, S. Seuring, M.Müller and G. Reiner (eds), Research Methodologies in Supply Chain Management: In Collaboration with Magnus Westhaus, Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag HD, pp. 125–37. Law, J. and E.A. Martin (2009), A Dictionary of Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levinson, M. (2008), The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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280  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Martin, C. (2013), ‘Shipping container mobilities, seamless compatibility, and the global surface of logistical integration’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 45 (5), 1021–36. Martin, C. (2014), ‘The packaging of efficiency in the development of the intermodal shipping container’, Mobilities, 9 (3), 432–51. Mayhew, H. (1851), London Labour and the London Poor, London: Griffin, Bohn and Company. Mentzer, J.T. and K.B. Kahn (1995), ‘A framework of logistic research’, Journal of Business Logistics, 16 (1), 231–50. Merriman, P. (2016), ‘Mobilities II:Cruising’, Progress in Human Geography, 40, 555–64. Merriman, P. and K. Peters (2017), ‘Military mobilities in an age of global war, 1870–1945’, Journal of Historical Geography, 58 (October), 53–60. Mezzadra, S. and B. Neilson (2013), ‘Extraction, logistics, finance: global crisis and the politics of operations’, Radical Philosophy, 178 (March–April), 8–18. Monios, J. and Wilmsmeier, G. (2016), ‘Between path dependency and contingency: new challenges for the geography of port system evolution’, Journal of Transport Geography, 51 (February), 247–51. Parker, M. (2012), ‘Containerisation: Moving things and boxing ideas’, Mobilities, 8 (3), 368–87. Peters, K. (2014), ‘Tracking (im)mobilities at sea: ships, boats and surveillance strategies’, Mobilities, 9 (3), 414–31. Royal Museums Greenwich (2018), Many Hands: Trades of the Port of London, 1850–1980, London: Portcities London, accessed 16 October 2018 at http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/ConNarrative.80/cha​ pterId/1915/outputFormat/print/Many-hands-Trades-ofthe-Port-of-London-18501980.html. Russo, I. (2019), ‘A roadmap for applying qualitative comparative analysis in supply chain research: the reverse supply chain case’, International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 49 (1), 99–120. Scott, J. (2015), A Dictionary of Sociology, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sekula, A. and N. Burch (2011), ‘The forgotten space: notes for a film’, New Left Review, 69 (May–June), 78–9. Slack, B. and A. Frémont (2009), ‘Fifty years of organisational change in container shipping: regional shift and the role of family firms’, GeoJournal, 74 (1), 23–34. Spinney, J., K. Kullman and L. Golbuff (2015), ‘Driving the “Starship Enterprise” through London: constructing the im/moral driver-citizen through HGV safety technology’, Geoforum, 64 (August), 333–41. Taylor, K.M. and S. Vachon (2018), ‘Empirical research on sustainable supply chains: IJPR’s contribution and research avenues’, International Journal of Production Research, 56 (1–2), 950–59. University of Manchester (2019), ‘MSc Operations, Project and Supply Chain Management’ accessed 9 October 2018 at https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/masters/courses/list/07783/msc-operations-project-and-supplycha​in-management/course-details/#course-profile. Urry, J. (2014), Offshoring, Cambridge: Polity. Valenzuela, F. and S. Böhm (2017), ‘Against wasted politics: a critique of the circular economy’, Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 17 (1), 23–60. Wilmsmeier, G. and J. Monios (2015), ‘The production of capitalist “smooth” space in global port operations’, Journal of Transport Geography, 47 (July), 59–69.

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PART IV REFLECTIONS

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27.  Seeing into the future of mobility: the contestable value of expert knowledge and Delphi as futures methods* Alexander Paulsson, Fabio Hirschhorn and Claus Hedegaard Sørensen

1. INTRODUCTION The future is uncertain. Yet, we all seek to anticipate and plan what the future may entail. As individuals, organizations and communities, we spend a lot of time thinking about future challenges and opportunities, both to prepare for it and the risks it might hold, but also to try to actively transform it, to manage and shape the future. What the future is projected to be like also impacts current trends and developments. Both predictions and visions are performative in that they, to some extent, shape our current actions and decisions. For larger corporations and governmental organizations, predictions, visions and objectives have become important instruments as they open some opportunities for action, while closing others. The rich, comprehensive and multifaceted field of mobilities studies has discussed the future of car usage (Sheller and Urry 2000), climate change and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions (Urry 2013; Schulz 2018), as well as high-technology transport and science fiction (Birtchnell and Urry 2013). Urry’s final book, What is the Future?, is about futures thinking, futures studies, and ‘social futures’ (Urry 2016, p. 7). Urry emphasizes that futures can be probable, possible and preferable, and shows how social institutions, practices and lives should be central to discussions of potential futures. In his book, Urry also discusses the future of smart cities and smart mobility. This connects to the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ in the world, which Sheller and Urry (2016) suggest is separated from, but at the same time partially overlapping with, the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ in the social sciences (Sheller and Urry 2006). Even though these new paradigms are extrapolated from current trends that reach out into an uncertain future, the future is not dealt with on its own terms. Instead, the emergence of the new mobilities paradigm denotes a gradual transformation in urban planning, from a paradigm of predict and provide (for example, new infrastructure to meet predicted traffic growth) to predict and prevent (for example, reduce the demand for car usage). However, the question remains, how will the new mobilities paradigm in the world materialize in the future, or how will smart mobility impact our travelling, our cities and urban planning? Which scenarios are probable, possible and preferable? Considering these questions, there is a need to further link mobilities studies and futures studies. This chapter illustrates how mobilities studies can be further connected to futures studies through an engagement with the methods developed in the field of futures studies. Although research on the future, as well as the adjacent field of future studies, has propagated over past decades, there has been a convergence around a handful of methods 282

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Seeing into the future of mobility  283 to study the future, including modelling, forecasting and scenario-building. What they have in common is their capability, or attributed capability, to estimate, predict and anticipate the future. The Delphi method, in particular, is described and assessed here as it illustrates many of the opportunities and challenges that scholars studying the future are encountering. While developing this task, we pay attention to a particular dimension involving the thinking of futures. This is the broader recognition that our current actions have consequences for later generations. This observation brings ethical questions to the fore and, it could be argued, should prompt us to develop sustainable visions and images of the future to guide us in the present. This ethical dimension also highlights the political character of the future for, in a way, institutionalized politics mainly concern social conflicts around different visions of the future. When the future is implied instead of explicitly discussed, it means that the ethical and political character of the future is transposed to current trends. Since predicting and envisioning the future ultimately becomes a way to influence it, it is imperative to scrutinize who the future-makers are, and who possibly purchase these prophetic forecasts, estimations and images of the future. However, to many observers this political character is missing in current discussions about futures. Swyngedouw (2010) argues that the public sphere has been de-politicized and participation in change processes has a predominantly managerial logic and many times marginalizes particular groups. However, the future, and especially the study of it, is ‘too important to be left to states, corporations and technologists’, the late John Urry proposed. With his final book, Urry tried to develop arguments for why ‘the terrain of future studies should be reclaimed for the social sciences, and, in a way, for people in the day-to-day lives.’ (Urry 2016, p. 10). The Delphi method is an interesting method to assess. As initially conceived, it was not meant as an open and inclusive participatory process, but built on the assumption that a group of experts are best suited to achieve consensus on predictions and forecasts of future scenarios. First developed for predicting trends on strategic military matters during the Cold War, the Delphi method was later expanded to more uses, opening up for inputs from more actors as well. Variants of the Delphi method, such as the Policy Delphi (Turoff 1970), promote and value the concatenation of varying and contrasting visions as a source of support for decision-making about complex policy issues. For these matters, argues Turoff (2002, p. 80), there are no real experts, only informed advocates and referees, and the articulation of their opinions can assist scholars, policy-makers and other types of future-makers. The structure of this chapter is as follows. First, we briefly discuss what the Delphi method is and how it has developed. Then, we illustrate the use of the Delphi method in two distinct projects that can support the future-making of urban mobilities. We subsequently discuss the pros and cons of the Delphi method and what lessons scholars in mobilities studies can learn from using methods developed in the field of futures studies.

2.  THE DELPHI METHOD AND ITS HISTORY During the early 1950s, researchers at the RAND Corporation in the USA developed the project Delphi. This study was meant to conceive a technique to organize the use of expert

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284  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities opinion to achieve reliable consensus on complex matters, such as forecasting events or trends, and to support decision-making (Dalkey and Helmer 1963). The method works as a structured communication process through which information is disseminated and exchanged among selected panelists. The process is straightforward: (1) key experts are identified and (2) presented to an issue and respond to a questionnaire. Then (3) responses are aggregated, and this results in a pooling of opinions that forms the basis of (4), a briefing or report returned to the experts. With this feedback material at hand, (5) individual participants (the experts) have the chance to reflect on the opinions of other key experts and can possibly (6) reconsider their own views in the following rounds of the survey. This process, using a series of consecutive questionnaires accompanied by controlled opinion feedback, continues until a certain level of consensus is reached among respondents.1 Controlled feedback and iteration processes are defining characteristics in the Delphi method. The use of feedback information gathered from the group, and the opportunity that individuals have to react to collective views and modify or refine their judgments, is of primary importance (Mitroff and Turoff 1973). The feedback material normally contains two types of information: (1) group opinions, comprising the aggregated results of each round (cumulative frequency curves, summary tables, and so on), and (2) individual views, that is, (anonymized) comments, clarifications or criticism made by participants. One further type of information that may be disseminated among participants is background information on the issue under discussion (for example, exchange rate or commodity prices in case the issue scrutinized relates to monetary policy decisions).2 Even though we have introduced the Delphi method as a six-step process, these core characteristics of the original Delphi method can be applied in a variety of ways, and there is no hard prescription on the types of questions that should be used, number of rounds, format and content of feedback material, minimum or maximum number of panel members (key experts), techniques for response aggregation, and so on. Importantly though, experts’ participation must always remain anonymous across all stages, ensuring a safe environment for free expression of opinions. Anonymity also favors the possibility of self-assessment and re-evaluation of our own opinion across rounds (Dalkey and Helmer 1963; Linstone and Turoff 2002). The use of the Delphi method has proliferated across numerous fields (Landeta 2006), leading to relevant methodological evolution. A number of variants of the method emerged and continue to be developed (for example, Turoff 1970; Schmidt 1997; Kezar and Maxey 2016); they modify aspects such as the number and sequence of questionnaires, the procedure to select individuals to compose the Delphi panel and the tools used for the analysis of responses. These ‘cousin’ methodologies also look into producing different types of outcomes, and not only seek consensus. The Policy Delphi, for instance, aims to develop comprehensive analyses of complex policy issues so that decision-makers can be better informed. The method tries to ‘generate the strongest possible opposing views on the potential resolutions of a major policy issue’ (Turoff 2002, p. 80). It is important to highlight that underlying the Delphi method is the critical role played by the survey coordinator (Hirschhorn 2019). As manager of the entire process, she or he identifies key individuals to compose the panel, develops and distributes the questionnaires and feedback information, and, finally, aggregates and summarizes individual opinions into a final group position. All these steps involve a substantial workload and also constant tradeoffs that impact the survey’s outcomes.

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Seeing into the future of mobility  285 Reviewing the application of the method in different research contexts is a fruitful way to grasp how the Delphi method can be structured, its strengths and weaknesses, as well as the main aspects a researcher must consider in the execution of the process. Drawing on two cases applying the Delphi method by asking a global expert panel to answer surveys, we grapple with the tension between territorial fixity and place specificity, on the one hand, and global flows, relations and interconnections, on the other, as discussed in the policy mobilities literature (Temenos and McCann 2013, p. 354).

3.  EXPERIENCES OF USING THE DELPHI METHOD We now turn to describing our own experiences working with the Delphi method in mobilities studies. We have worked with two different versions of the Delphi method in two different projects related to passenger transportation. In the first project, a Delphi in the making, the ambition is to look into the crystal ball to foresee potential future developments by asking experts about their opinions on the emerging technologies that go under the label of smart mobility. A key step in this task is the process to identify and select those individuals whose voices will be heard. This case, then, focuses on the experience in building a Delphi panel. In the other study, a completed Delphi, the ambition was to generate knowledge through the collection and articulation of varied opinions on a complex matter: the connection between organization and performance in metropolitan public transport systems. In both cases the ambition was to follow the spirit of the Policy Delphi and, based on the input from diverse individuals, produce insight that can support scholars, policy-makers and other types of future-makers in the transport sector. 3.1  Smart Mobility in the Future: Building a Delphi Panel In the coming decades, autonomous and connected vehicles, shared mobility and combined mobility (for example, mobility as a service – MaaS) are all expected to change how we travel and transport goods. Often these trends are labelled smart mobility (Docherty et al. 2018). Smart mobility may result in more sustainable transport as well as more attractive cities and regions, but the consequences may also be less positive, such as more vehicles on the road and increased congestion. How the future of smart mobility will play out remains to be seen. Drawing on the experience of a Swedish research project investigating how current policy instruments in the transport sector might be affected by the emerging technological developments, we explore how a panel for a Delphi study was established to gain insights into the potential impacts of these developments on smart mobility. Establishing a Delphi panel requires some prior knowledge about who these key experts might be or how they possibly could be found. A plethora of sampling methodologies have been developed in statistical studies or participatory methods to identify survey participants, for example, sampling based on actor types or snowball sampling. In sampling based on actor types, the sampling seeks to include stakeholders based on affiliation, that is, the affiliation of an individual (employee of a public agency, member of a customer association, private entrepreneur, and so on) is a proxy for its views, thus the variety (or similarity) of actor types ensures that various (or similar) opinions are included in the

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286  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities panel. In snowball sampling, the survey coordinator will pick a few potential members of the panel (based, for instance, on his or her personal network) and consult these individuals about who they advise should be in the expert panel. We chose a combination of these methods. There is no hard rule about the number of participants required to build a Delphi expert panel; recommendations do exist (for example, Turoff 1970; Okoli and Pawlowski 2004), but applications range from less than ten experts to over a thousand people (de Loë et al., 2016). We were interested in experts from research, public administration and the private sector who could be expected to be knowledgeable as regards the transport sector and possible policy instruments in a future of smart mobility. To establish the panel, we looked to the editorial board of the journal Transport Policy which we expected to fulfill the requirement as experts in the field. For some of these, we were not able to find their email addresses, which excluded the person in question from being a member of the panel. The research project team suggested a number of additional names, mostly from public administration and the private sector, to be included in the panel. This resulted in a panel of 86 experts of which 65 were researchers, 15 were from public administration, and only five from the private sector. Sixty-six were men and 20 were women. The panel members came from all over the world, though the US and Europe (and, in particular, Sweden) were overrepresented. We were relatively happy with the composition of the panel, but we would have appreciated having more panel members from the private sector and more women. After formulating drafts of an email invitation to participate in the panel as well as the actual survey text, we forwarded a test of these to a Swedish and a foreign research colleague to have their response and recommendation before finalizing the email invitation and the survey. Then, the entire panel was approached via an email to each member encouraging them to answer by an attached link. The survey also included a possibility to suggest additional members of the panel. After two reminders, the number of answers were very low, and we considered enlarging the panel to receive more answers. The enlargement of the panel included three steps. First, we included information about the Delphi survey and the possibility to sign up for the panel in a Swedish newsletter forwarded to about 2000 subscribers by the Swedish Knowledge Centre for Public Transport (K2). Second, an Australian colleague forwarded an invitation to participate in the panel to a network of Australian colleagues working within the field and, third, participants in the Conference on Integrated Transport 2019 in Stockholm (CIT 2019) were encouraged to sign up for the panel and thus answer the Delphi survey. By enlarging the panel in this way, our control of the configuration of the panel was reduced, and potentially we might also end up with a panel including non-experts. However, we expected that those signing up for the panel, most likely would consider themselves as experts within the field. During this process, we also were approached by a Swedish green think tank, which offered to forward the invitation within their network, which we however decided not to do, to avoid bias. At the time of writing, we have only 17 full answers, while about 20 additional people have signed up to participate in the panel and have received an email with a link to the survey. Owing to the difficulties in receiving answers, it seems a reasonable approach to use relevant newsletters, conferences, and so on to encourage people to sign up for a Delphi panel.

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Seeing into the future of mobility  287 3.2  K  nowledge Generation to Support Future-Makers in the Public Transport Sector: A Completed Delphi In a comparative study of public transport performance and quality in metropolitan regions, Hirschhorn et al. (2018) developed a global Delphi in public transport (GDPT). Their Delphi survey elicited the opinions of varied transport specialists from 18 countries with distinct professional roles and multiple technical backgrounds. Employees from public transport authorities and transport-operating companies, representatives from multilateral institutions, and from public transport user associations were consulted about a recurring question in the literature on metropolitan public transport governance: the influence of organizational form on performance outcomes. The Delphi method was chosen for three reasons mainly. First, its flexibility; while the structure of the GDPT partially draws on the ranking-type Delphi (Schmidt 1997), the questions, feedback material and diversity in the panel of experts sought ways to help articulate and confront diverse perspectives, in line with the Policy Delphi. Second, the anonymity of the key experts enabled a process where no single individual could control the discussion. Finally, the method offers a fast and economic way to bring experts together without having to personally meet at the same location at the same time. The GDPT was structured in three stages: brainstorming (respondents were free to come up with all relevant elements in connection to the issue at stake), narrowing-down (respondents, based on the long list produced in the brainstorming stage, shortlisted most relevant elements) and rating (respondents rated the elements that were shortlisted in the previous phase). One questionnaire was used for each stage. A total of 96 experts received the GDPT’s introductory email. The first questionnaire (brainstorming) elicited responses from 54 of these. The second questionnaire (narrowing-down) was completed by 48 participants, and 46 experts concluded the third and final questionnaire (ranking). A brief description follows. Brainstorming In this stage, the GDPT used two sets of questions. The first set was made of openended questions, and asked experts to freely list and briefly describe at least five relevant performance indicators and five organizational features that they would like to have analyzed in case they were to study a given public transport system. The second set of questions used Likert-scale assessments: after answering the open-ended questions, the questionnaire presented to experts a literature-based list of relevant and frequently analyzed performance indicators, and asked experts to rate each from 1 to 5 according to their increased relevance in their views. Again, the same question was posed in relation to public transport (PT) organizational features. This second set of questions was introduced in the GDPT as a safety-net and ‘in case the open-ended questions had generated answers that would need to be discarded (a frequent problem in Delphi), the responses to the rating questions (the Likert-scale questions) could be used to inform the following rounds of the survey reducing the loss of expert input’ (Hirschhorn et al. 2018, p. 147). This safety-net was eventually not used in the GDPT. The answers provided by experts to the open-ended questions were qualitatively analyzed to identify major themes, eliminate redundancies and to produce inventories. To develop this coding the GDPT used ‘sensitizing concepts’ (Bowen 2006), derived from literature on public transport. When the coding of the

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288  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities responses was finalized, a feedback report was prepared for the panelists including the two inventories – performance indicators and organizational features – comments from experts and statistics related to answers. Narrowing-down In this stage, the GDPT requested experts to examine the full inventories produced after the brainstorming and to select the seven most relevant performance indicators and seven most relevant organizational features. Limiting the number of choices emphasized the task of prioritization at this stage. The GDPT set a limit of seven items per inventory, as this was the average number of performance indicators listed by each respondent in round 1.3 After further analysis, the initially planned procedure in this stage, which consisted in forming shortlists with the seven most voted-for items of each inventory, had to be reconsidered; since only seven items would not adequately reflect experts’ priorities, the list was expanded to include ten items. The feedback report to the key experts in the panel included the shortlists. Finally, individual comments made by experts were also included. Rating In the rating stage, experts were asked to rate the shortlisted items according to their level of relevance. A constant-sum type of question was used and experts in the panel had to allocate a total of a hundred points across items shortlisted in the narrowing down stage. This type of question was used to allow assessing final responses with multiple simple but informative measures, including average points per item, standard deviation, highest point attributed to a single item by one expert, mode, number of zeros received by an item and, finally, rank items based on their average points.

4.  DISCUSSION AND LIMITATIONS What lessons can scholars in mobilities studies draw from using the Delphi method as it has been described here? Linked to this, what are the pros and cons of the Delphi method for studying and constructing mobility futures? Based on our experiences, there are five basic answers to these questions. First, as a participatory process, the Delphi method can include diverse stakeholders with multiple values and thus contribute to a more democratic decision-making/futuremaking process. Furthermore, the Delphi method has some advantages compared with other participatory methods. By ensuring anonymity, participants are allowed free expression of opinions, which enable contrasting views to be articulated and exposed. Unlike in a focus group interview, where one person or a sub-group may suppress or directly influence participants, the Delphi method does not require experts to be present at a single location and time, nor do they directly interact with each other, apart from receiving the brief report by the survey coordinator, which anonymously summarizes all response results. Second, some scholars criticize the Delphi method for not being able to deliver depth, but only breadth of knowledge (Van Dijk 1990; de Loë 1995). As a structured but not interactive dialogue process, the Delphi method does not seem suited as a survey method to explore issues in depth, and was not necessarily developed for this. Instead, the Delphi method can play a relevant role in a broader mixed-method research design,

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Seeing into the future of mobility  289 offering scholars and policy-makers a valuable resource that can be combined with other complementary methods to develop more informed visions about decisions and their impacts in future. Third, selection of panel members and keeping them on board during the duration of the study is a challenge and involves difficult tradeoffs which survey coordinators must deal with. Managing the amount of information conveyed to these individuals and avoiding complex questionnaires that may lead to participants’ fatigue are concerns across all Delphi steps. Communication with panelists should be concise, given that these individuals might have limited time available, but also clear and informative about the survey’s topic, goals, and the type of commitments required from participants. One possible way to deal with this (as employed in the GDPT) is to combine the use of succinct email communication with a dedicated blog as an additional channel of communication and repository of information about the survey. This will help to minimize the amount of information in email communications and to keep the engagement of participants. Therefore, the survey coordinator plays a critical role in all survey moments: identifying and attracting relevant members to the Delphi panel, avoiding the introduction of undesired bias that could potentially influence participants’ responses, and ensuring continued participation of experts with limited time. Fourth, innovations in information and telecommunication technology (ICT) and telecommunications have facilitated the application of the Delphi method: emails or online survey websites, for instance, increase the speed and reduce the workload associated with the preparation and distribution of questionnaires and feedback reports, as well as allowing Delphi processes to potentially gather experts worldwide. Similarly, diverse software can assist and improve the collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative output. It is no coincidence that recent decades witnessed continued and increased use of the Delphi method in a variety of scientific domains. Examples can be found in fields such as technology forecasting, engineering, medicine and nursing, as well as in different social science fields, such as public administration, management studies, psychology and public policy (Gupta and Clarke 1996; Landeta 2006). Fifth, the ubiquity in the use of the Delphi method also comes at a cost. Authors often do not consider minimum study design and reporting expectations, thereby producing less rigorous research (Brown 2007; Hasson and Keeney 2011). Problems can be various, for example, inadequate identification and selection of panelists, introduction of bias by the survey coordinator, poor formulation of questions, poor techniques to summarize and present the group opinion, and inability to create the context to ensure participants join the survey and continue through to the end (Linstone and Turoff 2002; Rowe and Wright 2011).

5. CONCLUSION The purpose of this chapter has been to outline how mobilities studies can be further connected to futures studies through an engagement with one of the significant methods developed in the field of futures studies: the Delphi method. Although the Delphi method was developed to consensually estimate, predict and anticipate the future on the basis of expert-only knowledge, it has broadened to other applications as well, where

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290  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities constructive conflict, and diversity of stakeholders and views are seen as valuable inputs for future-makers. While expert knowledge has a place in studies of the future, the field of mobility studies has put less emphasis on future studies in its empirical undertakings. It is possible to argue that the knowledge of ordinary citizens has less value than that of experts for foreseeing the future in such a specialized topic. Asking a person on the street about smart mobility and how it might impact the capacity of current policy instruments in the transport sector, risks receiving meaningless responses. However, by only relying on expert knowledge, ordinary citizens’ views, users and non-users of mobility technologies, are neglected or, at best, indirectly incorporated in the experts’ responses. As a consequence, the process of thinking of, deciding on and developing the futures of mobility disengages with ‘people in the day-to-day lives’ mentioned by Urry (2016, p. 10) and aggravates the post-political context depicted by Swyngedouw (2010). By using the Delphi method, it is possible to delve into the powerful world of experts, expertise and future-makers, providing direct access to those who work with developing innovations, new services or products. These actors can produce very rich insights to estimate and collaborate on the making of futures of mobilities, and this type of contribution should not be undervalued. Nonetheless, by gaining knowledge of what experts think, it becomes possible to contest their ideas as well, and so enable a more democratic and open discussion about the future of mobility. The Delphi can contribute to this, as the method is versatile and allows researchers to move beyond the participation and vision of a restricted group to incorporate values and opinions of multiple stakeholders. After all, the Delphi method could potentially contribute to more open and inclusive debates about futures, helping to re-politicize the future-making of mobilities. The future is uncertain. For studies of mobility, this is probably truer than ever owing to changed trends in shared mobility and autonomous driving. Since predictions and visions shape our current actions and decisions, it is important that mobility studies, to an increasing extent, learn from methods of future studies. The Delphi method represents one of several possibilities.

NOTES * The work is carried out within a research project partially funded by the Swedish Innovation Agency (Vinnova) and in collaboration with the Swedish Knowledge Centre for Public Transport (K2) and the Organisation & Governance Section of the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at TU Delft. 1. The stopping criteria can be a certain level of consensus or the stability of opinions (see Dajani et al. 1979; von der Gracht 2012). 2. Rowe and Wright (1999, p. 354) also highlight statistical aggregation of group responses at the end of the survey as one further key feature of the Delphi method. 3. There is no prescription for what should be the limit. Schmidt (1997), for instance, suggests that no limit should be established.

REFERENCES Birtchnell, T. and J. Urry (2013), ‘Fabricating futures and the movement of objects’, Mobilities, 8 (3), 388–405.

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Seeing into the future of mobility  291 Bowen, G.A. (2006), ‘Grounded theory and sensitizing concepts’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5 (3), 12–23. Brown, C.A. (2007), ‘The opt-in/opt-out feature in a multi-stage Delphi method study’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 10 (2), 135–44. Dajani, J.S., M.Z. Sincoff and W.K. Talley (1979), ‘Stability and agreement criteria for the termination of Delphi studies’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 13 (1), 83–90. Dalkey, N. and O. Helmer (1963), ‘An experimental application of the Delphi method to the use of experts’, Management Science, 9 (3), 458–67. De Loë, R.C. (1995), ‘Exploring complex policy questions using the Policy Delphi: a multi-round, interactive survey method’, Applied Geography, 15 (1), 53–68. De Loë, R.C., N. Melnychuk, D. Murray and R. Plummer (2016), ‘Advancing the state of policy Delphi practice: a systematic review evaluating methodological evolution, innovation and opportunities’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 104 (C), 78–88. Docherty, I., G. Marsden and J. Anable (2018), ‘The governance of smart mobility’, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 115, (September),114–25. Gupta, U.G. and R.E. Clarke (1996), ‘Theory and applications of the Delphi technique: a bibliography (1975–1994)’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 53 (2), 185–211. Hasson, F. and S. Keeney (2011), ‘Enhancing rigour in the Delphi technique research’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 78 (9), 1695–1704. Hirschhorn, F. (2019), ‘Reflections on the application of the Delphi method: lessons from a case in public transport research’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 22 (3), 309–22. Hirschhorn, F., W. Veeneman and D.M. van de Velde (2018), ‘Inventory and rating of performance indicators and organisational features in metropolitan public transport: a worldwide Delphi survey’, Research in Transportation Economics, 69 (September), 144–56. Kezar, A. and D. Maxey (2016), ‘The Delphi technique: an untapped approach of participatory research’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 19 (2), 143–60. Landeta, J. (2006), ‘Current validity of the Delphi method in social sciences’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 73 (5), 467–82. Linstone, H.A. and M. Turoff (eds) (2002), The Delphi Method – Techniques and Applications, e-book, © 2002 Murray Turoff and Harold A. Linstone, accessed 19 June 2019 at https://web.njit.edu/~turoff/pubs/ delphibook/index.html. Mitroff, I.I. and M. Turoff (1973), ‘Technological forecasting and assessment: science and/or mythology?’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 5 (2), 113–34. Okoli, C. and S.D. Pawlowski (2004), ‘The Delphi method as a research tool: an example, design considerations and applications’, Information & Management, 42 (1), 15–29. Rowe, G. and G. Wright (1999), ‘The Delphi technique as a forecasting tool: issues and analysis’, International Journal of Forecasting, 15 (4), 353–75. Rowe, G. and G. Wright (2011), ‘The Delphi technique: past, present, and future prospects – introduction to the special issue’, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 78 (9), 1487–90. Schmidt, R.C. (1997), ‘Managing Delphi surveys using nonparametric statistical techniques’, Decision Sciences, 28 (3), 763–74. Schulz, M.S. (2018), ‘Imagining futures of energy’, Transfers, 8 (1), 125–9. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2000), ‘The city and the car’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24 (4), 737–57. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2006), ‘The new mobilities paradigm’, Environment and Planning A, 38 (2), 207–26. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2016), ‘Applied mobilities mobilizing the new mobilities paradigm’, Applied Mobilities, 1 (1), 10–25. Swyngedouw, E. (2010), ‘Apocalypse forever? Post-political populism and the spectre of climate change’, Theory, Culture and Society, 27 (2), 213–32. Temenos, C. and E. McCann (2013), ‘Geographies of policy mobilities’, Geography Compass, 7 (5), 344–57. Turoff, M. (1970), ‘The design of a policy Delphi’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2 (2), 149–71. Turoff, M. (2002), ‘The Policy Delphi’, in H.A. Linstone and M. Turoff (eds), The Delphi Method: Techniques and Applications, e-book, pp. 80–96, © 2002 Murray Turoff and Harold A. Linstone, accessed 19 June 2019 at https://web.njit.edu/~turoff/pubs/delphibook/index.html. Urry, J. (2013), ‘A low carbon economy and society’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 371 (1986), 1–12, accessed 19 June 2019 at https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsta.2011.0566. Urry, J. (2016), What is the Future? Cambridge, and Boston, MA: Polity Press. Van Dijk, J.A. (1990), ‘Delphi questionnaires versus individual and group interviews’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 37 (3), 293–304. Von der Gracht, H. (2012), ‘Consensus measurement in Delphi studies. Review and implications for future quality assurance’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 79 (8), 1525–36.

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28.  Airports as a mobile method Claus Lassen

INTRODUCTION Why should we research airports? Can airports be seen as a mobile method? What are the methodological challenges of airport studies? Which particular problems do airport researchers face in relation to getting access to the field? How can data be collected in complex airports that are highly controlled, monitored, commercialised and privatised? Which methods and techniques can be used to overcome such challenges? These are some of the methodological and applied dimensions of airport research which this chapter addresses and reflects upon. Over the past decade, a new field of aeromobilities research (Lassen 2005, 2006; Kesselring 2006; Cwerner et al. 2009; Bloch 2018) that focuses on the societal implications and meaning of flying has been developed as a subfield of the new mobilities paradigm (Kaufman 2002; Sheller and Urry 2006; Urry 2007; Jensen 2013; Adey 2010a). Within this field of aeromobilities research, the discussion of mobile methods is highly relevant. One of the mobile methods that has been formulated in mobilities research is the study of transfer points as a place from which mobilities can be observed and analysed (Urry 2007; Büscher et al. 2011). Urry (2007) argues that the transfer point is an important new type of mobile method developed in line with the rise of a movementdriven social science. In relation to this concentration on transfer points, Kloppenburg (2013, p. 108) argues for airports as a way to gain access to and observe mobilities. Fuller and Harley (2004) stress that the contemporary airport offers laboratory conditions to analyse future city and infrastructure planning (Interview 3, this chapter). They point out it is perhaps ‘an early-warning system for