New Book: Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities

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 and Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen, Aalborg University, Denmark

Exploring the growing field of mobilities research, this Handbook focuses on the flows and movements of people, artefacts, capital, information and signs on different social and geographical scales. It examines the systems and practices of mobilities within societies, politics, cultures and economies from different theoretical, epistemological and methodological perspectives.

Reflecting the variety and diversity of research methods and applications, contributions from top scholars highlight the multiple dimensions of mobilities, from transport to tourism, cargo to information, and across physical, virtual and imaginative mobilities. Chapters analyse mobilities from different angles and scales, emphasising interdisciplinarity by looking at how researchers engage with mobile methods.

An inspirational toolbox of research methods and applications for mobilities, sociology and human geography scholars, this Handbook provides both qualitative and quantitative insights to the topic. It will be of interest to policymakers and urban planners looking for a better understanding of the impact and importance of mobilities in contemporary societies.

The book can be puchased from Edward Elgar Publishing.

New Book: Sharing Mobilities New Perspectives for the Mobile Risk Society

Sharing Mobilities: New Perspectives for the Mobile Risk Society

Sharing Mobilities, edited by Sven Kesselring, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen and Dennis Zuev focuses on the emergence of future sustainable and collaborative mobility cultures. At the intersection of physical and virtual capacity and access to people, goods, ideas, and services, this book poses fundamental challenges and opportunities for governance, economy, planning, and identity.

The future of new collaborative forms of consumption and sharing would play a key role in the organization of everyday life and business. Sharing mobilities is more than simply sharing transport, and its diverse impacts on society and the environment demand thorough theory-led sociological research. With an extensive global range, the contributors present radical manifestations of sharing capacities throughout diverse countries, including Germany, Denmark, Japan, and Vietnam. The phenomenon of mobility is highly actual and social as well as politically relevant and urging.

This collection focuses on open questions from the perspective of the mobilities turn while presenting state-of-the-art theory-based articles with applied perspectives. An ideal read for scholars based in social science and the interdisciplinary research on mobility, transports, and sharing economy. Sociologists, geographers, economists, urban governance researchers, and research students would also find this book of interest.

The book can be purchased from Routledge’s bookshop.

Im|mobile lives in turbulent times: Methods and Practices of Mobilities Research.

Call for Papers

We invite you to be part of the conference

Im|mobile lives in turbulent times: Methods and Practices of Mobilities Research.

Thursday July 9th and Friday July 10th 2020

At Northumbria University, Newcastle Business School, City Campus East, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8S .

This is an interdisciplinary, creative and experimental collaboration between Newcastle Business School, Northumbria NBS Tourism (MOS)

with MFRN (Mobilities Research Network), the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences at Northumbria University

and the Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) Lancaster University.

Our aim is to offer a platform through which developments and insights of multi-modal methodologies can be applied to a range of interests,

geographical contexts and experiences. We invite contributors from any discipline, including social sciences and the arts,

digital design and technology, medicine, psychology, urban planning and business innovation.

Information about themes and registration please check out the link below.

https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/events/2020/07/mobilities-symposium/

Please, submit your abstract of maximum 300 words for consideration either via the website or send to Sharon3.wilson@northumbria.ac.uk by December 18th 2019. Acceptance confirmation January 14th 2020.

We are really looking forward to seeing you all!

THE INTERNET CITY

THE INTERNET CITY
People, Companies, Systems and Vehicles
Aharon Kellerman, University of Haifa, Israel

‘As the Internet revolution continues to reverberate through the globaleconomy and daily life, urban life has become progressively more constituted around digital transactions. Kellerman has long been one of the most astute observers of this transformation. This volume not only coversthe basics of how cyberspace has become woven into the contemporaryworld, such as cell phones and digital divides, it also breaks new ground byaddressing topics that have received scant attention, such as autonomous vehicles. It offers a fecund series of insights into how people, firms, and places have been restructured bythe ever-growing use of digital technologies. This volume will be useful to students and faculty alike, and of interest to anyone interested in how cyberspace and the analogue world have become shot through with each other.’– Barney Warf, University of Kansas, US

As the Internet develops, on top of earlier urban communications, facilities and media, it is becoming the site of urban communications on an unprecedented scale. Exploring the history of the Internet, from preconception to the possibilities of an Internet-based future, The Internet City explores ways in which the Internet and urban life intersect.

The book interprets how the contemporary city is becoming fully based on Internet technologies in all of its major dimensions: the daily activities of urbanites and urban companies, the operations of urbansystems, and the functioning of upcoming driverless vehicles. With particular focus on the ways in which people routinely consume urban services via the Internet, Aharon Kellerman examines how they are simultaneously present in physical and digital spaces.
Urban geographers and urban planners will benefit from the detailed information on how the cityscape will be altered in the near future by the introduction of Internet-based autonomous vehicles. City policymakers will also find this a useful tool to explore how and why policies may need to be updated in accordance with the rising importance of the Internet in the urban sphere.

Contents: PART I URBAN CONNECTIVITY AND INFORMATIONAL ACTIVITIES 1. Introduction 2. Pre-Internet urban connectivity and informational activities 3. The Internet PART II URBAN INTERNET APPLICATIONS 4. The Internet for Individual users 5. The dual-space society 6. The Internet and companies 7. The Internet for urban systems 8. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) and the Internet PART III IMPLICATIONS OF URBAN INTERNET APPLICATIONS 9. Urban perspectives for the Internet-based city 10. Conclusion Index

The digital content platform for libraries from Edward Elgar Publishing
2019 c 224 pp Hardback 978 1 78897 358 8 £75.00 / $120.00
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URBAN MOBILITY IN MODERN CHINA

URBAN MOBILITY IN MODERN CHINA
The Growth of the E-bike
Dennis Zuev

In this concise book, Dennis Zuev succeeds in addressing a series of interlinked, urgent questions to do with mobility, sustainability, class and urban planning, while also providing a fascinating ethnographic snapshot of the fast changing character of urban life in contemporary China. Engagingly written in a lively style, the book can be read in an afternoon, but it lingers on.
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo

Based on solid empirical investigation, Zuev offers us a comprehensive view of the social, cultural and political contexts in which China’s e-bike thrives and develops, despite sporadic resistance from governments, users and by-standers.
Julie Yu-Wen Chen, Professor of Chinese Studies, University of Helsinki

The incredibly rapid, top to bottom transformations, are taking place in China today present a major problem for social scientific analysis. However, Dennis Zuev’s multi-method focus on one urban mobility technology — two-wheeled electric vehicles used by 200 million people — provides clear and deep insights into society-wide changes that go far beyond the nation’s low-carbon policies. Well-Illustrated, clearly written and with thick descriptions, Electric Mobility in China, is a much-needed addition to the literatures on socio-cultural and political transformations in China as well as changing urban mobility systems around the world.
Jerome Krase, Emeritus and Murray Koppleman Professor, Brooklyn College CUNY. is author of Seeing Cities Change: Local Culture and Class (Routledge)