Discourses and Ideologies of Mobility

Editorial Team

Katharina Manderscheid, Department of Sociology, University of Lucerne, Switzerland.
Marcel Endres, Graduate Program Topology of Technology, Faculty of History and Social Sciences, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany.
Christophe Mincke, Centre d’études sociologiques, Facultés universitaires Saint Louis, Brussels, Belgium.

In [...]]]> Call for Chapters | Book Project:

Discourses and Ideologies of Mobility

Editorial Team

Katharina Manderscheid, Department of Sociology, University of Lucerne, Switzerland.
Marcel Endres, Graduate Program Topology of Technology, Faculty of History and Social Sciences, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany.
Christophe Mincke, Centre d’études sociologiques, Facultés universitaires Saint Louis, Brussels, Belgium.

In the last two decades, the conceptualisation and empirical analysis of mobilities of people, objects and symbols has become a legitimate strand of the social sciences. Yet, as Mimi Sheller and John Urry argue, the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ should not be “a quest­ion of privileging a ‘mobile subjectivity’, but rather of tracking the power of discourses and practices of mobility” (Sheller and Urry 2006, p.211). Along these lines, scholars suggest that a ‘politics of mobility’ demands development, which would help to uncover the “social relations that involve the production and distribution of power” and “the ways in which mobilities are both productive of such social relations and produced by them” (Cresswell 2010, p.14).

The majority of mobilities scholars’ framings recognises objects within the dichotomy of mobilities and immobilities, movement and moorings. However, analyses of the formation of mobilities as an object of knowledge shaped by social sciences as well as other scientific discourses has not yet been given sufficient attention. Therefore, this book pursues a strategy of conceptualising mobilities beyond the dichotomy of movement and stasis. As Bonham (2006) argues, transport and movement has to be constituted first as objects of knowledge in order to hierarchise and govern mobilities. It is this formation of ‘movement-cum-knowledge’ — discourses, ideologies, classifications, prioritisations and obscurings — which engenders mobilities as objects of government, power struggles, and truth regimes. This approach moves beyond the discursive differentiations and sheds light on the constitution and various discursive strategies deployed to distinguish between licit and illicit ‘movers’, namely, illegal migrants, high-status expatriots, gypsies, leisure travellers, creative nomads, and so on (Cresswell 2006; Urry 2007).

Following Michel Foucault, we regard discourses and ideologies on mobility as systems of thought, which “systematically constitute the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 2002, p.54). These systems always contain a normative dimension by shaping specific ideas and judgements regarding the value and handling of various mobilities. Therefore, discourses of mobility are interfused with ideological codings and power hierarchies, which constitute certain social meanings and areas of knowledge. In a sense, both discourses and ideologies permanently build connections “from matters of fact to matters of concern” (Latour 2004, p.225), which are far from “exclusive from science” (Foucault 2002, p.199) Or, as Peter Adey puts it, “mobilities are underpinned by specific ideological and discursive meanings, which are not limited to any boundary between both academic and real social worlds” (Adey 2010, p.14).

Thus, social scientists can simply reproduce and adopt discourses on mobility, for instance in regards to migration and biopower; social networks and circulations; or in studies of mobile genders, bodies and ethnicities. Or social scientists can critically engage with the construction of these discourses by  de- and reconstructing them. The latter highlights that social sciences are frequently traversed by ideological traits, for instance in the concept of automobility, in debates on the right to mobility, in ideas of cosmopolitanism and sustainable mobility, and, not least, in general equations of mobility with modernity and freedom.

Against this outlined concepts of mobility, the aim of this book is to explore the unprecedented career of mobility as a discoursive formation in the humanities and social sciences. Following Michel Foucault, we want to encourage the historicisation of mobility discourses and their ideological implications in the sense of a genealogy and epistemology of mobilities. In accordance, the book´s interest is on mobility as a knowledge object rather than an identified subject within the historical contingency of movement. How do discourses and ideologies structure social life and lived reality? What are the real world affects of/on the will and the ability to be mobile? And, how do these lived realities, in turn, invigorate or intefere with certain discourses and ideologies of mobility?

Based on this framework, the book aims to address the problem on three interrelated levels:

Connotations: We want to explore the ongoing discursive construction, contestation and  changes in regards to the valuation and meaning of movement and stasis, mobility and moorings especially against the background of social change and processes of globalisation. Both, mobility and immobility are highly ambivalent terms differentiating in changing ways between good movers and bad movers, desired stasis and blocking social fixes, the promise of mobility (motility), forced movements and so on.

Cross-Disciplinary Connections: We assume that mobility discourses are often deeply interrelated with knowledge formations in other disciplines, for instance medicine and anatomy, thermodynamic and experimental physics, kinetics and engineering, ecology or evolution theory. The transference of ideas in regards to mobilities from one field of scientific knowledge to another has not yet gained a lot of attention. This also touches the question of what can be identified as the very essence of mobilities at a specific historical time and geographical place.

Science History and Episteme: We also seek to shed light on the uneven picture of the various historical origins of mobility discourses. In the sense of an “archaeology of knowledge on mobilities”, we want to stress particular meanings given to movement in different systems of thoughts and due to epistemological connections between them.

 
Chapter Contributions
We are looking forward to contributions which scrutinise the implicitness of the “mobility turn” as a stringent need as well as the indiscriminate recognition of a world that seems to be mobilised overly across the board. Article contributors should signpost approaches along one of the following lines of argument:

·         addressing the impacts of thought schemes and structures on current social, political and scientific discourses on mobility

·         emphasising conversely the role of mobility discourses for predominant thought patterns in other fields of knowledge

·         picking up, refining or drafting alternate theoretical concepts of mobility and their potentialities for further research

·         addressing the relationship between spatial mobility and other conceptual forms of mobilities (social, cultural, inter-generational, virtual, of thought, ideas, imaginations)

We intend to prepare the ground for a broad topical range of submissions. Exemplary topics could be:

·         powerful figures and metaphors of mobile subjectivity (e.g. “new nomadism”, cosmopolitanism, diasporas, home/rootlessness, ubiquity, fluidity). 

·         materialisations of mobility and their discursive charge (e.g. vehicles, tracks, areas, cities, objects, institutions, procedures).

·         legal, posited and social norms and acceptances of mobility (e.g. registration practices, legal obligations and rights, public opinion, social representations, moral regulations).

·         infrastructural and institutional constraints and possibilities (e.g. public and private transport systems, behavioural settings, incentive schemes, social organisations, social life structures).

·         medial constructions of mobility (e.g. print media, literature, movies, music, arts, news, web content, political discourses).

·         history and genealogy of (im)mobility discourses (e.g. history of movement rights and claims, etymological / encyclopedical origins, conceptual history of mobility terms).

·         scientific concepts and models which hisorically produced certain connotations and meanings  of mobility (e.g. blood circulation, graphical network models, thermodynamics, epidemology).

·         the co-constitution of specific disciplines and profession together with the formation of specific mobility and transport knowledge (e.g. traffic engineering).

·         the interweaving of security and control as a powerful dispositif of the present with normalisation and criminalisation of specific mobile subjects and their practices of movement.

Submission guidelines
Proposals should consist of a preliminary title, an abstract with a maximum of 600 words and a short CV of the author.

Submissions should be sent until March 31^st, 2013 to the Editors:

katharina.manderscheid@unilu.ch, endres@ifs.tu-darmstadt.de, mincke@fusl.ac.be

The deadline for full papers is December 31^st, 2013.
Papers should not exceed 8000 words.
The book is planned to be published in mid of 2014.

References 

Peter Adey (2010): Mobility. New York: Routledge

Jennifer Bonham (2006): Transport: disciplining the body that travels. In: Böhm, Steffen; Campbell, Jones;  Land, Chris; Paterson, Matthew (Eds.): Against Automobility. Malden, Oxford: Blackwell: 57-74.

Tim Cresswell (2006): On the move. Mobility in the modern West. New York: Routledge.

Tim Cresswell (2010): Towards a Politics of Mobility. In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28, 17-31.

Michel Foucault (2002),: The Archeology of Knowledge. Abingdon: Routledge (Routledge Classics).

Bruno Latour (2004) Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam ? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern, In Critical Inquiry – Special issue on the Future of Critique, 30, 2, pp.225-248.

Mimi Sheller and John Urry (2006): The new mobilities paradigm, Environment and Planning A 38 (2), 207 – 226.

John Urry (2007): Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press.

26-28 June 2013, Bern

Workshop 09 on Mobility, Discourse and Inequality (in German)

Call for papers

Marcel Endres and Katharina Manderscheid organise a workshop on Mobility, Discourse and Inequality at the 2013 Congress of the Swiss Sociological Association. Deadline for abstracts is 28 February. See http://46.232.176.110/~sgs/images/Workshop_PDF_DE/CfW_09_DE.pdf for more information

Challenges for the International Mobility of the Highly Skilled in the XXI Century – Women in movement

7-8 February 2013
deadline for submitting an abstract (200 words): 1st of December.
 

Geographical mobility among professionals is a vital aspect of the knowledge society, and one which has to be carefully [...]]]> Call for papers

Challenges for the International Mobility of the Highly Skilled in the XXI Century – Women in movement

7-8 February 2013
deadline for submitting an abstract (200 words): 1st of December.
 

Geographical mobility among professionals is a vital aspect of the knowledge society, and one which has to be carefully managed by the institutions, governments, enterprises and individuals involved. Mobility facilitates knowledge transfer and the exchange of ideas and innovation between countries and organisations. It also affects people´s labour market engagement patterns, career pathways, and work-life experiences, including their family relationships and caring work.
The conference on “Challenges of the International Mobility of the Highly Skilled in the XXI Century – Women in Movement” addresses the development of mobile careers and their implications for institutions, organisations and individuals. This will be held the 7th and 8th of February 2013 in Barcelona.
The conference will focus on the following topics:
- Statistical data on mobility patterns and professional profiles
- Gender differences in mobility patterns
- Effects on gender agency
- Family support in the mobility process
- Management of national identities
- Knowledge and innovation transfer
- Networks of the diaspora
- Mobility of dual-career couples

The conference will be led by Dr. Ana M. González Ramos, senior researcher in the Gender and ICT Research Programme in the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, who will use a life course approach to explore the gender dynamics of mobility skilled professionals, their families and scientific institutions.

For more information see https://challengesoftheinternational.wikispaces.com/

Differential Mobilities: Movement and Mediation in Networked Societies

Pan-American Mobilities Network May 8-13, 2013

Conference website and abstract submission (deadline November 21st):
http://mobilities.ca/pamnet-4/

From May 8-11, 2013 the Mobile Media Lab in the Communication Studies department of Concordia University in Montreal will be hosting an international conference sponsored by the [...]]]> Call for papers

Differential Mobilities: Movement and Mediation in Networked Societies

Pan-American Mobilities Network May 8-13, 2013

Conference website and abstract submission (deadline November 21st):
http://mobilities.ca/pamnet-4/

From May 8-11, 2013 the Mobile Media Lab in the Communication Studies department of Concordia University in Montreal will be hosting an international conference sponsored by the Pan-American Mobilities
Network in collaboration with the European Cosmobilities Network.

Confirmed keynote and plenary speakers:
Darin Barney (McGill University, Montreal, Quebec)
Gisele Beiguelman (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Micha Cárdenas (University of San Diego, California)
Vera Chouinard (McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario)
Gerard Goggin (University of Sydney, Australia)
Ole B. Jensen (Aalborg University, Denmark)
Jason Lewis and Skawennati Fragnito (Concordia University,Montreal, Quebec)
Danielle Peers and Lindsay Eales (University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta)

Mobilities has become an important framework for understanding and analyzing contemporary social, spatial, economic and political practices. Mobilities research is interdisciplinary, focusing on the systematic
movement of people, goods and information that “travel” around the world at speeds that are greater than before, creating distinct patterns, flows– and blockages. Mobilities research contributes to the study of these technological, social and cultural developments from a critical perspective. The theme of this year’s conference is “Differential Mobilities: Movement and Mediation in Networked Societies”. The term ‘differential mobilities’ has been deployed to describe dynamics of power within networked societies. When we conceptualize movement, mobility, or flows within spaces and places, we need to account for the systemic
differences within infrastructures and terrains that create uneven forms of access. ‘Differential mobilities’, conceptually, highlights how exclusions occur, creating striations of power. It draws attention to differences in
how these inequalities are experienced, the strategies for resistance, and the processes of mediation that have been implemented to instigate change.

We invite scholars, artists, and activists to submit creative presentations or papers that address all aspects of this theme, or related topics in mobilities research, such as:
Alternative mobilities and slow movements;
Borders, surveillance, and securitization with ubiquitous and mobile technologies;
Class, culture and the mediation of mobilities;
Civic engagement and political participation through mobile social media, new mapping practices and
location-aware technologies;
Creativity and the mobilization of resistance;
Discrimination and the built environment;
Embodiment, performance and mobile mediations;
Environmentalism, mediation and mobilities;
Immigration, migration and mobilities;
Indigenous culture and the mobilities paradigm;
Media theory and differential mobilities;
Mobile communications, differential mobilities and everyday life practices;
New methodologies for mobilities research;
Planning, policy and design for present and future mobilities;Privacy and surveillance issues and location-based social networks;
Race, gender and the politics of mobilities;
Regulating networks;
Social movements and mediated mobilities;
Urban and rural spatialities and the geographies of place;
Tourism, imaginary travel, and virtual travel;
Transitions toward sustainable mobilities;
Transportation and differential movements;

Disciplines represented at the conference may include (but are not exclusive to): Anthropology, Architecture and Design, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Communication, Criminology, Cultural Studies, Geography, Media, Sound and Visual Arts, Politics and International Relations, Public Policy, Sociology, Theatre and Performance Studies, Tourism Research, Transport Research, and Urban Studies.

Conference location:
Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec

Conference hotel:
Discounted rates will be available to registered participants.

Important dates:
Deadline for abstracts: 21 November, 2012
(maximum 300 words, including references)

Notification of acceptance: 15 January, 2013
Conference registration opens: 15 January, 2013
Early Registration deadline: 2 March 1, 2013
Conference Dates: 8-11 May, 2013

Please submit your abstracts through the form hosted by the conference website by no later than November 21st:
http://mobilities.ca/pamnet-4/

Organizing Committee:
Kim Sawchuk (Concordia University, Québec)
Jim Conley (Trent University, Canada)
Owen Chapman (Concordia University, Québec)
Adriana de Souza e Silva (NC State University, USA)
Paola Jirón Martinez (University of Chile, Chile)
Mary Gray (Microsoft/Indiana Univerisity, USA)
Ole B. Jensen (Aalborg University, Denmark)
André Lemos (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
Mimi Sheller (Drexel University, USA)
Jen Southern (Lancaster University, UK)
Phillip Vannini (Royal Roads University, Canada)

For further information, contact:
Ben Spencer, Administrative Coordinator, Mobile Media Lab
mmcconcordia@gmail.com
Concordia University, Montréal, Québec

Post-doctoral position at 80%

at the Humanities Faculty, Maison d’analyse des processus sociaux (MAPS)

(Laboratoire d’études transnationales et des processus sociaux), University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
www.unine.ch/maps-chaire

We are seeking a highly motivated post-doc who will conduct research on the project “Transnational Mobility of Academics in the Early Stages of their Careers: [...]]]> Job opening

Post-doctoral position at 80%

at the Humanities Faculty, Maison d’analyse des processus sociaux (MAPS)

(Laboratoire d’études transnationales et des processus sociaux), University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
www.unine.ch/maps-chaire

We are seeking a highly motivated post-doc who will conduct research on the project “Transnational Mobility of Academics in the Early Stages of their Careers: Transforming or Reproducing Gender Regimes” (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation).

Terms: 
Starting date January 2013 (or upon agreement); the position is a 3 year part-time (80%) appointment

Eligibility:  
- holds a PhD in a social science discipline (obtained between January 2009 and August 2012)
- demonstrates a good research and publication record in gender and migration/mobility issues
- possess excellent knowledge of quantitative (surveys, network analysis) and qualitative methodologies (biographic interviews, ego-centered networks, etc.) and research experience in both fields
- has perfect knowledge of English and perfect knowledge of French or  German with good mastery of the other language
- demonstrates an interest in interdisciplinary and team work

Salary: 
According to legal conditions of the University of Neuchâtel

A summary of the research project can be consulted at http://www2.unine.ch/maps-chaire/page-28356.html

Applicants should submit a letter of motivation, a curriculum vitae, and a representative publication (all PDF on format) no later than November 15, 2012 to Aylin Bastürk: aylin.bastuerk@unine.ch.

Questions about this position may be addressed to Professor Janine Dahinden: janine.dahinden@unine.ch

The University of Neuchâtel is an equal opportunity employer.

Planning and Religion – Exploring the Nexus in Developing Countries

Keywords: Religion, religious practices, cities, religious cities, space, mobility, gender, planning practices, master planning, Developing Countries, Asia
Deadline: 5th December 2012
—————————————————————————————–
Proposed Publisher: Routledge Earthscan
Proposed series: Questioning Cities

Editors for the proposed [...]]]> Call for chapters for the proposed book

Planning and Religion – Exploring the Nexus in Developing Countries

Keywords: Religion, religious practices, cities, religious cities, space, mobility, gender, planning practices, master planning, Developing Countries, Asia
Deadline: 5th December 2012
—————————————————————————————–
Proposed Publisher: Routledge Earthscan
Proposed series: Questioning Cities

Editors for the proposed book:
Yamini Narayanan, PhD (Urban Sustainability and Religious Studies)
School of Social Sciences and Humanities, La Trobe University
Bundoora (Melbourne campus)
VIC 3086, Australia
y.narayanan@latrobe.edu.au

Tanu Priya Uteng, PhD (Urban and Transport Planning)
Urban and Transport Planner
Planning Division
Rambøll Consultancy Services Ltd.
tanu.priya.uteng@ramboll.no
—————————————————————————————–
Please submit a 500-word abstract, title of the proposed paper and up to 6 keywords by the 5th of December 2012 to the Editors.

Book Proposal: An introduction
The book ‘Planning and Religion – Exploring the Nexus’ will study the limitations of secularist urban planning practices in cities from developing countries with specific and astounding religious character. Our initial aim was to dig for cities with a pilgrimage character, for example, Benares in India. However, after careful deliberation, we think this might overtly narrow the scope of the book so we have expanded to include cities from developing countries with a religious character. To this end, the project will examine primarily Asian cities, but the proposal remains open to include the gamut of cities from other developing countries, and explore the ramifications of religious/ideological understandings
and practices in terms of time and space. The implementation of religious practices and beliefs in the urban space gives rise to different facets of development which can provide quintessential point for deliberation and subsequent modifications for creating healthy cities. Some of these facets, for example, can be: how do religious beliefs provide a space for environmental and social activism, or pose a challenge to sustainable urban planning of the city? Are the mobility patterns included as part of the planning protocol with regard to religious practices, festivals? One of the critical contributions of this book lies in extracting the linkages between religion, sacred geography, urban-transport planning, mobility and livelihoods in major Asian cities.

The benefit of studying cities with a religious character is that the interface between the specific religion of the city and the development problematic may be more starkly presented and understood. For example, the pollution of the River Ganga flowing through the city of Varanasi in India is an excellent example of how Hindu practices may both assist and challenge the sustainability of river ecology. There are ritualistic and belief resources within religion that urban planning can – and must – utilise while devising sustainability of the city. Religion is, in such contexts, acts as critical an anthropological construct for development as culture itself.

To cite another example drawn from Varanasi, Varanasi stands at the fracture of being an “orthogenetic city” (Levy 1997: 56) – a city with its long-established, secure and continuously developing religio-cultural traditions, and a newer, multicultural city, with a secularist technical and administrative way of understanding itself. Orthogenetic transformation in a smaller city or a town would mean making whatever small social or technical adjustments that were required to adapt to developing urban life (Redfield and Singer 1954). However, for a large, high-profile and one of the largest destinations of tourist-pilgrims in India, urban planning in Varanasi both offers Hinduism a challenge and an opportunity to self-introspect, while being challenged in turn, by the vivid meaning-making religious, cultural and intellectual resources of Hinduism. In such contexts, Levy (1997: 61) calls Hinduism “a symbolic machine which has the power to organize space, time, society, and people’s private mental worlds on the large scale of the communal order of a ‘unicultural’ city. It is a kind of religion–in scale and in the uses to which it is put–which differs significantly, on the one hand, from that of simpler communities and, on the other, from that of the still larger imperial and economic orders which were to dissolve Hinduism’s kinds of cities. It is the kind of religion necessary to a city of orthogenetic transformation” (Levy 1997: 61).
The idea of putting this anthology together is also timely, particularly in light of Asia’s unprecedented, phenomenal urban growth. India, for instance, has over 500 major pilgrimage cities and several thousand minor ones (Srinivas 2008) though it’s planning policies remain purportedly secularist, concerned with technological innovations and rationalist approaches to built human settlements. Thus, creative postmodernist urban planners criticize this “secularization of our cityscapes” (Davey 2005: 207) and call for more holistic planning approaches that include appreciation of the role of religion and spirituality. Furthermore, studying the religion/planning nexus is important in light of growing religious fundamentalism and the ‘avoidable’ dentures transforming cities into communalised spaces, leading to social and spatial exclusion of the ‘other’ (AlSayyad and Massoumi 2011). This is a particularly volatile issue in cities with competing religious claims on the city’s space, heritage and identities.

Thus it will be a major task of this project to suggest ways in which the theology, informed by the intersecting dimensions of religion, gender, mobility, livelihoods and culture of pilgrimage cities may be used to inform urban planning policies in the chosen cities. Integrating religious theology into secularist urban policy may be a tricky task; however, it is also one that may be achieved through creativity and provide the most suitable striking point for sustainability in Asia. Empirical evidence from 59 countries already points to the fact that economic growth thrives when religious beliefs emphasise work ethic as a duty to God (Barro and McCleary 2003). Religious beliefs may thus similarly impact the efficiency (or inefficiency) of a range of secularist institutions such as the legal framework, governments, markets and corporations. In religious cities, these positive or negative impacts will be most obvious, because religious expressions will occur not just in beliefs but also in practices. This study will provide valuable empirical evidence of such impacts and accordingly suggest ways in which these impacts may be reflected and implemented through urban planning and development policies.
The book is envisaged to be divided in three parts. The first part will have a theoretical focus on the theme of religion and planning covering a wide range of topics ranging from religiosity – urbanism – feminity – livelihoods – media – technology – transport – disaster management etc. which we hope will initiate a dialogue on the nexus between religion and planning and set the arena for exploring the different and differentiated development regimes.

The second part will contain case studies from Asia and other developing parts of the world to cover the issues of development and religion in the pilgrimage cities of Asia.

The third or the last section will contain chapters looking into policy guidelines for easing the translation of understandings built in the first two sections.

The proposed book will be of interest to Students and Academic Research Institutions ranging from third year undergraduate, post-graduate researcher to university academia, Development Agencies, National and Local Governments, Policy Makers and policy-making institutions like The World Bank, Asian Development Bank, World Health Organisation, United National Environmental Program, United Nations Development Program etc.

Results of the Project
This project will be useful in addressing the following critical gaps in knowledge in a diverse range of disciplines – cultural studies, urban studies, religious studies, development, women’s studies, sociology, anthropology and ecology:

1. Retrieving religious understandings of religion, time, space and mobility and applying them to sustainable urban planning theory and practice using pilgrimage cities to identity important theoretical intersections more clearly
2. Identifying the cause and effect of ruptures between orthogenetic and contemporary city development in Asian cities
3. Locating the interface and tensions between religious participation in the selected cities

This book will thus attempt to clarify certain fundamentals of the developing relationships between urbanisation, modernisation, traditionalisation, and re-traditionalisation in the cities, through urban planning, development and influence of religion, gender and the many severe ecological crises that the Asian cities face in contemporary times. If you are interested in contributing a chapter to this end,

Please submit a 500-word abstract, title of the proposed paper and up to 6 keywords by the 30th of November 2012 to the Editors.

References:
AlSayyad, N & and Massoumi, M. 2011. The Fundamentalist City? Religiosity and the Remaking of Urban Space. Oxford: London.
Barro, R. J. and R. M. McCleary. 2003. Religion and Economic Growth across Countries. American Sociological Review 68(5): 760-781.
Davey, A. 2005. The Spirituality of Everyday Life. In A. Walker (Ed.), Spirituality in the City. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
Levy, R. 1997. The Power of Space in a Traditional Hindu City. International Journal of Hindu Studies, 1 (1), 55-71.
Srinivas, S. 2008. The Presence of the Baba: Body, City and Memory in a Global Religious Movement. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

A Two-Day Symposium, 6th and 7th of January 2013, Lucerne, Switzerland

The publication in English and in German of Michel Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France in the years 1970-1984 has been a key driver of the recent renaissance of research inspired by his work across the social sciences. As [...]]]> Foucault and Mobilities Research

A Two-Day Symposium, 6th and 7th of January 2013, Lucerne, Switzerland

The publication in English and in German of Michel Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France in the years 1970-1984 has been a key driver of the recent renaissance of research inspired by his work across the social sciences. As part of this, sociologists, geographers and others in the academic world have begun to draw on and work with a wider range of Foucauldian concepts than in earlier studies. Foucault’s thinking on power/knowledge, panopticism, discourse, the role of the sciences, and so on still resonates strongly across the social sciences but it is the topics that he lectured on at the Collège that arguably attract the bulk of attention: a surge of interest has occurred among social scientists in his writings on apparatuses/dispositifs, governmentality, self-government and ethics to name but a few concepts. The translation of the lectures into German and English has also brought to the fore a greater focus on the liveliness of the world, the non-discursive realm, materiality and resistance than Foucault is usually credited for. In fact, and as Philo (2012) has noted, the lectures show more than his published books that Foucault was closer to Deleuze than is often assumed.

Foucault’s work has been employed and embraced enthusiastically by ‘mobilities’ scholars (e.g. Adey, 2009; A. Jensen, 2011; Merriman, 2007; Paterson, 2008, Richardson and Jensen, 2008; Schwanen et al, 2011; Manderscheid, 2012). It can nonetheless be argued that mobilities researchers have not yet fully explored or exhausted the potential of Foucault’s philosophy for understanding mobilities.
Against this background the workshop will bring together scholars from across the social sciences with a shared interest in both mobilities and Foucauldian thinking. Mobilities are here understood broadly as the flows (or lack thereof) of people, artefacts, money, ideas, practices, and so on across a wide variety of spatial and temporal scales, both in contemporary societies or in the past.
The preliminary programme of the workshop consists of 7 sessions with overall 2 keynotes and 11 papers. The contributions are bundled into thematic groups.

■Foucault and (im)mobility
■Mobile Subjectivities
■Controlling/Securing Mobilities
■Mobility dispositifs
■Knowing and Calculating Mobilities
■Immobilisations
The workshop is organised by:
Katarina Manderscheid, Lucerne University
katharina.manderscheid@unilu.ch

Tim Schwanen, University of Oxford
tim.schwanen@ouce.ox.ac.uk

David Tyfield, Lancaster University
d.tyfield@lancaster.ac.uk

in collaboration with the Cosmobilities Network (www.cosmobilities.net)

and funded by the Swiss National Foundation (www.snf.ch)

Venue:
Day 1 (6.1.2013): KKL, Lucerne
Day 2 (7.1.2013): University of Lucerne

For more information, visit http://www.unilu.ch/deu/international-exploratory-workshop_942624.html

October 31st – November 1st, 2012
 

Governing mobilities
 

Aspirations of seamless and universal mobilities are a hallmark of social and economic life at the beginning of the 21st century. As systems of governance relying upon particular forms of governmentality developed in western societies to more effectively [...]]]> Cosmobilities Conference 2012 in Lausanne

October 31st – November 1st, 2012
 

Governing mobilities
 

Aspirations of seamless and universal mobilities are a hallmark of social and economic life at the beginning of the 21st century. As systems of governance relying upon particular forms of governmentality developed in western societies to more effectively and productively propagate and sustain the emerging capitalist system and manage its socioeconomic disjunctures, mobility has become a matter of special concern. A set of interlocking rationales, apparatus, institutions, roles and procedures of governance have come to sustain powerful `mobility regimes` justifying, stabilizing, naturalizing, controlling and disciplining particular forms of mobilities characterizing contemporary social, economic and political life in the north Atlantic rim.

 Nowadays the modern society is more than ever a “society on the move”. The development of transnational mobility systems across the world involving huge networks of transport and communication infrastructures such as airports, roads, trains, shipping and mobile communication have enabled the flow of people, money, objects, and information at an unprecedented scale. In this process massive social, economic, political and environmental processes, connecting specific social groups, places and regions and disconnecting others, are activated. Thus motility, referring to entities’ capacity to be mobile in social and geographic spaces, is becoming increasingly important.

 But the logic, form and versatility of these new, emerging mobility regimes still need to be thoroughly described and understood. Hegemonic mobility regimes such as global transport, urban and regional, corporate mobility regimes are being intensely contested and challenged by the realities of global risks, economic crises, demographic changes and alternative utopias pursued by various social actors. Controversies around climate change, for example, evidence that the cosmopolitization of societies, the potential for mobility afforded by multiple, interlocking and networked transport and communication infrastructures and the idea of a global market, critically rely upon unsustainable use of resources and increasingly fragile mobility systems.

This conference focuses on the question of which systems of governance are involved in these processes and how they are evolving as a result of these trends at a time when the future looks less and less like the past. In contrast to mainstream scientific literature and studies on transport and mobility dominated by works on travel and commuting, in this conference we propose to examine the governance of individual and collective actors’ mobility projects. In modern societies, where discourses lauding spatial  and social mobility seem prevalent, this conference aims to understand critically how public policies consider the coexistence of different types of mobility projects, and inequalities linked to this diversity.

The conference is co-organised with the MSFS’ (Mobilités spatiales, fluidités sociales) francophone conference. Joint session(s) will take place October 31st.

 This conference is free and open to the public, however we do require registration. Information, program and registration are available here:

http://lasur.epfl.ch/en/msfs/coming-conference

Or contact yann.dubois@epfl.ch

Volume 24, Pages 1-546 (September 2012)

Special Section on Theoretical Perspectives on Climate Change Mitigation in Transport

Edited by David Banister, Tim Schwanen and Jillian Anable

see http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09666923/24/supp/C