Call for Papers:

Ad-hoc Session Proposal, ISA World Congress of Sociology, 11-17 July 2010 in Gothenburg

Sustainable Futures and Spatial Mobility Regimes

Peak oil and climate change have brought to the fore the centrality of mobility to social and economic life and the urgent pressures to develop alternative mobilities. Hosting half the world’s population, cities are increasingly important actors in achieving low carbon futures and privileged sites where the moral dilemmas of modern techno-utopias are being  rehearsed. In the context of transport, sustainable futures are haunted between idyllic  visions of clean, just and democratised mobilities such as those projected by Masdar city in Abu Dhabi or Dongtan ecocity in China and present and distopias of splintering urbanisms, ever growing slums, large scale infrastructural collapse and climate related disasters.

We welcome contributions covering the following and related aspects of urban future mobilities:

i.mobilities futures being created by current techno-social developments;

ii.mobilities futures are being envisioned by relevant political actors and what possible shortcomings do they entail from a sociological perspective;

iii.conflicts between ecological restrictions and social needs concerning transportation

iv.the performative role of expectations and hope in shaping urban mobility regimes

v.the connected understandings of social inequality and mobility justice, and

vi.social and cultural forms implied in visions of future mobilities.

Please email your paper proposal including title, short description (200 words), your name, co-authors, email address and affiliation before 1 December 2009 to both session organisers

j.caletrio@lancaster.ac.uk and katharina.manderscheid@unilu.ch

Organisers:

Cosmobilities Network