Mobility, mobilities, immobility: What's in a name? (original) (raw)

Abstract

As a concept, mobility nicely captures the common impression that our lifeworld is in constant flux, with people circulating across the planet. The scholarly literature is replete with metaphors attempting to describe (perceived) altered spatial and temporal movements. Figures of mobile people, too, including the nomad, the pedestrian, the flâneur, the pilgrim, the tourist and the exile, have been used to describe both self and other in the social sciences and humanities for a long time. Such figures act as a conceptual shorthand in contemporary scholarly debates, allowing social theorists to relate broad-scale phenomena to the human condition. Taking the societal implications of various forms of mobility and immobility seriously and not as a given, the critical discussion of people ‘on the move’ during this lecture will help us to figure out the analytical purchase of the conceptual perspective of mobility studies to normalize movement within the single category of ‘mobility’.

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