An Interview with Tim Cresswell

Tim Cresswell ; Peter Adey Academy of Mobility Humanities 2022 Mobility Humanities Vol.1 No.2

PA (Peter Adey): Firstly, I’d like to say thank you very much for agreeing to talk to us. I thought we were going to start off talking about something that has inspired the Academy of Mobility Humanities (AMH), and this journal, which is in relation to Pearce and Merriman's book and special issue of Mobilities (2017), “Mobility and the Humanities.” One of the interesting things they highlighted was a counter version of the way that the new mobilities paradigm and mobility studies could be constructed. They question the more social science driven origins, and present an alternative history to the new mobilities paradigm. Obviously, knowing your work very well, I wondered how you saw that kind of history? TC (Tim Cresswell): I think that until I saw that reference to an alternative history, I did not think that was necessary as a construct because, for me, I think that the way mobility and mobility studies became prominent was through the humanities. I never considered that it was anything other than that. And so, as they note in the paper, when I write about such things, I tend to note that thinking about mobilities connects the social sciences, the humanities, and, indeed, the arts. When I think about where my inspirations were, before the new mobilities paradigm paper and before John Urry's book, Sociology Beyond Societies (2000), there was work being done in a of number of fields, including anthropology, critical theory, philosophy, and literary studies that focused in one way or another on mobilities. So if you look at Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes(1992), you could say the only reason it’s not mobilities work was because it wasn't identified as such. It was clearly starting to talk about these ideas of transculturation and moving between things. And James Clifford was talking about living between sites, not focusing on one place as an anthropological piece of work but living across the routes with a “u” rather than roots with the two “o”s. In philosophy, there were all the works that were happening under the guise of postmodernism that cantered fluidity and the nomadic. Even in sociology, if you read a book of Zygmunt Bauman, you can call that social science or you can call that Humanities. The same is true of John Urry (Tourist Gaze, Sociology Beyond Societies, and Mobilities). If you read Mimi Sheller’s work, it is as much informed by the humanities as it is by social sciences. When I hear reference to the social sciences, I tend to think of something a bit more reductive than it needs to be. I think of a more empiricist, slightly more quantitative tradition that still tries to maintain the word “science.” But there is clearly the interpretive social sciences which overlap with the humanities. In my own work I think that all my trajectory of thinking about mobility is inspired by the Humanities or what would be recognised as humanities, including creative arts and literature.

Introduction: Practising Mobility Humanities Research

Jinhyoung Lee Academy of Mobility Humanities 2023 Mobility Humanities Vol.2 No.2

Lynne Pearce is a scholar who has been involved in bringing humanities approaches to bear upon mobility practices since around the time Lancaster University’s Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) was established by John Urry and Mimi Sheller twenty years ago. Whilst literary scholars, in particular, have been slow to respond to the invitation to engage in challenging interdisciplinary scholarship, she has been actively involved in the Centre since 2014, and is now serving as its co-director (Humanities). In recent times, Pearce has published two landmark books focusing on literary and cultural mobilities—Drivetime: Literary Excursions in Automotive Consciousness (2016) and Mobility, Memory and the Lifecourse in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture (2019)—and is also co-editor of the collection Mobilities, Literature, Culture (2019) (with Marian Aguiar and Charlotte Mathieson). In addition, she has been guest editor of several pioneering special issues—for example, “The Urban Imaginary” for Mobilities (February, 2012), “Mobility and the Humanities” for Mobilities (April, 2017) (with Peter Merriman), “Mobilities and Memory” for Mobility Humanities (July, 2022), and the double special issue, “Unruly Landscapes,” for Transfers (March and July, 2022) with Margherita Cisani, Laura Lo Presti, Giada Peterle, and Chiara Rabbiosi from the University of Padua.

Mobility, Infrastructure, and the Humanities

Peter Adey ; Jinhyoung Lee ; Giada Peterle ; and Tania Rossetto Academy of Mobility Humanities 2024 Mobility Humanities Vol.3 No.1

Mobility, suggested John Urry, is fundamental as one of “the infrastructures of social life” (13). Yet mobilities are as equally undergirded by infrastructures of systems that can both enable and disable mobilities. This special issue emerged from the 2022 Global Mobility Humanities Conference, and in this introductory article we open out several problematics which framed some of the conference and introduce further the themes explored by the special issue papers. First, we tease out the academic networks, practices and relations of a broader “infrastructuring” of the (mobility) humanities. Secondly, while theorising a mobility humanities of infrastructure, we introduce the papers by way of exploring several cross-cutting concerns. That is, we discuss how the methodological possibilities stimulated by a humanistic lens may produce nuanced accounts of infrastructures (“Methods as Infrastructures”); how mobility humanities can present the polyvocality of infrastructures, enlarging the conceptualisation of both infrastructure and infrastructuring (“Pluralising Infrastructures”); and how infrastructures can be interrogated ethically and politically in terms of a wide variety of critical issues that pertain to mobility equality, sustainability, and inclusiveness, that is, the notion of mobility justice (“[Ex]change: The [Broken] Promises of Infrastructures.” Thus, we hope this special issue functions as a powerful and productive trigger to stimulate more encounters and develop generative conversations.

An Anthropological Approach to Mobilities: Noel B. Salazar

Taehee Kim Academy of Mobility Humanities 2024 Mobility Humanities Vol.3 No.1

As Noel B. Salazar maintains, anthropology, which straddles social sciences and humanities, provides distinct perspectives on mobility research by dismantling concepts and theories that presume unitary cultures in fixed places. This brief contribution considers two facets of such an anthropological approach to mobilities: imagination and scale. Imagination can be used not only as a subject but also as a method of studying mobility. In particular, the “following” methods of mobility research require imaginative mobilities, which are linked to the representation of mobility in works of literature and art, making it a key area of research within the field of mobility humanities. Furthermore, the concept of scale presents a significant methodological challenge in mobility studies. If mobility research employs a multiscalar approach to mobilities, it becomes evident that the transnational scale is manifested within the national scale. Additionally, it becomes clear that mobility at one scale can coexist with immobility at another, challenging the binary opposition of immobility and mobility. In this context, the new mobilities paradigm challenges the normalisation of stasis as well as the naturalisation of movement. Scrutinising notions of imagination and scale utilised in the anthropological approach to mobilities can defy preconceived assumptions in much mobility research that is based on such binaries.

Introduction: Moveo, Ergo Sum

Inseop Shin ; Jinhyoung Lee Academy of Mobility Humanities 2023 Mobility Humanities Vol.2 No.1

This special issue traces back to the 2021 Global Mobility Humanities Conference (GMHC), organised online by the Academy of Mobility Humanities, Konkuk University, on Oct. 29 and 30, 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the physically restricted mobilities experienced globally at the time brought to attention the relevance of the conference, “moveo, ergo sum,” that was previously used to address the topic of “human identity” (Bergmann 21) or the idea of “becoming through mobility” (Salazar 8). Unlike René Descartes, who had to travel abroad to seek a fixed axiom, “Cogito, ergo sum,” the conference participants, crossing arts, cultural and literary studies, geography, philosophy, sociology, and urban design, discussed mobilities whilst acknowledging their forced immobility, critically revisiting the specific “mobilitarian ideology” (Mincke 27) that prioritises mobility over immobility.

An Interview with Noel B. Salazar

Noel B. Salazar ; Taehee kim Academy of Mobility Humanities 2024 Mobility Humanities Vol.3 No.1

Noel B. Salazar is Professor in Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven, Belgium. He is editor of the Worlds in Motion (Berghahn) book series, co-editor of Pacing Mobilities (2020), Methodologies of Mobility (2017), Keywords of Mobility (2016), Regimes of Mobility (2014) and Tourism Imaginaries (2014), and author of Momentous Mobilities (2018), Envisioning Eden (2010) and numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on mobility. Salazar sits on the editorial boards of, among others, Transfers, Applied Mobilities, Mobility Humanities, and Mobile Culture Studies Journal. He is founder of Cultural Mobilities Research (CuMoRe) and of the EASA Anthropology and Mobility Network (AnthroMob).

Introduction: Ontology of Movement as a Framework for the Mobility Studies

Taehee Kim Academy of Mobility Humanities 2023 Mobility Humanities Vol.2 No.1

It has been almost two decades since “a whole new kinetic paradigm" or “a new paradigm defined by motion,” mentioned in the epigraph quoted above, was brought to light in the name of the "new mobilities paradigm" (Sheller and Urry 207). This inauguration of the paradigm was arguably the result of "an almost/not quite ontology which is gradually gathering momentum around the key trope of 'mobility'" (Thrift 258). Needless to say, there has been no lack of criticism and resistance to this paradigm. For instance, critics discerned that "if mobility is everything," as is often assumed to be the case in this paradigm, "then it is nothing," since the difference between mobility and immobility and among diverse types of mobility cannot be discerned and, consequently, mobility has no explanatory power (Adey 75). More radically, it was criticised that every vocabulary of this research program's name, "new mobilities paradigm," qualifying it as “new,” focussing on “mobilities,” and designating it as a “paradigm,” was problematic (Cresswell, "Towards a Politics of Mobility" 18).

Mobility/Fixity: Rethinking Binaries in Mobility Studies

Peter Merriman Academy of Mobility Humanities 2023 Mobility Humanities Vol.2 No.1

In this paper, I outline some of the different conceptual approaches to mobility and immobility/fixity that have emerged in mobility studies over the past few decades, connecting this work to broader philosophical and methodological debates in the humanities and social sciences. I discuss writings which have distinguished between mobility and moorings, mobility and motility, and nomadic and sedentary metaphysics, before focussing upon studies which either approach mobility-fixity as a continuum, or highlight the many qualities, events and experiences which traverse or cut across this binary. In the final section I outline Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theoretical approach to movement, affect and becoming, in which they distinguish between molar and molecular becomings and movements. By adopting a processual and non-representational approach to mobility and stasis I argue that the problem is not one of understanding when and why things move or are still, but of tracing when and how movements become perceptible and imperceptible.

Introduction: Mobility Justice and the Era of (Post-)pandemic

Taehee Kim Academy of Mobility Humanities 2022 Mobility Humanities Vol.1 No.1

Professor Mimi Sheller visited the Academy of Mobility Humanities (AMH) in December 2019 to hold a special lecture titled “Movements for Mobility Justice,” and to commemorate the publication of the Korean edition of her celebrated book Mobility Justice. On this occasion, I was honoured to interview this distinguished scholar who is widely acknowledged in mobilities studies. This interview, which was held on December 12, 2019 at Konkuk University in Seoul, was planned for the interdisciplinary journal of Mobility Humanities, embracing the perspective of “the humanities of mobility, that is,the mobility humanities” (Kim et al. 100) which was then at the stage of planning and the inaugural issue of which is now present in this form.

Introduction: Understanding Neo-nomadic Mobilities beyond Self-actualisation

Fabiola Mancinelli ; Noel B. Salazar Academy of Mobility Humanities 2023 Mobility Humanities Vol.2 No.2

In 2018, Noel Salazar presented a paper at the 5th World Humanities Forum in Busan, South Korea, entitled “Moveo Ergo Sum: Mobility as Vital to Humanity and Its (Self)image,” in which he reflected on the existential need for people to move. Moveo ergo sum became the motto for the 2021 Global Mobility Humanities Conference (GMHC), encouraging us to think about the multiple ways in which mobility intersects with the construction of modern subjectivities (Salazar, “Introduction”). The expression recalled a quote from one of Fabiola Mancinelli’s research participants, a digital nomad from the US, whose words and unusual biography as a location-independent entrepreneur read like a declaration of selfactualisation through mobility, the desire to realise her full potential by constantly putting herself outside her comfort zone: “Travel is who I am, and this is not negotiable” (426). This remarkable coincidence was the trigger for us to propose the panel “Understanding Neonomadic Mobilities beyond Self-actualisation” to unpack the mobility-identity nexus as an analytical lens to explore the phenomenon of contemporary nomads.