Mobilities Studies

According to Sahih Muslim, a Sunni Muslim hadith collection, women are obliged to perform their pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in today’s Saudi Arabia solely together with a legal male chaperone (mahram), i.e. one of their immediate family members, such as a father, brother, husband or son she is not eligible to marry. Shia Muslim women, however, are allowed to go for hajj or umrah (“small pilgrimage”) alone if they feel safe. The Saudi government tightened the corresponding law for all Muslim women at the end of the 1990s. Women are obliged to enter Saudi Arabia together with a mahram only until they reach the age of forty-five – but this legal rule is only applicable for women who need a visa to enter the nation state.
This chapter examines fundamental differences in the experiences had by female pilgrims regarding their male supervision according to their citizenship and their Islamic belief (Sunni or Shia Islam). By comparing three stories of women from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia, the goal is to investigate the intersecting social categories and practices of gender, Islamic belief, nationality and age as enabling or as limiting factors for women on pilgrimage. Whereas for those women whose male companionship only depends on the interpretation of the belief system their GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) nationality can be a loophole for their mobility, the Saudi legislation can be an obstacle or an empty legal shell for those female citizens who require a visa to perform pilgrimage in the holy places Mecca and Medina.

Au commencement était le campement, l’abri de fortune érigé à la va-vite pour parer au plus pressé, se mettre au sec lorsque l’orage menace, quand la fatigue fait tituber, que les poursuivants se sont lassés ou que l’on est égaré. Mais toute ancestrale que soit cette condition du naufragé et du fuyard en quête d’un gîte pour faire face à l’urgence, elle est toujours bien contemporaine, sur les trottoirs, les interstices et les terrains vagues des mégalopoles, sur les routes des exodes et le long des frontières.

Following Emily Keightley and Anna Reading in their conceptualization of ‘mediated mobilities’, I illuminate useful connections between media ecology and mobilities research and make the case for a combined modal medium theory. Both fields align clearly in their interest in technology and technique, media and modes, and messages and moods. A fruitful starting point in the suggested transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework is the exploration of the specific medium along with its materialities. In the second step, different kinds of environments and possible choreographies the medium affords ask to be considered. In a broader conceptualization, the term ‘medium’ refers not only to technological entities but also to subjects (tourists), practices (dancing), and places (cities), which likewise prompt different messages and moods. Ideally, research occurs on a synchronous level by following the routes of media and modes across space, and on a diachronous level by exploring the roots of media and modes across time. The objective is to promote a material medium literacy that questions capacities and agencies of forms and materials in their respective contexts.

Mobility has been historically tied to conceptions of cosmopolitanism, bringing forward imaginaries of belonging-in-the-world and going beyond the narrow limits of parochial allegiances into embracing virtues of openness as global citizens shaped by the experience crossing borders and encounter with the Other. Despite dominant ideas about cosmopolitans as elite itinerants of middle-class intellectuals, artists, tourists, expatriates and capitalists, global migration with its entailing forms of mobilities from below-economic migrants, transmigrants, refugees, exiles-has redefined the term to include forms of minor and vernacular cosmopolitanisms that emerge among the migrant underclass. However, just like these forms of mobilities, these types of cosmopolitanism are also bound and shaped by class, gender and ethnicity. This paper explores versions of cosmopolitanism from below in the stories of Mia Alvar in her book, In the Country, that center on female domestic workers from the Philippines. Through the transnational itineraries of these border-crossing women protagonists in contemporary Filipino fiction, the article examines the intersections and contradictions of class, gender and race in cosmopolitan imaginaries of mobilities in Southeast Asia.

Critical Mass is an international, monthly event where bicyclists briefly take over city streets to celebrate bicycling, demonstrate their collective strength and send a clear message to the public: ‘We are not blocking traffic, we are traffic!’ In this essay, I explore how Critical Mass functions as both a performative critique of motorized space and a critical response to
automobility. Rather than offering an empirical account of Critical Mass, I discuss the politics of Critical Mass through the lens of the Situationist International, or situationists – a group of avant-garde artists and architects that developed a unique program of spatial politics in the 1950s. Using the situationists as a reference point, I also explain how Critical Mass impacts the progress of formal bicycle advocacy and I contextualize vélomobility within a paradigm of utopian urbanism.

The task of studying the impact of social class on physical and mental health involves, among other things, the use of a conceptual toolbox that defines what social class is, establishes how to measure it, and sets criteria that help distinguish it from closely related concepts. One field that has recently witnessed a wealth of theoretical and conceptual research on social class is psychology, but geographers' and sociologists' attitude of diffidence toward this " positivistic " discipline has prevented them from taking advantage of this body of scholarship. This paper aims to highlight some of the most important developments in the psychological study of social class and social mobility that speak to the long-standing concerns of health geographers and sociologists with how social position, perceptions, social comparisons, and class-based identities impact health and well-being.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.11.037

https://www.waveland.com/browse.php?t=196&r=s|urban%20life
https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=9D5FDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA444&lpg=PA444&dq=%22berna+yazici%22&source=bl&ots=9oXGUhcnqg&sig=LhH71ChFYkJekU0Q3NcOzyewHwc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRweeqldrYAhUNhaYKHSkcDto4ChDoAQhdMAg#v=onepage&q=%22berna%20yazici%22&f=false

Mobilities are being greatly reshaped in order to respond to contemporary challenges, such as automobile dependence, environmental pollution and so on. Mobilities performed by Autonomous Vehicles (AV), or driverless mobilities, will play a leading role in this process due to the vast array of new possibilities they may bring. In particular, this technology will bring a sharp decrease in the overall cost of mobilities system, including their spatial, social, environmental etc. negative externalities, and notably contribute to their optimization. However, since their implementation is at a rather immature stage, many aspects including, but not limited to their potential effects, technological readiness, legal issues, ethics and societal acceptance are still largely undiscovered. Aim of this project is to elaborate on the future modus operandi of driverless mobilities, as well as to identify which are the supportive driving forces and the challenges in their implementation. Examination of two cases where driverless mobilities have been practiced, in Aalborg, Denmark and Trikala, Greece, pointed out a strong impact of three elements in making driverless mobilities. Safety goes first. Embodiment of AV into existing mobilities practices will be impossible if actual and perceived levels of safety are not high enough. Then come two factors of equal importance, namely proof of usefulness and perception of people towards them.

Anthropological studies have paid too little attention to the everyday experience of traffic, a fact all the more striking given the central place that traffic has come to occupy in urban life worldwide. I submit that the daily experience of traffic is a critical and underutilised medium for examining social inequality in a global, urban social order. My analysis invokes the spectrum of inequalities in relation to traffic in Istanbul, mapping both the hierarchies born out in paradigmatic traffic situations and certain extremes – those barred or excused from participating in the traffic scene. I argue that traffic congestion constitutes a unique zone in which cross-class encounters take place. This analytical focus on the daily experience of traffic demonstrates that urban inequality is produced not only through segregated social spaces, but also on the move.

PLEASE SEE http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00141844.2012.714395
OR http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2012.714395

This is a book about people caught between home and abroad, crossing
imperial boundaries in southeastern Europe at the beginning of the
modern age.
Through a series of life stories, which the author reconstructs with the
aid of many new sources, readers discover how certain men and women
defined and adapted their loyalties and affiliations, how they fashioned
their identities, how they enrolled their linguistic, political, economic,
and social resources to build a family and a career. Travelling between
Istanbul, Vienna, Trieste, Moscow, Bucharest, or Iaşi, individuals of
different backgrounds built their networks across borders, linking people
and objects and facilitating cultural transfer and material and social change.

In the modern globalized world, the multiple and frequent movements of immigrants, the complicated social networks that create and link two or more countries, the uncertain economic, social and political settings of the states directly affect the lives and future decisions of people pushing us to adopt new theoretical and methodological approaches, which can better grasp their transnational experiences. The approach of cultural mobilities suggested in this paper addresses the culturally and socially constructed aspect of modern mobilities through the lived experience of the immigrants themselves and studying within the specific social and economic contexts where it occurs. Ethnographer’s work is to follow mobile practices of immigrants, adopting a multi-sited approach, in order to capture all of their experience without distinguishing 'here' and 'there' which in modern times seem blurred, due to frequent movements, unforeseen paths and economic instability of countries. The case study of Albanian immigrants who work seasonally in Greece (Corinth) and often move inside the country in order to find work due to the economic crisis and visit several times a year their home to maintain their links with their relatives or other family matters demonstrates that the distinction between country of origin and destination obscured in contemporary times. Τhe mobilities of people affected by the economic and social conditions of countries thus seal the uncertainty of their future plans. These complex circumstances create mobilities; both of them are overlapping notions and must be studied together

Historically, recreational running grew partially with the aim of
controlling the side effects of “sedentary” lifestyles and physical
inactivity, i.e., obesity, heart diseases and other health risks. This
trend developed in the 19th century, with the emergence of middle
classes who had the requisite time and resources to exercise during
their leisure time. Recreational running became popular in the
1970s, within the context of renewed societal attention to fitness
and physical health, which developed in countries such as the
USA and spread quickly to other industrialised nations. Based on
ethnographic research, I discuss in this article the crucial role that
mobile tracking devices, as markers of an active lifestyle, play in
keeping runners (im)mobile. I focus on how the data generated by
GPS sports watches are widely shared and used by runners and their
followers in general as well as specialised social media platforms. I
disentangle why, paradoxically, these mobility technologies make
exemplary mobile people more immobile, because many hours
are spent behind electronic device screens to communicate (and
seeking social approval for) their mobile performances. I place my
critical anthropological analysis of recreational running and mobility
technologies within the context of wider societal trends related to
(self-)discipline.

Complex dynamics emerge around im/mobility that are related to social relations, identifications and power in many parts of the contemporary world. The manifold ways in which Muslims engage the possibilities of mobile lives show the tremendous creative potential of these practices. Coming from different disciplines and regional contexts, the contributors to this book investigate the myriad connections between Islamic concepts, Muslim practices, and gender and mobility theories. Their findings contribute to the mobility debate by revealing that im/mobile lives of people are deeply rooted in religious and/or gendered backgrounds and social structures and furthermore invite a critical rethinking of the concept of mobility itself.

This chapter is looking at ways how to better utilize classical anthropological and ethnological methodology, namely that of ethnography, for tourism research. I will argue that anthropological methods applied in combination of the ethnographic research practices of (Eastern) European ethnology in the framework of the new mobilities paradigm, would give especially fruitful results in understanding the contemporary phenomenon of tourism.

Displacement is often framed as exceptional to a presumed norm of national sedentism. However, displacement can be seen as an increasingly ubiquitous experience, deriving from conditions that throw into question the sustainability and flourishing of lives and accompanying experiences of struggle and uncertainty. Historically deep forms of dislocation and contemporary global projects of accumulation by dispossession structure how displacement is experienced by diverse populations—including many with the privilege of citizenship. This article argues for a more expansive utility of the framework of displacement (thus deexceptionalized), while attending to how specific forms of displacement unfold on the ground.

""This article is an ethnographic study of a 29-kilometer stretch of cross-border highway located in South Albania and linking the city of Gjirokaster with the main checkpoint on the Albanian–Greek border. The road, its politics, and its poetics
constitute an ideal point of entry for an anthropological analysis of contemporary South Albania. The physical and social construction, uses, and perceptions of this road uniquely encapsulate three phenomena that dominate social life in postsocialist South Albania: the transition to a market economy, new nationalisms, and massive emigration (mainly to Greece). Taking this cross-border road section as my main ethnographic
point of reference, I suggest the fruitfulness of further discussion of the relationship between roads, narratives, and anthropology.

[roads, globalization, transnationalism, development, postsocialism, materiality, Albania]""

Mobility studies emerged from a postmodern moment in which global ‘flows’ of capital, people and objects were increasingly noted and celebrated. Within this new scholarship, categories of migrancy are all seen through the same analytical lens. This book builds on, as well as critiques, past and present studies of mobility. In so doing, it challenges conceptual orientations built on binaries of difference that have impeded analyses of the interrelationship between mobility and stasis. These include methodological nationalism, which counterpoises concepts of internal and international movement and native and foreigner, and consequently normalises stasis. Instead, the book proposes a ‘regimes of mobility’ framework that addresses the relationships between mobility and immobility, localisation and transnational connection, experiences and imaginaries of migration, and rootedness and cosmopolitan openness. Within this framework and its emphasis on social fields of differential power, the various contributors to this collection ethnographically explore the disparities, inequalities, racialised representations and national mythscapes that facilitate and legitimate differential mobility and fixity. Although they examine nation-state building processes, the anthropological analysis is not confined by national boundaries.

Grounded in scholarly analysis and personal reflection, and drawing on a multi-sited and multi-method research design, Momentous Mobilities disentangles the meanings attached to temporary travels and stays abroad and offers empirical evidence as well as novel theoretical arguments to develop an anthropology of mobility. Both focusing specifically on how various societies and cultures imagine and value boundary-crossing mobilities “elsewhere” and drawing heavily on his own European lifeworld, the author examines momentous travels abroad in the context of education, work, and spiritual quests and the search for a better quality of life.

Resumen Desde los años noventa la movilidad urbana ha sido una de las principales preocupaciones de las geografías de género. En efecto, algunas geógrafas afirman que la movilidad expresa por un lado una articulación clara entre fenómenos sociales y territoriales y, por otra, es una de las experiencias cotidianas que más inciden en la calidad de vida urbana (Hanson, 2010). Esto ha permitido constatar que los pro-cesos de movilidad urbana son heterogéneos y desiguales, en la medida que tanto la estructura urbana, así como los comportamientos individuales y la percepción de los espacios urbanos están de diferentes formas influenciados por los factores socioculturales tales como género, edad, tipo de actividad, entre otras. En este con-texto este artículo explora por una parte las experiencias de viaje de las mujeres en el Metro de la Ciudad de México y el papel que juega la inseguridad y la violencia en sus desplazamientos por la urbe. Asimismo, se analizan algunos efectos que ha tenido la implementación de vagones exclusivos para mujeres en la movilidad urbana de las usuarias de este servicio.

Abstract Gender differences in urban mobility. Travel experiences of women in the Mexico City Subway. Since the nineties urban mobility has been one of the main concerns of gender geographies. Indeed, some geographers say that mobility on the one hand expresses a clear link between social and territorial phenomena and on the other, is one of the everyday experiences that most affect the quality of urban life (Hanson, 2010). This has revealed that the processes of urban mobility are heterogeneous and unequal, to the extent that both the urban structure, as well as individual behavior and perception of urban spaces is in different ways influenced by sociocultural factors such as gender, age, type of activity among others. In this context, this paper explores one hand travel experiences of women in the Mexico City Metro and the role of insecurity and violence in their travel through the city. It also analyzes some effects it has had to implement women-only cars in urban mobility of users of this service.

"Scholarship on backpackers speculates some individuals may extend backpacking to a way of life. This article empirically explores this proposition using lifestyle consumption as its framing concept and conceptualises individuals who style their lives around the enduring practice of backpacking as ‘lifestyle travellers’. Ethnographic interviews with lifestyle travellers in India and Thailand offer an emic account of the practices, ideologies and social identity that characterise lifestyle travel as a distinctive subtype within backpacking. Departing from the drifter construct, which (re)constitutes this identity as socially deviant, the concept of lifestyle allows for a contemporary appraisal of these individuals’ patterns of meaningful consumption and wider insights into how ongoing mobility can lead to different ways of understanding identities and relating to place.

Keywords: lifestyle consumption; backpacker; mobility; drifter; identity"

Automobile-based tourism during the USA Jim Crow era, while providing a mechanism for African Americans to circumvent institutionalized discrimination and segregation, was nonetheless fraught with anti-black harassment and denied accommodations, and even violence. The emotional geographies that undergirded this Jim Crow travel have traditionally not attracted significant attention from tourism scholars despite the foundational role they play in shaping current travel patterns, preferences, and anxieties among African Americans. We interpret Jim Crow travel in the context of the atmospheric politics of White supremacy that negatively affected Black motorists on the road and the counter mobility-work of African Americans using the automobile to survive, negotiate, defy, and redefine these atmospheres of uncertainty, fear, and intimidation. In particular, our paper focuses on the emotional labor behind Jim Crow automobile travel, using oral histories collected through a partnership with the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, a Knoxville, Tennessee Black heritage site, to highlight the travel experiences of people of color. Results suggest that seemingly practical and mundane driving practices, decisions, and preparations were always deeply informed by the emotion-laden work of African Americans controlling the degree to which racism might affect them and their children, both physically and psychologically, as well as controlling the extent to which their presence on the road might affect and inflame a hostile White public.

Figures of mobility, from nomads to flâneurs and tourists, have been used to describe both self and other in the social sciences and humanities for a long time. They act as a conceptual shorthand in contemporary scholarly debates, allowing social theorists to relate broad-scale phenomena to the human condition. This repeated usage highlights how these figures have become 'keywords', in the sense given by Raymond Williams, which typify much of the vocabulary constituting the study of human mobility today. In this general introduction, I lay out the overall conceptual framework behind the various contributions to this special issue.

The purpose of this doctoral study is to bring a spatial dimension into the research on urban mobilities and connect the spatial dimension to the marginalisation of cyclists in urban space. This is been done by exploring the role of urban bicycling and transport planning. The theoretical frame of space, mobilities and power is used for analysing that role through case studies in two Scandinavian cities, Copenhagen and Stockholm. Urban bicycling is a good example of showing the relation between space and mobilities, since cyclists often suffer from marginalised space in cities around the world. The philosophical foundation of the thesis is in critical realism and critical theory. For background data, observations and document studies have been conducted in Stockholm and Copenhagen. The main data collection for this thesis was done both qualitatively, in the form of interviews with planners and politicians, and quantitatively, in the form of survey studies among the citizens of Copenhagen and Stockholm. The data is analysed with the help of the theoretical framework that builds on mobility studies, spatial theory by Lefebvre, and Harvey and power theories deriving mainly from Lukes’ three dimensions of power. The materialisation of power relations is analysed with the example of modern planning in Sweden and Denmark. Overall this thesis manages to show how cycling as a mode of transport is marginalised in urban space, and that urban space wars between cyclists and car drivers and among cyclists are fought in Copenhagen as well as in Stockholm. The conclusion is that different factors, such as the economic situations in Denmark and Sweden, have affected urban and transport planning and thus have created two very different transport systems, where cycling plays a large role (Copenhagen) and a smaller role (Stockholm). Nevertheless, this thesis shows that even in cities that are very good for cycling, like Copenhagen, the motorised modes of transport create many problems and are still dominating urban space.

As cidades constituem-se como arranjo socioespacial escolhido para trabalho, educação, saúde, lazer e demais dimensões da vida cotidiana no Brasil. Desta forma, a questão da mobilidade urbana torna-se fundamental no contexto das cidades e os planos de mobilidade urbana constituem-se em ferramentas imprescindíveis para a construção do pleno deslocamento da população — fundamental para o exercício da cidadania, desenvolvimento econômico, social e sustentabilidade dos municípios. Este trabalho final de graduação tem por objetivo estudar como devem ser estabelecidos planos de mobilidade urbana para um município de médio porte considerando suas interfaces com a dimensão regional. Para compreensão do tema, foram levantados: (i) referenciais teóricos relacionados à mobilidade urbana, a partir dos marcos legais e das políticas públicas existentes no Brasil; (ii) caracterização dos diferentes modais existentes, bem como a definição de intermodalidade e (iii) planos de transporte e mobilidade urbana implantados no país, a fim de possibilitar uma breve leitura de planos e informações quanto aos seus aspectos positivos, negativos e especificidades. A revisão da literatura possibilitou (a) um entendimento sucinto do que tem sido discutido e definido, por meio de diretrizes e normas sobre o tema no atual panorama brasileiro; (b) a identificação da percepção de que o Brasil tem mostrado uma preocupação crescente em incluir a mobilidade urbana nos processos de planejamento urbano, fato já consolidado internacionalmente; (c) o delineamento de um plano básico e geral de conexões interligando as cidades que compõem a Região Administrativa de Ribeirão Preto; (d) a apresentação de um plano de mobilidade básico e geral para a cidade Ribeirão Preto, tendo como elemento interlocutor o plano de conexões proposto interligando as cidades que compõe a Região Administrativa; e (e) concentrar os estudos em eixo viário específico da Região Norte da cidade, ampliando a escala de detalhamento em função de sua complexidade e problemas de mobilidade detectados durante as etapas de levantamento. O trabalho espera colaborar no desenvolvimento e incentivo de novas análises relacionadas ao tema e os dados coletados poderão ser analisados de maneira mais específica, permitindo maior compreensão sobre cada um dos aspectos levantados.

Ce chapitre montre comment l’émergence de nouveaux espaces de sociabilité et de consommation s’articule autour de l’autonomisation de certaines pratiques sociales, comme celle du voyage, ou à une implication croissante dans des pratiques artistiques. Son analyse s’inscrit dans une sociologie des aspirations, qui transcende des milieux sociaux variés et qui se traduit par la formation ou le renforcement de nouveaux réseaux économiques et de développement d’espaces de consommation aux échelles urbaine, nationale et transnationale. La consommation du café à Téhéran, les conditions de son importation ainsi que la professionnalisation du milieu viennent illustrer les modalités de circulation des modèles de valorisation et de diffusion de certains modes de vie dans l’Iran contemporain.
https://books.openedition.org/diacritiques/6071?lang=en

Within the inclusive approach of mobility studies, migration has
been referred to as one of the most prominent forms of mobility.
However, discussing all migrants’ experiences as just
“mobile” experiences shadows the range and nuances of migration.
This paper argues and illustrates how migration can be
a form of mobility and also addresses migration as a much
nuanced form of mobility that has been rather silent in existing
literature. We examine one social condition that has informed
a range of international migrants’ experiences: their (re)organization
of gender patterns within the family on the basis of
transnational realities. We use a multi-scalar model of intersectionality
to conceptualise migratory movements as mobility,
particularly when the meaning is assigned to it on the basis of
power relationships. This way, we suggest a fruitful intersectional
analysis of migration and mobilities.

Esta dissertação discute uma das práticas de intervenção governamental mais proeminentes sobre a problemática da “vida nas ruas” - o acolhimento institucional -, com o intuito de analisar o entrelaçamento entre as lógicas de gerenciamento empregadas nos espaços onde este serviço é desempenhado e as práticas cotidianas do público acolhido. Partindo de uma reconstrução histórica da categoria população em situação de rua, exploro a trajetória de
criação da política de acolhimento e a emergência das duas modalidades com que o serviço é, atualmente, executado: os equipamentos de pernoite (abrigos/albergues) e as “repúblicas”. Estas duas modalidades são observadas a partir de quatro instituições de acolhimento situadas na cidade de Belo Horizonte, analisadas quanto às diferenças em sua execução, os espaços vivenciais que proporcionam e as formas como são articuladas pelos atores acolhidos na construção de seu cotidiano. Deste modo, o trabalho realiza uma comparação sobre como as duas modalidades de acolhimento institucional participam na produção e inauguração de formas contemporâneas de se estar em situação de rua e como estas são empreendidas no espaço da cidade.

It is hard to talk about human mobilities without taking into consideration how mobility is being shaped by and shaping processes of imagination. The key concepts of imagination and mobility have rich and complex genealogies. The matter is even made more complex because there are many related concepts surrounding them. Imagination is
associated with images, imagery and imaginaries, whereas mobility is connected to movement, motion and migration (not to mention its imagined opposite, immobility). To be able to see the forest for the trees, I focus in this critical reflection on a discussion of the concepts themselves. One of the analytical advantages of mobility studies, a
relatively novel field of study, is that it shows us how imagination (a dynamic psychological process) and imaginaries (products of the imagination) are crucial for very different forms of human (im)mobility.

Automobile-based tourism during the USA Jim Crow era, while providing a mechanism for African Americans to circumvent institutionalized discrimination and segregation, was nonetheless fraught with anti-black harassment and denied accommodations, and even violence. The emotional geographies that undergirded this Jim Crow travel have traditionally not attracted significant attention from tourism scholars despite the foundational role they play in shaping current travel patterns, preferences, and anxieties among African Americans. We interpret Jim Crow travel in the context of the atmospheric politics of White supremacy that negatively affected Black motorists on the road and the counter mobility-work of African Americans using the automobile to survive, negotiate, defy, and redefine these atmospheres of uncertainty, fear, and intimidation. In particular, our paper focuses on the emotional labor behind Jim Crow automobile travel, using oral histories collected through a partnership with the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, a Knoxville, Tennessee Black heritage site, to highlight the travel experiences of people of color. Results suggest that seemingly practical and mundane driving practices, decisions, and preparations were always deeply informed by the emotion-laden work of African Americans controlling the degree to which racism might affect them and their children, both physically and psychologically, as well as controlling the extent to which their presence on the road might affect and inflame a hostile White public.

English
This work proposes the field of road anthropology that aims at analyzing the socio-cultural construction of road behavior, beginning with the Buenos Aires ethnographic case. From a symbolic and historical perspective, and mainly through auto-ethnography and participant observation, it is explored the meanings of road behavior and its tensions vis-à-vis legal norms, identifying key maneuvers in the street play, and their associated social values. Guided by the notions of habitus, ethos and performance, the ethnographic research intends to reach the native meanings of road events, its practical rules, social metaphors, its relationship with the practice of road citizenship, and the semiotic rebelliousness that defines it. Lastly, it is proposed the usefulness of road anthropology for advising public policies to reduce Argentina’s dangerously high rate of road accidents.

Spanish
Este trabajo introduce el campo de antropología vial cuyos objetivos son analizar la construcción sociocultural del comportamiento vial en general, comenzando con el caso etnográfico de Buenos Aires. Desde una perspectiva simbólica e histórica, el trabajo, a través principalmente de auto-etnografía y observación participante, explora los sentidos de la conducta vial y sus tensiones con la normativa legal, identificando maniobras clave y los valores sociales que se observan en el "juego de la calle". La investigación etnográfica guiada por las nociones de habitus, ethos y performance, apunta a acceder a los sentidos nativos del hecho vial, reconstruir su normativa práctica, las metáforas sociales compartidas colectivamente, su relación con el ejercicio de la ciudadanía vial y la rebeldía semiótica que la define. Se propone finalmente la utilidad de la antropología vial para el asesoramiento de políticas públicas para la eventual reducción de la alta siniestralidad vial argentina.

The article takes a critical look at the highly popular figure of the NOMAD and counter-reads it with the mobile experiences of pastoral nomads and artists, who count (themselves) among its most ardent Wahlverwandte (family by choice).

Some of the core thoughts are also published in my short essay The Nomadic Artist. Three Reasons to Say Good-Bye to a Fantasy in the 2014 SOLITUDE YEARBOOK (see below)

Roads and Anthropology is the first collection of road ethnographies, edited by two pioneers in the anthropological explorations of infrastructures, the essays published in this book aim to pave the way for that rising field of anthropological research.

This book was published as a special issue of Mobilities.

Table of Contents
-Dalakoglou D. & P. Harvey. Introduction. Roads and Anthropology: Ethnographic Perspectives on Space, Time and (Im)Mobility
-Nielsen M. Roadside Inventions: Making Time and Money Work at a Road Construction Site in Mozambique
-Campbell J. Between the Material and the Figural Road: The Incompleteness of Colonial Geographies in Amazonia
-Kernaghan R. Furrows and Walls, or the Legal Topography of a Frontier Road in Peru
-Harvey P. & H. Knox. The Enchantments of Infrastructure
-Klaeger G. Rush and Relax: the Rhythms and Speeds of Touting Perishable Products on a Ghanaian Roadside
-Pedersen M. & M. Bunkenborg Roads that Separate: Sino-Mongolian Relations in the Inner Asian Desert
- Dalakoglou D. ‘The Road from Capitalism to Capitalism’: Infrastructures of (Post)Socialism in Albania