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Mobile Lives PDF

203 Pages·2010·2.19 MB·English
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Mobile Lives How should we understand the personal and social impacts of complex mobility systems? What are the costs of mobile lives? Can lifestyles based around intensive travel, transport and tourism be maintained in the twenty-first century? What are the possibilities of developing post-carbon lifestyles? In this provocative study of ‘life on the move’, Anthony Elliott and John Urry explore how complex mobility systems are transforming everyday, ordin ary lives. The authors develop their arguments through an analysis of various sectors of mobile lives: networks, new digital tech nologies, consumer ism, the lifestyles of ‘globals’ and intimate relation ships at-a- distance. Elliott and Urry introduce a range of new concepts – miniaturized mobilities, affect storage, network capital, meetingness, neighbourhood lives, portable personh ood, ambient place, globals– to capture the specific ways in which mobility systems intersect with mobile lives. This book represents a novel approach in ‘post-carbon’ social theory. It will be essential reading for advanced undergraduate students, post - graduates and teachers in sociology, social theory, politics, geography, international relations, cultural studies, economics and business studies. Anthony Elliottis Chair of Sociology at Flinders University, Australia, and Visiting Research Professor at the Open University, UK. His recent books include Contemporary Social Theory: An Introduction (2009), The New Indi vidualism 2nd Edition (with Charles Lemert, 2009), The Routledge Companion to Social Theory (editor, 2010) and Globalization: A Reader (co-editor, 2010) – all published by Routledge. John Urryis Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, UK, where he is Director of the Centre for Mobilities Research. His recent books include Mobile Technologies of the City (co-editor, Routledge, 2006), Mobilities(Polity, 2007), Aeromobilities(co-editor, 2009), After the Car (co-author, Polity, 2009) and Mobile Methods(co-editor, 2010). International Library of Sociology Founded by Karl Mannheim Editor: John Urry, Lancaster University Recent publications in this series After Method include: Mess in social science research John Law Risk and Technological Culture Towards a sociology of virulence Brands Joost Van Loon Logos of the global economy Celia Lury Reconnecting Culture, Technology and Nature The Culture of Exception Mike Michael Sociology facing the camp Bülent Diken and Carsten Bagge Advertising Myths Laustsen The strange half lives of images and commodities Visual Worlds Anne M. Cronin John Hall, Blake Stimson and Lisa Tamiris Becker Adorno on Popular Culture Robert R. Witkin Time, Innovation and Mobilities Travel in technological cultures Consuming the Caribbean Peter Frank Peters From arkwarks to zombies Mimi Sheller Complexity and Social Movements Multitudes acting at the edge of Between Sex and Power chaos Family in the world, 1900–2000 Ian Welsh and Graeme Chesters Goran Therborn Qualitative Complexity States of Knowledge Ecology, cognitive processes and The co-production of social science the re-emergence of structures in and social order post-humanist social theory Sheila Jasanoff Chris Jenks and John Smith Theories of the Information Society Sound Moves 3rd Edition IPod culture and urban experience Frank Webster Michael Bull Crime and Punishment in Jean Baudrillard Contemporary Culture Fatal theories Claire Grant David B. Clarke, Marcus A. Doel, William Merrin and Richard G. Mediating Nature Smith Nils Lindahl Elliot Aeromobilities Haunting the Knowledge Economy Theory and method Jane Kenway, Elizabeth Bullen, Saulo Cwerner, Sven Kesselring and Johannah Fahey and Simon Robb John Urry Global Nomads Social Transationalism Techno and new age as transnational Steffen Mau countercultures in Ibiza and Goa Anthony D’Andrea Towards Relational Sociology Nick Crossley The Cinematic Tourist Explorations in globalization, culture Unintended Outcomes of Social and resistance Movements Rodanthi Tzanelli The 1989 Chinese Student Movement Non-Representational Theory Fang Deng Space, politics, affect Nigel Thrift Mobile Lives Anthony Elliott and John Urry Urban Fears and Global Terrors Citizenship, multicultures and Forthcoming in the series: belongings after 7/7 Victor J. Seidler Global China Lash Scott, Keith Michael, Sociology through the Projector Arnoldi Jakob, and Rooker Tyler Bülent Diken and Carsten Bagge Laustsen Stillness in a Mobile World David Bissell and Gillian Fuller Multicultural Horizons Diversity and the limits of the civil Revolt, Revolution, Critique nation The paradox of society Anne-Marie Fortier Bulent Diken Mobile Lives Anthony Elliott and John Urry First published 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Anthony Elliott and John Urry All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Elliott, Anthony. Mobile lives: self, excess and nature/by Anthony Elliott and John Urry. p. cm. 1. Transportation – Social aspects. 2. Civilization, Modern. 3. Information technology – Social aspects. 4. Sociology – Philosophy. 5. Social sciences – Philosophy. I. Urry, John. II. Title. HE147.5.E45 2010 303.48’32 –dc22 2009050207 ISBN 0-203-88704-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0–415–48020–5 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–48022–1 (pbk) ISBN10: 0–203–88704–2 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–48020–8 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–48022–2 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–88704–2 (ebk) Contents List of figures viii Preface ix Acknowledgements xiii 1 Mobile lives: a step too far? 1 2 New technologies, new mobilities 25 3 Networks and inequalities 45 4 The globals and their mobilities 65 5 Mobile relationships: intimacy at-a-distance 85 6 Consuming to excess 113 7 Contested futures 131 Afterword 155 References and notes 161 Index 183 Figures All images © Ross Harley, reproduced with permission 1.1 Baggage collection, Xian Xianyang International Airport, 2007 xiv 1.2 Announcement board, Prague International Airport, 2007 12 2.1 Online services, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, 2007 24 2.2 Departure hall, Seoul Incheon International Airport, 2007 35 3.1 Internet lounge, Seoul Incheon International Airport, 2007 44 3.2 Connect Zone, Seoul Incheon International Airport, 2007 55 4.1 Global time display, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, 2007 66 4.2 Departure hall, Seoul Incheon International Airport, 2007 75 5.1 Travelator, Dubai International Airport, 2007 84 5.2 Sleep Inn, George Bush Intercontinental Airport Houston, 2007 99 6.1 Holland Casino, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, 2007 112 6.2 Travelex queue, Prague International Airport, 2007 122 Preface Consider the following irony. People today are ‘on the move’, and arguably as never before. Massive social changes – globalization, mobile techn ol- ogies, intensive consumerism and climate change – are implicated in the ever-increasing movement of people, things, capital, information and ideas around the globe. It is estimated that people today travel 23 billion kilometres each year. By 2050 it is predicted that, if resource constraints do not intervene, this will increase fourfold to 106 billion kilometres each year.1Travel and tourism make up the largest industry in the world, worth in excess of $7 trillion annually. The number of international flight arrivals nears one billion. People today are travelling further, faster and (for some at least) more frequently. While many choose to travel, others are forced to be ‘on the move’. Asylum seekers, refugees and forced migration also proliferate. Add to this a rapid explosion in communicative and virtual mobilities, with more mobile phones than landline phones and over one billion internet users, and it is clear that a golden age of mobility has truly arrived – bringing with it dizzying possi bilities and terrifying risks. Mean - while, some social scientists warn of the dangers of declaring that there really is any ‘epochal social change’ taking place here; there is business as usual. How might we account for such denial? Why is it that, in a globalizing world based on accelerating mobilities, issues concerning transformations of movement are mostly neglected by mainstream social science? This and other difficult questions surrounding issues of movement are asked and answered in the ‘mobilities paradigm’ – which is a systematic sociology of mobility transformations, as detailed in John Urry’s Mobilities. Mobile Livesraises many newquestions about the intersections of insti - tut ional mobility systems and transformed, everyday, ordinary lives. The argu ment of the book is that changes in how people live their lives today are both affected by and reflect the broader changes of global mobility

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