Course intro
Another name for this course could be, “The Politics of Mobility and Place.” It’s based on the concept of mobility justice from sociologist Mimi Sheller, which itself draws on the new mobilities paradigm that sociologist John Urry (and Sheller, and many others) started about two decades ago. The basic idea is that social science–even geography–usually studies concepts that are fixed in place, while assuming sedentarism as the norm. But we also move, all the time, and so our social-environmental-political-cultural-economic processes are comprised of people and objects moving, not just standing still. How do we study mobility? How do we take into account who gets to move and who doesn’t, who has to move and who doesn’t, how material objects enable and inhibit mobility, and more? These questions are what this course is about.
Housekeeping
My e-mail is jcidell@illinois.edu, and you can schedule a meeting with me through Calendar Bridge. I’m in NHB 2068, and I’m usually in my office when I’m not in class.
Readings are available through the class Box folder or the library.
External websites you’ll need include Miro.com, where you’ll need to create an account and join my team. (The Miro orientation board is here and the class activity board is here.)
Course requirements
There are six main components to this course, intended to integrate different aspects of the material, to give you a chance to pursue your own interests, and to build a community of mobility justice scholars. They are as follows:
- Participation (20 percent). This is a discussion-based course, so it relies on your input. However, there is more than one way to participate in a course. You’ll fill out a participation rubric early in the semester, set goals for yourself, and evaluate yourself over the course of the semester. (If you’re unable to attend class in person, you can still participate in the discussion on Miro.)
- Preparing for discussion (25 percent). This will help you to be fully prepared for class by writing short responses based on the week’s readings. Your responses will be due at 10 AM Monday and Wednesday and will help to formulate topics and questions. (Of the 27 possible weeks, you can miss 5 with no penalty.) For the response papers, we’ll use the QAQC method, borrowed from Dr. Jovan Scott Lewis of UC Berkeley. For each of the day’s readings, do the following:
- Quotation: Quote a sentence from the text that you think is central to the author’s argument (note: it doesn’t have to summarize the whole argument, just be central to it).
- Argument: In one paragraph, state the author’s argument. Be sure to include both what the author is arguing for and arguing against, as relevant.
- Question: Raise a question you think is not completely answered by the text. The question should not simply be a question of fact.
- Connection: Connect the argument of this text to an argument or point you find in another reading, in previous class discussions, or from outside of class. Cite and quote as appropriate, and explain how the reading’s argument connects with the other source’s argument or point.
- Presenting others’ work (5 percent). I’m focusing on articles rather than books to keep costs down and to discuss a wider variety of material, but it’s also valuable to see how an author engages in depth with a single topic. You will choose a book on mobility justice (some possibilities are here) and give the class a 10-minute presentation on the book. This should not just be a bullet-pointed summary of the book, nor simply a critique. What did the author set out to do, and to what extent did they do it? What does it contribute to the literature? How do the different chapters fit together into a single argument? How might it be a model for your own work? Who should read it and why? Sign up for a date to present here and label yourself as a Presenter.
- Mini term paper I (25 percent). The new paradigm of mobilities requires new methods. For this paper, you’ll choose one of the methods commonly used by mobilities researchers and put together an annotated bibliography of 5-7 readings explaining and using that method. Examples include go-alongs or mobile interviews, videography, mobile ethnography, traveling-with, time-space diaries, follow-the-thing, dérive, auto-ethnography, qualitative GIS, and more. This paper will be due at the start of spring break.
- Mini term paper II (25 percent). This is more like a conventional seminar paper, where you will choose a very specific topic and do a review-and-agenda paper (also 2500-3000 words). What’s the current state-of-the-art work on this topic? Which previous authors and disciplinary approaches is that work based on? Where is this topic going, or what are the open questions, and how might you contribute? This paper will be due at the end of the term.
Course readings
Week 1: Introduction
1. Cresswell, Tim. (2010). Towards a politics of mobility. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space volume 28: 17-31.
2. Sheller, Mimi. (2018). Theorising mobility justice. Tempo Social 30(2): 17-34.
Week 2: Automobility
Class 2a: The system of automobility
1. Urry, John. (2004). The ‘System’ of Automobility. Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4–5): 25–39.
2. Culver, Gregg. (2018). Death and the Car: On (Auto)Mobility, Violence, and Injustice. ACME 17(1): 144–70.
Class 2b: Cars as material objects
1. Henderson, Jason. (2020). EVs Are Not the Answer: A Mobility Justice Critique of Electric Vehicle Transitions. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 110(6): 1993-2010.
2. Pollard, Jane, Blumenberg, Evelyn, and Brumbaugh, Stephen. (2021) Driven to
Debt: Social Reproduction and (Auto)Mobility in Los Angeles. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 111:5, 1445-1461.
3. Kurnicki, Karol. (2021). What do cars do when they are parked? Material objects and infrastructuring in social practices. Mobilities 17(1): 37–52.
Week 3: Engineering
Class 3a: Small infrastructure
1. Prytherch, David. (2021). Reimagining the physical/social infrastructure of the American street: policy and design for mobility justice and conviviality. Urban Geography 43(5): 688-712.
2. Farmer, Stephanie. (2014). Cities as risk managers: the impact of Chicago’s parking meter P3 on municipal governance and transportation planning. Environment and Planning A 46: 2160 – 2174.
3. Sepehr, Pouya (2024). Mundane Urban Governance and AI Oversight: The Case of Vienna’s Intelligent Pedestrian Traffic Lights. Journal of Urban Technology https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2024.2302280.
Class 3b: The work of traffic engineering
1. Siemiatycki, Matti, Enright, Theresa, and Valverde, Mariana. (2020). The gendered production of infrastructure. Progress in Human Geography 44(2): 297-314.
2. Culver, Gregg. (2015). A bridge too far: Traffic engineering science and the politics of rebuilding Milwaukee’s Hoan Bridge. In Cidell, Julie and Prytherch, David, eds., Transport, Mobility, and the Production of Urban Space. New York: Routledge, pp. 81-99.
3. Lowe, Kate. (2024). Reframing Data-Driven Decision Framing as Academic Experts. In Cidell, Julie, ed., A Research Agenda for Transport Equity and Mobility Justice, London: Edward Elgar, Chapter 13.
Week 4: Transit
Class 4a: The meaning of transit systems
1. Enright, T. (2013). Mass transportation in the neoliberal city: the mobilizing myths of the Grand Paris Express. Environment and Planning A 45: 797-813.
2. Enright, T. (2019). Transit justice as spatial justice: learning from activists. Mobilities 14(5): 665-680.
3. Olsson, Lina and Thomas, Ren. (2024) Mobility justice or transit boosterism? The use of rail transit as an urban transformation strategy in Kitchener, Canada, and Malmö, Sweden. Mobilities 19(4): 663-685.
Class 4b: The experience of transit
Jigsaw (pick one of the following on Miro):
I. Bovo, Martina, Briata, Paola, and Bricocoli, Massimo. (2023). A bus as a compressed public space: Everyday multiculturalism in Milan. Urban Studies 60(15): 2979–2993.
II. Kusters, Annelies. (2017). When transport becomes a destination: deaf spaces and networks on the Mumbai suburban trains. Journal of Cultural Geography 34(2): 170-193.
III. Rink, Bradley. (2016). Race and the Micropolitics of Mobility: Mobile Autoethnography on a South African Bus Service. Transfers 6(1): 62–79.
IV. Wenglenski, Sandrine. (2023). Small arrangements with self and others: A visual study of the everyday ordinary on Paris’s A train. Urban Studies 60(15): 2994–3009.
Week 5: Large infrastructure
Class 5a: Infrastructure and the city
1. Siemiatycki, M. (2006). Message in a Metro: Building Urban Rail Infrastructure and Image in Delhi, India. IJURR 30(2): 277-292.
2. Jigsaw (pick one of the following on Miro):
I. Zigmund, Stephen (2022). Infrastructural excess: the branding and securing of bus rapid
transit in Cleveland, Ohio. Urban Geography 43(3): 427–447.
II. Beier, R. (2020). The world-class city comes by tramway: Reframing Casablanca’s urban peripheries through public transport. Urban Studies 57(9): 1827-1844.
III. Harris, A. (2018). Engineering formality: flyover and skywalk construction in Mumbai. IJURR 42(2): 295-314.
IV. Pérez Fernández, Federico. (2024). Retrofit: Aerial cable cars and the reengineering of urban peripheries. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, DOI: 10.1177/02637758241274648.
Class 5b: Infrastructure and the nation-state
1. Cowen, Deborah. (2020). Following the infrastructures of empire: notes on cities, settler colonialism, and method. Urban Geography, 41:4, 469-486.
2. Turner, Sarah, Nguyen, Binh, and Hykes, Madeleine. (2024). A train reaction: the infrastructural politics and mobility injustices accompanying Hanoi’s new urban railway Line 2A. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 45: 225–246.
3. García-Mejuto, Diego. (2022). Theorizing nation-building through high-speed rail development: Hegemony and space in the Basque Country, Spain. EPA: Economy and Space 54(3): 554–571.
Week 6: Labor
Class 6a: Mobility workers
1. Gregson, Nicky. (2017). Logistics at Work: Trucks, Containers and the Friction of Circulation in the UK. Mobilities 12(3): 343-364.
2. Rekhviashvili, Lela and Sgibnev, Wladimir (2018). Placing Transport Workers on the Agenda: The Conflicting Logics of Governing Mobility on Bishkek’s Marshrutkas. Antipode 50(5): 1376-1395.
3. Vitrano, Chiara and Kębłowski, Wojciech. (2024) ‘Bouncing between the buses like a kangaroo’: efficient transport, exhausted workers. Mobilities 19(3): 396-412.
Class 6b: Working with mobility
1. Ferguson, Harry. (2009). Driven to Care: The Car, Automobility and Social Work. Mobilities 4(2): 275–293.
2. Gregson, Nicky. (2023). Work, labour and mobility: opening up a dialogue between mobilities and political economy through mobile work. Mobilities 18(6): 888-902.
Week 7: Logistics
Class 7a: The global logistics system
1. Levinson, Marc. (2006). The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. Chapter 1, part of Chapter 2, part of Chapter 14.
2. Cowen, Deborah (2010). A Geography of Logistics: Market Authority and the Security of Supply Chains. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100(3): 600-620.
3. Gregson, Nicky, Crang, Mike, and Antonopoulos, Constantinos. (2017). Holding together logistical worlds: Friction, seams and circulation in the emerging ‘global warehouse.’ Environment and Planning D 35(3): 381-398.
Class 7b: The logistical city
1. Danyluk, Martin. (2021). Supply-Chain Urbanism: Constructing and Contesting the Logistics City. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 111(7): 2149-2164.
2. Jigsaw (pick one of the following on Miro):
I. De Lara, Juan. (2018). “This Port Is Killing People”: Sustainability without Justice in the Neo-Keynesian Green City. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(2): 538-548.
II. Apostolopolou, Elia. (2024). The dragon’s head or Athens’ sacrifice zone? Spatiotemporal disjuncture, logistical disruptions,and urban infrastructural justice in Piraeus port, Greece. Urban Geography, DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2024.243.
III. Simpson, Michael. (2022) Fossil urbanism: fossil fuel flows, settler colonial circulations, and the production of carbon cities. Urban Geography 43(1): 101-122.
IV. Jenss, Alke. (2020). Global flows and everyday violence in urban space: The port-city of Buenaventura, Colombia. Political Geography 77: 102113.
Week 8: Climate change
Class 8a: Mobility and climate change
1. Schwanen, Tim. (2019). Transport geography, climate change and space: opportunity for new thinking. Journal of Transport Geography 81: 102530.
2. Rau, Henrike and Matern, Antonia. (2024). Mobility practices in a changing climate: Understanding shifts in car ownership and use across the life course. Mobilities, 19:5, 869-888.
3. Everuss, Louis. (2023). Using mobilities theory to study the nexus between climate change and human movement. Australian Geographer 54(4): 449–458.
Class 8b: Climate coloniality and mobility
1. Whyte, Kyle, Talley, Jared, and Gibson, Julia. (2019). Indigenous mobility traditions, colonialism, and the anthropocene. Mobilities 14(3): 319–335.
2. Mimi Sheller (2023) Mobility justice after climate coloniality: mobile commoning as a relational ethics of care. Australian Geographer 54(4): 433-447.
SPRING BREAK
Week 9: No class (American Association of Geographers’ Annual Meeting)
Week 10: Velomobilities
Class 10a: Cycling systems
1. Spinney, Justin. (2024). Moving beyond cycling in support of economic growth: using a capabilities approach to identify infrastructure design principles. In Cidell, Julie, ed., A Research Agenda for Transport Equity and Mobility Justice, London: Edward Elgar, Chapter 4.
2. Larsen, Jonas. (2017). The making of a pro-cycling city: Social practices and bicycle mobilities. Environment and Planning A 49(4): 876–892.
3. Ravensbergen, Lea, et al. 2024. Cycling as social practice: a collective autoethnography on power and vélomobility in the city. Mobilities 19(2): 329-343.
Class 10b: People on bikes
1. Spinney, Justin. (2011). A Chance to Catch a Breath: Using Mobile Video Ethnography in Cycling Research. Mobilities 6(2): 161–182.
2. Behrendt, Frauke. (2018). Why cycling matters for electric mobility: towards diverse, active and sustainable e-mobilities. Mobilities 13(1): 64-80.
3. Waitt, Gordan, Buchanan, Ian, Lea, Tess, and Fuller, Glen. (2023) The languishing bike: depleting capacities of cycling-bodies. Social & Cultural Geography 24(6) 987-1004.
Week 11: Different bodies, different mobilities
Class 11a: Disability and mobility
Jigsaw (pick one of the following on Miro):
I. Imrie, Rob. (2012). Auto-disabilities: the case of shared space environments. Environment and Planning A 44: 2260 – 2277.
II. White, Lauren. (2023) ‘I have to know where I can go’: mundane mobilities and everyday public toilet access for people living with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Social & Cultural Geography 24(5): 851-869.
III. Stock, Robert. (2023). Broken elevators, temporalities of breakdown, and open data: how wheelchair mobility, social media activism and situated knowledge negotiate public transport systems. Mobilities 18(1): 132–147.
IV. Harada, Theresa and Waitt, Gordon. (2023) Geographies, mobilities and politics for disabled people: power-assisted device practice. Australian Geographer 54(4): 515-526.
Class 11b: Elderly mobilities
1. den Hoed, Wilbert and Paolo Russo, Antonio. (2024). Aging, everyday active mobility and the challenge of the tourist city: an illustration from Barcelona. Urban Geography https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2024.2436830.
2. Harada, Theresa, Birtchnell, Thomas and Du, Bo. (2023) The rush of the rush hour: mobility justice for seniors on public transport in Sydney, Australia. Social and Cultural Geography 24(2): 212-231.
3. Finlay, Jessica. (2018). ‘Walk like a penguin’: Older Minnesotans’ experiences of (non)therapeutic white space. Social Science & Medicine 198: 77–84.
Week 12: Informal mobilities
Class 12a: Understanding informality
1. Rekhviashvili, Lela et al. (2022). Informalities in urban transport: Mobilities at the heart of contestations over (in)formalisation processes. Geoforum 136: 225–231.
2. Prins, Annemiek (2024): Reconfiguring rickshaw mobilities: formalization and exception in Dhaka’s diplomatic zone. Mobilities https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2024.2412116.
Class 12b: Informality in action
1. Murthy, Manas and Sur, Malini. (2023) Cycling as work: mobility and informality in Indian cities. Mobilities 18(6): 855-871.
2. Toro Lopez, Maritza and Van den Broeck, Pieter. (2023). Informal transportation systems in the region of Uraba in Colombia through the lens of everyday forms of resistance. Mobilities 18(3): 468–488.
3. Kębłowski, Wojciech and Rekhviashvili, Lela. (2022). Moving in informal circles in the global North: An inquiry into the navettes in Brussels. Geoforum 136: 251-261.
Week 13: Policing and surveillance
Class 13a: Systems of policing mobility
1. Hopkins, E. and Sanchez, M. (2022). Chicago’s “Race-Neutral” Traffic Cameras Ticket Black and Latino Drivers the Most. ProPublica, https://www.propublica.org/article/chicagos-race-neutral-traffic-cameras-ticket-black-and-latino-drivers-the-most.
2. Nowak, Zachary. (2022). The railway panopticon: State formation, carceral power, and everyday policing in the late-nineteenth-century train station. Political Geography 97: 102624.
3. Lee, Do Jun and Wang, Jing. (2024) From threat to essentially sacrificial: racial capitalism, (im)mobilities, and food delivery workers in New York City during Covid-19. Mobilities 19(6): 1023-1040.
Class 13b: Enforcement and alternatives
1. Turner, Sara (2020). Informal motorbike taxi drivers and mobility injustice on Hanoi’s streets. Negotiating the curve of a new narrative. Journal of Transport Geography 85: 102728.
2. Chowdhury, R. (2020). Homosocial trust in urban policing: Masculinities and traffic law enforcement in the gendered city. City 24(3-4): 493-511.
3. Song, Lily and Mizrahi, Elefmina. (2023). From Infrastructural Repair to Reparative Planning: Metro as Sanctuary. Journal of the American Planning Association 89(4): 566-579.
Week 14: Platform mobilities
Class 14a: Mobile food delivery
1. Attoh, Kafui, Wells, Katie, and Cullen, Declan. (2024) The work of waiting: migrant labour in the fulfillment city. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 50(15): 3839-3854.
2. Chung, Noel. (2024). Connected, programmed, and immobilised: a mobile ethnography of platform-mediated food delivery in Seoul. Mobilities 19(4): 573-592.
Class 14b: Digitalization and data
1. Behrendt, Frauke and Sheller, Mimi. Mobility data justice. Mobilities 19(1): 151–169.
2. Sgibnev, Wladimir and Rekhviashvili, Lela. (2020). Marschrutkas: Digitalisation, sustainability and mobility justice in a low-tech mobility sector. Transportation Research Part A 138: 342–352.
3. Robinson-Tay, Kathryn (2024) The role of autonomous vehicles in transportation equity in Tempe, Arizona Mobilities 19(3): 504-520.
Week 15: Future mobilities
Class 15a: Possible futures
1. Jones, Caitlin and McCreary, Tyler. (2021). Zombie automobility. Mobilities, 17(1), 19–36.
2. Bissell, David, et al. (2023) Region power for mobilities research. Australian Geographer 54(3): 251-275.
Class 15b: Possible futures II
1. Nikolaeva, Anna, et al.. (2019). Commoning mobility: towards a new politics of mobility transitions. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 44: 346-360.
2. Davidson, A.C. (2021). Radical mobilities. Progress in Human Geography 45(1): 25–48.