OpenSpace Seminar
Title: Terminals and Corridors:
sounding out cultures of mobility
Since the publication in 2000 of John Urry’s Sociology Beyond Societies: mobilities for
the twenty-first century, movement and mobility have taken an increasingly important
place within the study of societies and social action. Within cultural
geography,
Cresswell’s
Click here to
insert yourpioneering work (2001, 2006; Cresswell and Verstraete 2002)
set
an agenda for mobilities studies which is sensitive to historical and geographical
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specificity
andapprox
placed within its distinctive political and cultural political contexts. Yet the
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role
for cultural
geography as part of what Cresswell terms the ‘mobilities turn’, seems to
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be increasingly problematic, challenged by both the subject matter and the mode of
investigation. The location of mobilities within specific techno-social networks,
formations and assemblages challenge conceptions of what constitutes culture, how
and to what extent notions of meaning and value can be extended beyond established
conceptions of image, text and symbol. Whilst attempts to address the experience of
mobility, the sensations of speed, flow, and effort, its moments of intensity and restraint,
expose the limits of cultural representation as a means of understanding lived
experience.
This paper provides some thoughts concerning culture within cultural geography faced
with the challenges set by mobilities studies. From a standpoint of culture as mediation,
it develops some common ground between theories of transport, communication and
culture in order to explore possibilities set by these problems. Beginning with the
properties of sound and rhythm it suggests a means of imagining a way of inhabiting the
world shaped by the technologies of railway travel through the acoustic territories of the
‘terminal’ and the ‘corridor’.
About OpenSpace:
The OpenSpace Research Centre promotes research on geographical and environmental concerns.
Founded in 2009 to promote research into geographical and environmental questions.
For more information see Openspace website: www8.open.ac.uk/researchcentres/osrc
OpenSpace Centre Director: Prof Steve Pile
George Revill
Wednesday 13th October 2010
MYB3
Michael Young Building
14:00pm – 16:00pm