Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities 1788115457, 9781788115452

Exploring the growing field of mobilities research, this Handbook focuses on the flows and movements of people, artefact

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Table of contents :
Front Matter
Copyright
Contents
List of contributors
Introduction to the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities
Part I: Motivations
1 Mobility justice
2 Mobilities and values
3 Mobilities and (un)sustainability
4 Researching the mobile risk society
5 Mobilities and social futures
Part II: Methods
6 openAnalogInput(BODY): investigating data mobilities through critical making
7 How to use time-geographic travel diaries in mobility research
8 Applying multiple and multi-scalar methods to mobilities hub research
9 Drone mobilities and auto-technography
10 Logbooks of mobilities
11 Sensory imagination as mobile method: sonic place-making on forest roads
12 Campervan ethnographies: mobile experiments and methodological manoeuvres
13 Mobility orientations
Part III: Applications
14 Mobility behaviour change programmes in France: contexts of emergence, governance, goals and impacts
15 Investigating mobilities with literary methods
16 Vital mobilities
17 Tracing human mobilities through mobile phones
18 MoVE: mobile virtual ethnography
19 Mixed mobile methods for a mobile practice: inclusive research on pilgrimage mobilities
20 Mobile visual methods
21 Fostering discursive mobilities in sustainable mobility policymaking
22 Mobilities policies: exploring momentums as urban tipping points in practice
23 The transformation of mobility: AI, robotics and automatization
24 Researching transnational family life in a mobile era
25 Family mobilities
26 Supply chains and the mobilities of cargo
Part IV: Reflections
27 Seeing into the future of mobility: the contestable value of expert knowledge and Delphi as futures methods
28 Airports as a mobile method
29 Run riot! On mobilities, life, and death (of civilisation), and the reveries of running artfully
30 Creative arts practice in mobilities
31 Simulation and preserved mobility spaces
32 Resonance of mobilities
33 Phronesis (and its potentially central contribution to mobilities research in the twenty-first century)
34 Methods of mobilities design research
35 Critical mobilities – mobilities as critique?
36 Embodied ethnography in mobilities research
37 Synaesthesia and the mobile city
38 How to dismantle a bus: planetary mobilities as method
Index
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HANDBOOK OF RESEARCH METHODS AND APPLICATIONS FOR MOBILITIES

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HANDBOOKS OF RESEARCH METHODS AND APPLICATIONS Series Editor: Mark Casson, University of Reading, UK The objective of this series is to provide definitive overviews of research methods in important fields of social science, including economics, business, finance and policy studies. The aim is to produce prestigious high quality works of lasting significance. Each Handbook consists of original contributions by leading authorities, selected by an editor who is a recognised leader in the field. The emphasis is on the practical application of research methods to both quantitative and qualitative evidence. The Handbooks will assist practising researchers in generating robust research findings that policy-makers can use with confidence. While the Handbooks will engage with general issues of research methodology, their primary focus will be on the practical issues concerned with identifying and using suitable sources of data or evidence, and interpreting source material using best-practice techniques. They will review the main theories that have been used in applied research, or could be used for such research. While reference may be made to conceptual issues and to abstract theories in the course of such reviews, the emphasis will be firmly on real-world applications. Titles in the series include: Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Environmental Studies Edited by Matthias Ruth Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Social Capital Edited by Yaojun Li Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Transport Economics and Policy Edited by Chris Nash Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Heterodox Economics Edited by Frederic S. Lee and Bruce Cronin Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Happiness and Quality of Life Edited by Luigino Bruni and Pier Luigi Porta Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Political Science Edited by Hans Keman and Jaap J. Woldendorp Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Experimental Economics Edited by Arthur Schram and Aljaž Ule Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Comparative Policy Analysis Edited by B. Guy Peters and Guillaume Fontaine Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities Edited by Monika Büscher, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Sven Kesselring and Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen

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Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities

Edited by

Monika Büscher Lancaster University, UK

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen Aalborg University, Denmark

Sven Kesselring Nürtingen-Geislingen University, Germany

Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen Aalborg University, Denmark

HANDBOOKS OF RESEARCH METHODS AND APPLICATIONS

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

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© Monika Büscher, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Sven Kesselring and Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2020940500 This book is available electronically in the Social and Political Science subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781788115469

ISBN 978 1 78811 545 2 (cased) ISBN 978 1 78811 546 9 (eBook) Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

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Contents List of contributorsix I ntroduction to the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities Monika Büscher, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Sven Kesselring and Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen

1

PART I  MOTIVATIONS  1 Mobility justice Mimi Sheller

11

 2 Mobilities and values Malene Freudendal-Pedersen

21

 3 Mobilities and (un)sustainability Dennis Zuev and Luca Nitschke

28

 4 Researching the mobile risk society Sven Kesselring

38

 5 Mobilities and social futures Monika Büscher

50

PART II  METHODS  6  openAnalogInput(BODY): investigating data mobilities through critical making63 Fernanda da Costa Portugal Duarte  7 How to use time-geographic travel diaries in mobility research Malin Henriksson and Jessica Berg

74

 8 Applying multiple and multi-scalar methods to mobilities hub research Gunvor Riber Larsen

84

 9 Drone mobilities and auto-technography Julia M. Hildebrand

92

10 Logbooks of mobilities Larissa Schindler

102

11 Sensory imagination as mobile method: sonic place-making on forest roads Helena Krobath

111

v

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vi  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities 12  Campervan ethnographies: mobile experiments and methodological manoeuvres125 Sharon Wilson 13 Mobility orientations Konrad Götz and Georg Sunderer

137

PART III  APPLICATIONS 14  Mobility behaviour change programmes in France: contexts of emergence, governance, goals and impacts Marie Huyghe, Ghislain Bourg and Anaïs Rocci

151

15 Investigating mobilities with literary methods Anita Perkins

162

16 Vital mobilities Stephanie Sodero and Richard Rackham

172

17 Tracing human mobilities through mobile phones Siiri Silm, Olle Järv and Anu Masso

182

18 MoVE: mobile virtual ethnography Jennie Germann Molz

193

19  Mixed mobile methods for a mobile practice: inclusive research on pilgrimage mobilities Avril Maddrell

202

20 Mobile visual methods Phillip Vannini and Martin Trandberg Jensen

212

21 Fostering discursive mobilities in sustainable mobility policymaking Chelsea Tschoerner-Budde

221

22  Mobilities policies: exploring momentums as urban tipping points in practice231 Nina Moesby Bennetsen and Katrine Hartmann-Petersen 23 The transformation of mobility: AI, robotics and automatization Anthony Elliott and Ross Boyd

241

24 Researching transnational family life in a mobile era Earvin Charles Cabalquinto

251

25 Family mobilities Lesley Murray

263

26 Supply chains and the mobilities of cargo Thomas Birtchnell and Tillmann Böhme

272

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Contents  vii PART IV  REFLECTIONS 27  Seeing into the future of mobility: the contestable value of expert knowledge and Delphi as futures methods Alexander Paulsson, Fabio Hirschhorn and Claus Hedegaard Sørensen 28 Airports as a mobile method Claus Lassen 29  Run riot! On mobilities, life, and death (of civilisation), and the reveries of running artfully Kai Syng Tan

282 292

303

30 Creative arts practice in mobilities Kaya Barry

315

31 Simulation and preserved mobility spaces Lewis Charles Smith

325

32 Resonance of mobilities Samuel Thulin

335

33  Phronesis (and its potentially central contribution to mobilities research in the twenty-first century) David Tyfield

345

34 Methods of mobilities design research Ole B. Jensen, Andrea Victoria Hernandez Bueno, Shelley Smith and Cecilie Breinholm Christensen

354

35 Critical mobilities – mobilities as critique? Katharina Manderscheid

365

36 Embodied ethnography in mobilities research Maja de Neergaard and Hanne Louise Jensen

374

37 Synaesthesia and the mobile city Rodanthi Tzanelli

382

38 How to dismantle a bus: planetary mobilities as method Bronislaw Szerszynski

398

Index411

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Contributors Kaya Barry is a geographer and artist who investigates the intersections of mobility, creativity, tourism and migration. She is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Australia. Nina Moesby Bennetsen is a PhD Fellow at Roskilde University, Denmark. She has a background in transdisciplinary urban studies. Nina is former municipal project leader of mobilities planning and sustainability. She is currently part of an advisory committee for the implementation of a future light rail project in Gladsaxe, Denmark. Jessica Berg is a researcher at the Swedish national road and transport research institute. Her expert area is primarily accessibility, mobility and travel behaviour, and especially in relation to vulnerable groups, public transport and mobility as a service (MaaS). Jessica is a trained public health scientist with a PhD in ageing and later life. Thomas Birtchnell is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography and Sustainable Communities, the University of Wollongong, Australia. His books are Indovation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 3D Printing for Development in the Global South (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) co-authored with William Hoyle, and A New Industrial Future? (2016, Routledge), co-authored with John Urry. Tillmann Böhme is a supply chain management expert in the Faculty of Business at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Dr Böhme (MBA) is a collaborative multi-­ disciplinary field researcher. He has conducted applied research to a vast range of industry in Australia, New Zealand, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany. Ghislain Bourg has a PhD in psychology and is a consultant at Auxilia, a consultancy office. He works on behavioural change (commitment, social representation and norms) applied to sustainable practices such as mobility and energy savings. Ross Boyd is a Researcher at the Hawke EU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at the University of South Australia. He is currently exploring the transformative impacts of AI on work/employment, automated mobilities, I4.0 and elder care. With Robert Holton he is developing a social theoretical approach to intelligent social machines. Andrea Victoria Hernandez Bueno is an architect and urban designer, and is currently a PhD student at Aalborg University, Denmark, in the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology. She is interested in the democratization of urban spaces by improving urban mobilities and public spaces through design. Monika Büscher is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, UK. She is an Associate Director in the Centre for Mobilities Research and an Associate at the Institute for Social Futures. Her research explores the digital dimension of contemporary ‘mobile lives’ with a focus on information technology ethics and risk governance.

ix

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x  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities Earvin Charles Cabalquinto is a Lecturer in Communication at Deakin University, Australia. He is also a member of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation. He was a Visiting Research at the Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) at Lancaster University in June 2019. His research expertise lies at the intersections of mobilities, migration and digital media. Cecilie Breinholm Christensen holds an MA in architecture, a minor in psychology and is currently doing a PhD on mobilities design, studying mobile embodied situations in Copenhagen metro as they are staged by its physical setting. She is affiliated with the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark. Fernanda da Costa Portugal Duarte is a digital media scholar, maker and Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Her research draws from approaches to media and cultural studies, design and media arts to investigate ways of becoming, making and knowing through and with media technologies. Anthony Elliott is Dean of External Engagement, Research Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Hawke EU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at the University of South Australia. He is author and editor of some 40 books in social theory and modern sociology, most recently The Culture of AI. Malene Freudendal-Pedersen is Professor in Urban Planning at Aalborg University, Denmark and has an interdisciplinary background linking sociology, geography, urban planning and the sociology of technology. She is co-organizing the International Cosmobilities Network, co-founder and co-editor of the Journal Applied Mobilities and the book series Networked Urban Mobilities, both at Routledge. Jennie Germann Molz is a sociologist at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, where she teaches courses on social theory, travel and tourism, global citizenship and emotion, and conducts research on questions of identity, belonging and ethics in the context of mobile togetherness. Konrad Götz studied sociology and political science in Heidelberg, Germany. He subsequently gained his doctorate from the University of Frankfurt am Main with a dissertation on leisure mobility. He has been with the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE) in Frankfurt am Main as a social research scientist since 1995. His main field of interest is social-empirical research on sustainable mobility. Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen is Research Assistant at Aalborg University, Denmark and holds a Master of Science (MSc) in planning studies and geography from Roskilde University. His fields of interest include urban studies, everyday mobilities, social mobilization, and social movements. Katrine Hartmann-Petersen is Associate Professor in Planning and Mobilities at Roskilde University, Denmark. She has a transdisciplinary background investigating interconnectedness between everyday life, urban planning and mobilities. She is a former special adviser in municipal planning departments dealing with mobilities planning in practice. She is also a member of the Cosmobilities Network taskforce.

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Contributors  xi Malin Henriksson, PhD, is a Senior Researcher at the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute. Her research concerns transport and power and qualitative approaches to mobility research. Recent projects include transport poverty in excluded neighborhoods and the governance of new mobility services. Julia M. Hildebrand is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Eckerd College, USA. Her work bridges media studies and mobilities research and has been published in journals such as Media, Culture, & Society, Mobilities and Transfers. She earned her PhD at Drexel University. Fabio Hirschhorn is a post-doctoral researcher at Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. His research focuses on the governance and policymaking of urban mobility systems. Prior to this, Fabio worked with urban transport projects with the World Bank in Washington, DC and also as a corporate lawyer in São Paulo. Marie Huyghe has a PhD in town planning and is a freelance consultant. She works on the individual mobility practices in rural areas, and analyses the impact of different tools (nudges, marketing programmes) in terms of behaviour change. Olle Järv is an Academy Research Fellow at the Digital Geography Lab, University of Helsinki, Finland. With a background in human geography and regional planning, his research interests focus broadly on human mobilities and their extraction from big data to understand social processes and phenomena – cross-border interactions, transnationalism, segregation, socio-spatial inequality and urban accessibility. Hanne Louise Jensen is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research interests are in the fields of ­mobility,  everyday life and the social production of place. Currently she is engaged in research on positive social networks in ghettoes and bridges and leisure mobility on the Limfjord. Ole B. Jensen is Professor of Urban Theory at the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark. He is deputy director and co-founder of the Centre for Mobilities and Urban Studies (C-MUS). He is author of numerous books and articles on mobilities, urban studies, and mobilities design. Sven Kesselring is a sociologist. He is Professor in Sustainable Mobilities at NürtingenGeislingen University (HfWU), Germany, co-editor of the ‘Networked Urban Mobilities’ book series (Routledge) and editor of the journal Applied Mobilities. His main research areas are sustainable mobilities, the transformation of automobilities and the social theory of the mobile risk society. Helena Krobath studies spatial narratives and colonial resource imaginaries in British Columbia, Canada. Helena presents public soundwalks, composes electroacoustic art, and collaborates with community arts projects. She co-hosts the Soundscape Show on Vancouver Co-op Radio (CFRO). Gunvor Riber Larsen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture and Media Technology at Aalborg University, Denmark. Her current research is focused on aeromobilities and airport studies. Other research interests include the challenges of being

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xii  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities mobile in rural areas with little or no public transport service provision, and the role of distance in international tourist travel. Claus Lassen is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre of Mobility and Urban Studies (C-MUS) at Aalborg University, Denmark. His research analyses changing social relations in the light of international air travel, and he has published a number of articles and book chapters on business travel, aeromobilities and airports. Avril Maddrell is Professor of Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Reading, UK. She is Co-Editor of Social and Cultural Geography, and author/co-author/ co-editor of numerous books, including Sacred Mobilities (Ashgate, 2015), Christian Pilgrimage, Landscape and Heritage (Routledge 2015), Contemporary Encounters in Gender and Religion (Palgrave 2017) and Deathscapes (Ashgate, 2010). Katharina Manderscheid is Professor for Sociology in the Department of Socioeconomics at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her work focuses on spatial mobility and the future of automobility, personal mobility in cities, conduct of life and sustainability, social inequality and social science research methods. Anu Masso is an Associate Professor of Big Data in Social Sciences at Tallinn University of Technology and Senior Researcher in Data Studies at University of Tartu, Estonia. Her research focuses on the theory of social transformations, spatial mobility and social  ­datafication. She is known for her work on social science methods and methodologies. Lesley Murray is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Brighton, UK, whose research interests centre on urban mobilities. She has published extensively in this field, including on gendered and generational mobilities, the intersections between mobile and visual methods and urban mobile spaces. Maja de Neergaard is Assistant Professor at the Danish Building Research Institute, Aalborg University Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research interests are urban theory, urban and regional planning, dwelling practices, cultural and material studies. In both  research and teaching Maja has worked with ethnographic and experimental methods. Luca Nitschke is PhD Fellow and member of the mobil.LAB Doctoral Research Group of the Hans-Böckler-Foundation at the Technical University Munich and NürtingenGeislingen University, Germany. He researches the relationship between mobilities and society in non-commercial sharing arrangements. He studied environmental sciences and environmental studies in Bielefeld, Barcelona, Aveiro, Aalborg and New York. Alexander Paulsson, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Economics and Management at Lund University, Sweden. He is currently doing research on the policy and governance of automated vehicles as well as the marketization of public transport. Together with Claus Hedegaard Sørensen, he is the editor of Shaping Smart Mobility Futures, due to be published in 2020. Anita Perkins is an independent researcher and writer based in Wellington, New Zealand, with a PhD in German from the University of Otago. Her 2016 monograph ‘Travel

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Contributors  xiii Texts and Moving Cultures: German Literature and the Mobilities Turn’ brings together mobilities studies with the cultural analysis of German literature and film. Richard Rackham has over a decade of experience as Assistant Director, Governance and Resilience for NHS Blood and Transplant. His responsibilities include coordinating EU Exit and responding to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Anaïs Rocci is a PhD sociologist, specialist in the analysis of behavioural changes towards more sustainable practices and specifically on Travel Behaviour Change programmes. She recently joined ADEME (The French Environment and Energy Management Agency) after working in research and then in a consultancy and research office. Larissa Schindler is Professor of Methods of Empirical Research at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. In her research, she focuses on mobilities, sports, bodies and qualitative research methods. She is currently conducting an ethnographic study ‘Air travel: on the embodied accomplishment of technically augmented mobility’, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Mimi Sheller is Professor of Sociology, founding Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University, USA, founding co-editor of Mobilities, Associate Editor of Transfers, and past President of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility. Her most recent book is Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes (Verso, 2018). Siiri Silm is a Senior Researcher in Human Geography and acting head of the Mobility Lab, University of Tartu, Estonia. Her fields of research include human spatial-temporal behaviour, urban spaces, social networks, segregation (ethnic, age-related) and crossborder mobility. She has participated since 2004 in developing mobile phone-based methodology and conducting research. Lewis Charles Smith is an AHRC PhD student at the University of Essex, UK. His current research examines the role of the British Overseas Airways Corporation in subverting perceptions of British national decline. He is particularly interested in modern British history, particularly twentieth-century industry, gender, advertising and the digital humanities. Shelley Smith, architect, urbanist, PhD, is an independent researcher, lecturer and writer. Her work focuses on the discovery and expression – through words, photos and film – of the potential for sensorial experience in contemporary urbanity. In addition, she develops workshops and methods for mapping, cataloguing and communicating this. Stephanie Sodero is a Canadian Banting Postdoctoral Researcher in Medical Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research focuses on how climate change disrupts vital mobilities, such as blood supply chains, that impact life chances. Claus Hedegaard Sørensen, PhD, is Research Leader at the Swedish Knowledge Centre for Public Transport (K2) and Senior Researcher at the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI). His research is focusing on transport governance and transport planning in relation to sustainability and smart mobility. Georg Sunderer studied sociology at the universities of Trier, Germany and Galway, Ireland. He has been working for ISOE as a research associate since 2010, focusing on

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xiv  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities mobility and urban spaces. His special areas of interest are the acceptance of sustainable mobility offerings, ethical consumption and social-ecological transformations. Bronislaw Szerszynski is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, UK. His research crosses the social and natural sciences, arts and humanities in order to situate the changing relationship between humans, environment and technology in the longer perspective of human and planetary history. Kai Syng Tan is Senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Art, Visiting Artist at Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, King’s College London, UK and Trustee for Music in Detention. Her work is distinct for its ‘eclectic style and cheeky attitude’ (Sydney Morning Herald), ‘radical interdisciplinarity’ (geographer Alan Latham) and ‘positive atmosphere’ (Guardian). Samuel Thulin is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of mobilities research, communication and media studies, sound studies, and critical disability studies. Thulin has a PhD in communication from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Martin Trandberg Jensen is an Associate Professor in Tourism and Mobility at the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University, Denmark. His research involves, and often combines, the sociology of mobilities, human geography and cultural studies. Chelsea Tschoerner-Budde is a consultant in the Ministry of Transport for the State of Hessen, Germany. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Freiburg. Her research integrates interpretive policy studies and mobilities research and aims to develop the knowledge and tools needed to form sustainable policies in the transport sector. David Tyfield is a Reader in Environmental Innovation and Sociology at the Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC), Lancaster University, UK. He is Executive Director of the Joint Institute for the Environment (JIE), Guangzhou and Co-Director of Lancaster’s Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) and is a co-editor of the journal Mobilities. Rodanthi Tzanelli is Associate Professor of Cultural Sociology at Leeds and Visiting Independent Scholar at CE.MO.RE., Lancaster, UK. Her interests span social theory and cultural studies, with an emphasis on intersections of tourism/migration mobilities and technology. She is author of 12 books, including Cinematic Tourist Mobilities and the Plight of Development: On Atmospheres, Affects and Environments (2018). Phillip Vannini is a Professor in the School of Communication & Culture at Royal Roads University, Canada. He is author/editor of 15 books, including Off the Grid and Ferry Tales. He is also a producer/director of films such as Life off Grid, Low & Slow, and A Time for Making. Sharon Wilson is a Senior Lecturer and researcher interested in tourism mobilities, cultural geographies and art. Adopting interdisciplinary research approaches to the study of social phenomena, she adopts experimental methodologies that seek to understand human mobility in imaginative and embodied ways. She is also the founder of the MFRN (Mobilities Futures Research Network).

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Contributors  xv Dennis Zuev is an Assistant Professor at City University of Macau, Macau SAR and Associate Researcher at CIES-ISCTE, IUL and Instituto Oriente, UL, Portugal. He conducts research in sustainable tourism, urban mobilities, Chinese studies and visual sociology. He is the author of Urban Mobility in Modern China: The Growth of the E-bike (Palgrave, 2018).

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Introduction to the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities

Monika Büscher, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Sven Kesselring and Nikolaj Grauslund Kristensen

The growing field of mobilities research focuses on the flows and movements of people, artefacts, capital, information and signs on different social and geographical scales. Scholars in mobilities research are working on the physical movement of people and goods, digitalised (social) relations and communication between individuals, groups, organisations and institutions, the experience and embodiment of space in motion and dwelling, and many other subjects. Mobilities research examines the systems and practices of mobilities from different theoretical, epistemological and methodological perspectives, but with a common ontology of mobilities as the constitutive element of societies, politics and economies (Urry 2000; Sheller and Urry 2016; Sheller 2017; Jensen et al. 2019). This Handbook reflects the variety and diversity of the field in respect of research methods and applications for mobilities research, while also illuminating the multiple dimensions of mobilities, from transport to tourism, cargo to information as well as physical, virtual and imaginative mobilities. In these contexts, the motivation to make methods mobile springs from a deep appreciation of how ‘the reality is movement’ (Bergson 1911, p. 302). The new mobility paradigm (Sheller and Urry 2006) not only broadened the perspective by including social and cultural practices in the study of mobilities, but also added a new epistemological, creative, normative, public dimension to doing research. Mobile methods provide new insights by mobilising an analytical approach to the constitutive role of (im)mobilities (Büscher et al. 2010; Fincham et al. 2010). This may literally mobilise researchers in ethnographic go-alongs, as many of the authors in this Handbook describe (for example, Wilson, Chapter 12 in this volume), or metaphorically mobilise research by self-tracking (Duarte, Chapter 6 in this volume), following the mobile positioning of mobile phones (Silm et al., Chapter 17 in this volume) or through cultural analysis (Perkins, Chapter 15 in this volume), and it may mobilise research subjects in planning (Bennetsen and Hartmann-Petersen, Chapter 22 in this volume) or through phronesis (Tyfield, Chapter 33 in this volume). Mobilising research means employing the understanding of how research objects, subjects field sites and collaborators are mobile and in movement rather than geographically fixed or static. With the mobilities paradigm, interdisciplinary research and qualitative methods have come to the fore, compared with earlier traditions of mobility and transportation research (see, for example, Yago 1983; Vannini 2015). Researchers and research users engage with mobile methods, to investigate the emergent nature of reality and the way in which social and material phenomena are socially constructed and made durable in and through the intra-actions of many human and non-human agencies (Barad 2007). Currently, not only the subject of investigations but also many research collectives are on the move, bringing mobile, inventive, live methods and methodologies into different contexts, from health care to aeromobilities, tourism to urban development, and many 1

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2  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities more. This occurs by creatively engaging with the dynamics of complex systems, processes of becoming and emergence, and multi-scalar interconnections between microbial, human, animal, technological and planetary agencies. The field of mobilities research is broad in its interest, tracing social mobility, political movement, and transformations of time and space, opening up new avenues for transdisciplinary research co-creation. It is often about defining new ways of creating the infrastructure for more richly informed applications of research and collaborations, and ways of staying with the troubles of contemporary challenges (Le Dantec and DiSalvo 2013; Haraway 2016). All this builds the background for the interdisciplinary content of the Handbook. The perspective applied here is broad and deep, and the contributions of this Handbook each focus on specific aspects of the field. In so doing, each chapter highlights how interconnected and spread out the mobilities turn in social science has become during the past 20 years. The Handbook gathers and introduces a broad range of creative and explorative methods and methodologies in the field of mobilities research and its varied applications. The focus is on introducing different research approaches to broaden our understanding of global mobilities challenges in the contemporary (and future) world, ranging from lowcarbon mobility system transitions, to the increase of digitalisation in questions of ethics, philosophy and (ontological) security and risk. The call for interdisciplinary research is widely significant for facing current and future mobilities challenges. The research gathered in this Handbook introduces the reader to ways of mobilising – conceptually, theoretically, conceptually and practically – both quantitative approaches (such as selftracking and artificial intelligence, or AI) and qualitative methods (such as technography and participative observation). It will serve as a resource for researchers and research users in different disciplines and contexts, as it brings together key contributions on qualitative and quantitative research (and its multi-method combinations) and research on co-creation methods within the mobilities paradigm. Through the Handbook the capacities of methods and applications for mobilities research will be presented and synergy will be developed from the methodological creativity and impact, its breadth and depth within the growing field of interdisciplinary mobilities research. The Handbook has chapters from a broad range of methods and applications, with a specific reflexive focus on the analytical purchase enabled and the practical import of applying research in the world. It is divided into four parts (‘Motivations’, ‘Methods’, ‘Applications’ and ‘Reflections’), which we briefly introduce next.

PART I  MOTIVATIONS Part I focuses on the impetus for research, and traces the driving factors such as concerns with sustainability, inequality, social justice, social mobility, activism, transformations of time and space, and many more. The contributions open up new avenues for transdisciplinary research co-creation on these questions: ●● ●●

What are the urgent questions and burning issues that drive the individual research and motivate the scientists? How does this relate to new and emerging research agendas, traditions and perhaps schools that mobilities research is shaping currently?

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Introduction  3 The authors in this part reflect individually on the ‘why?’ of their own research. The chapters give an insight into the reasons behind their research and their ways of selecting topics, deciding on priorities, and so on. However, they also show the worries behind the research, the ethical and sometimes moral reflections that lead to a specific research agenda and, in consequence, to a specific selection and application of methods and methodologies. In her opening chapter to the Handbook, Mimi Sheller gives an insight into the range of mobility injustices and different levels of studying mobilities. Mobility injustices do not only have an urban scale. They also have a national, a transnational and a planetary dimension, and this chapter describes the emergence of applied mobilities research that seeks to contribute to more sustainable, and just, policies and planning. In addition, it offers an overview of mobile methods, focusing on two different sub-fields of mobilities: cycling research, and migration and border studies. In the following chapter Malene Freudendal-Pedersen explores and discusses the role of values when we are motivated to do something, with a discussion point being the climate crisis. By reflecting on two prominent figures in the climate debate, Al Gore and Greta Thunberg, the chapter explains how paying attention to everyday life mobilities plays a key role in understanding values as a driving force to do something. Staying with the discussion of sustainability, Dennis Zuev and Luca Nitschke describe the concept of sustainability, and reflect on some of the paradoxes and contradictions of contemporary mobilities and mobilities research in particular. The chapter supports a critical engagement with mobilities and provides an overview of fields where mobility research should pay more attention to sustainability and environmental consequences in general. Sven Kesselring focuses on the relationships between mobility research and the current state of the mobile risk society. In particular, he raises the question of how to deal with the massive time constraints climate change puts on societies, organisations, institutions and the individual. This contribution addresses the current transformative process of the system of automobility and the questions of technological fixes and technocentric policy and planning approaches. He puts centre stage the question of whether mobilities research has the time and the right methods to deal with the challenges and necessities of climate change. By methodologically mobilising the concept of social futures, Monika Büscher demonstrates how we might leverage the deep understanding of the contingent, emergent character of socio-technical, socio-material orders that the new mobilities paradigm enables. Her stories from the 2017 Lancaster Mobile Utopia Experiment explore how we might change the systemic dynamics that create precarity as the condition of our times, connecting attempts to find new ways of sensing this precarity and working with it to create visions of a good life, and contesting what good life might be possible and what ‘good’ might mean, and for whom.

PART II  METHODS Part II focuses on the objects of research and how to create new knowledge about them. It illustrates mobile and multi-method approaches within mobilities research, and presents a

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4  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities range of methods to gain empirical insights, and collect and measure data on mobilities. This ranges from quantitative, technology-based tracking to qualitative ethnographical approaches. The part puts at the centre of its attention the question: what methods are applicable to deepen our understanding of mobile worlds? Chapters in this part primarily focus on the how of doing research, the concrete application and the handling of connected to specific applications and methods. Starting this part, Fernanda da Costa Portugal Duarte examines the dynamics of data mobilities and their implications for self-tracking. In her chapter Duarte explores the self-tracking technology Truth or Dare (ToD), and how it turns the biological body into a site of physiological data, and demonstrates how critical making can be applied as a method to investigate protocols of data mobilities. The following chapter, by Malin Henriksson and Jessica Berg, introduces timegeography travel diaries. They show them as a useful and rich method to study everyday life. By the use of recorded travel activity data researchers can understand and analyse how individuals carrying out and orchestrate travels, include places, structure times, manage meetings with people, and embody experiences, atmospheres and emotions. The chapter provides knowledge on how, when, where and why travel diaries should be used in mobility research, and describes how to design and use time-geographical travel diaries throughout a research process. On the basis of the research project ‘Airport City Futures’, Gunvor Riber Larsen presents a triangulatory design of qualitative and quantitative methods and describes the often troublesome venture of performing an analytical reduction of complex realities in practising mobilities. Staying in the air, Julia M. Hildebrand examines auto-drone technography as a creative and self-reflective mobile method, with the focus on the example of drone-logs; the juxtaposing of sky video with ground audio. The chapter argues that the distant and detached perspective of a drone can complement mobile methods practically and metaphorically. The use of logging method can be studied in Larissa Schindler’s contribution on different versions of logbooks (pre-existing logbooks and solicited logbooks). Her chapter resents logbooks as mobile and explains how logbooks contribute to a profound (multimethod) research design, following the questions: what are logbooks? How can they contribute to our understanding of mobile worlds? Helena Krobath examines creative methods for exploring relations between space, sensing and knowledge that co-construct place. These sense-based methods focus on listening through personal situative and conceptual frames and embodied practices. Krobath describes how she assembles a situated account of driving in the backwoods of Mission, British Columbia, Canada, iterating emplaced exercises with documentary research and theoretical framing. Through this, she explores features of the road that have come to seem fixed or elemental. Following the auto-ethnographic practice of driving, Sharon Wilson examines methodological approaches used in a fieldwork of Volkswagen (VW) campervan mobilities, focusing on the phenomena of tourism. Through the chapter, Wilson seeks to contribute to the creative methodological practices by examining their applications in an autoethnographic study of driving on the British motorway. Actor network theory (ANT) is used to unpack the VW campervan travel as a mobilisation of many things. In concluding this part, Konrad Götz and Georg Sunderer explore mobility orienta-

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Introduction  5 tions, a concept derived from transdisciplinary sustainability research on mobility. Mobility orientations indicate the motivation behind, and the meaning of, mobility and is used to gather information for measures to decouple mobility from automobility. The chapter presents adjacent research and refers to other examples and applications.

PART III  APPLICATIONS Part III focuses on presenting various applied mobile methods in mobilities research and how mobile and live methods creatively address the fact that ‘the mobile flies forever before the pursuit of science’ to intervene in the world (Bergson 1920, p. 317). The part presents different ways of infrastructuring for more richly informed applications of research. A key question is, what are the new learnings when applying mobilities research to the lived world? The chapters in this section are primarily focusing on for whom and with whom mobilities research is undertaken. Opening this part, Marie Huyghe, Ghislain Bourg and Anaïs Rocci study individual (mobilities) behaviours focusing on the changes in mobility habits encouraged through travel behaviour change programmes. As an important field of mobility in order to reduce our environmental impact, the chapter focusing on voluntary travel behaviour change programmes (VTBC) in France, and through a comparative analysis it provides insight into the trends arising from these operations. In the following chapter Anita Perkins describes how to apply a mobilities framework for cultural studies of literature. By presenting a multi-layered, three-step analysis approach that attempts to take a cross-sectional view of the context within which the text was produced, the author illustrates this analytical approach. To show how it can bring a fresh perspective to the writer’s textual representations of mobile experience, Perkins analyses Graeme Simsion’s book The Rosie Project, where an autistic university professor sets out in search of love. From an analysis of literature to the analysis of crisis, Stephanie Sodero and Richard Rackham explain the concept of vital mobilities, the movements of goods, people and information that impact life chances in the context of crisis. By extending Adey’s (2010) work on emergency mobilities, vital mobilities is presented as a concept to analyse the context of everyday circulations and their disruption in response to crisis events. Focusing on blood (mobilities) as a literally life-sustaining example of vital mobilities, the chapter discusses two different and disruptive events: the Manchester bombing (2017) and the Filton flood (2012). In the following chapter, Siiri Silm, Olle Järv and Anu Masso explore the different use and inherent potentials of mobile positioning, which is defined as tracing the location of a mobile phone through time and physical space. As they state in the chapter, more than 5 billion people in the world have a mobile phone, and they explain why mobile phones provide a unique opportunity to study human mobility. The chapter focuses on mobile positioning, respectively passive, active and smart-phone based positioning, as a productive approach to examine the spatio-temporal mobility of people and population dynamics. For another look into the field of mobile ethnography, Jennie Germann Molz demonstrates how mobile virtual ethnography (MoVE) enables research at the intersections

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6  Handbook of research methods and applications for mobilities of embodied mobility and mediated interactions among long-term travellers. Mobile virtual ethnography is a methodological approach that adapts traditional ethnographic techniques to the study of the interplay between travellers online and on-the-road mobility practices, and Molz uses her own field studies to describe the application of MoVE. Continuing the application of methods to study mobile life, Avril Maddrell explores mobile practices of pilgrimage journeys using mobilities concepts, and mobile methodologies. The exploring of pilgrimage journeys is described as a dynamic embodied process and experience, whether focused on visits to shrines or on pilgrimage routes. The chapter focuses on examining mobile methods of analysing postcards and photo diaries, for an interdisciplinary case study of a pilgrimage project. In the following chapter Phillip Vannini and Martin Trandberg Jensen examine the value of visual methods and their specific applications and challenges (both quantitatively and qualitatively). They reflect on different forms of visual (video and photography) and art-based approaches (painting, mapping, and so on) to examine the reflexivity and performativity of visual research. Chelsea Tschoerner-Budde explains and discusses the strength of discourse analysis in relation to identifying and enhancing understanding of barriers and opportunities in shifting mobility policies. Her chapter introduces the application of a discourse analytical approach as a concrete tool for promoting sustainable mobility, illustrated through a case study of sustainable mobility policy-making in the German city Munich. By introducing examples from planning practices in mobilities projects, for example, the Danish light rail project SMIL, Nina Moesby Bennetsen and Katrine Hartmann-Petersen explain the valuable learnings from investigating the links between dynamics in everyday life and the mobilities planning processes. They argue how it offers an understanding of how new mobilities policies can create urban tipping points for innovation in strategic work with mobilities policies in practice. With the use of examples of planning practices, the chapter emphasises how mobilities planning can gain from new ways of organising planning processes, based on knowledge that is taken for granted. Rapid innovations in smart technologies have a wide impact on contemporary and future mobilities. Anthony Elliott and Ross Boyd examine the profound impact of artificial intelligence (AI), advanced robotics and accelerating automation, arguing that fast innovation of smart technology requires a rethinking of mobilities research. To examine this impact, they explore what they refer to as mobilities 3.0, the interconnections among intelligent machines and digitalised subjects which are on the move and AI in relation to military systems. Digitalisation has a profound impact on the convergence (annihilation) of space through time, and connectedness is no longer a matter of physical distance. Exploring personal time–space compression and distanciation, Earvin Charles Cabalquinto examines practices of maintaining long-distance relationships enabled through digital communication technologies. Critical application of a range of methods allows him to study how expatriate Filipino workers stay in touch with their left-behind loved ones, and unpacks and articulates these families’ lives on the move. Continuing in the research on mobile family relations, Lesley Murray explores families as key sites of social relations for understanding mobilities. Murray takes a critical mobile perspective on what defines families and highlights a range of mobilities research methodologies and methods applied to family, to contribute to an understanding of family mobilities and of mobilities through family.

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Introduc