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SOCL 320   (Week 1)  General introduction: mobilities
     Recently mobility has become an increasingly important issue in relation to social as well as urban contexts. Global movements of capital, commodities and migrants, the explosion of tourism and increasing virtual https://www.51lunwen.org/travelling are radically changing societal structures and conditions of social action, while the continued expansion of urbanisation into the countryside is bringing mobility forth as an ever more significant urban issue. Importantly, also Politics and power are affected by mobility: today the mobile seem to be the powerful, and in face of increasing global mobility politics seems, to a large extent, to remain local and immobile. Hence, mobility is proposed as key concept for a reorientation of social theory that transcends the nation-state framed concept of “society”.  Meanwhile, in urban theory, mobility surfaces in a variety of contexts that relates it to, for instance, public space, social networks and disputes about access to urbanity through collective or individual transportation.
Not surprisingly, mobility is also a highly contested issue in both social and urban terms. This is obvious, especially if mobility is thought of in terms of power, a context in which the legitimacy of such power is immediately, and significantly, questioned. But one could also ask, in more general terms, how and in which ways mobilities are justified and criticised.
 Against this backgorund, the first lecture focuses on three points. Firstly, mobility is not a universal phenomenon. It is not, so to say, a human condition. As Bauman argues, mobility differentiates the human condition rather than unifying it. Whereas mobility is a matter of choice for some, for others it is a fate. Concomitantly, mobility as destiny and mobility as fate are different. And such divisions point towards different social topologies of mobility. Whereas increasing mobility can bring liberation in one social topology, it can create hell in another.
Secondly, mobility is a relational concept. As Virilio puts it, “[s]peed is not a phenomenon, it is the relationship between phenomena”. One’s mobility may well be another’s immobility. More importantly, the immobile “stand-ins” can contribute considerably to the stabilisation of the mobile, reticular world today.
   Thirdly, there is not a single type of mobility. Following Virilio (1995) again, we can operate with three kinds of mobility. These are related: firstly, to transportation; secondly, to transmission, that is, to the information and communication networks; and thirdly, to what Virilio calls “transplant”, that is, to internalisation of technology in the human body like in the case of cyborg technologies. But, crucially, in all these three forms, mobility is a paradoxical concept. Taken to their extremes, all three forms of mobility result in inertia.  To give an example, the high point of mobility, the Kosovo War, took place in network space. As Virilio wrote, during this war, “the soldiers stayed mostly in their barracks! In this way ... inertia has truly become a mass phenomenon. And not only for the TV audiences watching the war at home but also for the army that watches the battle from the barracks. Today the army only occupies the territory once the war is over”. Hence, one of the pasradoxical consequences of mobility may be immobility.
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