Travel can be an isolating experience. One of the most ubiqitous ways of thinking about the experience of railway travel during the 19th century was the idea that the body became``an anonymised parcel of flesh which was shunted from place to place, just like other goods. Each of these bodies passively avoided others'' (Thrift, 1996, page 266). Yet mobilities are rarely experienced alone or in isolation from other people. Indeed, one of the figures that unite many different types of mobility is that of`being with'. In the process of travel, we temporarily submit ourselves to become part of a mobile collective. To become a passenger always involves a`being with'. One of the central themes running through research on mobilities is how being mobile with other people mobilises a series of relational practices. Car travel might involve finely honed interactional textures between driver and passenger (Laurier et al, 2008), or improvisational choreography between the driver and other car drivers (Katz, 1999). Research on walking in the city has similarly pointed to the skilful tactics developed by pedestrians to accomplish moving through the urban environment (Edensor, 2000; Middleton, 2009). Similarly, others have looked at the myriad of diverse practices that are enacted in order to become a passenger, such as packing, preparing, and moving with luggage (Bissell, 2009; Watts, 2008), or purchasing tickets (Dodge and Kitchin, 2004), through to the various mobile practices that passengers at transport terminals undertake, particularly at airports (

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IntroductionFor edgy social scientists,`comfort' is a rather conservative word. To remain within our comfort zone' is something that we are led to believe will at best impede our progress and at worst suffocate our creativity, stifle our development, and prevent new avenues from being opened up. To draw on slightly hackneyed business rhetoric, to act outside one's comfort zone, to think`outside the box', is a highly desirable and necessary hallmark of`independent and self-motivated' individuals (Chappell, 2006, page 26). It indicates a willingness to be productive, characteristic of Western individualism, not to mention the aesthetico-political impulses of the avant-garde. To remain comfortable in this situation is negative and equates to complacency and a lack of sustained effort: a highly undesirable sensibility. Yet, the situation becomes more complex when, at the same time, to be comfortable may be a highly desirable sensation. The feeling of comfort may be extremely beneficial, a sensation through which an individual may derive a sense of security. Individuals may remain within their comfort zone precisely because it is a pleasant feeling. Conversely, to be uncomfortable is regarded as a highly undesirable sensibility and something that should be minimised at all costs. This paradox is made increasingly complex when different forms of comfort are considered. To be uncomfortable in an undesirable social situation may be, on the face of it, different to the discomfort experienced through a pain in the head. Nevertheless, whilst these two examples appear disparate, the sensations of both are felt through the body: the body is at the nexus of these sensibilities. Comfort is, therefore, a highly complex sensibility and one that requires sustained attention to the nuances therein. Through this paper I would like to focus on corporeal comfort as a complex bodily sensibility. I want to consider what comfort is and how comfort works to affect bodies in multiple and heterogenous ways. While introducing and acknowledging this complexity, I focus on one particular aspect of bodily comfort that will allow an exploration of a particular corporeal configuration. Through this piece, I explore sitting as a bodily configuration where a desirable sensibility of comfort can potentially be attained. Sitting provides an ideal framework through which to explore the nuances of comfort, how it can be achieved, and, conversely, how it can subside.

This paper develops ideas of differential mobility at the scale of the 'everyday' by investigating some of the complex relationships between mobility and immobility; facilitation and encumbrance when moving through railway stations. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research with rail passengers in Britain, the first section explores the entangled relationship between differently-mobile bodies and the station by considering some of the tensions that emerge between experiences of encumbrance and facilitation. Focus here is on how navigating through the station with different mobile objects, or 'prostheses', impacts on passengers in a variety of ways. Drawing on insights from science, technology and society studies, it demonstrates how moving with different objects gives rise to fluid apprehensions of both mobile objects and the built form of the station itself. However, and importantly, this section suggests that this fluidity also has the capacity to disrupt the intended affective dimensions of the built form. The second section explores how differently-mobile passengers move through the station with these mobile objects. Drawing on de Certeau's notion of 'tactics' and Ingold's idea of the 'taskscape', this section pulls out some of the practical knowledges that, through repetition, develop into skills and techniques for moving. In doing so, this paper seeks to illuminate some of the complex relationships between mobility, prosthetics, encumbrance and affectivity that emerge when moving through the railway station.

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Autonomous vehicles are one of the most highly anticipated technological developments of our time, with potentially wide-ranging social implications. Where dominant popular discourses around autonomous vehicles have tended to espouse a crude form of technological determinism, social scientific engagements with autonomous vehicles have tended to focus on rather narrow utilitarian dimensions related to regulation, safety or efficiency. This article argues that what is therefore largely missing from current debates is a sensitivity to the broader social implications of autonomous vehicles. The article aims to remedy this absence. Through a speculative mode, it is shown how a mobilities approach provides an ideal conceptual lens through which the broader social impacts of autonomous vehicles might be identified and evaluated. The argument is organized across four dimensions: transformations to experiences, inequalities, labour and systems. The article develops an agenda for critical sociological work on automated vehicles; and it calls on sociologists to contribute much-needed critical voices to the institutional and public debates on the development of autonomous vehicles.

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