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'I would much rather be still here and travel in time': the intertwinedness of mobility and stillness in cottage living MAJA LAGERQVIST Lagerqvist, Maja (2013). 'I would much rather be still here and travel in time': the intertwinedness of mobility and stillness in cottage living. Fennia 191: 2, pp. 92−105. ISSN 1798-5617.Along with urbanisation and modernisation, the use of second homes has increased in the Western world. This can be seen as part of the increasing mobility of people in society, but also as part of a search for stillness and escape from modern urban society. Recently, scholars in geography and other disciplines have argued that mobility and fixity are two sides of the same coin. This paper aims to explore the complex, manifold and often paradoxical relationship between mobility and immobility in practices of dwelling and seeking stillness in a highly mobile society. It elaborates on how mobility and stillness, in both space and time, are intertwined and mutually influence each other by analysing second home usage of old cottages that formally were dwelling houses of poor tenant smallholdings in Sweden. How do mobility and stillness exist and interact at these cottages and what parts do the cottages themselves have in this? This is studied through interviews with cottage users regarding their daily life practices and encounters with history and materiality at the cottages. These cottages are easily thought of as places of immobility where time has stood still. However, the paper shows that these cottages are places that continuously emerge through entanglements of mobility and stillness and of present and past times. The practices and experiences of mobility and stillness at the cottage are much integrated in and directed by the cottages' specific geography, history and materiality, and the activities and thinking of their users because of these characteristics. The users go to the cottage to be at a place where they, with the help of the preserved materiality and history of the cottages, can feel rooted and still. At the same time the cottages offer imaginary time travels and experiences of other times and lifestyles.

When young people travel, they are often very dependent on public transport or parents. This study uses interviews with 16–19 years old teenagers in Stockholm to investigate their everyday experiences of public transit. The paper explores the experiences of buses and subways, here conceptualized as mobile places, to understand how they shape teenagers’ daily life. Understanding teenagers’ experiences of public transportation is part of understanding their everyday life, struggles, and possibilities to be mobile and participate in society. It is also a step towards ensuring that they find public transportation inclusive, safe, and worth traveling with today and in the future. Conceptually, the analysis focuses on how these mobile places are experienced as providing weights or reliefs to the everyday and if, how and when they may be places of interaction or retreat, addressing two needs in teenagers’ personal being and development. The study shows how various experiences of traveling with buses and subways shape how the teenagers feel, and how they make strategic choices in relation to this. A quite manifold, varying, and complex picture of public transportation arises, with stories of wellbeing, comfort, discomfort, and exclusion, and with sharp differences between girls and boys, and between buses and subways. These nuances are essential in planning and evaluation of transport systems in regard to how, when, where, or for whom public transport can be a part of social sustainability, as public policies often assume.

In 2008, the Republic of Ireland entered a severe financial crisis partly as a part of the global economic crisis. Since then, it has seen large raises in income taxes and cuts in state spending on health, welfare, education and on heritage, which has suffered relatively large cuts. This implies a need for rethinking choices and prioritisations to cope with the changing circumstances. Across Europe, the effects of the crisis on heritage, or the whole cultural sector, have yet mostly been highlighted in general or supposed terms rather than empirically analysed. But what actually happens to how heritage is conceptualised in times of crisis? Inspired by Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper explores representation of and argumentation for heritage in Irish state heritage policies pre and post the recession 2008. Much concerns regarding heritage management are discursively shaped. Policies, stating the authorised viewpoint, are thus key in the construction of heritage and its values in society. Recently, research has highlighted a shift towards more instrumentality in cultural policy due to wider societal changes. A crisis could influence such development. The analysis departs from an often-stated notion of heritage as a part of the Irish national recovery, but what does that imply? Focus is therefore put on how different representations of heritage and its values are present, argued for and compete in a situation with increasing competition regarding relevance and support. The paper shows how heritage matters are refocused, streamlined and packaged as productive, good-for-all, unproblematic and decomplexified in order to be perceived and valued as part of the national recovery. This includes privileging certain instrumental values, foremost economic, by means of specificity, space and quantification, while heritage's contribution to social life, education or health, although often mentioned, are downplayed by being expressed in much more vague terms.

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