Geographies of transport III

Abstract

This third report in the series reviews recent research on the geographies of transport in Africa, Asia and Latin America to reflect on the spatialities of knowledge production and the question as to whether a post/decolonial turn is occurring in geographical scholarship on transport. A simple and heuristic classification scheme is developed and deployed to demonstrate that predominantly western worldviews, theories, concepts, methods and research practices continue to prevail in geographical scholarship on transport in the Global South. It is also shown that this hegemony is being reworked and resisted in various ways, and the report concludes with suggestions about how geographical scholarship on transport can be worlded and ultimately decolonized further.

Towards decolonised knowledge about transport

“…A review of recent geographical research on transport in Africa, Asia and Latin America confirms that most studies at best adapt pre-existing conceptual and theoretical frameworks to accommodate empirical deviations from a (western) norm, and this holds for researchers in and from Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as their colleagues in western universities (Schwanen, 2018). The dispositive of which academic research on transport is part has become global in reach and orientation despite its disproportionate basis in western-and hence inevitably time and place-specific-philosophical ideas, methodological practices, theories and modes of problematisation.…”

Decolonial approaches to urban transport geographies: Introduction to the special issue

“…This requires a fundamental shift in the dynamics of knowledge production, giving a much more pronounced role to subaltern knowledge, notably coming from geographical areas that have experienced colonialisation. The authors contributing to this special issue thus follow a counter-hegemonic vector of knowledge production, building on existing efforts towards de-centering various fields of geography (Jazeel, 2017;Noxolo, 2017), in both urban geography (Wood, 2020b;Tuvikene, 2016) and transport geography (Schwanen, 2018a). Of course, expanding geographically the empirical corpus of transport studies is but a first, and perhaps the most obvious step towards their decolonisation.…”

“…Put simply, cities of the global south are no longer perceived as peripheral localities, but rather as central nodes in knowledge production (McFarlane and Robinson, 2012;Edensor and Jayne, 2012). Yet, despite a growing number of notable exceptions (Kwan and Schwanen, 2016;Lucas et al, 2018;Priya Uteng and Lucas, 2018;Schwanen, 2018aSchwanen, , 2018b, transport geographies have remained largely immune to decolonial thinking. The yet nascent links with urban studies suggest a potential for revising and revitalising transport geographies by bringing these together with other debates in the field of geography (Kębłowski et al, 2019a;Tuvikene, 2018;Wood, 2019Wood, , 2015.…”

‘Sir, it was my right of way!’ Examining cultural change and the contested entitlements of automobility

“…From the 1990s, as the Indian economy rapidly opened outwards, automobility has become embedded in everyday life for increasing numbers of people. Freund and Martin (2007) make the case that this is a global phenomenon, but the context of Delhi raises particular issues for our understanding of automobility, including the need to decentre knowledge production (Schwanen 2017;Kwan and Schwanen 2016;Cresswell 2014Cresswell , 2010de Koning 2009;Cristaldi 2005;Law 1999).…”