Introduction: Rhythm, Rhythmanalysis and Urban Life

Abstract

I'm sitting on a train heading into London, lucky to get a window seat. It's a high-speed line and the green of the south east England countryside is a blur. This makes it hard to see the criss-crossing of tracks and roads, this infrastructure of commuting and economic development, that converge towards the city. I feel slightly nauseous if I look at something close to the line. Best to focus on the distance. The rhythms of train travel familiar to me from a childhood spent in the 1970s are my reference point, that 'chuggity-chug' motion of wheels on the track. Speed is relative, of course. Still, the singularity of the high-speed whoosh makes me want to hold my breath as the train tears into a tunnel under the River Thames and then bursts out into the capital. This is the part I like, as the rhythms of the city reveal themselves in turn. I notice the building sites of north east London, the flows or 'circuits' of capital and power that underpin the latest surge of construction. At Stratford International, the smooth turning of the escalators carries passengers from platforms carved deep into the ground up into the station and the nearby shopping centrethe rhythms of consumption are never far in the city. As the train pulls away again, I catch a glimpse of people grouped at bus stops or crossings, the rhythms of vehicles, diverse bodies and the fabric of the street intersecting with one another. After another stretch underground, we approach St Pancras and everything slows down. There's always a short wait ahead of the end of the line, a welcome pause. People meander along the canal path occasionally looking up at the new apartment blocks built within nineteenth century cast-iron gasholders, while longboats await repair and a small nature reserve is a hive of unseen activity against a backdrop of controversial regeneration. Suddenly we are in the station, this grand site of modernity. The train doors open and the crowd moves briefly en masse. Then the 'invisible ties' of the

Rupture, repetition, and new rhythms for pandemic times: Mass Observation, everyday life, and COVID-19

“…The practice of rhythmanalysis has attracted significant interest in recent decades, especially in geography and urban studies ( Degen, 2008 ; Edensor, 2010 ; Smith and Hetherington, 2013 ; Lyon, 2021 ). From ‘a speculative invitation to think rhythmically’ ( McCormack, 2013 : 42), it has been developed as a ‘strategy of inquiry’ and a ‘sensitising concept’ (see Lyon, 2021 ). Yet rhythm is both a concept and an object of analysis.…”

Teaching the sociology of time in a time of disruption (a strike and a pandemic)

“…The rhythms of everyone’s everyday lives have been upended. The students are already aware of some of my research on rhythm (for instance, the rhythms of Billingsgate fish market (Lyon, 2016)) and I encourage them to think through rhythm and to practice ‘rhythmanalysis’ (Lefebvre, 2004; Lyon, 2021) with their own bodies as they observe everyday life to sense and make sense of these strange new times.…”