Radical mobilities

Abstract

As mobility becomes a key concept within geography it needs to be considered what a radical approach to mobility means. Reviewing literature on mobilities from within transport, policy mobilities and migration studies, this article discusses three interpretations of radical mobility: scale or speed of changes required in mobility, critical approaches tracing mobilities and relations of power and approaches that question the ontology of mobility. Drawing on material and radical black feminist thought, I instead suggest a rhizomatic understanding of mobility as material-semiotic transformation of energy. This ontology shifts understandings of what just and sustainable mobilities can be.

Transport and mobility justice: Evolving discussions

“…At the same time Sheller's conceptualisation of mobility justice has been criticised. Davidson (2020) , for instance, points out that the operationalisation of the mobility as commons that Sheller (2018b) proposes still approaches mobility as a resource that can be owned and distributed with states required to regulate transnational firms and excessive levels of mobility and speed whilst minimising the harms and cost of mobility. Sheller's mobile ontology is still significantly oriented towards distributive justice.…”

“…Grosz, 2017 ; Ferreira da Silva, 2017 ), Davidson proposes to move further away from questions about distribution through two moves. The first of these is to understand mobility as a material-semiotic process of energetic transformation through death and/or the foregoing of forms of life: the movement of humans hinges on metabolisms, either of those humans themselves when they eat or drink organic matter in some form to move themselves through their physical environments, or of the “organisms that died millions of years ago” ( Davidson, 2020 , page 15) and so enabled the formation of fossil fuels. This energetic transformation is not merely biophysical (material) but also entangled with ideas, ranging from the notion that it is perfectly fine to extract oil ‘resources’ for human movement, even at high environmental or geopolitical risk, to the belief that active travel should be encouraged because of its benefits to individual health.…”

“…In short, Davidson (2020) contends that mobility justice demands unlearning the typically taken-for-granted assumptions about mobility, value, and human subjectivity. Focusing on the latter in particular, Karlsson (2018) proposes that questions of morality need to be seen as embedded in the very development of movement in any living organism.…”

“…When this double movement of recognition and taking responsibility is coupled with Davidson's (2020) understanding of mobility as a material-semiotic process of energetic transformation, it can help to reframe mobility justice as an emergent process of participatory reflection, decision-making and action. Recognition then becomes a process of unravelling in the situated and multi-scalar way that Sheller, 2018a , Sheller, 2018b proposes and Henderson (2020) adopts for electric vehicles (EVs) the assumptions on which current mobility systems are based, the ways they operate, and how they bind together specific socio-technical, politico-economic, and energetic configurations.…”

Populism, Instability, and Rupture in Sustainability Transformations

“…Rather than seeing progress as a movement between predefined stable states, transformations are understood as restructuring fundamental relationships of power (Barca 2011). This involves recognizing that sustainable, green interventions are in themselves acts of power (Davidson 2020). So when researchers differentiate between degrees of change, from incremental changes to those that are more radical, transformation is often considered the most deepreaching form (see, e.g., Heikkinen, Yl€ a-Anttila, and Juhola 2019).…”