Small arrangements with self and others: A visual study of the everyday ordinary on Paris’s A train

Abstract

It is generally considered that public transport is a more restrictive, less freely chosen form of public space, one that generates less chosen encounters than other public spaces. Daily travel can nonetheless be considered a context of familiar everyday experience, and public transport a place that is likely to reconcile exposure to others with a certain form of privacy. In our research, we used video to observe the ordinary experience of day-to-day mobility in situ on the A train that serves the Paris urban area (France). It reveals a taxonomy of the small arrangements with self and others that travellers display on public transport, by investigating the patterns of attention to others and the methods employed by individuals to cope with the anonymity and ambivalence of everyday experience.

Public spaces of transport as mobile public spheres and atmospheric publics

“…And one could be on a crowded bus with many other people but not feel any sense of commonality, communicative action, or 'citizenship' that might be invoked by the idea of a public sphere. As Wenglenski (2023) argues, there is a coexistence of both public and private activities and feelings within public transit. The public-ness of public transport, in other words, is situational, emergent and imbued with meanings as well as codes of conduct and conditions of presence; indeed, urban mobility is always about 'flows of meaning' and 'meaningful everyday life practices', as Jensen (2009) has argued.…”

“…The public-ness of public transport, in other words, is situational, emergent and imbued with meanings as well as codes of conduct and conditions of presence; indeed, urban mobility is always about 'flows of meaning' and 'meaningful everyday life practices', as Jensen (2009) has argued. Different spatial arrangements, interactional affordances and constellations of meaning allow for the temporary congregations and performances of people on public transit to form a public (or not) depending on situational actions (Wenglenski, 2023).…”