Mobile Culture

This is a draft of a paper on mobile culture. In particular it draws attention to the fact that humans are on the move more than ever before. "There are over 600 million international passenger arrivals each year (compared with 25m in 1950); at any one time 300,000 passengers are in flight above the US, equivalent to a substantial city."

The author also brings up the concept of being 'geographically independent'. It brings to mind the question of how physical communities will manage with their members less frequently found within their physical space. If physical communities want to retain their powers of collective decision making they will need to broaden their community scope to people who aren't physically present but are nonetheless concerned with the affairs of that region. So in other words, even physical, situated communities may start being mobile communities to some degree. Another way of looking at it is that some mobile communities may choose to have their purpose be management of a physical region.

I also particularly enjoyed the feminist quote regarding the labels of nomad or tourist. "If rather [these labels] ... are re-coded as paparazzi, homeless drunk, sex-tourist and womaniser, then they lose the positive valuation that they have typically enjoyed within male-stream nomadic theory."

John Urry
Mobile Cultures (draft)
[Full-text pdf] (url corrected)