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<\/a>Mobilities, Mobility Justice and Social Justice, edited by Nancy Cook, Associate Professor of Sociology, and David Butz, Professor of Geography, explores how social inequities are constituted in relation to mobility.<\/p><\/div>\n
The topics and regions represented in the book exemplify the \u201cdeeply tran-disciplinary nature\u201d of mobility studies, she says. \u201cIt has put us in contact with a whole different set of scholars from all over the world who we didn\u2019t have access to before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Contributing authors, who come from philosophy, gender studies, communications studies, architecture, transport planning, public administration, geography and sociology, were asked to think about and analyze particular mobility-related injustices using specific social justice concepts.<\/p>\n
“This was to strengthen the justice focus of mobility analyses, and to bring thinking about the mobility-based aspects of injustice to social justice theorising,\u201d says Cook.<\/p>\n
The result is a diverse collection of empirical case studies that illustrate how \u201cdifferent scales, types and facets of mobility interact with particular kinds of social relations to (re)produce inequalities,\u201d she says. Chapters explore issues such as LGBTQ communities\u2019 access to public space, global air travel, ferry service, urban cycling, forced migration, food waste and even tick migration.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost chapters in the book are interested in access or impediments to movement, the way certain sorts of movement are imagined ideologically, and how that shapes people\u2019s access to social justice or shapes inequitable social relations,\u201d says Butz.<\/p>\n
Butz and Cook saw first-hand the social justice implications of mobility infrastructure in their SSHRC-funded research project on the Shimshal Road in Pakistan. During the road\u2019s construction, locals looked forward to a time when they would not have to carry everything on their backs through the mountains. However, the effects of switching from a pedestrian to a vehicular mobility regime have been complicated.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe actually see a deepening of particular kinds of inequalities by age and gender,\u201d says Cook. Men and students are \u201cdifferentially benefitting\u201d from access to this new mobility platform in relation to women and older adults.<\/p>\n
According to Butz, mobility justice is more than simple efficiency of movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see social class and social advantage manifested in the way people travel. The trip from St. Catharines to Toronto is different for the person on the bus, in a car or on the Go train,\u201d he says. \u201cThese experiences work into people\u2019s identities and understandings of themselves in relation to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mobility justice is as much about staying in one place as it is about access to movement. It\u2019s about the ability to make choices in relation to mobility. \u201cMany commuters would prefer to work near where they live and not feel compelled to move,\u201d says Cook. Infrastructure enables people to live far away from their jobs but relegates them to cheaper suburbs and long commutes.<\/p>\n
Like social justice, mobility justice is most often noticed in its absence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get at justice by looking at injustice,\u201d he says. But there are movements towards mobility justice, at least for some people. \u201cAn accessibility regime at a university is a positive example of achieving social justice for a group through a focus on enabling their mobility.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two say their interest in mobility justice emerged from and is supported by their work with the Social Justice and Equity Studies program and the Social Justice Research Institute.<\/p>\n
\u201cMobility justice has taken our research in a really new direction which has been very exciting,\u201d says Cook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having choices about when, where and how to move \u2014 and when to stay put \u2014 is at the core of mobility justice, a new concept that is developing at the nexus of mobility studies and social justice scholarship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":55076,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,1,4,5,38],"tags":[7369,5014,2524,522,7363,7364,7365,7368,412,7366,7164,7367,771],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55074"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55077,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55074\/revisions\/55077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}