Week 3: Kellerman, Sheller and Urry, Jensen, and Wood & Graham
Kellerman (2006) discusses the spatial and social implications of technologies for "space transcending mobilities" (italics in original). These mobilities fall into two categories: the physical, such as bikes and cars, and the virtual, such as telegrams, telephones, the internet, and other wireless technologies.
Kellerman's discussion of social networking was particularly interesting to me. These technologies promote social networking in obvious ways. With our transportation systems, visiting friends, family, clients, business partners, colleagues, etc. who live in different cities, states, countries, etc. (I promise the listing is not intended to fill space!) is much easier, and evolving virtual technologies make keeping in touch and establishing new relationships with other individuals and groups easier as well. On the other hand, these technologies may also discourage people from befriending or otherwise interacting with people outside of their business, previously established relationships, or other social groups. As Kellerman notes, these technologies may foster social segregation because "'they permit closer ties among people with a shared social status even if geographically separated (Freund and Martin, cited in Kellerman, 2006, p. 85).
Maybe I'm shying away too much from Kellerman, Freund, and Martin's focus on social status, but what's interesting to me here is how people can move to an entirely new area yet still interact primarily with people from their old social circle with these new mobilities. When I was younger, video gaming was a past time of my friends and I, as it was for many in my age group and those younger. We spent many weekend nights going over to one another's houses playing multiplayer games (I got into music in high school and became too cool for video games). These days, even though I've moved from Dayton to Raleigh, we could still basically "hang out" every weekend with online gaming. If I was still into video games, I would not have to find a new group of people which to "geek out" (that's for Matt). I can keep in virtual contact with them and many other old friends through social networking sites. If I did want to find a new social group outside of CRDM--why would I want to do that, of course--there's even websites for finding people like me in the area: while in this case I am meeting people outside of established social circle, they're people specifically matched to my interests, not necessarily a representative sample of people in Raleigh. Plus, with today's physical mobilities I could visit the old crowd within only 9 hours by car, or even less by plane. While this doesn't mean I'm going back there every weekend, it's much more feasible to do so now than over a 100 years ago. There are plenty of other ways I could separate myself from my new surroundings. I could do a lot of my shopping online, further reducing my interaction with my new physical surroundings. I can even get XM radio and completely avoid getting a flavor of local radio--of course, car CD players, Ipods, and such allow for this. Speaking of Ipods, I can listen to my Ipod when walking to and from the parking deck to my office, further losing myself in the tastes I brought with me to Raleigh and isolating myself from my physical environment. Essentially, these newer mobilities enable us to interact with many people we may not have previously, but with these new mobilities we also have all sorts of ways to isolate ourselves from my new physical and social surroundings.
The focus of Sheller and Urry (2006) article is not on the mobillities themselves but the emergence of new mobilities as a research area in general. They synthesize the conclusions researchers from multiple disciplines have contributed to the field, explain theories that the new mobilities paradigm undermines--sedentarism and deterritorialism--discuss multiple and new mobilities, and examine the differenet foci and methods of extant research.
They introduce Simmel's sociological theories about Modernity; Jensen (2006) elaborates on the application of Simmel as well as Goffman's theories to mobilities studies in greater detail. Sheller, Urry, and Jensen all discuss Simmel's concept of "metropolitan loneliness," a condition caused by the reduction of personal space associated with the city and technology: "one nowhere feels as lost and lonely as in the metropolitan crowd" (cited in Jensen, 2006). Simmel contends the fast-paced metropolis instills a blase attitude in people, leaving them distant and detached. While I am not much of a literature guy, I know that Simmel was not the only person exploring these themes in the early 20th century, as many authors of the late Victorian and early Modernist period looked at them as well. One book that sticks out to me is E. M. Forster's Howard's End. In his novel, a lifeless, unknowable, fast-paced London leaves its residents dehumanized and mechanical. He describes the train station and downtown London as soulless and indifferent; the people, as a consequence, are constantly on the go, engaging in generally short, meaningless conversations. Though the city and mobilities bring them closer together physically, characters feel even more detached from one another.
In his application of Goffman to mobilities studies, Jensen explains Actor Network Theory (ANT), a concept central to Wood and Graham's discussion (2005) of how software preserves mobility boundaries in hyrbid collectives. Researchers using ANT are interested in how these collectives stay in tact and how "power can act a distance" (p. 179); this happens through the interaction of humans, nonhumans (animals), and inhumans (inanimate objects, either naturally occurring or man-made). ANT suggests hyrbid collectives using classification and categorization to create "discursive and material boundaries" (p. 180). These boundaries are permeable like a cell membrane: the membrane allows certain things to get through but not others, but activity inside and outside of the cell--or, in the case of the hybrid collective, the activity leading to work by computer engineers--can lead to changes the in its selective permeability (or the surveillance parameters).
As Wood and Graham discuss, the programs used for surveillance hide the bias of the programmers and institutions using them: the programs carry out particular filtering functions for the well-being of the institution, but they also discriminate against certain mobilities, or groups of people. The authors detail several examples of this discrimination operating in electronic road pricing, international airports, internet routers, etc. What's interesting to me is their insistence that the discrimination inevitably occurs, whether the program designers or the institution consciously do it or not. As Jamie suggested, this is how discrimination works in other situations. I've observed this is how many people who use racially insensitive remarks react when accused of racism. Like Don Imus, they will claim that they did not explicitly intend to offend anyone, they were just playing around, or something to that effect. What they do not understand is that even if this is true, their remarks could still be racist. Unconscious biases could lead them to such remarks. Conscious or unconscious, their actions still lead to discrimination.