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Abstract

In a brief reflection on the multiple disruptions of mobilities imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this article shows the significance of the scholarship published in Transfers over the last ten years for thinking about the future. Clearly the encounter with a novel and deadly virus—transferred between people, traveling rapidly across geographical regions, crossing over the threshold of our bodies, buildings and borders—has drastically changed many things about us, about cities, about economies, and about the world. An analysis inspired by critical mobility studies highlights the inequities of the mobility disruption, especially in the United States, the importance of histories and representations of mobility for understanding the present situation, and the need for changed choreographies of mobility after the pandemic.

Abstract

This article explores three reasons why literary scholars have been slow to engage with both the New Mobilities Paradigm and the New Mobilities Studies promoted by Transfers, namely: (1) the residual conservatism of “English studies”; (2) the sort of textual practice associated with “literary criticism” (where the text remains the primary object of study); and (3), the tension between the humanist and/or “subject-centered” nature of most literary scholarship and the posthumanist approaches of mobilities scholars based in the social sciences and other humanities subjects. However, the close reading of literary and other texts has much to contribute to mobilities studies including insight into the temporalities—both personal and social—that shape our long-term understanding of contemporary events such as the current pandemic.

Abstract

In this short article, I offer a personal reflection on my own mobilities and how these influenced my academic interest in human movement and brought me in contact with mobility studies and Transfers. On the special occasion of the journal's tenth anniversary, I look back at how the journal has fared. I remind readers of the initial plans and expectations that were expressed by the founding editors, with a focus on issues that are important from an anthropological point of view. I complement this critical and constructive analysis with a brief look into the future. In which direction should Transfers ideally be moving? What are the implications of societal developments such as the ones surrounding the coronavirus pandemic for the journal and its thematic focus?

Abstract

Transfers and T²M have carved out a space for free thought. Using the itinerary of the Boulevard Périphérique (beltway) of Paris as an example, I demonstrate how debates and controversies have been integral to the advancement of the way we conceptualize and problematize mobilities. Frictions with political and ideological projects only reinforce our commitment. Nowadays, we have to face a permanent wishful thinking and I express my concern regarding the instrumentalization and the uses of knowledge to promote a “sense of History” disconnected from Parisian tradition, which itself has been neglected as an inglorious relic of the past. The bright path to a smart/world city will probably take longer than expected by its own self-promoters.

Abstract

Looking back on nine years of Transfers, this essay first analyzes the journal's 141 main articles statistically, investigating whether and how much they represented the editorial team's ambition to develop New Mobility Studies guided by transmodality, transnationalism, and transdisciplinarity, in the process decentering the vehicle, the nation, and even history. Together with its hundreds of Editorials, opinionated Ideas in Motion essays and book, film, and art reviews, the journal was able to carve out a clear trend toward a well-established and solid niche within the general mobility studies field. Embedded in a narrative about the personal scholarly development of its first editor in the midst of the CIVID-19 pandemic, the essay shows how Transfers managed to offer its readers a hybrid mix of a scholarly vista on and over the edge of the field and an artistic, curatorial, and filmic and, in general, aesthetic struggle with mobility.

Seeing Women Migrants in Africa Kalpana Hiralal and Zaheera Jinnah, eds., Gender and Mobility in Africa: Borders, Bodies and Boundaries (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), xi + 259 pp., 10 illus., $119

Indigenous Mobilities: Thinking Mobility from the South and beyond the Nation-State Rachel Standfield, ed., Indigenous Mobilities: Across and Beyond the Antipodes (Canberra: ANU Press), 279 pp., $50

Mobile Dwellings, Standing Still: An Ethnography of Possible Mobility Hege Høyer Leivestad, Caravans: Lives on Wheels in Contemporary Europe (London: Bloomsbury Academic), 192 pp., 20 illus., $102.60

Rethinking Exile in and Out of Africa Nathan Riley Carpenter and Benjamin N. Lawrance, eds., Africans in Exile: Mobility, Law, and Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 337 pp., $35

How to Study Roads Anthropologically Dimitris Dalakoglou, The Road: An Ethnography of (Im)mobility, Space, and Cross-Border Infrastructures in the Balkans (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), 203 pp., 34 illus., £19.99

Invisible Cycle Histories for Brighter Mobility Futures Tiina Männistö-Funk and Timo Myllyntaus, eds., Invisible Bicycle: Parallel Histories and Different Timelines (Leiden: Brill, 2018), xii + 282 pp., $133

Someone Needs to Care: Caregiving Practices beyond the Family and the State Azra Hromadzic and Monika Palmberger, eds., Care across Distance: Ethnographic Explorations of Aging and Migration (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018), 183 pp., 15 illus., $110

Everyday carry (EDC) is a collection of items carried routinely by people, in pockets, on wrists, or in bags. This initial article on EDC attempts to portray and interpret mobility-related EDC, which mediates between moving persons and their devices or activities. Our discussion begins with a general introduction of EDC, presented as utilities and preparedness accessories, followed by historical and functional expositions of four routinely carried mobility items: home keys, car keys, watches, and smartphones. These four items have been developed at different times and places, thus responding to varying human needs. Then, mobility-related EDC items are interpreted from two perspectives: everyday life, noting their unique use by owners, and mobility, noting the instant access to mobility that they facilitate, thus turning potential mobilities into practiced ones.

This think piece approaches urban travel from a mobility humanities perspective, using the example of Seoul, South Korea, a leading metropolis in Asia. The article demonstrates three modes of interpreting urban travel in Seoul: (1) representation by means of mobile video technologies embodying a paradoxical relationship of powers; (2) literary imagination confining a possible mobile community in a restricted region; and (3) philosophical speculation presenting “crossing the Han River” as a spiritual and emotional reproduction of the connection between, and consequential rupture of, heterogeneous territories. The article pays particular attention to the represented, imagined, and speculated dimensions of urban travel, which is understood as a physically practiced and cognitively elaborated production, rather than a predefined movement per se.