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Mobility Series: Key Ideas in Geography

In recent years, mobility has come to be renowned as a buzz word amongst social science research and has become a hot topic outside academia. Immigration, transport and the economy are but some of the issues with which mobility plays a vital role. Mobility then is a timely addition to the growing mobilities literature and manages to successfully introduce the reader to the key debates and issues which have arisen so far. The book is divided into five main sections which can be read individually, but read in its entirety the reader can appreciate the relational aspect of mobility which figures as a main theme of the book. The first section introduces mobility as a fundamental process of everyday life, from waking up in the morning or driving to work but also inclusive of less tangible concepts: ‘. . .tourism to migration, . . . transport to communications, at multiple scales and hierarchies, all depend upon mobility’, (2009:11). Moving on to the second section, ‘Meanings’, Adey concisely introduces the reader to the key theoretical discussions on mobility that have emerged from different subject positions. Notably, Adey’s narrative relating to the subjective experience of the flanêur compared to the consumer and the tourist assist to ground the more abstract discussions between nomadism and sedentarism. The third section, ‘Politics’, starts with the premise that all mobility is political and not universal. To appreciate that not everyone moves in the same way, or has the same ability to move, the reader is directed to question the allocation of mobile resources across society. Of particular note is the example offered by the evacuation of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 which exhibited a distinct racial divide in citizens’ mobility out of the city. A key strength of this book lies in the fourth section, ‘Practices’, which deals with the doing, performance and practice of mobilities. Discussing key ideas such as non-representational theory leads Adey to convincingly argue that there are certain aspects of mobility that are not easily conveyed through traditional research methods. Emotions, feelings and other less tangible attributes of mobility help to visualise mobility as a multi-sensory process. The final section, ‘Mediations’, uses some novel examples to reinforce the principle idea of mobility as a relation. The spread of the SARS virus internationally is introduced as a case study to visualise how mobilities can carry other mobilities, i.e. people mobilising the disease on long-haul flights. As well as case studies peppering the book to help link theory with practice, the book is also peppered with short ‘Key Ideas’ and ‘Mobile Method’ segments. The ‘Key Ideas’ allow Adey to explore important philosophical contributions to the field of mobility research such as Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘nomad science’ (2009:59) and Bourdieu’s ‘Habitus’ (2009:140). Succinctly summarising these complex volumes into neat boxes provides a helpful starting point for further reading. The ‘Mobile Method’ segments similarly review both novel and more traditional ways of doing mobility research, providing suggestions to apply to your own research. Through publication in the ‘Key Ideas in Geography Series,’ an idea of the importance and significance of mobility research to geographical study is given. However, it should be noted that Adey is conscious to not pigeon-hole mobility as a discrete geographical discipline and he successfully articulates mobility as being inherently interdisciplinary. This is also reflected in Scottish Geographical Journal Vol. 127, No. 4, 335–340, December 2011