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discuss how these approaches have been adopted by tourism geographers before considering,
through three specifi c authors (Cohen, 2009, 2010; Terranova-Webb, 2010; Thulemark,
2011). This will lead on to a brief discussion of mobile methods (see Büscher and Urry,
2009) before concluding with some comments about the future of mobilities for tourism
geographers.
What are mobilities?
There are many defi nitions of 'mobilities' that could be adopted. There is that of the Centre for
Mobilities Research introduction (CeMoRe, n.d.), which says that the concept of mobilities
'encompasses both the large-scale movements of people, objects, capital, and information across
the world, as well as the more local processes of daily transportation, movement through public
space, and the travel of mater ial things within ever yday life'. There is also that of Hanson (2009:
467), who frames mobility through time and space and two main factors, that of physical
mobility (the movement of people, knowledge, goods across territory) and social mobility
(changes in social status). Sheller and Urry (2006: 214) suggest that the new 'mobilities para-
digm' needs to draw on theoretical resources that converge around studies of space, place,
boundaries and movement and goes beyond sedentarist and nomadic conceptualisations of place
and movement. They suggest that social science has 'largely ignored or trivialised the impor-
tance of the systematic movement of people for work and family life, for leisure and pleasure,
and for politics and protest' (Sheller and Urry, 2006: 208). In introducing their paradigm they
say that the challenge will be in adopting methods and theories to 'keep up' with the ever-
changing and pervasive nature of new forms of (im)mobility (Sheller and Urry, 2006).
Mobility has, as Hannam et al. (2006: 1), appropriately point out, 'become an evocative
keyword for the twenty-fi rst century'. Continuing further, Adey (2010: 1) suggests that
mobility is a key component of the world today, Ong's (2006: 121) 'new code word for
grasping the global'. As such, mobility is
A way of addressing people, objects, things and places. It is a way of communicating
meaning and signifi cance, while it is also a way to resist authoritarian regimes. It is
also the predominant means by which one engages with the modern world.
(Adey, 2010: xvii)
Mobility is therefore movement made meaningful in any given social context (Cresswell,
2001; Oakes and Price, 2008). As Cresswell (2010: 20) says, 'all forms of mobility - they have
a physical reality, they are encoded socially and culturally, and they are experienced through
practice'. Thus mobility is related to social changes (Oakes and Price, 2008) and is about
much more than simply moving populations from one place to another. If mobilities is all
about being 'on the move' (Urry, 2007: 207), then, in relation to tourism, perhaps this can be
taken one step further to presume that tourism is generally about 'people on the move' (Burns
and Novelli, 2008: xix).
Temporary mobility?
Yet, as hinted at above and certainly within geography, mobility is not a new idea (see for
instance Cresswell, 2010; Giddens, 2000; Hall, 2005c; Williams and Zelinsky, 1970; Wolfe,
1966). However, the idea of a specifi c mobilities 'paradigm' (Hannam et al. , 2006; Sheller and
Urry, 2006) has grown considerably over the last decade. Whilst geography was seen to go
 
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