Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
mobile methods comes from the call to be more attentive to researching the affective dimen-
sion of mobility (see Hannam
et al.
, 2006). Taking affect at its broadest level, and continuing
with the OE, gap years and backpacking, Conradson and Latham (2007: 235) understand
affect as a consequence of the interactions that occur between the bodies, objects and mater-
ials that comprise particular ecologies of place. Affect may possess a collective and distributed
dimension, but as it moves between and through specifi c bodies it also effects change.
They go on to say: 'We can then see how geographic mobility may be a route to different
modalities of feeling. Because migration inevitably involves an encounter with new ecologies
of place, the possibility for new affective and emotional dynamics is present' (Conradson and
Latham, 2007: 237). Their premise focuses on the experiential aspects of the mobility and
immobility within the OE. In recognising that many of these individuals have decided to
move and or be mobile for more than economic reasons, so the experiential becomes neces-
sary to interrogate. Yet questions still remain about how to investigate the performance and
the affective geographies of their blurred touristic/work/leisure mobilities.
There are, of course, many critiques of mobilities. As already intimated, mobility is not a
new concept. Scapes, fl ux and fl ow (Appadurai, 1996; Castells, 1996), for instance, all encom-
pass or are compassed by mobilities. In recognising that much mobility research is concerned
with people, so authors such as Appadurai (1996) have also recognised that so much more
than the human is mobile - knowledge, material, information, money. Thus, Büscher
et al.
(2011) discuss how we have never been ' just' human and consider that humans are therefore
co-constituted with/through material agency (see Latour, 1993). Whilst there is not room to
go into detail here, criticisms can also be levelled at mobility due to the exclusionary nature
of much mobile practice (Ahmed, 2004), or the fact that mobility both refl ects and reinforces
power and gender (i.e. masculine) positions (Skeggs, 2004).
Yet, despite these criticisms, the mobilities turn or paradigm (Cresswell, 1997; Sheller and
Urry, 2006) offers tourism geographers the opportunity to explode past misconceptions
about the role of tourism in today's world. As Hall (2005c: 134) says, 'By placing mobility at
the heart of our understanding of tourism, the geography of tourism may . . . be able to make
a greater contribution to human geography, given the contemporary signifi cance of concepts
of circulation.' The experiential, the encounter, the affective, and movement itself need to be
considered within tourism geographies (see also Gibson,
Chapter 6;
Larsen,
Chapter 8;
and
Meethan,
Chapter 7
of this volume). Following Cresswell (2010: 22), mobilities within
tourism research should be approached by or through considering 'the fact of movement, the
represented meanings attached to movement, and the experiential practice of movement', and
so the immobilities and mobilities of tourism and everyday life should not subscribe to a
singular theoretical model but seek to contribute to wider debates about a geographically
theoretical approach to mobilities.
