Mobile Methods

In the twenty-first century, more than ever, everything and everybody seems to be on the move. Global flows of people, goods, food, money, information, services and media images are forming an intensely mobile background to everyday life. Social scientists, too, are on the move, seeking new analytical purchase on these important aspects of the social world by trying to move with, and to be moved by, the fleeting, distributed, multiple, non-causal, sensory, emotional and kinaesthetic.

Mobile Methods addresses the challenges and opportunities of researching mobile phenomena. Drawing on extensive interdisciplinary discussion, the book brings together a collection of cutting-edge methodological innovations and original research reports to examine some important implications of the mobilities turn for the processes of ‘research’, and the realm of the empirical. Through analysis that addresses questions such as ‘how are social relationships and social institutions made in and through mobility?’, and ‘how do people experience mobility in twenty-first century world cities?', the authors mobilize sociological analysis, bringing new insights and opening up new opportunities for engagement with contemporary challenges.

This book is a key text for undergraduate and postgraduate students of disciplines including Human Geography, Social Policy, Sociology and Research Methods.

Monika Büscher is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University. She is a member of the Centre for Mobilities Research and Co-director of the Mobilities Lab – an interdisciplinary research laboratory. Her recent books include Configuring user–designer relations: Interdisciplinary perspectives (Springer, 2009), Ethnographies of Diagnostic Work (Palgrave, 2009) and Design research: Synergies from Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge, 2010).

John Urry is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, where he is also Director of the Centre for Mobilities Research. His recent books include Sociology Beyond Societies (Routledge 2000), Mobile Technologies of the City (Routledge 2006), Mobilities (Polity 2007), Aeromobilities (Routledge 2009) and Mobile Lives (Routledge 2010).

Katian Witchger is a PhD student in Humanities at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies on Society and Culture, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec. Her current research interests include digital objects, sound recording, online music, intellectual property law and the Internet.