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 analyses that address 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 mobilise 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."--Jacket.

Introduction: mobile methods / Monika Büscher, John Urry and Katian Witchger -- Any mermaids? Early postcard mobilities / Julia Gillen and Nigel Hall -- On becoming 'la sombra/the shadow' / Paola Jirón -- Choreographies of leisure mobilities / Michael Haldrup -- Mobilities of welfare: the case of social work / Harry Ferguson -- Connectivity, collaboration, search / Jennie Germann Molz -- Travel remedy kit: interventions into train lines and passenger times / Laura Watts and Glenn Lyons -- Mobile, experimental, public / Monika Büscher [and others] -- Reassembling fragmented geographies / Lorenza Mondada -- Studying mobile video telephony / Julien Morel and Christian Licppe -- Mobile positioning / Rein Ahas.