Public spheres on the move: the embodied deliberation of cycling in Los Angeles

ABSTRACT

Across Los Angeles, mass bike events have exploded in popularity and regularly stop cars to allow thousands of bodies to move together through the city. We argue that such “mobility events” are shared physical practices that embody political deliberation. By challenging dominant regimes of power, they create public spheres “on the move”, concretely and conceptually. While these publics have emancipatory potential, this potential is ambivalent because embodied practices can still reinforce social divisions. Our interdisciplinary approach, in conjunction with interpretive methodologies, contributes to the mobilities and political science literatures by tying together the structural factors and everyday practices at play in sociopolitical phenomena.

KEYWORDS:

• public sphere
• mobility
• embodied practices
• interpretive methods
• cycling

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Natasha Behl and Sarah Marusek for their invitation to contribute to this special issue of Space and Polity. We would also like to thank editor Ronan Paddison and the anonymous reviewers, as well as Nikola Bagic, Melanie Masud, Walter Nicholls, and Ryan Sauchelli who critiqued and encouraged earlier versions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Pernilla Johansson is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California – Irvine. She studies communities of practice, particularly in international peacebuilding.

Stacey Liou is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of California – Irvine. A political theorist, her research interests include popular sovereignty.

Notes

1 We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on this point.

2 Although, as we witnessed and as some participants explained to us, there are repeat participants who meet at each iteration of cicLAvia and especially at Critical Mass and other rides (e.g. Ovarian Psycos, Wolfpack Hustle).