Micropolitics of Mobility: Public Transport Commuting and Everyday Encounters with Forces of Enablement and Constraint

Abstract

Politics in geographical research on mobilities evaluates the nature of power and control of mobility and considers how people are differently enabled and constrained by these processes. Politics is usually approached along subject-centered lines where the task is to identify who is enabled and who is constrained and subsequently to account for the hidden mechanisms of power behind this unevenness. This article argues that what these subject-centered analyses can risk underplaying are the very transformations that mobility practices such as commuting themselves actually give rise to. This article draws on qualitative fieldwork during an evening train commute between Sydney and Wollongong in Australia to argue that the politics of mobilities needs to attend to ongoing processes of “micropolitical” transformation that take place through events and encounters, changing relations of enablement and constraint in the process. My argument is that we need to expand our understanding of what constitutes mobility politics to understand the nature and reach of the multiple forces that are at play, affecting and transforming life in this zone. This potentially enables us to more sensitively evaluate questions of responsibility and intervention.

地理学对能动性的研究之政治, 评价权力的本质与能动性的控制, 并考量人们如何不一而足地被这些过程赋予能力或受其限制。政治经常以聚焦主体的方式进行探讨, 而该项工作旨在辨别谁被赋予能力以及谁受到限制, 从而解释此般不均背后所隐藏的权力机制。本文主张, 这些以主体为核心的分析所可能导致的不充分之处, 正是在于诸如通勤本身的能动性实践实际上能够带来的改变。本文运用在澳大利亚悉尼与卧龙岗之间的夜间火车通勤之质性田野工作, 主张能动性的政治, 必须观照透过事件与偶遇而发生的 “微政治” 改变的持续过程, 并在过程中改变了赋予能力与限制的关係。我主张, 我们必须扩张对于何者构成了能动性的政治之理解, 以了解正在上演的多重驱力的本质与范围, 而它们影响并改变了此区内的生活。这麽做, 能够潜在地让我们更加敏感地评估有关责任和介入的问题。

La política en investigación geográfica sobre movilidades evalúa la naturaleza del poder y el control de la movilidad, y considera cómo la gente es diferentemente capacidad y constreñida por estos procesos. Usualmente la política es aproximada a lo largo de líneas centradas en sujeto donde la tarea consiste en identificar quién está habilitado y quién constreñido, y subsiguientemente tomar en cuenta los mecanismos de poder ocultos detrás de esta desigualdad. Este artículo arguye que lo que estos análisis centrados en sujeto pueden arriesgar por intervenir poco son las propias transformaciones a que dan lugar las prácticas de movilidad, tales como el viaje al trabajo. El artículo se basa en trabajo de campo cualitativo durante una noche de viaje en tren entre Sídney y Wollongong, en Australia, para plantear que las políticas de movilidades deben atender los procesos corrientes de transformación “micropolítica” que tienen lugar a través de eventos y encuentros, cambiando durante el proceso las relaciones de habilitación y restricción. Mi argumento es que necesitamos ampliar nuestro entendimiento de lo que constituye política de movilidad para entender la naturaleza y alcance de las múltiples fuerzas que entran en juego, afectando y transformando la vida en esta zona. Esto potencialmente nos capacita para evaluar más sensiblemente cuestiones de responsabilidad e intervención.

Key Words:

• affect
• commuting
• mobilities
• politics
• public transport

关键词：:

• 情感
• 通勤
• 能动性
• 政治
• 公共交通。

Palabras clave:

• afecto
• conmutación
• movilidades
• política
• transporte público

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the comments and kind suggestions offered by audiences at the University of Western Australia, the University of Western Sydney, the University of Tasmania, and the University of Waikato. I would like to thank Elaine Stratford for giving me the opportunity to present this paper as a public lecture in Hobart, and Peter Thomas for providing comments on a draft version. I would also like to thank Mei-Po Kwan and Tim Schwanen for their editorial support, and the three reviewers for their supportive recommendations.

Funding

This research is part of a larger project titled “Stressed Mobilities: Understanding the Significance of the Commute for City-Workers” (http://commutinglife.com), funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Award (DE120102279).

Notes

1. Nonrepresentational theories are a diverse body of geographical thought that do not prioritize the role of representation when making claims about the composition and enactment of social life. They offer ways of thinking about how our lifeworlds are made up of all kinds of different actors, agents, and forces with different capacities, expanding what counts as both the social and the human. It is largely through focusing on embodied mobile practices that nonrepresentational theories have been particularly inspirational for geographical research on mobility. Through very different contexts, McCormack's (2014) research on dance, Vannini's (2012) research on ferry passengering, Adey's (2010a) research on aeromobilities, and Sharpe's (2013) research on parkour each develop nonrepresentational theories to provide new understandings of the power and significance of mobility for our lifeworlds.

2. Around 2.3 percent of the whole of Sydney's workforce is now from Wollongong (BITRE 2012), making it a large dormitory suburb (Waitt and Gibson 2009).

3. This is well in excess of the average one-way commuting time in Sydney of just under thirty-five minutes (BITRE 2012).

4. Such inequalities could read through the processes of economic restructuring that have occurred in this region over the past century. Since the 1930s, Wollongong and the Illawarra was a center of heavy industry, most famed for its steel manufacturing. Global economic restructuring during the 1980s resulted in mass deindustrialization that saw the unemployment rate increase. Much of the Illawarra's heavy industry has since closed down, although the city retains a significant blue-collar workforce. Although the health and education sectors have since grown significantly, the region continues to be influenced by its proximity to the more diverse and cosmopolitan economy of Sydney. The effects of this economic restructuring on commuting practices have been complex. On one hand, there has been a significant in-migration to the area, where creative workers and professionals are seeking more affordable housing and a lifestyle change in a picturesque setting between the Illawarra escarpment and the Tasman Sea (Waitt and Gibson 2009). On the other hand, there has been an increase in people leaving the area each day to work in Sydney. These broad processes of economic restructuring are complicated by the distinctive local politics that this railway line transects (see also Dorling 2013). It traverses through places known for their relative affluence (Loftus) and poverty (Redfern) and areas that are known for their distinctive cultural contexts (e.g., Sutherland Shire, or “The Shire” as it is known locally).

5. It is important to acknowledge the specific role of sound within this event. As Simpson (2009) shows, sound both signifies and affects. Let's take the boy's line, “A dirty mullet,” from the unfolding event here. There is certainly a discursive, representational dimension to this line that we could interpret as a reference to his own haircut. To focus on the symbolic dimensions, though, would overlook the complex affective dimension created by the materiality of the sound itself. This is about the boy's timbre of voice and volume within the specific milieu of this carriage at this time. These symbolic and affective dimensions are, of course, entwined. Voiced over and over in the way it is here in the context of this event, “A dirty mullet” is not just a reflexive reference to a haircut. I experienced it as a complex torsion of taunt, irony, disparagement, and humor. It is these dimensions together that give the sound its capacity to resonate in particular ways.

6. In a discussion on how to think about the collectivity of an event, Manning (2013) reminds us of the importance of appreciating that different bodies will, of course, carry different tendencies and capacities. She said, “The point is that the same macro-event creates different bodyings in different ecologies co-constituted by different emerging milieus” (27). What this means for the present argument is that people “will be responding differently together, as inhabitants of the same affective environment” (Massumi 2014, 108, italics added).

7. So what this immanent understanding of politics invites, then, is a “shift away from the question of agency per se, towards an ontology in which the capacities to act and to be acted upon are modulated by the relations afforded by a particular milieu across a multiplicity of scales” (Roberts 2011, 2516).

8. For instance, the boys' frustrations of not being able to find four seats to sit together on a packed train after walking the entire length of the eight-car train while it was in motion (I realized later on that they boarded the rear carriage of the train at Redfern Station—microperceptions of the luminous orange top worn by one of the boys); the carriage that they arrived at was designated a quiet carriage; the boredom of having a long journey ahead of them; the high temperatures that afternoon; of being a minority in the carriage in terms of dress and age; and the fatigue of the commuters at the end of the day.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Bissell

DAVID BISSELL is a Senior Lecturer in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, Acton, Australian Capital Territory, 2601, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include work-related mobilities, the experiential politics of transport infrastructures, and the value of public transport for cities.