Situated (im)mobilities research in the mobile risk society: the dispersed management of risk of contagion in public transport

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the in-situ accomplishment of travelling together during the turbulent times of a global pandemic. It expands the literature on the Mobile Risk Society to enquire into the dispersed, situated management of risk of contagion in public transport. Particularly, it suggests combining the grand theory and epochal account for risk assumed by Beck with a Foucauldian governmentality-perspective that understands risk management as the numerous endeavours to steer and manage the conduct of passengers as well as, importantly, the passengers’ conduct of themselves. Appropriating ethnomethodological categorisation analysis, the paper analyses video footage from inside train carriages running in the north region of Denmark during the pandemic and points out the fine-grained details of passengers’ interactional negotiation and fulfilment of the train company’s risk-management strategy.

KEYWORDS:

• Pandemic mobilities
• ethnomethodology
• governmentality
• public transport
• mobile risk society

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. https://www.sikkerhed.aau.dk/digitalAssets/810/810202_forskellen-paa-forskningshjemlen-og-samtykkehjemlen_endelig.pdf

2. Watson (1978, 1997) was among the first to point out that Sacks’ notion of category-bound activities should be understood as just one type of category-bound predicate. Hence, additional predicates that can be expected to be ascribed to the members of a given category are rights, entitlements, obligations, knowledge, attributes, and competencies.

3. We use “competence”/“competently” to describe peoples’ ability to “display [category] membership by not drawing attention to the fact that they are indeed a member” (Forrester, Reason, and Stokoe 2006).

Additional information

Funding

This work was conducted as part of the ongoing research project Travelling Together: A video study of collective, sustainable mobility (2021-2024), funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark and made in collaboration with Nordjyllands Trafikselskab.