Utopian mobilities: Moving futures on and off the earth

Short Abstract:

Climate crisis and global pandemic have turned mobility into a threat to our planet - while projects wishing to move beyond earth sprout from the ground. This panel wishes to engage mobilities' constitutive role in these social transformations with Eric Olin Wright's notion of real utopias. Long Abstract:

This panel wishes to engage ethnographic research on mobility with Eric Olin Wright's notion of real utopias. Real utopias embody the tension between dreams and practical realities: they surface when practices are reformed in feasible ways thanks to the reinforcement of the role of civil society. The current global situation is calling to question the idea of geographical movement as something inherently positive. The intersection between the climate crisis and the global pandemic has turned mobility into an ecological and health threat to our planet. At the same time, projects wishing to explore moving beyond earth sprout from the ground and gain momentum through connected media. Whether as problem or tool, mobilities themselves remain constitutive of these social transformations.

This panel invites papers to explore how the individuals' freedom of and potential for movement intersects with the making of real utopias for collective, equitable and sustainable alternative mobility futures - or on the contrary, jeopardizes such advances. How do people bridge their wish/necessity to move with the emerging moral imperative of immobilization? How do movements which propagate hypermobilization fit into global debates on climate awareness? How do these mobilities and immobilities feed into the concept of utopia(s)?

We welcome new contributions drawing on a broad spectrum of examples, such as mobilities and activism, labour im/mobilities, academic lifestyles, futuristic mobilities and (space) tourism, and more largely invite researchers who find it intriguing to think their ethnographically grounded research along the lines of mobilities and utopias.