LIVRES

Manuel de sociologie des mobilités géographiques, by Leslie Belton-Chevalier, Nicolas Oppenchaim and Stéphanie Vincent

Sylvie Fol

18/03/2021

While mobility in all its forms has been the subject of an increasing amount of research over the past twenty years, this handbook provides a synthetic overview of the work devoted to spatial mobilities and offers a sociological definition of geographical mobility. At a time when studies in this field are proliferating, it responds to the glaring need for a handbook that critically evaluates this research.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Theories

OPINIONS

Twelve discourses of climate delay in the transport sector

Giulio Mattioli

25/01/2021

Perhaps one of the few good news of the 2020s is that climate denial is on its way out. In most of Europe, it has become hard to find public figures or organisations that outright deny the reality of human-made climate change. The bad news is that a more subtle, but no less insidious discourse has taken its place. One where the speaker acknowledges (or pays lip service to) climate change, but then quickly moves on to explaining why we should not do this and that to tackle it. Often, the goal is exactly the same as climate denial: to stop climate mitigation efforts in their tracks.

RESEARCH NOTES

Slowing down: Yes, but why, what and how?

Jean-Yves Boulin

30/11/2020

In 2018, the Mobile Lives Forum launched a day-long workshop on people’s desire to slow down, a desire that came to light in the international survey on aspirations for mobility and lifestyles. The findings we are publishing here take on a particular significance today, particularly because of the health crisis linked to Covid-19, through the need to regulate telework or the need to think differently about the spatial distribution of activities, demonstrating that it is time to rethink our rhythms of life and mobilities, and to (re)claim a balance between our social life, family life and professional life.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

SOUTHERN DIARIES

Going out in the public space, moving, stopping, showing themselves: the mobility strategies of women in Algiers

Madani Safar Zitoun, Khadidja Boussaïd, Samia Bentoudert, Maroua Kennouche

06/11/2020

Although Algeria’s urban space is governed by gender norms, women are certainly present and their use of public space is constantly evolving. Far from the clichés that confine them to the domestic sphere, their use of the city is complex: constantly balancing the need to conform to a strong patriarchal order and the desire to enjoy an increasingly assertive sense of freedom. Women occupy the city on a daily basis following unspoken and often invisible rules. In a constant quest for freedom, many of them implement avoidance strategies and spatial appropriation mechanisms that, while conforming to societal expectations, also subvert them. Step by step, from inside the home all the way to the…

Thematics : Lifestyles

SOUTHERN DIARIES

Urban mobility in Algiers: An overview of the sociological research

Madani Safar Zitoun

04/11/2020

Research on mobility issues emerged in Algeria with the creation of the Laboratory for Socio-Anthropological Analysis of Territorial Development (LASADET, Algiers 2). Its director, Professor Madani Safar Zitoun, reviews the work carried out within the laboratory, the evolution of mobility issues in Algeria and the specificities of social science research at the University of Algiers.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Theories

OPINIONS

"We need to boost public transport supply and limit car use in order to reduce our emissions by 60% within 10 years"

Jean Coldefy

22/10/2020

Reducing our CO2 emissions by 60% within 10 years, as the European Parliament aims to do, requires an unprecedented modal shift. Jean Coldefy discusses the implications of such a goal, which requires boosting public transport supply and limiting car use. Funding such a program implies a revolution in mobility pricing. Do politicians realize this and how will they get citizens on board?

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

OPINIONS

Covid-19: Are we heading for a ‘new normal’ and does it matter?

Greg Marsden

15/07/2020

The restrictions in mobility that have accompanied the lockdown and subsequent staged release of lockdown in response to Covid-19 have created the conditions for some quite radical natural experiments in social adaptation. In this article I reflect on what we can learn about the importance of collective social norms in making more transformative social change work. I argue that whilst there is both great potential in some of the adaptations to set us on a more climate compliant pathway, there are also strong historic and political reasons that may limit what results. More generally, as events unfold we learn more and more about the importance of collective norms in achieving transformative…

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies, Theories

OPINIONS

60 consumption options to fight global warming

Diana Ivanova, Dominik Wiedenhofer, Max Callaghan

10/07/2020

Tackling the global climate crisis requires that societies drastically reduce their greenhouse gas footprints (GHG footprint). In this review, we synthesized 60 consumption options and their GHG mitigation potentials, taking into account the life cycle GHG footprints of production and consumption. We find a few options with high potentials and many options with intermediate potential. We highlight how unlocking these potentials requires overcoming infrastructural, institutional and behavioural lock-ins. Avoiding catastrophic climate change will require substantial changes in everyday life and of businesses, guided by ambitious climate policy.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

RESEARCH NOTES

Yellow vests and mobility crisis: what did the “True” and the “Great” Debates lead to?

Mobile Lives Forum, Antoine Lévêque, Marc Antoine Messer, David Moreau, Christophe Parnet, Stephan Utz, Vincent Ventresque

03/07/2020

With the Yellow Vests movement that exploded in France during the winter of 2018/2019, the question of travel in people’s lifestyles and the need to better understand their mobility in order to design efficient public policies was unexpectedly brought to the fore in the public debate. With a commitment to pursuing research related to current events and the social reality of mobility, we wanted to conduct a series of exploratory research projects to report on these matters and ensure that we fully understand the lifestyles and systems that caused the discontent and desires exposed by these movements.

Thematics : Lifestyles, Policies

RESEARCH NOTES

Rural mobility during the lockdown

Aurore Flipo, Nicolas Senil

24/06/2020

The lockdown and its strict restrictions on people’s movements led many French people to live and organize themselves differently, especially in rural areas where mobility is a crucial resource. This study, which is part of a larger project, aimed to understand the impact of this unprecedented situation. How did people in rural areas experience this restriction of their movements? Did the lockdown foster the emergence of new aspirations in terms of rhythms of life and mobility, as it did for people living in cities?

Thematics : Lifestyles

OPINIONS

“Being anchored to be agile”: a call for interdisciplinarity in mobility research

Dominique Joye

23/06/2020

Following the publication on the Mobile Lives Forum website of the roundtable "Spatial mobilities, the origins of a field," Professor Dominique Joye, an expert on social sciences research methodologies, further discusses the issue of interdisciplinarity in current research. He reminds us both of the virtues of hybridization for scientific research and the importance of disciplinary roots to take advantage of it. Behind this apparent paradox, which can be summed up by the phrase “being anchored to be agile,” lies perhaps one of the keys for developing research in a “boundary” field such as mobility.

Thematics : Theories

NEW VOICES

France’s National Low-Carbon Strategy: Can it work without slowing down?

Aurélien Bigo

18/06/2020

In order to become carbon neutral by 2050, France has adopted an ambitious roadmap that concerns all sectors of the economy. Of particular importance is passenger transport since the National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC, for Stratégie nationale bas-carbone) aims to make it almost entirely carbon-free. Aurélien Bigo draws on the historical evolution of carbon emissions to assess the SNBC in light of the various prospective scenarios. He asks whether the government’s scenario can do without slowing down travel to properly address the urgency of the energy transition.

Thematics : Policies