This text is the introduction to V. Amit & N. B. Salazar (eds.), Pacing Mobilities. Timing, Intensity, Tempo & Duration of Human Movements, New York/Oxford, Berghahn, 2020, 202 p. It is also available on Berghahn publisher website. We thank Vered Amit & Noel B. Salazar for allowing us to reproduce it on Rhuthmos.
Why Pacing ?
Since the beginning of the new millennium, the emergence of a contemporary interdisciplinary field of mobility studies has shifted away from a linear conception of moving or a priori assumptions of sharp demarcations between different types of journeys. Journeys may be one-off, repeated, take circular arcs and/or form part of a succession of moves. Moves can traverse short or long distances, involve exceptional or quotidian situations, and different types of moves may intersect while one type of voyage can prompt or shape another. In their influential 2006 outline of the ‘New Mobilities Paradigm’, Mimi Sheller and John Urry observed that this expansive view of mobilities also involves a broad range of modalities, including forms of physical movement such as walking and climbing, as well as movements mediated by technologies such as cars, bicycles, buses, trains and planes (2006 : 212).
In turn, mobilities interact with and are shaped by an equally diverse range of immobilities (Salazar and Smart 2011a). These may be associated with sedentary infrastructures – such as airports, train or gas stations, cable systems and satellites (Sheller and Urry 2006 : 210–11) – that enable the movement of people, ideas, images or things (Cresswell 2010 : 19). [...]
