Document Type
Book Chapter
Abstract
The abbreviated name of our organization, T2M, incidentally invokes a chronological progression of thought about the history of technologies of motion. It suggests a movement from the particularity of traditional transportation and traffic management studies, with their tendency to focus on hardware, unitary modes of movement, the progressive substitution of one transportation mode for another, and the nation as the basic unit of analysis, to a much more diffused and open-ended analysis of the plethora of interdependent mobilities that characterize contemporary life. The move from T to M works to propel transportation and traffic studies away from an empirically grounded speciality of the social sciences into the heart of broader twenty-first century debates about ways of conceptualising a world on the move. The shift draws inspiration from, and adds historical perspectives to, the ‘mobility turn’ in the social sciences, which exhorts a dynamic, theoretically nuanced and multidisciplinary analysis of the movement of people, objects and ideas across global networks.
RIS ID
29505