Sigurd, Hoff, Thomas Bergmann & Tore Sager 
Spaces of Mobility [PDF ebook] 
The Planning, Ethics, Engineering and Religion of Human Motion

Conflicts surrounding modern human mobility are more than one hundred years old, and are deeply connected to the history of modernization and globalization. The multidisciplinary contributions in this volume do not offer one single theory or methodology for mobility studies, but are instead meant to promote the development of overarching approaches in the future. The first section contains reflections on the socio-political, environmental, and ethical aspects of mobility, where "hypermobility" causes serious and deep damage to social planning, and in doing so, creates an explosive challenge to democracy. Through its enormous energy consumption, hypermobility also produces problematic impacts on local and global natural environments, which makes it necessary to refocus the analysis of attitudes towards mobility patterns. From an ethical perspective, mobility represents a marginal but still crucial challenge to reflect on why and how modern modes of transport emerge, are preserved and could or could not be transformed.The second section emphasises the interaction between surroundings, artefacts and the individual. Taking the theory of ecological psychology as their point of departure, the contributions to this section focus on the understanding of the human person as an integrated embodied mind in the environment. They highlight the ways in which modes of technologically based movement affect the identity of "mobile humans", and they discuss how global mobility affects the self-understanding and moral identity of human beings with regard to their existential embeddedness in place.The final section focuses on the sociological differentiation of the "landscape" of mobility. A focus on the specific conditions, situations and practices of immigrants, children and elderly in technically constructed and socially negotiated traffic and transport systems offers a picture that is not normally a part of political processes. Focussing on differences between human beings makes it necessary to question ideologies, practices and designs of contemporary transport systems.