Cycling Cultures blog

Quite a diverse range of talks coming up in February:

- Kat’s speaking on The Socio-Politics of Bloomers and Lycra: why what cyclists wear still matters, at an Institute of Railway Studies & Transport History Research Workshop at 2pm, in York, Thursday 2nd Feb.
- I will be speaking with James Woodcock on The Case Against The Car, at Tent City University, Occupy London, at 5:30pm on Thursday 2nd Feb.
- I’m talking on Cycling, Culture, Place, and Policy: making the connections, at CEMORE, Lancaster University, on February 21st, 4:15pm
- I’m presenting some of the Cycling Cultures findings to the Bristol Cycling Campaign on February 28th, at the YHA Bristol, 7:30pm.

The UEL Sustainable Mobilities Research Group is pleased to be hosting the 2012 Cycling and Society Symposium. Send your abstracts in now! The Symposium takes place on Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th September, and the deadline for abstracts is 29th February.

About the Symposium
The Cycling and Society Annual Symposium is an informal and interdisciplinary event. It welcomes academics, policy makers and advocates who wish to share research, knowledge and experience of any topic related to cycling. (At previous symposia, participants have discussed cycling in relation to comparative research; conflict; culture; environmental issues; fear and stigma; gender; history; identity; image; inequalities; interventions; legal issues; methodology; modelling; policy; planning; social change; social movements; statistics; technology; transport infrastructure; well-being – and more!)

This year we invite poster as well as oral presentations. Oral presentations should be no more than 15 minutes to allow plenty of time for discussion. Poster presentation may be particularly suitable for those new to presenting or those seeking to raise awareness of new projects. Those wishing to participate without presenting are also very welcome to attend. A programme will be available in April giving details of presentations and additional events including the annual Cycling and Society Research Group meeting. If you require any further information in the meantime please contact Rachel Aldred at R.E.Aldred@uel.ac.uk.

To submit an abstract, please email your title with an abstract of up to 300 words, stating whether this would be a poster or an oral presentation, to R.E.Aldred@uel.ac.uk by the deadline of Wednesday 29th February 2012. Abstracts will be reviewed by a panel of members of the Cycling and Society Research Group and decisions will be sent via e-mail to the corresponding author by Friday 30th March 2012. The fee for the event will not be more than £25.

Background to the C&S Symposium Series
The Cycling and Society symposium series was launched in 2004 at Lancaster University, with subsequent meetings at the Universities of Cardiff (2005), Chester (2006), at the offices of the CTC in Guildford (2007), University of West of England (2008), University of Bolton (2009), Oxford University (2010) and Glasgow School of Art (2011). The symposia are linked to the Cycling and Society Research Group (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/cycling-and-society.html) whose members span many disciplines and approaches to the study of cycling. An edited collection of papers presented at earlier symposia was published in the book ‘Cycling and Society’ (eds. Horton, Rosen & Cox, 2007) by Ashgate as part of its Transport and Society Series.

I’ve been finishing off my amendments to the article ‘Incompetent, or too competent: negotiating everyday cycling identities in a motor dominated society’. Subject to them agreeing the amends, it will be going in Mobilities journal While I can’t post it online now because of copyright restrictions, I am happy to email it to anyone who’s interested.

In some ways this is a companion piece to my published article on ‘Cycling Citizenship’ which looks at positive discourses around being a cyclist and how these relate to practices of mobile citizenship. This one looks at ‘the cyclist’ as a stigmatised identity using some of the interview data from Cambridge and Hull. It argues that cyclists are caught between stereotypes of being an incompetent cyclist (the ‘bad cyclist’) and being too competent a cyclist (the ‘proper cyclist’, ‘bike nut’, ‘avid cyclist’, etc.)

Here’s a sample bit of data about being a ‘proper cyclist’ -

‘Oh I would say an avid cyclist is somebody who like, they live and breathe it really. You know the sort, you’ll see them when you’re driving somewhere going up a really steep hill and all you can see is these legs like tree trunks (laughter)’

Most people had vivid descriptions of one kind or another, representing the kind of cyclist they were definitely not. In the article I discuss this as a way of drawing boundaries, negotiating identity and avoiding what stigma writers call a ‘spoiled identity’. Also in the article I talk about some of the ways that being ‘a cyclist’ interacts differently with other social identities (class, gender, etc.) depending on the context. For example, in Cambridge cycling has a more middle-class image than it does in Hull, and that matters for how cyclists perceive themselves – and how easy or difficult it might be to be ‘a cyclist’.

One thing I don’t get a chance to discuss in the article is how cycling identities are informed by, and inform, cycling politics. This is something that’s being hotly debated in London at the moment – not necessarily in so many words, but in arguments around how advocacy should work, what forms activism should take, and so on. One sign of this is the email I got over the weekend from Lilli about the Londoners on Bikes project, a new group seeking to mobilise a cyclist ‘block vote’ in the upcoming mayoral elections.

I thought it was interesting (a) to see this form of cycling activism develop and (b) more specifically, the choice of name – ‘on bikes’ rather than ‘cyclists’. With the research internship on advocacy and activism, I’ll be thinking some more about how different forms of activism and advocacy mobilise different conceptions of ‘the cyclist’, ‘people on bikes’, ‘potential cyclists’ and so on, and the implications of this in turn for the changing politics of cycling.

Following the success of Eva’s cargo bike project last year, we’re looking for two new undergraduate interns this year. One will evaluate a Bike Club project on Hackney’s Woodberry Down Estate (in assocation with Hackney Council) and the other will use online research and participant observation to study cycling advocacy in London. More details here. Please note these are paid part-time internships open to UEL undergraduates only.