DIY Bike: UK cyclists, tinkering practices and mobile responsibility in a mass motorized society
This is an abstract for a paper I am currently working on.
Car cultures, and the vast infrastructures that enable them, are so embedded and normalized within industrialized urban landscapes and social practices that the role they play in shaping understandings of mobile citizenship has until recently escaped sustained attention (Miller 2001; Patterson 2007; Urry 2007). The article contributes to this literature by following the example set by Spinney (2010) who argues that cycling challenges a range of assumptions built into the urban mobile landscape. Drawing on ethnographic and interview-based research conducted for the ESRC funded Cycling Cultures research project (2010-2011), I use the bike as a lens into the mundane, everyday practices of being mobile, that is navigating, parking, carrying things, security and maintenance. I explore how cyclists tinker with, adapt or otherwise modify themselves, their vehicle and/or everyday materials and places to fit into a mass motorized society and what these insights reveal about the broader mobile landscape and debates on sustainability. I conclude by discussing the nature of responsibility produced by and attached to modes of mobility, arguing that cycling, with its hands-on Do-It-Yourself (DIY) affordances, draws attention to levels of personal accountability and tacit engagement that have been slowly leeched from other mobile citizens.
June 10th, 2011 at 10:26 am
[...] been searching for bike theft stats for a paper I am writing that explores mobile responsibility. They are not easy to find especially as there is, [...]