British Sociological Association Conference
6-9 April 2010
Glasgow Caledonian University
Rachel Aldred & Kat Jungnickel
Abstract:
Spaces of Mobility: Placing Cycling, cycling places
This paper draws on current ESRC funded research to discuss how the practice of cycling produces, and is produced through, specific experiences of place. It builds on interview and ethnographic research in Cambridge and Hackney to describe how cycling is constructed differently in different socio-spatial and political contexts. Cambridge and Hackney have relatively high levels of cycling, compared to the UK average of 2% of trips, and cycling in both places is portrayed as part of local culture and identity. Cambridge is the UK’s “Cycling City” with 25% modal share, while Hackney is known as London’s “cycling borough” and has seen a substantial rise in cycling, now at 10% modal share. Yet the two areas differ dramatically in terms of income profiles, ethnic mix, occupational structures, and cycling infrastructures. The paper will show how cycling in the two areas creates distinctive mobile places, grounded in different experiences of embodiment and different socio-spatial and political contexts. It will consider the importance of sounds and smells as well as visual stimuli, and locally distinctive bicycling technologies; Cambridge is famous for the numbers of Dutch-style bikes on its streets, while Hackney is better known for its singlespeed and fixed gear cyclists. It will ask: what kinds of embodied identities are available to people cycling in each place? What kinds of identities are excluded and marginalised? Finally the paper will consider implications for how we conceptualise places and mobilities, particularly subordinate forms of mobility.