Narrating Mobile Methodologies: Active and Passive Empiricisms

Abstract

Work on mobilities — as a collective interest of many working in human geography, sociology and cultural studies — is one such area where methodological transformation is currently high on the agenda, reflected in the number of workshops and conference sessions dedicated to this topic (RGS-IBG, 2006; RGS-IBG, 2007; CeMoRe, 2006). In light of recent calls for social scientists to work more closely with their objects of study (Latour, 2000 in Gane, 2006), many researchers argue that a new range of research practices need to be developed which attend more successfully to the experience of being on the move. Whilst I am broadly in agreement with the argument that we need to develop more creative ‘mobile methods’, in this chapter I want to take a step back by considering, and critically reflecting on the type of research that emerges from the development of these methods. More specifically I want to suggest that these methods, which often privilege particularly active dimensions of the mobile body, may be less well-equipped to get at and narrate some of the less-agentive experiences of mobility, where bodies are pacified and not engaged in any form of intentional, auto-affective action.