ResearchCompleted ProjectsMobility Pioneers. Structural Changes in Mobility under Conditions of Reflexive Modernization Mobility is a crucial but highly ambivalent characteristic of modern societies. In first modernity the concept of mobility links with the social idea that the realization of specific projects and plans is inextricably coupled with physical and/or social movement. Thus the connex between movement (e.g. effective mobility) and motility (e.g. the mobility potential of a person or network) is the origin of the ambiguity of modern mobility. Changing social or geographical positions is perceived as performing mobility potential. In second modernity mobility comes into question and movement and motility can emerge as uncoupled, too. In other words: to demonstrate mobility potential it is not absolutely necessary to travel corporeal but to use virtual mobility as a „mode of transport”. Starting from this fundamental observation the project investigates the reflexive transformations in the concept of mobility. In the light of „mobility pioneers” we have been able to analyze the uncoupling of movement and motility. Empirical data reveals the inner logic of reflexive mobilities. We evolved relational strategies to institutions and networks which enable subjects to realize own projects and plans. Thus we can describe now reflexive „mobility politics”. In the first phase we discovered the specificity of modern and reflexive concepts of mobility. The project being in its second phase develops a theoretical perspective on mobility in its dialectics with immobility and flexibility since a comprehensive approach includes compulsion and constraint as shaping forces. The binding character of mobility, its power to define others (people and things) as immobile and to force them into adaptation is an essential part of our work. Mobility politics and its limits are analysed in three contexts: (a) in fields of high mobility pressure which are endowed with an aura of novelty (e.g. consulting, elancer), (b) in paradigmatic domains of transition from industrial to information society (e.g. media, IT sector) and (c) in areas of traditional constellations of spatial and social mobility with far reaching processes of restructuration (e.g. in the German Federal Armed Forces).
Team: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Bonß (UniBW) Dr. Sabine Collmer (Marshall Center) Dr. Sven Kesselring (TUM) Dr. Gerlinde Vogl (TUM)
Funding Institution: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Time Frame: 08/1999 – 07/2006 Contact Person: Dr. Sven Kesselring, Tel./Fax: +49.89.28928598 Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Information: http://www.sfb536.mwn.de/projekte/sfb_b3.html, (http://www.sfb536.mwn.de). |
