Mobility in History Blog

By Dr. Sharon Wilson, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University

This is the second part of a 2-part series Dr. Wilson is writing on tourism and activism related to nuclear sites. For more about Dr. Wilson and her work, visit her faculty page. To read the first entry in this essay, click this link.

Art and Tourism

By engaging with contested sites of leisure and capturing these travel experiences through photography, drawing and community participation, it is suggested that the art of touring politely disrupts the status quo of places visited because it can critically engage with the issues of atomic power through the gentle lens of art. Whilst other artists have looked at the nature of art and tourism and art and the toxic, (Martin Parr, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, and Isabella Mongelli for example) what is subtle and effective about this project is the process by which it uses an established form, a family vacation, to critically engage with toxic smells, sounds, contagions, stories and imaginaries as a form of cultural production and political debate. The 30-day tour culminated in a body of work which includes a range of creative musings from pastiches of family portraits to self-styled souvenir drawings of the nuclear power stations, oral histories of residents, security guards, police and employees who live and work in intimate proximity to the nuclear ‘factories’.

The almost ubiquitous nature walks (which formed part of the artistic ‘family activities’) were often remote and yet industrial. Their setting against the ‘romantic idealism’ in the highly managed safe zones of public nature reserves revealed a paradoxical symbiosis between the banal landscapes of industrialisation, environmental toxicity and the itineraries of conservation which seek to preserve and maintain nature. Interestingly, anecdotal evidence from visitors to these places which tried to mix local tourism with the nuclear said that they didn’t feel comfortable photographing a nuclear site in spite of nature paths passing through or adjacent to the stations. By investing in conservation and promotion of local tourism, another juxtaposition between the mundane architecture of the functional factory is set against the equally manufactured, ecologically ‘sustained’ environment with conservation of the nature that surrounds the factories tempering the perceived threat to public health. Whilst conventional leisure seekers travel to contemplate picturesque landscapes through a romantic gaze, travel to these sites is foreshadowed by the perceived dangers associated with nuclear facilities.

Many of the planned artistic interventions occurred in residential areas associated with the nuclear sites and travel in this sense allowed hosts and guests to meet in fleeting encounters; the format of a family on holiday in a caravan had an innocence and novelty about it which allowed the artists to explore environmentalist issues without themselves being ostracised. As Lindsay pointed out:

We were playing out being tourists, being slightly disruptive and inquisitive even ignorant, sort of ‘oh what’s going on here’ type thing. It allows you to take any role that you want. You can talk to the train spotters or the ex-worker from the nuclear industry. I don’t think many people actually thought we were tourists but I think they quite liked the fact we opened up the possibility that you could tour nuclear power stations. The idea of setting up a new paradigm of how and why you might want to travel, a kind of informal activism and leaving perhaps a legacy for a kind of new form of tourism seemed like a plan. Because of the art side of it, you are acting as a tourist, so it is tourism development in a strange way. As a family we made a tourist itinerary of motor boating, kite flying or swimming in the sea. But they were all set within a nuclear framework; doing them next to a power station added a weird element of risk.

The ‘nuclear family’ moniker (in this case, the idealised white Anglo-Saxon version of the nuclear family²³ ) is the post-war idea of the family which itself alludes to the security in conformity. It is this conformity set against the backdrop of a somewhat ambivalent relationship with nuclear energy that underpins the family photographs. Taken at each destination, they represent an attempt to begin a dialogue which locates threat. Here, the traditional poses both allude to the conventions of expressing togetherness in a happy family holiday, whilst also being a reminder of the toxic landscapes which contextualise these portraits. By engaging in family activities at each of the destinations, the aim was also to engage a wider audience through the cultural media genres of literature, film and art, adding narratives to public debates on the environment, on beauty and toxicity. Through the genteelism of art production, this narrative can be a ‘quiet riot’ in the otherwise undisturbed experience of the everyday. So, from the realm of artistic appreciation in a banal landscape, the radioactive ‘elephant in the room’ is temporarily made visible by a family on holiday. They are not, of course, an entirely conventional family, but rather a publicly funded one which travels to make art: the Nuclear Family Project is in this sense a form of alternative ‘niche’ tourism but hosted under the rubric of ‘environmental tourism’ and mediated through an artistic practice. By their own admission, The Nuclear Family Project are artists and not activists. Because of the form of their project, they are also ‘holiday makers’. In contrast to the idealised notions of a white, happy family on a beach (Obrador-Pons)²⁴ this is juxtaposed with the arguably darker aura of the toxic landscape; spaces of leisure and family activities as played out in the contested spaces of the nuclear industry. The artists, in holidaying in these places, wished not only to use tourism for contemplating the strangeness of industrial landscapes but also as antithesis to the more traditional forms of tourism such as the beach holiday:

I had no idea what it would be like to tour nuclear sites. I didn’t even know if you could get close to them. They are fenced off, but fenced off right next to the building and were surprisingly accessible – that really surprised me. I mean, even Dounreay, an ex-military site had a nice viewing area that was made for tourists. It has informative panels and yet was one of the nuclear research places during the Cold War, I believe it would have been top secret. They are now promoting tourism and have even built a massive car park to encourage people to hang around. Wylfa has a visitor centre, and Trawsfynydd is a tourist spot again – now that the reactors don’t heat up the lake water. In fact, it’s now a leisure lake with watersports, fishing and Ospreys.

By touring nuclear sites, The Nuclear Family are able to re-engage both hosts and guests (and most importantly audience) in a debate about the social reality of nuclear threat. As Pezzulo²⁵ points out, tourism is romanticised for its promise of pleasure, and yet tourism may also enable exploitation of other cultures. In the case of the environmental justice movement, raising awareness about polluted communities and reducing the physical distance between hosts and guests serves to redress this. Being a creative family on holiday, the danger of ‘othering’ its host is reconciled by the artists’ reciprocal engagement with, for example, place. Making work that does not preach about the nuclearity of the destination, and has an appreciation for aesthetics with a genuine concern and sympathy for local issues, is arguably a more ethical encounter with its host.

When visiting these industrial towns, the artists used a variety of tactics to engage with both the public and the surrounding areas which they wished to explore. As participants in this somewhat unlikely holiday, the artists, as suspect holidaymakers, mimicked the performances of conventional leisure tourism by engaging in activities such as beach walking, fishing, sightseeing, apparently behaving like any other visitor. Another approach was to park their caravan in public areas such as car parks and roadsides near the nuclear facilities, intending to prompt reactions to their unusual presence. Using such leisure spaces for family activities naturally led to tourist encounters with residents who lived and worked with nuclear reactors on their doorstep. Interactions included conversations with the communities about the positive and negative impacts of nuclear factories in their neighbourhoods. So, instead of exploiting the destinations encountered, Marek and Lindsay made art which, while addressing an environmentalist agenda, also involved the local community as a way of giving something back. The artists as tourists were as curious about where to find the souvenir shop as they were at disclosing uncomfortable truths,  striking up conversations on difficult topics with non-threatening naivety. By performing family holiday activities close to a nuclear facilities, rhetorical questions are raised around safety, security and what can be construed as acceptable leisure pursuits in toxic zones.

As Marek observed:

In Sizewell there is a managed walk that highlights butterfly spotting and right next to it is a sign about what to do if there’s a disaster, you know, go home close your windows etc. Weirdly the campsites right next to some of them are really beautiful. Sandy Bay camp site’s promotional material talks about wildlife and proximity to the Sizewell sands beach, and stunning Suffolk coastal walks yet completely fails to mention that it’s directly next to two enormous nuclear power stations. When we arrived and talked to the woman at reception, I said we had come to see the nuclear power station and she stopped and gave me an uncomfortable look then regained her composure and went on  ‘oh that’s nice’. I did wonder if she’d imagined that any of her other guests had come to see it. Sizewell Tea are great though, they are a beachside café and they proudly celebrate the fact they are in a car park next to a nuclear power station and make the best of it.

Lindsey also commented that:

Awareness of the nuclear presence is quite ambiguous. I mean we were a bit worried before we left for the tour. Dounreay beach has a history of incredibly hot particles. I think we also imagined we would have more fractious encounters. I didn’t anticipate how pretty the sites would be and how accessible they were with paths and places to walk dogs alongside the structures. We did meet occasional tourists like the Dutch ones in the camper van, and they were completely unaware of the nuclear power station, and they were the only ones walking their dog on the beach. Others would not go on the beach but enjoyed the view of the coast, and some read the warning signs not to go on the beach and turned back. There they were more cautious but at Torness everyone rocks up more as a conventional seaside holiday spot, a best kept secret beach. Dungeness was at the other extreme and had been a tourist resort well before it had a nuclear power station so its popularity is probably historical.

Conclusion

This study has followed the journey of The Nuclear Family project to understand better, how the mobilisations of art and tourism can re-engage environmentalist discourses surrounding the controversial global enterprise of atomic power, manufacture and disposal. Set against the mundane realities of communities living and working at nuclear power stations in the UK, a family of contemporary artists posing as tourists on a caravan holiday were inspired by the cold war narratives of their childhood; their mobile installation used creatively to explore how eco politics in the 21^st century, relates to everyday life.

By visiting 16 nuclear power stations in the UK and staying at the industrial beaches, car parks, laybys and visitor centres located next to nuclear reactors, these unconventional holiday destinations allowed social connections with residents, prompting informal conversations about the challenges and benefits of engaging with atomic power. Despite the undeniable danger attached to being a nuclear host, Chernobyl as historical exemplar of horrific consequences, the communities in question tended to mythologise potential risks, distancing them from both public consciousness and debate.  Arguably, given the quotidian circumstances of the everyday, death by radiation appears as phantasmagorical given the occurrence of disasters overall.

Whilst the artists enjoyed capturing the beauty of the industrial landscape and with gentle provocation raised the issue of the toxic, local residents as employees of the nuclear industry counteracted these critical views with stories of economic and conservational benefits. In summary, this essay has discussed how tourism mobilities can be used as a vehicle through which to explore the dichotomy between urban mythology and scientific actuality. Through critical contemplation of the relations between economic necessities, social activism and aesthetic practices therefore, new stories about our paradoxical relationship

With the nuclear as a lived experience have been told.

References

20. Turner, J.C, (1982). Towards a cognitive redefinition of the social group. Social identity and intergroup relations, pp.15-40.

21. Redclift, M. (2011). “The Response of the Hermeneutic Social Sciences to a ‘Postcarbon World’.” International Review of Social Research 3 (2): 155–166.

22. Blühdorn, I., (2011). The politics of unsustainability: COP15, post-ecologism, and the ecological paradox. Organization & Environment, p.1086026611402008.

23. Carr, N.(2011). Children’s and Families’ Holiday Experience, London, Taylor and Francis.

24. Obrador Pons, P. (2012). Annals of tourism research, Vol. 39, No. 1, pp, 401-420

25. Pezzullo, P. C. (2007). Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, travel, and environment justice.

By Dr. Sharon Wilson, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University

This is the first part of a 2-part series Dr. Wilson is writing on tourism and activism related to nuclear sites. For more about Dr. Wilson and her work, visit her faculty page.

In the guise of a family holiday, artists Lindsay Duncanson, Marek Gabrysch and their 11 year old son Lukas toured the British Isles to explore 16 active and decommissioned nuclear power stations. By using the ‘Egg’ touring caravan as a living space and art studio, this creative family began a 2200 mile journey to visit nuclear industrial sites from Dounreay in Caithness to Dungeness in Kent. Using these ‘toxic’ sites for artistic exploration and recreation constitutes an unconventional form of tourism. Hannam and Yankovka¹ note, ‘dark’ and ‘toxic’ tourism has developed as the numbers of travellers interested in death, sufferings and disasters have grown significantly of late. Whilst this project is not dark tourism per se, it does prompt a conversation about a human interest in the macabre or, in this case, how non-touristic sites may be used for leisure consumption. Unlike the fascinations of dark tourists who engage in toxic tours, The Nuclear Family Project links artistic and touristic practices together in a cultural performance and allows for engagement in family futures that are lensed through ‘environmental uncertainty’ and a ‘post-ecologistic’ quest for sustainable energy. So, while this art tour is partially about appreciating the beauty in a potentially savage environment of the nuclear, it is also, by default, a mobile form of political tourism that promotes toxic awareness through art. By travelling in a mobile atelier, the artists were not only able to engage in tourist activities, but also to use their caravan as a workplace from which to produce family portraits, drawings, photography and creative writing. The Nuclear Family Project tour thus raises interesting questions regarding the connections between art, politics and tourism as they meet on the move.

How then can a nomadic art practice utilise tourism to stimulate conversation about local and environmental issues? Whilst the discussion does make comparisons with ‘toxic’ tourism and protest art, it ultimately draws a distinction between the UK Nuclear phenomena (which barely registers on the cultural Geiger counter) and the more prevailing conditions of chemical corridors such as ‘Cancer Alley’ in Louisiana: a more deadly but still comparable context. As cultural theorist Pezzulo² summarises in what Bullard³ also describes as ‘human sacrifice zones’, the guided bus tour is a powerful vehicle for environmental activism, in which campaigns against the consequences of industry attempt to make the intangible more visible through the modus of travel. Admittedly the nuclear threat, in this case, is more an ‘accident waiting to happen’ than communities being constantly exposed to dangerous contaminants. Nevertheless, the looming presence of nuclear reactors, whilst questionably benign, does not make them less hazardous as future impacts just because they appear dormant now.

To consider the outcomes of the tour, the first point of note is that the artists, in the post-mortem of their journey, reflected upon the idea that a self-conscious use of tourism as a positive agency could initiate debate about the corrosive impacts of the nuclear. It is suggested therefore, that as travel meets art through the auspices of a ‘toxic’ tour, an alternative form of vacation with a creative and educational purpose is made possible which fits neither the mould of toxic tourism nor raw activism. Also, as MacCannall⁴ points out, tourism is by its nature deemed toxic, ‘even tourists dislike tourists’. The question arises as to whether this kind of ‘art tourism’, in which the artists are engaging in a personal journey of discovery, may lead to ethical encounters with local populations surrounding nuclear sites. Another issue to emerge from their travels was how art is used to promote environmental justice as a gentler form of protest. Here it is proposed that participation in arts activities hosted in a 1960s vintage caravan due to its non-threatening demeanour is, perhaps, a quiet radicalism that re-engages residents and tourists in debate about the sustainable future of communities, nature and industry. As Branagan and Boughton⁵ point out, non-violent activism and education often occur simultaneously. So, while the artists’ intention was not to lead directly to civil unrest, arguably, by simply being in these locations making art, attention is drawn to important issues. As a result, it would seem that socially engaged art might facilitate critical debates in places where issues are on the threshold. The final point made relates to the ways in which the nuclear industry contributes to conservation, urban regeneration and tourism development. Admittedly it would be outlandish to propose that a temporary caravan holiday would be a catalyst for any major environmental campaign. Nevertheless, its presence is timely and subtly impactful. Investment in nature and the local communities pushes an industry agenda to redeem public opinion in a ‘post-toxic’ atmosphere. This dichotomous relationship between industry and nature reserves can lead to a social production of space paradoxically formed by chemical and community relations. The discussion briefly considers how beautification of the landscape may civilise the industrial thoroughfares through the encouragement of biodiversity in industrial habitats, reclamation and the strategic designation of leisure spaces. So, whilst the nuclear chemical industry creates toxicity, it also maintains, controls and manipulates nature arguably to reposition the tourist gaze through a pro-nuclear lens.

Art and Activism

In considering how The Nuclear Family Project situates itself as a form of ‘accidental’ environmental activism, a brief account of where it is located in the wider campaign for sustainable ecologies and economies is in order. The UK government’s nuclear energy policy has, in the past, been met for the most part with public outcry. Often this was as much a response to the Cold War’s nuclear weapons program as to the industry itself. Even in the face of the relative safety of nuclear energy versus other forms of generation (coal mining, gas drilling) and against other risk-related contexts⁶, serious concerns about risk underlying the nuclear industry remain. As Martin⁷ points out, most environmental damage is caused by governments and corporations, yet the world’s environmental crisis is so enormous that averting its relent is not just about governmental or corporate action but requires the engagement of all of society⁸. We seem to be in a state of flux concerning our energy future. Public opinion favours low-carbon  generation from wind and other renewables in spite of limited and sporadic supply. In the face of rising demand for low-carbon baseload, UK public opinion polls still reflect substantial unease regarding nuclear power. However, current trends toward nuclear power are interestingly characterised by falling concern and increased ambivalence⁹. This was borne out by the artists’ experience through conversation with the communities visited. Brook¹⁰ suggests that because nuclear power has arguably advanced the means to enable low-carbon energy, the notion of its endorsement as an energy source is also in the public consciousness. Also, according to Truelove and Greenburg (2013)¹¹, the new greater risk of climate change has made people more open to nuclear facilities since these may improve energy security. Thus, previous criticism has perhaps begun to take a back seat in light of more global ecological concerns.

With these wider national debates in mind, the ‘Nuclear Family’ project is a creative response to the fear of the unknown. With concern about nuclear still expressed by around half the general population, its roots in the mindset of nuclear threat and with only limited information about how nuclear power is managed, the human imagination is left to draw its conclusions. The artists, therefore, travelled the country with a desire to learn about the phenomena, to understand what those living near the power stations think about the industry, and with optimism to explore nuclear power from a post-Cold War perspective with no particular axe to grind.

In this instance, the artists used their ‘tour’ to learn where the real and imagined idea of ‘the nuclear’ resides in 2016. Researching the subject, they travelled using their caravan as a travelling laboratory for aesthetic specimens to be collected, observed and contemplated. Tourist Information, collated oral histories, snapshots, collected shells and anecdotes from conversations en-route, were all used as a mobile archive and meeting ground for community interest. Environmental concerns were surreptitiously built into the leisure activities, not only from an artist’s perspective but also for the visiting public. That said, the artists by their own admission were not trying to preach a particular doctrine, and despite making critically engaged art, they chose to ‘sit on the fence’ in their attitude to the nuclear industry. They used tourism simply to converse with those who are impacted by the presence of the nuclear industry. The artists also said that their main aim in touring, apart from their own personal pleasure in making art, was about a fascination with industry and landscape: despite having little previous contact with nuclear power stations they were still mystified and intrigued by them. It was also a ‘privilege’, they said, to be able to share their thoughts, fears and misconceptions with different people in the hope to widen knowledge about the toxic. So, although the tour was a personal inquiry, the fact that they had conversations with others was deemed an additional benefit Marek, sharing some observations noted:

It is hard to hear negative conversations around the nuclear power stations because there is a zone of acceptance. The police at Sellafield said there was generally support around the power station, and it would gradually wane off with distance, so the zone of maximum dissatisfaction would be just outside of commuting range; outside the zone of economic influence. There are often lots of lovely houses around the power stations, and perhaps people live there because it’s quiet.

Protests often involved people who had travelled from other places, from cities. The Wylfa protest group, PAWB, on the other hand had been protesting locally against the power station in Anglesey since it had been there. In an old school CND way, perhaps they would be against anything nuclear. Their debate is wider though because it’s also about maintenance of nuclear weapons. Conversely, we live in an energy hungry society and locally, people need jobs and so on. Activist groups seem more focused ideologically than practically in terms of their nuclear debate. Activist groups protest against the nuclear for ideological reasons; parties that often do not live in the sites they represent often undertake campaigns. Whilst this is not necessarily a negative, protest groups are interested in national issues of the nuclear and have occasionally been criticized for having a romantic or revolutionary vision of social change. A campaign to close a nuclear power station as part of the long-term goal to decrease nuclear pollution may make sense, yet in the short term is unpopular if livelihoods depend upon it. Whilst protest groups may provide a much needed voice for environmentalism, critically they are not always representative of the communities for whom they seek ‘justice’. This problem is echoed in the worthy optimism of Cumbrians Against Radioactive Environment (CORE). As a not for profit organisation, CORE started life in 1980 as the Barrow Action Group, with  the aim of opposing the import of foreign fuel to be reprocessed at Sellafield. In 1990, they also engaged in toxic tourism, conducting local tours and giving presentations to schools, universities and community organisations. Whilst this group offered an effective forum for which to take local issues to parliament, their work was not popular with the locals. CORE celebrated living in harmony with nature, pro-actively defending the purity of the fells, estuaries, lakes and woodlands of Cumbria. Through a political activism they were deeply opposed to what they felt was ‘harbouring invisible danger’, yet many of them did not work at the reprocessing  plant. They alluded to the preservation of the traditional picturesque and nature as essential and important national assets, deemed these under threat and in need of protection above and beyond the economics. As pointed out on their website, CORE’s manifesto embodied sentiments such as ‘The water we drink, the food we eat along with the very air we breathe all bear the hallmark of man-made nuclear pollution.’¹².  One of CORE’s major campaigns was to fight against the operation of a new plant THORP and they were successful in challenging a proposal by the nuclear waste agency NIREX to put a waste dump on the edge of the Lake District.

On the other hand, The Nuclear Family Project was motivated by curiosity regarding the reappraisal of nuclear in the light of climate change by notable media commentators (such as Stewart Brand and George Monbiot). This curiosity was alongside a genuine interest in toxic landscapes and appreciation of the natural world through art. This forms a different, if contentious, lens through which to engage with the issues highlighted by collectives such as CORE. However, such sentiments have similar environmental roots and it is merely the process which differs. Art arguably has the power to involve itself more subtly with politically driven campaigns due to perceived neutrality. As Marek explained, “By being holidaymakers on an unlikely tour, the caravan served as a sounding board or a conversation opener from which reciprocal knowledge could be exchanged through creative dialogue”. So, art arguably endeavoured to give a voice to the unspoken without being seen to be overtly activist. Marek commented that, “Typical protest tends to polarise people and lead to disengagement where arguments are complex: where people are at loggerheads, there is no dialogue”. Lindsay added that, “The project, rather than a point of conflict, instead was a meeting place where ideas could be cracked open – we were trying to work it out for ourselves, what the arguments are, and the most authentic way was to go and visit the places”.

To echo this, according to Taylor¹³, the celebratory and creative aspects of the arts bring a balance to environmentalism by lightening its often confrontational messages with creativity and humour. Although anger is an important emotion in activism, it is not sustainable for long periods, and may contribute to burnout. Similarly, audiences may ‘turn off’ if they are continually bombarded with angry messages, whereas the use of many different emotions can evolve a variety of ‘hooks’ to engage people. In this case, the novelty of the vehicle and the public being invited to participate in quirky activities such as making milkshakes on Sellafield beach added a sense of oddity hard to ignore. It would be naive to suggest that visiting toxic locations and talking to others would serve to collapse or rehabilitate the atomic industry, yet engaging local people in environmental debates linked to the local area, if nothing else, is the antithesis to the normative acceptance of toxicity. As Marek noted after spending time in these localities:

It almost felt like rather than attempting to change the minds of locals we were an expedition on behalf of the angry liberal city dwellers to understand nuclear. In the light of changing attitudes and increasing opposition to fracking and fossil fuels: the default stance was always been to distrust nuclear but this is now undermined by global warming concerns. All well and good to just say we can’t have fracking and fossil fuels and we need renewables…what does that mean in real terms? If nuclear power is part of that alternative- what does that really mean to the country and communities?. There was, however, a playfulness in our family activities, reminders about local nuclear impact… the ‘elephant in the room’

Pezzullo¹⁴ uses the term ‘toxic tourism’ to describe organised tours to places of environmental degradation in underprivileged communities. Toxic Tourism cannot just be categorised as dark tourism, but, as Di Chiro¹⁵ proposes, it is a form of environmental tourism which draws together the contentious relationships between environmental justice and social degradation. The arts fit into this debate by using aesthetics to synthesise sometimes controversial ideas into potent symbolic images, songs or performances which can raise awareness with the community at large (Andrew and Eastbum¹⁶, Evergreen Theatre,¹⁷). The arts play an important role in exposing these covert processes in promoting open, factual debates. As Branagan points out, the arts bring a carnival, yet simultaneously sharp, atmosphere to environmental rallies¹⁸. This arguably creates ‘liminal’ settings which are conducive to the deep learning necessary for social action (Turner) ^{19, 20} Using tourism to socialise with strangers by means of a self-conscious ‘doing family’ performance, is a playful and non-invasive way to meet others. Indeed many activists have used art to educate audiences, to disseminate information and try to convert them to environmentalism.

The question arises: what kind of social activism may be induced through aesthetic practices when a) the itineraries are not always clear, or b) are ignored? Considering the natural inertia experienced in the ‘zone of acceptance’ (as Marek puts it),  the nuclear ‘foreshadowing’ the every day, is inherent, and tacitly accepted around the potentially hazardous sites. (See Figure 3). In fact, Bonnett, like Redclift²¹ and Blühdorn²² mourns the fact ‘that we now live in a post-ecologist period in which, behind a façade of deep ecological concern and green politics, inaction is par for the course’. Re-igniting potential concerns through art, however, could lead to significant social change through a radicalised population if the messages were clearly heard and acted upon in a meaningful way. The Nuclear Family Project’s alternative form of tourism contains the idea that pleasure-seeking with traditional forms of family leisure such as swimming on Wylfa Beach or building sandcastles at Dounreay, instead of deactivating and naturalising the toxic, draws attention to it. Art activists from this pretext are seen not as provocateurs but instead passionate, informed individuals who admire and respect the place and just have relevant questions to ask.

The second part of Dr. Wilson’s essay will appear on Mobility in History Blog in early June!

By Katie V. Streit

Katie Valliere Streit is an independent scholar based in Dayton, Ohio.  Streit obtained a PhD in History from the University of Houston. Her research focuses on the history of automobility and state development in southern Tanzania during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

Historians spend countless hours in libraries and archives with backs bent, eyes strained, and fingers stained with ink. We diligently strive to read any and all secondary and primary sources that could help answer the questions driving our work. Many historians of technology, however, have unique opportunities to set aside the manuscripts and physically engage with the instruments, mechanism, and networks they are researching. New and more nuanced insights can arise when historians operate telephones or repeating rifles, observe hydroelectric dams or blacksmiths forging tools, manipulate plastics or textiles, ride in trains or aircraft, and so forth. Travelling over 3,600 km on public transportation in Tanzania altered my perception of the ways in which infrastructure deficiencies impacted lives and livelihoods in the nation’s southern region for the past century.

Figure 1. Map of Tanzania created by the United Nations Officer for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Source: United Nations Officer for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “United Republic of Tanzania.”

My investigation into the history of road transportation in southern Tanzania began with a seemingly simple two-part question, “Why was there a lack of all-weather roads in southern Tanzania, and how did their absence hamper the region’s economic development?” My predecessors had addressed the latter half of the question. They concluded that the failure of the colonial (1880s-1961) and post-colonial states to construct adequate transportation infrastructure in the south aggravated the region’s real and perceived impoverishment and isolation throughout the twentieth century.[i] I reached a similar conclusion after two years of archival research in Tanzania and England. Colonial authorities and private investors were eager to improve infrastructure in southern Tanzania (then German East Africa) in the 1890s in order to better exploit natural resources and create a lucrative, cash crop producing landscape. The physical destruction and social unrest caused by the Maji Maji rebellion (1905-1907) and First World War thwarted colonial “development” schemes in the south. The motorable roads haphazardly constructed by Allied forces to facilitate troop and supply movements during the war quickly deteriorated in the face of neglect and adverse climatic conditions. The abandoned and decrepit roads became a powerful symbol of Southern Tanzania’s isolation and impoverishment in the aftermath of the war, as well as a justification for the colonial state’s reluctance to invest in the seemingly unprofitable periphery.

Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, government officials stationed in the south repeatedly petitioned the central state to allocate more funds and manpower to improve the region’s failing infrastructure. They recounted tales of nearly careening over ravines and disassembling their vehicles in order to wade them through flood waters as evidence that road improvements were needed in order to improve administrative efficiency and encourage economic progress.[ii] Both the British colonial state and Tanzanian national government, however, invested their limited resources in more prosperous regions accessible by railway networks. At the turn of the twenty-first century, newspaper articles and historians continued to lament the deplorable road conditions. Stranded passengers purchased food from local communities and slept onboard the broken-down buses out of fear of potential lion attacks as they waited indefinite periods for a replacement vehicle to arrive. These stories persuaded me that the history of road transportation in southern Tanzania was innately pessimistic. The dilapidated roads served as a powerful symbol of the region’s isolation and poverty. They helped to justify government neglect and propagate stereotypes that the region was incapable of “development.”

In 2015, I finally travelled to the south in order to collect oral histories from former drivers and mechanics operating in the region from the 1940s to the 1970s. My experiences travelling in southern Tanzania were as varied as the passenger vehicles I boarded, including motor cycles (piki piki or boda boda), auto rickshaws (bajaj), mini-buses (dala dala), and major bus liners. I was shocked by the ease of my journeys south from Dar es Salaam to Lindi (454 km) and northeast from Songea to Dar es Salaam (934 km). After reading numerous accounts of passengers being stuck for days trying to cross the Rufiji River toward Lindi and the perils of travelling through the Southern Highlands out west, I was unprepared for the comfort of the “luxury” buses’ recliner seats, air-conditioning, complimentary food, and in-service movie entertainment. As the buses speed along tarmac roads, I wondered whether southern Tanzania had entered a new era of improved interconnection with the rest of the nation, which in turn facilitated economic opportunity and prosperity for the regional populace.

I could not reconcile this narrative with my experiences travelling in the region’s interior. The 232 km journey across the Makonde Plateau from Masasi to Mtwara (via Newala) took ten grueling hours. The mini-bus was lucky to exceed 20 mph on the back-breaking dirt road. Chicken coops were shoved in the trunk, mattresses strapped to the roof, and passengers squeezed aboard like sardines in the overfilled aisles. If the villagers did not board our bus, they would have to wait until the following day. When I safely arrived in Mtwara, I was certain that I had experienced the worst main road in the south. The ease of travelling along tarmacked roads from Mtwara to Lindi and Lindi to Masasi seemed to confirm my assumption. It turned out that I was mistaken.

Figure 2. Bus from Masasi to Mtwara via the Makonde Plateau. Picture taken by author, 2015.

I ended my field research by travelling west along the main road from Masasi to Songea (460 km) – a road that was the focus of my dissertation. The Tanzanian government had recently commissioned Chinese contractors to oversee construction of a new all-weather, bitumen standard road to Songea – a feat that had not been accomplished in over hundred years. Once again, I found myself boarding a mini-bus before dawn; shoving my bag under my feet and sandwiching my knees into the seat in front of me. Within thirty minutes of departing, the mini-bus diverted from the main road onto an extremely bumpy frontage road. To my astonishment, we remained on the dirt road for the next 15 ½ hours when we reached the outskirts of Songea. Although the driver skillfully dodged the worst potholes and bumps, the passengers uncontrollably bounced about and collided into one another. The windows remained open to combat the oppressive heat. As a consequence, our ears (and my sanity) suffered from an incessant rattling, while our belongings, hair, and skin became saturated in dust and grim that construction trucks kicked up as they barreled past.

My disbelief at the road conditions turned to a silent road rage amid the constant pounding. I finally understood the frustration locals expressed at the government’s inability to construct tarmacked roads. How could anyone access outside markets and conduct profitable businesses under such conditions? If the major east-west road was in such a terrible state, how much worse must the conditions be for hundreds of smaller district and village roads scattered across the south? It was no wonder that activists in the south used the roads as proof of their second-class citizenship.

Figures 3. Construction progress on Masasi-Songea Road (outside Masasi). Picture taken by author, 2015.

Gradually my anger subsided into a deep appreciation for local agency and innovation. I respected the fortitude of countless drivers navigating horrendous roads for the benefit of themselves and their communities. I reflected upon the technological knowledge of drivers and mechanics forced to find innovative ways of repairing vehicles in transit and/or when replacement parts were scarce. I also contemplated the initiative and innovation local communities demonstrated for over a century in the face of inadequate infrastructure. Whether launching beer pots full of cargo across the Mbwemkuru River or transporting motor vehicles half-mile across the Rufiji River aboard a ferry consisting of four bound canoes topped with a wood platform, southern Tanzanians found creative ways to remain mobile.[iii] I gained new respect for the passengers (many of whom stood for hours in the aisle) as they repeatedly endured this and similarly punishing journeys in order to make a living and visit loved ones. I also witnessed the multitude of livelihoods that individuals carved out on and along the road (drivers and mechanics, itinerate traders, precious gem dealers, petrol station owners and operators, teenagers hawking food at bus stops, and so forth). My oral history interviews and conversations with fellow passengers confirmed that individuals throughout southern Tanzaniautilized automobiles as tools to create dynamic, interregional, socioeconomic networks.

While bumping along the Masasi-Songea road, I ultimately encountered parallel narratives of road transportation in southern Tanzania – one of a region’s peripheralization and impoverishment, and the other of local initiative, innovation, and opportunity. My experiences travelling in the south did not undermine my archival research, but rather enriched my research and enabled me to adopt a more nuanced perspective of the past and present realities impacting a dynamic people struggling to improve their lives in an impoverished region of Tanzania. Furthermore, my research challenged the assumption that individuals residing in impoverished regions and nations depend upon technological transfer to experience technological advancements that can improve their livelihoods. I found that southern Tanzanians not only appropriated and adapted imported technologies to fit their needs and desires, but they developed unique methods and systems of constructing, maintaining, improving, and transforming mobility technologies and infrastructures so as to better pursue opportunities locally, regionally, and internationally.

—

[i] Felicitas Becker, “A social history of Southeast Tanzania, ca 1890-1950” (PhD diss., Cambridge University, 2002), 154-55; Chau P. Johnsen Kelly, “A Tale of Two Cities, Mikindani and Mtwara: Consuming Development in Southeastern Tanganyika, 1910-1960” (PhD diss., University of California Davis, 2010); Priya Lal, African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania: Between the Village and the World (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Pekka Seppällä, “Introduction,” in The Making of a Periphery: Economic Development and Cultural Encounters in Southern Tanzania, eds. Pekka Seppällä and Bertha Koda (Uppsala, Sweden: Narodiska Afrikainstitutet, 1998), 7-37; Husseina  Dinani, “En-gendering the Postcolony: Women, Citizenship and Development in Tanzania, 1945-1985,” (PhD diss., Emory University, 2013); and Matteo Rizzo, “The Groundnut Scheme Revisited: Colonial Disaster and African Accumulation in Nachingwea District, Southeastern Tanzania, 1946-67,” (PhD diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2004).

[ii] BLCAS MSS. Afr. s. 1738 (27), Lumley, “Forgotten Mandate”; and BLCAS MSS Afr. s. 609, Harry Churchill Baxter, “River Crossing.”

[iii] BNA FCO 141/17730, Tanganyika: Southern Province: Provincial Commissioner’s Monthly Newsletter 1944-1955, T.O. Pike to Chief Secretary, April 10, 1948; and BNA CO 822/139/1, “‘Well, That’s The Biggest Obstacle Crossed’: Major Haulage Transport and Some Snags,” extract from Tanganyika Standard, October 1, 1949.

Contemporary Asylum Narratives: Representing Refugees in the Twenty-First Century, Woolley, Agnes, New York (USA), Palgrave Macmillan (First Published 2014) pp 239

ISBN: 9781137299055 (Hardback) Price: US$100

Contemporary Asylum Narratives announces its objective upfront; it seeks to enquire into “the communicability of the asylum experience” in narrative fiction, films, and theater (2).  However, this volume is much more than your regular exegeses of cultural narratives about refugee experiences in Britain. It thoroughly contextualizes its textual archive within current legislative definitions of terms like “asylum” and “refugees” in UN documents, Britain, and Europe, within juridical protocols and proceedings that decide whether the refugee has a valid reason to be granted asylum or not, and key theoretical scholarship on migration, globalization, and ethics of narrating the other (Homi K. Bhabha, David Farrier, Stuart Hall, Jacques Derrida, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Simon Gikandi, Khwame Anthony Appiah, Paul Gilroy, and Arjun Appudurai amongst others). This comprehensive critical framework clearly lays out the complex history and discourses surrounding the current refugee crisis in Europe for both academic and non-academic audiences. But without rendering it simplistic in any fashion. It also allows the book to make a crucial intervention “in the tension between migration as a ‘poetics of relocation’ (Bhabha, 1994, p. 225), and the materiality of displacement, statelessness and border crossing” (4). In other words, Dr. Woolley’s book serves as an invaluable supplement to literary and cultural scholarship about immigration experiences that often-chiefly focus on nostalgia for the home country and challenges of assimilation in the host country (Salman Rushdie, Anupama Jain, Malashri Lal and Sukrita Paul Kumar), racial melancholia (David L. Eng and Shinhee Han), and generational divides amongst immigrant populations (Piyali Bhattacharya, Susan Eckstein and Mette Louise Berg, Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur. Contemporary Asylum urges a more in-depth, expansive conversation around lived experiences of immigration from below by asking – How do you narrate the story of those who are caught between host-land and homeland; not metaphorically but in real life? How do you make their trials and tribulations visible in order to sensitize the public to their stories when the latter’s survival depends on their remaining invisible; imbricated with the bodies of ships, of trucks, and the system, sometimes illegally? How do you let the refugees’ voice come through versus speaking for them? Herein, Dr. Woolley’s work is a welcome addition to critical deliberations on the immigration experience of at-risqué populations such as Aihwa Ong’s ethnographic account of Cambodian refugees in California in Buddha is Hiding; Refugees, Citizenship, the New America (2003), Inderpal Grewal’s study of Sikh refugees in the U.S. in Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms (2005), and Mahmud Mamdani’s memoir on Ugandan Asians’ experiences in Britain in From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain (2011).

Drawing on a range of narrative media and genres, this volume makes a compelling argument for how self-aware fiction and non-fiction, film and theater confront “proliferating sites of exclusion in Britain […] [to] provide unsovereign spaces, in which authorial sovereignty is undermined through an insistent attention to the challenging aspects of [narrating the traumatic conditions that make one a refugee and] imagining and representing asylum” (211). The author deftly unpacks how storylines, dialogues, formal, and para-textual elements produce the text itself as an imaginative site for readers to ethically connect with refugee subjects. Here communication is engendered in two ways. One, readers are invited to extend towards refugee lives in the pages of the book or on the screen through imagining who these people are, the places they have left behind, and how they experience Britain. Refugees are never “native informants” (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak), instead readers must do the work of reaching out to them. Sometimes such exertions can be frustrating and/or discomfiting given the challenges of encountering historical, economic, and cultural others. But as the author underscores, such crises are deemed as important starting points of communication between British natives and asylum seekers. Two, these texts are extremely self-aware and critical of their own intrusive gaze into refugee lives. Subsequently, audiences pick up on this which then creates opportunities for them to reflect on the violence of modes of seeing and unseeing refugees. It also foregrounds the unfairness of government committees requiring asylum seekers to furnish a clear, coherent, and empirical narrative that fits legislative bills for who counts as an “authentic refugee” even in the face of severely traumatic migration experiences.

The introduction substantially and efficiently grounds the reader in the murky, multilayered context of immigration policies and practices in Britain and public responses to it from the late 20^th. C to the present. Dr. Woolley’s volume thus starts out strong. It continues to amaze and impress further as it investigates how three different literary genres (novels, films, and plays) navigate the precarious politics of representing refugee figures and documenting their testimonies. Each chapter critically engages with genre conventions and relevant theoretical concepts. It also offers compelling, original close readings of the narrative and enters them into conversation with existing critical scholarship on the text. Such rigorous and exhaustive readings of all primary texts allows Contemporary Asylum to foreground not just the diverse representational anxieties concomitant upon encounters between British citizen-subjects/authors and refugees but also shows how such tensions are engendered at intersections of race, class, caste, gender, age, and sexual identities of both parties, their physical locations within the island of Britain, and at different points of refugee’s journeys to or from Britain.

The book’s clear and cogent organization further adds to its appeal. Each section deals with a specific medium of representation and is divided into an introduction, two chapters, and a conclusion. Such consistency not only helps one better remember the arguments made in each section, it also allows someone who needs to read the author’s analysis of a particular text to access that section quickly and easily. While the entire volume would be a welcome addition in any graduate class dealing with refugee narratives, the depth and detailed analyses in each short chapter makes it particularly amenable for undergraduate classes where the instructor might only want to use a chapter or part of one.

In the first section titled “Hospitable Representations,” the author studies two novels – Graham Swift’s The Light of Day (2003) in chapter one and Caryl Phillips’ A Distant Shore (2003) in chapter two. In the former, the Croatian refugee Kristina has an affair with her English employer’s husband, is outcast, and must finally leave the country. But before that eventuality, Sarah, her English employer hires a private detective, George to track the lovers’ movements. George subsequently takes to conjectures, speculations, and rampant imaginations of who Kristina might be and what her former homeland must be like. A violent murder in south-west England makes him immediately relate it to the Croatian countryside during the war. It is moments like these that highlight the individual mind’s attempted empathy towards the refugee figure even though such hospitality is problematic given the detective’s drawing on Orientalist stereotypes to imagine the other and their homelands as sites of violence and excess. In A Distant Shore, Woolley limns the “communicable empathy” between the female, English protagonist Dorothy and the African refugee Gabriel/Solomon. Dorothy’s age and newness in the village of Weston marks her an outsider to the community just like Gabriel/Solomon, given his color and foreign nationality. However, the high point of this chapter’s textual analysis lies in how the novel becomes “the act of hospitality” by “[r]ecovering through the imagination the ‘unseen and unheard strata of experience (Clingman, 2007, p. 57) of which forced migration is a part.” Thus, the novel doesn’t attempt to tell Gabriel/Solomon’s story for him. Instead, its disjunctive structure and rapid “perspectival shifts” connect readers to the characters’ traumatic experiences as refugees and outcastes (53).

Part two studies Pawel Pawlikowski’s Last Resort (2000) and Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men (2006). Both films offer up stories of minority migrants while being troubled by the camera’s own interpretative gaze upon refugee subjects. In the former, the camera and the audience become complicit with state surveillance mechanisms and exploitative male pornographic gaze in acts of “looking at” refugees as objects of curiosity. Such representational strategies foreground that looking into “the world of asylum” is always a complex act, an ethically murky territory, given the voyeuristic and dehumanizing modes and means of spectatorship. In reading Children of Men, Woolley draws on Giorgio Agamben’s theorization of the camp as the “materialization of the state of exception” where power “openly confronts [this bare body that is] pure, biological life,” in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995) to foreground how Cuaron’s “probing camera technique” (99) makes visible the British government and citizens’ complicity in exercising power and oppression at refugee campsites. Despite its radical futuristic imagination of extra-national spaces and humanity as more empowering than the nation-state and citizenship and its designating Kee, the poor, black refugee woman as the one to birth that future, chapter four critiques the film on two counts: one, the film’s “ill-defined” (109) and vague conception of what such a community would look like and two, as Kee becomes the “symbol and bearer of pure humanity” her political subjectivity becomes diminished reducing her and her newborn to tabula rasa(s) for others to script the new world order on.

Part three engages with Kay Adshead’s The Bogus Woman (2001) and Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Credible Witness (2002). Both raise the question of “narrative possibility” (123) vis-à-vis refugee subjects. In contradistinction to fixed UN definitions and legislative expectations of coherent, empirical narratives from asylum seekers, Adshead and Wertenbaker’s plays limn the narrative fractures, traumatic silence, and dissonant storylines that characterize refugee narratives. Drawing on Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub’s definitions of trauma and Cathy Caruth’s theorization of bearing witness to such trauma, Woolley underscores how both texts engender a reciprocal “bearing witness” between the refugee protagonists and British audiences. This is supplemented by the creative use of the theatrical space e.g. the “shared perceptual field” (138) that enables the audience access to the refugee woman’s point of view in Adshead and “the constantly shifting terrain” of the stage that more effectively performs a dismantling of the walls of “Fortress Europe” in Wertenbaker (157). Finally in part four, Woolley considers Chris Cleaves’ novel The Other Hand (2009) and Kate Clanchy’s non-fictional account in Antigona and Me (2009) to establish how “paratextual” (Gerard Genette) elements – authorial engagements with heterogeneous texts in producing their work available in reader’s guide and notes sections, epigraphs, and in narrative allusions – gesture at multiple voices, experiences, and modes of storytelling that contest and complicate the single truth of refugee experience ordained by the author and government policies for granting asylum.

As outlined above, Contemporary Asylum makes a significant contribution to postcolonial, migration, and refugee studies. It is also critical to mobility and transport studies. For instance, the introductory chapter begins with an x-ray image of refugees from French documentarian Elias Grootaers’ film Not Waving, But Drowning (2009). The film negative that also serves as the volume’s front cover, shows the refugees trying to imbricate themselves with the cargo in the large shipping containers and the metallic structure of the truck that is carrying them to their asylum destinations. As Dr. Woolley notes, their very survival depends on their succeeding to make themselves invisible to the border patrol at the checkpoint. This powerfully renders the volume’s subject of representational anxieties in narrating refugee stories. On the one hand Grootaers wants to make visible the hardships of the asylum seekers from Pakistan but on the other, he is deeply aware of the risks of exposing them. This immediately makes accessible the difficult responsibility of narrating refugee lives. But it also underlines how studying transport systems today must necessarily take into account their human cargo, be they refugees on clandestine journeys or in networks of sex trafficking and human smuggling. Contemporary Asylum offers brief glimpses of such encounters between humans and modes of transport in the book e.g. Alexander’s mother’s journey from Russia to the U.K. in search of her son in chapter six and Little Bee’s deportation journey aboard an airplane as both a moment of privilege and a moment of being under erasure in chapter seven. However, the rich interpretative possibilities of analyzing such moments remain unexplored in the current volume. This said, Contemporary Asylum Narratives delivers an ambitious, rich, and nuanced critical reading of how contemporary literary and visual cultures document, complicate, and intervene productively in xenophobic political and public discourses vis-a-vis the current refugee crises. It not only considerably expands and reinvigorates the scope of literary-cultural studies of migration by engaging with lived experiences from below, it also reifies the importance of artistic work and a liberal arts education for a more inclusive, empathetic future.

Dr. Sreyoshi Sarkar,

Ball State University, IN, USA

By Dr. Basak Tanulku

Basak Tanulku is an independent researcher, based in Istanbul, Turkey.  Tanulku obtained a PhD degree in Sociology from Lancaster University in the UK for the research project: “An Exploration of Two Gated Communities in Istanbul, Turkey” (2010). Her main work focuses on socio-spatial fragmentation, gated communities; space and identity; urban vacant lands and buildings; urban social movements and protests and alternative spaces and public spaces and urban commons. Tanulku has written for various blogs and published articles in peer-reviewed journals. 

This post is the second in a two-part installment, the first can be accessed here.

Minibus: An Unwanted but Irreplaceable Vehicle

Istanbul’s traffic is also characterised by “minibuses” which emerged during the 1970s as a result of the need for larger vehicles and cheaper public transportation for the urban poor, living in the urban peripheries (Ozturkmen, 2009). As Ozturkmen argues, minibuses reflect migrant culture, while dolmuses reflect middle-class culture (Ozturkmen, 2009). Relatedly, minibuses are associated with “Arabesque” a genre-mixing Turkish and Middle Eastern music which became very popular during the 1980s. During that time, several Arabesque music singers became cultural icons and actors. Their art reflected the emotions, experiences, and struggle of the urban poor who could not adapt to the urban culture and were stuck between the urban and rural ways of life. As some ethnographers argue, the popularisation of Arabesque was due to minibus drivers who listened to this music in their vehicles loudly (Stokes, 1998).

Image 2: Minibuses in Uskudar, one of the main commercial and shopping districts of Istanbul on the Asian side. These minibuses carry passengers between Uskudar and Hasippasa or Uskudar and Talimhane, which are mainly inhabited by the urban poor. However, passengers are diverse since the route also passes through the upper and middle-income districts.

Minibuses are smaller than a bus and larger than a dolmus (which was described in detail in part one of this post). While the number of passengers of a dolmus is fixed (nine at maximum), the number of passengers which a minibus can carry is not fixed, since passengers can also travel on foot. The passengers are also more diverse, such as mothers with push chairs, disabled and older people with equipment, and people who carry heavy loads.

The minibuses are not as standard as dolmuses, however, they can be identified by the names of each stop written on their facades, while they are either blue or light yellow vehicles. Even not as popular as dolmuses, also minibuses are covered with advertisements, something which differentiates them from shared vehicles in other countries. As demonstrated by Cengiz, drivers modify the minibuses by decorating the exterior of their vehicles with additional apparatuses to make them more valuable (Cengiz, 2013). The minibuses are cheaper than individual taxis and dolmuses. The prices depend on the route’s length and similar to dolmuses, always paid in cash. Similar to dolmuses, passengers urge drivers when they want to get off such as “inecek var” (there is someone who wanna stop). The drivers can change the regular routes when there is an accident or congestion. In that case, the drivers urge passengers that they won’t follow the formal course. Similar to dolmuses, minibuses stop at particular locations approved by the municipality which consist of a signboard which demonstrates the name of the stop, while the drivers personalise these stops by bringing chairs, small tables or similar furniture.

Inside the vehicle, the driver, called “reis” or “kaptan” (chief or captain) has the ultimate power to decide where to stop or take more passengers. The driver’s seat is located higher than or segregated from passengers’ seats. Different from the dolmus, drivers sometimes have an aide, who collects money, accommodates passengers and urges the driver when the vehicle is full. The drivers, similar to dolmus, chat to the passengers sitting in the front row. They are always men, while sometimes they carry only female passengers. Most women prefer to sit next to another woman, particularly in the districts inhabited by conservative people who give more importance to gender segregation in public areas. [1]  When a woman (alone or with her children) gets on the minibus, in most times a younger man gives his seat to her, which demonstrates the respect shown towards older (and women) people in Turkish everyday culture: women (with children) are seen as more respected, and once they get older, they receive more respect since they become mothers.

Minibuses are regarded as premodern, macho, violent or outlaw in public opinion which do not follow traffic rules. As a result of their negative image, every couple of years, minibuses become the subject of debates in the media and have been proposed to be banned from the traffic. Despite this negative image, minibuses seem to have an irreplaceable role in Istanbul since they provide passengers with flexible and cheap solutions in the traffic.

Conclusion

Istanbul’s urban transport infrastructure consists of different vehicles which operate on the same routes, but in different schedules, adopting different rules, having different designs and addressing different needs. This essay took two shared vehicles, dolmus, and minibus, to demonstrate how the urban transport is a very complex realm which consists of pre-modern and modern, and formal and informal vehicles completing each other and addressing diverse needs. Dolmus and minibus contribute to the everyday culture of the city, reflecting different identities, jargons and particular forms of communication between passengers and drivers based on a continuously changing network of formal and informal routes. Despite the differences regarding routes, passengers, designs, both vehicles have some standard features. First, both emerged as a result of the demand of people rather than a direct intervention by the city municipality or the state. Dolmus is associated with the middle class and the modern side of the city while minibus is related to the city’s lower classes residing in its peripheries. However, they become incorporated into the city’s complex transport system which includes the licencing of car plates and registration of drivers, and regulations about the locations of the stops and pricing. In this context, they are paratransit vehicles, i.e., they are managed by the city municipality. However, private individuals or companies own or manage them. In some cases, they also operate illegally.

Second, both vehicles have not experienced many changes, except the standardisation of their designs (automatic doors, air conditioners, or modifications by drivers) and the regulation of their markets. The same routes still work today, however, as the result of the development of the city and increase in population, additional routes were introduced, or as a result of the diversification of urban transport, some courses were cancelled. The reason for their importance in Istanbul’s transport is people’s demand for cheaper and quicker travel. Also, they are suitable for the dense and old urban centre. Also, mainly dolmus is a small and flexible vehicle which can enter in any street of Istanbul and does not damage the old and valuable building stock.

Third, both vehicles provide flexibility and more options while saving the time of passengers. As an example, while minibuses can accommodate passengers on foot, anyone can also wait for the next one to be able to sit. Both vehicles also provide flexibility regarding the shift. As an example, while a bus only passes particular times on a specific route, a dolmus or minibus makes three or four shifts at the same time slot. A driver can also choose to board even if dolmus or minibus is not full, instead, he can take passengers across the route.

 Last but not least, as most of the public transportation of Turkey, they are mixed spaces which bring together people from very different backgrounds. Both vehicles are also spaces where gender differences can be seen, and the relationships between men and women are reshaped. This is an important difference from the shared taxis in European countries such as France, Russia or Bulgaria since in Turkey gender issues are shaped by the rules of Islam and traditional values of everyday life. In this respect, they do not only contribute to Istanbul’s complex transportation system but also culture and identity, and they can be regarded as a form of public space where people from diverse backgrounds meet.

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[1]     The public vehicles in Turkey are not segregated by gender, and most vehicles (stately managed vehicles such as buses, trams, ferries and privately managed vehicles such as dolmus or minibus) are mixed-sex. However, in some municipalities in Turkey, gender-segregated vehicles have been introduced.

References

Acarer, E. (2014) %100 Istanbul, Tarih, Mekan ve Sırlar (100% Istanbul: History, Space and Secrets), 5th ed., Istanbul: Inkılap Publishing House.

Celik, Z. (1986) The Remaking of Istanbul, The University of California Press.

Cengiz, K. A. (2013) Dolmus Ici ve Dısı Nesneler ve Yazılar Aracılıgıyla Kimligin Ifsası (The Revelation of the Identity through the Objects and Words in a Dolmus (Minibus), Ankara Universitesi Dil, Tarih ver Cografya Fakültesi  Antropoloji Dergisi, vol: 25, pp. 89-116.

Guney, E. G. (2012) A Study on the Effect of Transportation Systems to The Evolution of The City Image – The Case of Istanbul, MEGARON, vol: 7(1), pp. 91-107.

Ozturkmen, A. (2009) “Dolmus” in Istanbullasmak, Olgular, Sorunsallar, Metaforlar (“Dolmus” in Becoming Istanbul, Facts, Problematics, Metaphors), Dervis, P., Tanju, B., Tanyeli, U. (eds.), Istanbul: Garanti Galeri.

Stokes, M. (1998) Türkiye’de Arabesk Olayı (The Arabesque Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey, original), Istanbul: Iletisim Press.

By Dr. Basak Tanulku

Basak Tanulku is an independent researcher, based in Istanbul, Turkey.  Tanulku obtained a PhD degree in Sociology from Lancaster University in the UK for the research project: “An Exploration of Two Gated Communities in Istanbul, Turkey” (2010). Her main work focuses on socio-spatial fragmentation, gated communities; space and identity; urban vacant lands and buildings; urban social movements and protests and alternative spaces and public spaces and urban commons. Tanulku has written for various blogs and published articles in peer-reviewed journals. 

This post is the first part of a two-part installment, which will conclude next week on MHB.

Introduction

Cities are connected through a complex system of transport which allows mobility of people, goods, and places. An essential aspect of urban transport is “shared taxis” (either private or public initiatives) which provide cheap and flexible travel in countries as diverse as Nigeria, France, and Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Romania), Russia and India, as a result of the insufficiency of the public transport or economic crisis. They are used mostly by the urban poor, to reduce the cost of travel and to have flexibility in daily urban travel. They are also analysed within the context of sustainable urbanism since they provide travel while saving energy. In most of the research studies, their technical aspects or their roles in urban planning or in creating a sustainable urban transport system are investigated. Instead, this blog post adopts a historical and cultural approach to analyse two forms of shared vehicles, “dolmus” and “minibus” in Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey. It relies on the information collected by observation of the author, a long-time resident of Istanbul and a frequent and regular user of dolmus and minibus as well as media and desk research. The blog post demonstrates how both vehicles emerged as a result of people’s demand which could not meet by the municipalities. However, as it shows, they evolved from informal vehicles into formal ones having essential roles in the city’s complex transportation system, reflecting different cultures, passengers, designs and communication between passengers and drivers[1].

Istanbul: A City Connected by a Complex Transport System

Istanbul is the most populated and densest city of Turkey with an approximately 15 million inhabitants which also keeps a high-rank position in these categories among other large cities in the world. Even if Istanbul is not the official capital city, it can be regarded as the country’s leading economic, commercial, financial and cultural centre. It is located between the Balkans and the Middle East which grows across the East-West axis. Bosporus divides Istanbul into two: European and Asian sides[2]. There are three bridges on the Bosporus connecting the two sides, which can be transited by private cars, as well as buses, dolmuses, and minibuses.

Istanbul was the capital city of the Ottoman Empire, and the modernisation of its transportation system began in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire. At that time, the urban landscape was dramatically changed which continued with the secular Turkish Republic in the 20th century. During the second half of the 19th century, Istanbul was transformed by several interventions such as the opening of large boulevards and squares, the erection of tower clocks, the construction of concrete apartment blocks, all of which contrasted with the old and vernacular built environment left from the Byzantium and the Ottoman Empires (Celik, 1986; Guney, 2012). As an example, in 1851 ferries were introduced which connected different villages across Bosporus. In 1875, one of the oldest undergrounds of the world, known as the TUNEL opened connecting Karakoy and Beyoglu, which were important centres of foreign commerce and banking. Similarly, tram goes back to the 1870s when Istanbul needed a more developed transportation network. However, it was replaced by motor vehicles such as buses during the 1950s, when the city’s population grew as a result of continuous migration from rural areas and towns for working in its developing industries.

Istanbul’s traffic also reflects these numbers: it is ranked sixth in the world in traffic congestion[3]. Istanbul has an elaborate system transportation which involves different vehicles operating on different routes and schedules. A highly professional network connects this transportation system, such as smart screens and tickets, motor vehicles, and expressways, supported by a large number of technical staff. In this network, the same passenger can travel the same route in different vehicles according to the passenger’s time and budget availability. In Istanbul, there are two different ways of transportation: land and sea. However, as the following numbers will demonstrate, sea (ferries, boats) is not used very widely among people. Instead, the city’s inhabitants prefer travelling via motor vehicles such as private cars or buses. As an example, according to the data provided by the Istanbul Municipality, Istanbul’s public transportation is provided by three primary vehicles: sea, tram, and motor vehicles. Among them, motor vehicles have the most significant share (78.02 %), while sea has 4.38 % and tram has 17.60 % (including tram/underground, the railway and the undersea tunnel, MARMARAY). Among motor vehicles, 16.03 % of total transportation is done through minibuses, approximately 30% is done through buses and metro buses (including those managed by the municipality and private companies and individuals), and 12.95 % is done through taxis and taxi-dolmuses while the shuttles hired by companies have a share of 16.97%[4]. In the last years, the underground has become another important way to travel in Istanbul which is preferred for avoiding traffic congestion. There are also expensive options such as helicopters or sea-taxis which are preferred by celebrities or the very rich.

Istanbul’s transportation can also be read within the governance framework: the municipality governs most of the buses, trams, and ferries. However, dolmus and minibus can be regarded as “paratransit vehicles,” i.e., they operate outside the state or municipality realm, and owned and managed privately (either by individuals or private companies). While most of them are registered and work legally, some of them are not registered instead, operate illegally. 

Dolmus: A Middle-Class Inner-City Vehicle 

There is not any data about the number of dolmuses or their share in transportation. Dolmus is used in the city centre (business, retail and residential areas) and has a much lower usage than other vehicles (such as buses, minibuses or tram). However, it is an essential part of Istanbul’s traffic and everyday culture which has created its jargons, identity, and designs. Dolmus firstly emerged in Istanbul during the 1940s to meet the city’s growing need for cheap transportation. The first dolmus line was introduced by a cook between Eminonu and Nisantası, to meet the demand of his customers aiming to travel less expensive as the result of the economic crisis during the War (Acarer, 2014). The same route still operates today. Dolmus means ‘stuffed’ or ‘full’ (of passengers) in the Turkish language. The first dolmus vehicles were American foreign cars, regarded as signs of status, modernity, and progress among drivers and passengers.

Image: A row of dolmuses, in the district of Nisantasi. This dolmus route is the first one which still carries passengers between the upper-class shopping district of Nisantasi and the traditional commercial district, Eminonu.

The current dolmuses are not old American cars, but small yellow vans which were introduced during the first half of the 1990s. Until that change, dolmus has not experienced significant changes. However, an important change in its design took place during the 1970s when the rapid increase in oil prices led drivers to search for alternatives to reduce energy costs or increase the number of passengers. To minimise energy cost diesel motors were introduced, while to increase the number of passengers a seat was added inside the vehicles which changed their original designs.

The dolmuses wait at stops approved by the municipality, which usually consist of a signboard demonstrating the name of the stop. The drivers typically wait near their dolmuses, or at a café or a similar mobile café which sells food and drinks. The drivers put chairs near the stops to rest.

Each dolmus can accommodate maximum nine passengers per shift. Since dolmuses are smaller vehicles (between a minibus and a taxi), passengers always sit inside the vehicle and cannot carry a large amount of load, such as a pushchair. The driver’s seat in a dolmus is not segregated from that of the passengers. Near the drivers’ seat, in the front row, usually two or one passengers are accommodated who talk to the driver while on board. Dolmus is cheaper than individual taxis, and the price depends on the length of the route. The money is passed by passengers from the back rows to the front until it reaches the driver and always paid in cash. Money is kept near the driver’s seat.

The passengers urge drivers when they want to stop such as “müsait bir yerde durur musunuz” (could you please stop at a proper place?) or “inecek var” (there is someone who wanna stop). The driver has the power to manage the travel (when to switch on and off the air conditioner or the radio) and also decides when to change the regular route to avoid delays such as an accident or something else which causes congestion. The drivers also have walkie-talkies which provide communication with other drivers about the road’s condition. The dolmus vehicles are the same to each other, i.e., the small yellow vans. However, in last years, different from shared taxis in other countries, they are used as boards for advertising. The money goes to the driver or the company. Drivers personalise their dolmuses by decorating their interiors with the photographs of their family members or talismans or prayers against accidents and bad luck. [5] The drivers are always men. However, particularly during the day at certain times, only women use them who go shopping or visiting friends or relatives, which make these vehicles as women-only realms. Different from minibuses, dolmuses are not seen as macho or premodern, even if the drivers are always men.

Next week, Dr. Tanulku concludes discussion of transportation in Istanbul with a focus on the role of the minibus in the city.

Notes

[1]  There is few research studies conducted about them in Turkey. The research studies mainly focus on their role in urban planning and transportation. There are also research studies which focus on the design of these vehicles and how they can provide a sustainable and/or greener transportation for passengers. By keyword search conducted by the author in the database of Council of Higher Education which lists all graduate and Ph.D. theses in Turkey, there are only five theses on dolmuses and nine on minibuses (by the search through the keywords “dolmuş” and “minibüs”). Please see https://tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerkezi/tezSorguSonucYeni.jsp (accessed 03.07.2017). In some of these sources, these terms are used interchangeably.

[2] According to the recent data given by Turkish Institute of Statistics, Istanbul’s population is 14, 804, 116 http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/UstMenu.do?metod=temelist (accessed 03.07. 2017).

[3] https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/trafficindex/#/ (accessed 03.07.2017)

[4]   Except for private vehicles http://www.iett.gov.tr/tr/main/pages/istanbulda-toplu-tasima/95 (accessed 03.07.2017). However, it should be noted that here “public” refers to how a vehicle is shared, rather than its status of ownership. As an example, minibus, dolmus, and taxis are not owned or run by the city municipality, but by private companies or individuals. However, they are regarded as public since they are not used individually but shared among passengers.

[5] In the research study on minibuses, Cengiz argues that their decoration and design reflect drivers’ identities. This is seen in their interiors decorated with rosaries, talismans, photographs, and mascots while their exteriors are decorated with meaningful words, reflecting love, missing or losing (Cengiz, 2013).

By Gladys Moraa Marie Nyachieo, Kenyatta University, Kenya

This work is based on a conference paper presented during the 15th Annual T2M Conference (Mobile Utopia Conference).  The original paper was entitled “Exploring ‘Public’ Road Passenger Transport In Kenya: A Futuristic Utopia Or Dystopia?”Presented at Lancaster University, November 2-5, 2017. United Kingdom. The author focuses on the dynamics and challenges of public road passenger transport in Kenya while looking at it short history.

Public road passenger transport in Kenya dates back to the 1930s, but a lot has changed due to increase in population and urbanization. Road transport accounts for over 80 percent of the total internal freight and passenger traffic in Kenya with the remainder of about 7 percent being mainly carried by rail and air. Kenya’s road network serves both domestic and regional passenger and freight transport demand. In Kenya, there is currently no state-operated road passenger public transport service.

 Instead, public transport is mainly dominated by the informal sector commonly referred to as Paratransit. This is composed of privately-owned and operated transport options that include matatus (buses, mini buses, vans), motorcycles (boda boda), bicycles and tricycles (tuk tuk).  Due to the lack of organized public passenger transport, alternatives have led to rapid growth in these non-conventional means of public transport.

Paratransit has the advantage of responding to the demand for motorized mobility from a large percentage of urban residents to satisfy a need for travel that cannot be met by walking. With thousands of vehicles in a city and minimal regulation of routes, paratransit responds quickly to changes in demand. This demand could be as a result of ordinary daily and seasonal changes, or longer-term changes brought about by competing forms of transport, and/or changes in mobility patterns.

Although paratransit often appears to be disorderly, it is actually an intricate system that involves quite a large number of different players. Paratransit in Kenya is characterized by flexibility and demand responsiveness, lack of schedules, fluctuating fares, poor working conditions, competition, formation of cartels and unpredictable stops and routes.

After the inception of the first buses to offer organized mass transport for passengers especially in Nairobi, there were many challenges that led to its collapse. Kenya Bus Services (KBS) which was owned by the Overseas Transport Company of London was the first form of Private Public Partnership (PPP) in Public Road Passenger Transport (PRPT). KBS remained the sole operator of bus transit till the 1970’s when matatus (Para-transit) came into the picture. The state then introduced Nyayo Bus Service in 1986 which was subsidized but inefficient after operating for seven years, Stagecoach closed shop therefore ending public sector participation in PRPT.

Matatus started operating before independence in the mid-1950s. They came into operation due to a lack of public transport in areas around Eastlands, a result of colonial restrictions. After independence in 1963, there was significant growth especially in Nairobi. This growth lead to rural-urban migration and therefore increased demand.

With the increase in population and urbanization, passenger journeys per day have also increased. Currently, the population of Nairobi is about 3 million residents, and a daytime population of 4.5 million people who need to commute through the city. Therefore, there is need for elaborate urban transport services to serve mobility needs of this big and increasing population.

The name Matatu originated from a Kikuyu word (mang’otore matatu) meaning, “three cents.” That was the standard fare for most trips. After independence, the local informal sector lobbied to have matatus operate as public transport.  This was effected through a presidential decree in 1973. Allowing free operation without regulation was the beginning of the chaotic transport system that has characterized the Kenyan road transport sector for a long time now.

The demand that could not be met by the Kenya Bus Service under The Overseas Transport Company (OTC) was filled by matatus, operating informally and illegally. Since their inception, matatus have increased in number because they were primarily not regulated and therefore, not taxed. The illegal matatu sector has created many jobs and contributed to the economy.

Currently, about 80 per cent of those using urban public transport are served by matatus. It was not until 1984 that matatus were required to have PSV license due to a new policy. By 2000, there were about 40,000 matatus in operation in Kenya. But as much as the matatu sector is important in the Kenyan economy, the workers in this sector often complain of poor labor conditions characterised by long hours, harassment from the police and county council askaris, fear of job loss, lack of proper payment structures in terms of salary, among other issues.

In an attempt to streamline the matatu sector, several policy interventions have been put in place. Among the latest directives aimed at streamlining the matatu industry was cashless transactions to enable taxation and regulate fares that keep fluctuating.  Ultimately, this initiative failed due to complicated power structures that exist around the public transport system in Kenya.

Commuters in Nairobi are now able to get around easily, because matatu routes have now been mapped and made available on Google maps. This has transformed the travel experience of the passengers. Aesthetic elementss are also used to compete for passengers. Matatus have resorted to elaborate interior design and furnishings on the outside with flashy lights and big screen televisions. In addition, WI-FI and music is now a common feature for passenger road transport in Kenya. The matatus are also used as a means of advertising through digital media signage among others. This has transformed the mobility space for most passengers.

Images: examples of “pimped” Matatus in Nairobi, Route 111

The entry of boda boda motorcycles as a mode of transport (commercial motorcycles as taxis) in the already chaotic public passenger transport sector brought even more chaos. The zero rating of motorcycles below 250cc in Kenya in 2008 by the government meant that more people could afford them. Just like matatus, the boda boda started off without any form of regulation. Boda boda motorcycles became popular because they could use all possible routes to get their pillion passengers to their destination even during heavy traffic congestion.

Therefore, the current public passenger transport services have the following common features:

• a blend of all forms of travel modes (paratransit)
• over-crowding/overloading
• long queues of commuters at “termini”
• vehicular congestion arising from poor road space usage and planning by private vehicles, non-motorized transport, roadside vendors, among others
• low occupancy (e.g. 10-14 seaters) vehicles used by public service vehicle operators
• insufficient supply and use of non motorized and intermediate means of transport
• lack of standards in the design and manufacture of vehicles
• poor road design, e.g. inadequate drop-off and pick-up points

Challenges facing road passenger transport in Kenya are chaos and disorder. After the implementation of the famous Michuki laws (via legal notice No. 161 of 2003) there was a form of normalcy and orderliness for a time. But the situation has gone back to chaos since the actors do not adhere to traffic rules and there is poor enforcement of the rules.

Another challenge in the sector is cartels. Cartels in the matatu sector are said to work with the matatu crew and stage managers to harass and steal from commuters. Matatu cartels in Kenya operate like gangs. First, they do not allow new entrants into the matatu business unless one pays a huge amount of money to them. Secondly, they manage transport routes and matatu terminals and shield them from “outsiders”. It is also rumored that cartels work in cahoots with the police to commit crimes.

Alongside matatu sector cartels/gangs, there are other major challenges: rude, abusive crews; no stopping at zebra crossings; overcharging passengers; reckless driving; overloading; picking passengers at any place including the middle of the road; high incidences of unsafe vehicles; blocking the roads; nonstop hooting and whistle-blowing by touts banging on the sides of vehicles.

Images: Passengers queuing for matutus in Nairobi. 

Moreover, in Kenya an estimated 3,000 deaths occur from road crashes annually. Many public transport service vehicles are involved in traffic accidents, and many lives are lost due to a lack of safety regulations on these vehicles.

These issues have inevitably led to some policy and practical changes in public road transport. Reforms in the transport sector can be seen through the creation of the National Transport Safety Authority (2012). The adoption of the IntegratedNational Transport Policy (INTP) attempted to give directions to deal with challenges in public transport. In the same year, Traffic Amendment Act (2012) introduced a number of regulations and severe penalties for traffic offences. It also highlighted the regulations targeting boda boda transport. The requirement for that paratranist groups join savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) was another new development to ensure smooth running of the transport affairs through self-regulation. All matatus or public transport vehicles must belong to a SACCO. Finally, one of the most recent drivers for reform was the creation of the Nairobi Metropolitan Area Authority (NAMATA) to be responsible for transport policy to help develop the city’s metropolitan area and oversee the implementation of the integrated transport master plan.

Works Cited

• Aduwo, I.G. (1990). The role, efficiency and quality of services of the matatu  mode of public transport in Nairobi: A geographical analysis (Unpublished MA thesis). University of Nairobi.
• Asingo, P. (2004). The institutional and organizational structure of public road transport in Kenya. Institute of Policy Analysis and Research, Nairobi Kenya.
• Behrens, R., McCormick, D., & Mfinanga, D. (2015) “Introduction to paratransit in sub-saharan Africa.” In Behrens et al (Ed), Parantransit in African Cities: Operations, regulations and reforms. New York. Routeledge.
• Chitere, P.O. (2004). “Matatu industry in Kenya: A study of the performance of owners, workers and their associations and potential for improvement.” IPAR Discussion Paper No.055 Nairobi. Institute of Policy Analysis and Research.
• Chitere, P.O. (2006). “Public service vehicle drivers in Kenya; Their characteristics and compliance with traffic regulations and prospects for the future.” IPAR Discussion paper no-081/2006. Nairobi: Institute of Policy Analysis and Research.
• Government of Kenya (2004). Economic survey 2017. Nairobi Central Bureau of Statistics.
• Howe, J. (2003). “Filling the middle: Uganda’s appropriate transport services.” Transport Reviews, 2003, 23(2), 161-176. Oxford, UK.
• Integrated Urban Development Masterplan For The City Of Nairobi (Niuplan), 2014-2030. Stakeholder Meetings Nairobi City County, January – February 2014.
• International Association of Public Transport (2010). Public transport in Sub-Saharan Africa. Trans-African consortium, Brussels. Retrieved from link.
• Khayesi, M. (1999). An analysis of the pattern of road traffic accidents in relation to selected socio economic dynamics and intervention measures in Kenya (Unpublished PhD Thesis). Kenyatta University, Nairobi.
• Kumar, A. (2011). Understanding the emerging role of motorcycles in African cities: A political economy perspective. Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program (SSATP) discussion paper; no. 13. Retrieved from link.
• Ministry of Transport, (2009). Integrated National Transport Policy. Nairobi: Government Printer.
• Moraa, G. (2010). Road safety in Kenya: Knowledge attitudes and practices of passenger service vehicles. LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing GmbH& Co; Mauritius.
• National Transport Safety Authority,( 2015). Road safety status report. Retrieved from link.
• Nyachieo, G. M. M. (2015). Socio-cultural and economic determinants of boda boda motorcycle transport safety in Kisumu County, Kenya. (Unpublished PhD thesis). Kenyatta University Repository.
• WHO (n.d) Motorcycle-related road traffic crashes in Kenya facts & figures. Retrieved from link.

By C.R. van Tilburg, Universiteit Leiden (The Netherlands)

Dr. van Tilburg is the author of Traffic and Congestion in the Roman Empire (London/New York: Routledge, 2007, repr. 2012). For more information about his work, visit his faculty profile page.

Not all drawings remained merely utopias. I will discuss two examples of cities which were designed as utopias, but were also actually built. They approached the ideal city as constructed according to the concepts of Renaissance planners. They could be constructed as utopias, designed as ideal cities, with perfect civic and military infrastructures. The utopia had to be realised. Nevertheless, putting these designs into practice offered significant challenges.

Valletta

In 1522, the Hospitallers were defeated by the Turks and forced to leave Rhodes; they moved to Malta. On this island, some reinforcements were constructed on a modest scale. There were plans to transform the peninsula, Sciberras, into a heavily strengthened fortress system, but these plans were not realised. In 1565, the famous Siege of Malta took place. After three months, the Hospitallers defeated the Turks. After the victory, the knights decided – taking into consideration Malta’s strategic location – to reconstruct the peninsula and to transform it into a city and strong fortress. Its name was Valletta, in honor of the Commander of the Hospitallers, Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Vallette (1494-1568), who defeated the Turkish army (20,000-48,000 soldiers) with only 8,000 knights.

Initially, the Italian fortress-builder and architect, Francisco de Marchi (1504-1576), proposed to build a fortress with eight bastions, but this could not be realised, as he failed to take into account the height differences on the peninsula. Probably, he was not familiar with the local situation. De la Vallette consulted Pope Pius IV, who sent another architect, Francesco Laparelli to Malta. Laparelli (1521-1570) proposed construction of a new city with one central main street and winding streets in the other parts. His ideas followed Alberti’s. Unfortunately, these ideas were – as far as we know – not drawn or written down, as was the case with Alberti’s.

Later on, Laparelli developed a different scheme: a city equipped with bastions, using a Hippodamic street pattern, as some of his contemporaries did. The similarity with the design of another Italian city planner, Pietro Cataneo, is significant: this design involved a remarkable hierarchy between the individual streets and showed various squares. In his second design, Laparelli designed a city without plazas and with larger building-blocks, with four parallel running streets (including the main street) in line with Fortress St Elmo. Significantly, none of these four streets is connected directly to the gate; the main street runs from St Elmo to a bastion (fig. 1). Possibly, Laparelly designed a city where social equality was reflected in the building blocks, in accordance with the humanists’ ideals (and with Hippodamus’ teachings), as described in Thomas More’s Utopia: ‘Everyone had the same amount of wealth, respect, and life experiences. The city where they lived was always geometric in shape, and was surrounded by a wall. These walls provided military strength, but also protected the city by preserving and passing on man’s knowledge’.

Fig. 1. Valletta’s military plan

Finally, Laparelli’s fourth design was accepted by the Hospitallers, when the city was already under construction. In this final plan, three lengthwise streets were considerably wider than the others (including the side streets, intersecting the three main streets at right corners); the main street in line with St Elmo, directly connected with the city gate, situated exactly in front of the primary thoroughfare (fig. 2). This last design would doubtless have improved the mobility, creating a better situation than the winding streets (inspired by Alberti) in his previous designs. The peninsular city would be greatly protected by high walls and bastions of stone, following the rocky coastline.

Fig. 2. Valletta’s civic plan, as built

By 1568, Laparelli was disappointed with the project and withdrew as city architect and his successor became his former pupil, Geronimo Cassar. Under his leadership – in collaboration with the Hospitallers – Valletta got its final shape with a division: the ‘collachio’ where the knights were housed, and another part for the other inhabitants. The ‘collachio’ also contained the hospital, the Palace of the Grand Master, the Treasure House, the Chancellery, and the Arsenal, among other structure. In short, De Marchi and Laparelli designed Valletta as a city, according to Alberti’s concept for the ideal city. Nevertheless, this ideal city had to be changed into one with a star or crystal shape, containing a Hippodamic grid within the walls. The Hospitallers forced Laparelli to later his sketches frequently, which had led to his resignation.

In this last design for the city, from a military point of view, Valletta was nearly impossible to conquer. It was situated at the relatively flat level of a high rock, equipped with bastions following the peninsula in a star shape and only one city gate at the land side. The main street to which the gate was connected was a straight one, running directly to Fortress St Elmo, from where the city could be under fire. It seems, however, that the Hippodamic street pattern was initially designed to cope with traffic flow, improve civic infrastructure and  provide an esthetic point of view; probably, the Hospitallers disagreed with the military strategy borrowed from Alberti with its narrow, winding streets.

So we see a compromise: on the one hand, inside the important and heavy military infrastructure with strengthened bastions and walls, surrounded by water on three sides and only one city gate on the landward side. On the other hand, a Hippodamic street map, where it would be more comfortable for traffic. As a result of this compromise, Valetta is no ideal city, neither in military, nor in civic respect.

Palmanova

Renaissance city planners sometimes chose a radial map instead of the Hippodamic one. Departing from the center, streets ran to the gates like rays. Other streets encircle the center, running parallel to each other and crossing the radial streets, creating space for building-blocks with the shape of a wedge of cake or a crescent. Cities with a radial map were designed by Filarete, Fra Giocondo, Girolamo Maggi and Francesco di Giorgio Martini. Even more than in case of Hippodamic cities, esthetics plays an important role. Changing a Hippodamic city is quite simple – we have seen that Valletta is not exactly symmetrical due to the geographical situation – but to intervene in a circluar city is nearly impossible. One must build an entirely new wall, or not build one at all. Nevertheless, such cities were really built, and like Valletta, not exactly according to the Utopian, original design intervening in the street system.

Twenty years after the maritime Battle of Lepanto against the Turks (in 1571, six years after the Siege of Malta), the Senate of Venice decided to protect the city on the landward side by means of a city-fortress. The building activities started in 1593, under the leadership of the military engineer Giulio Savorgnano (already 78 years old, assisted by the younger Florentine Bonaiuto Lorini). Like Valletta, this city was designed as a utopia, according to Renaissance-humanistic ideals, military as well as civic. At the drawing table, and seen from above, the city looked like a crystal: a hexagonal place in the center, encircled by three concentric streets with nine corners, corresponding to the nine bastions at the nine corners of the city wall (later, in the 17^th century, the fortress was enlarged with ravelins). Nevertheless, the final result was not the original design by Savorgnano and Lorini. Initially, the gates were situated close to the bastions, so that they were better protected. In a later stage, they were moved to the center of the ‘curtains’ (the stretches of the walls between two bastions).

A far larger operation was the extension of the approach roads to the central square. In 1596, Lorini wrote his book Delle Fortificazioni, in which he designed a radial city that had striking similarities with Palmanova that one had to conclude that this was a first design of it. In this plan, the military problems of Palmanova were strongly reduced. Apart from the situation that there were two concentric streets instead of the three realised in Palmanova, the most striking difference was that the streets connected to the gates were not running directly to the central place, but ended against a building block. Inevitably, this made traffic to follow a zigzag route. As in Palmanova, as it was actually built, there were nine radial streets; three of them run from the gates to the inner concentric street and the other six from the central (hexagonal) place to the six bastions in the city wall. Furthermore, there were nine more streets connecting the inner and outer concentric streets, totaling 18 radial streets (fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Palmanova’s military plan

From a military point of view, such a design would be very effective: invading enemies – after passing through the gates – would not be able to go straight on to the central place, but would be forced to make a zigzag route. Such a situation would make it more difficult to take under fire the center of the city and to keep it under control. In the same way, the change of position for the gates made them less safe. The design was modified. As in the case of Valletta, this was probably due to a change in opinion of the authority supervising the plans – in this case the Senate of Venice. In 1593, Marcantonio Barbaro was appointed ‘Proveditore Generale’ of the fortifications; he gave permission to change the original design by Savorgnano and Lorini, involving (amongst other alterations) the extension of the access roads straight to the central place (fig. 4), causing a decrease in the city defense.

Fig. 4. Palmanova’s civic plan, as built

Like in Valletta, we see here a shift from military to civic interests. The street system was modified to the wishes of the inhabitants, improving traffic, whilst the strategic/military interests were considered as less important. A direct connection between the gate and the central square increased ease of mobility for citizens.

From a military point of view, here again, the ideal city could not be realised. Was Palmanova, then, an ideal city from a civic point of view? No, it wasn’t. As the American scholar Edward Wallace Muir Jr. described the sad fate of Palmanova:

“The humanist theorists of the ideal city designed numerous planned cities that look intriguing on paper but were not especially successful as livable spaces. Along the northeastern frontier of their mainland empire, the Venetians began to build in 1593 the best example of a Renaissance planned town: Palmanova, a fortress city designed to defend against attacks from the Ottomans in Bosnia. Built ex nihilo according to humanist and military specifications, Palmanova was supposed to be inhabited by self-sustaining merchants, craftsmen, and farmers. However, despite the pristine conditions and elegant layout of the new city, no one chose to move there, and by 1622 Venice was forced to pardon criminals and offer them free building lots and materials if they would agree to settle the town.”

Summary and conclusion

Long before Thomas More, people developed notions about the ideal city. Plato described the ideal city, Atlantis, although he only knew it by means of legends. Hippodamus and Aristotle described ideal street maps: respectively, a grid-pattern map, and a more chaotic map (supposedly for better defense). Vitruvius, the first author whose work came to us in complete form preferred a Hippodamic city, equipped with strong walls.

In the Italian Renaissance, new ideas about ideal cities arose. Many scholars, humanists, philosophers, artisans, engineers and architects designed their ideal cities by means of models and sketches. The first one of them, launching new ideas, was Leon Battista Alberti, who – following Vitruvius – wrote a work on city planning and architecture. On the subject of street maps, he did not agree with Vitruvius: Alberti preferred gently winding main streets, and a labyrinth of narrower alleys to accommodate a military point of view.

Influenced by new social ideas and the failings of medieval cities, a new generation of humanist city planners arose. They designed new cities, using models or on paper, with a geometric and symmetric map, with equal building blocks, star- and crystal-shaped, equipped with city walls and bastions. Such a city was Sforzinda, designed by Filarete, the first design of a city in early modern times.

To realise cities, designed in such a way, they could turn to the plans of the earlier generation of Italian military architects and engineers, like De Marchi, Laparelli, Savorgnano and Lorini. Both Valletta and Palmanova were, initially, designed with a focus on military concerns: narrow streets, a zigzag between the gate and the centre, resulting – inevitably – in a reduced possibility to cope with traffic flow. The supervisors (the Hospitallers and the Senate of Venice), however, gave priority to civic interests over military concerns, thus producing a wider and more direct infrastructure. The compromise that resulted was a long way away from a perfect, ideal city; either from a military, or from a civic point of view.

Palmanova ended as a city where hardly anybody wanted to live. A crystal-shaped place, beautiful to see on the drawing-board, but ultimately, in terms of lived experience, it remained a utopia.

By C.R. van Tilburg, Universiteit Leiden (The Netherlands)

Dr. van Tilburg is the author of Traffic and Congestion in the Roman Empire (London/New York: Routledge, 2007, repr. 2012). For more information about his work, visit his faculty profile page.

In our time, modern cities are planned and developed without paying any thought to the possibility of sieges. From 1800 onwards, no city would be able to resist modern weapons in any case. Cities built before that time, however, had to offer military capabilities, in order to protect their inhabitants in times of struggle or war. Each city was a compromise: there were, on the one hand, civic interests that would profit from a wide infrastructure, but, on the other hand, martial interests, for which a narrow infrastructure would be preferable. People who planned the ideal city had to find a balance between these two functions. The most famous city planner of Antiquity was the Roman architect Vitruvius, who designed the ideal city, with a grid street pattern and effective city walls.

In the 15th century, the period of the Italian Renaissance, Vitruvius’ work was copied and studied profoundly. The scholar Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) wrote a work about city planning, following Vitruvius; he thus inspired a whole generation of researchers who engaged into city planning. In some cities, an ideal compromise – a utopia – of civic and military infrastructure seemed to be realized. During the planning and building process, however, conflicting interests diminished their ideal shape.

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By Tarini Bedi, University of Illinois-Chicago, USA

Dr. Bedi is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois in Chicago, USA. She is also a member of the executive committee for the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T²M). This excerpt is part of a book that is an anthropological history and ethnography of Bombay’s taxi-drivers and others connected to the taxi-trade from the late 19^th century to the present. The book explores the relationships between those who drive for a living as part of a city’s public transport and the political, domestic, residential, and “intimate” communal workspaces that are created around them over time. A version of this was presented at the 2016 T²M conference in Mexico City.  A detailed, article-length version is forthcoming in the journal Modern Asian Studies.

Introduction: Old Workers in a New City

I sat on the floor of taxi-driver Rahim’s house. Rahim limped despondently past the bright curtain that shaded the dark, front room of this two-room house in a small Mumbai settlement on a rainy July evening. With him, a profound sadness floated in to hang heavily over all of us, much heavier than the violent Mumbai monsoon that battered against the tin roof. “Padmini mari gayu” he said softly in Gujarati--- “My Padmini has been killed.” “My taxi has been cut into many pieces, but my heart is broken into many more.”

Rahim is from a working-class Muslim community known in Mumbai as chillia. His family had driven taxis in Bombay since the early twentieth century. That evening, Rahim had returned from Mumbai’s Motor Vehicles Department, the state’s main licensing and regulatory body. At his annual visit to get his taxi’s license renewed, he was forewarned that it no longer complied with new regulations on age and would need to be handed over to the state to be destroyed. Rahim’s youngest son, Syed drove the same car for the evening shift and his brother-in-law Bilal drove the car on Fridays when others went to prayers at the mosque. This shared car had a long and hard-working relationship to Mumbai’s roads, as did the men who had driven it. Syed and Bilal sat next to Rahim and complained in anger: “All these years the RTO (Regional Transport Office) officials took our bribes and gave a passing certificate; now all of a sudden they are trying to enforce the law? What was the real age of this car? What is age anyway? Is it the body of the car the inside of it? We have put in a new engine, a new taillight, new brakes, and a new CNG (compressed natural gas) tank. But they have decided it’s too old, only because it looks old, and has no place in the new Mumbai; they want us to either buy new cars or give up our family business and join a fleet-taxi company. Where will we get the money to buy a new car? After being a public servant my whole life, who wants to become a ghulam (slave) of the private sector? What happens to workers?”

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The Bicycle: Towards a Global History, Smethurst, P, UK, Palgrave Macmillan (First Published 2015) pp-194

ISBN:  9781137499493 (Hardback) Price: $110

Paul Smethurst’s The Bicycle: Towards a Global History usefully supplements existing postcolonial accounts of human-machine encounters during the 19^th. and 20^th. Centuries (Anderson 1983; Agular 2011; Bonea 2016) and how these shaped and inflected ideas of nationhood, modernity, and European colonialism. Smethurst’s rigorous mapping of the history of the modern-day bicycle in the “western countries” of UK, France, and Germany as well as the bicycle’s changing socio-political significance in countries of the Global North and South allows this study to be both interdisciplinary and transnational in scope and readership. In addition, the interspersing of the historical-cultural-sociological narrative with poster art, magazine advertisements and cartoon strips, photographs, and close readings of literary narratives on the bicycle offers a rich, multimodal interface that engrosses the reader from beginning to end.

The Bicycle opens with an introductory overview of the bicycle’s trajectory in human history - as a sign of promising new times ahead (19^th. C), enabling class and gender transgressions (late 19^th. - early 20^th. C), functioning as a nostalgic reminder of the good, old days in the face of the two world wars, and as central to the green movement and counterculture in the 21^st. C. Smethurst underlines his objective upfront: “explor[ing] the shifting cultural meanings of the bicycle, particularly in [how it was crucial] in transitions to social modernity in different parts of the world.” (8). In the process, he carefully registers and attends to the simultaneous dual processes that shaped “modernity” - technological and scientific advances that made possible new machines and modes of transport, new dreams and possibilities for humans and the changing philosophies and ideas about human potential that made people seek out new, self-determined futures.

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by Michael K. Bess, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas

This post is adapted from the conference paper and presentation that the author developed for the 2016 meeting of T2M in Mexico City. Michael is an assistant professor at CIDE in Mexico, focused on the study of mobility and transport in Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico border during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His on-going work considers the role that institutions play in developing transportation infrastructure and how these spaces are policed. For more information on Michael’s work, visit his Academia.edu page. --ed

In Mexico, technological progress arrived on rails. During the long rule of the country’s strongman president, Porfirio Díaz, in the late nineteenth century, the federal government coordinated the construction of thousands of miles of railroads. The private sector and U.S. investment played a critical role in this work, connecting cities to coastal ports, and linking markets to major industrial and mining centers, like Cananea, in Sonora a northwestern state on the U.S.-Mexico border. Although resource extraction was a primary goal, poor and working-class Mexicans also embraced the railroad. Studies have shown that third-class passenger service remained in high demand during this time as people moved themselves and goods from one region to another. Likewise, railroads became a prominent foil where middle-class Mexicans and intellectuals debated the impact of modernization in the country’s newspapers. Poets described the experience and speed of traveling by rail to flight: “That subtle bird, upon its wings sustain, as it comes and goes, I come and go on the railroad.”

The opportunities for mobility that the railroad presented required considerable upkeep, however. From very early in this history, company managers and government officials invested in the creation of workshops in strategic parts of the country to ensure that resources for construction and repair were readily available. In Aguascalientes, a central state that is 420 kilometers (260 miles) northwest of Mexico City, the U.S.-owned Mexican Central Railroad decided to build its general workshops. The decision was strategic; the state was near multiple populations centers, including the cities of Guadalajara, León, and Zacatecas, and was also near several important trunk lines for the burgeoning rail network. From my conference paper, delivered at T2M in Mexico City, I noted that the facility quickly transformed the little provincial state capital.

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By Tarini Bedi, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Chicago

This post is adapted from Dr. Bedi's work, which appeared in Mobility in History's eighth volume. The print publication's archive is available online with Berghahn Journals; Dr. Bedi's article can be accessed by clicking this link.

Attention to the historiography of mobility, circulation, and transport in South Asia, a region that covers modern nation-states of Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives, Bhutan, and Tibet has the capacity to illuminate broader theoretical and empirical concerns for scholars of mobility in other parts of the world.

Until quite recently, the dominant area of focus in South Asian transport history was on the railways and on the British colonial period (Davidson 1868; Kerr 1995; 2001).  This focus on the history of Indian railways is vital to understanding the technological and economic ramifications of large transportation networks. It also illustrates how the building of transportation systems exemplified the material strategies of colonial governance and control.

The more recent work in South Asian transport history is excitingly multi-disciplinary and draws from cultural, economic and labour history, literary studies, ethno-history, global history, and anthropology.  In doing so, it de-centers the privileged position of railways and the British colonial period as a watershed historical moment in South Asian transport history. It also provokes important discussions about the connections between pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial transport mobilities. Further, while in both transport and labour historiography of South Asia, transport workers conventionally received very little scholarly attention this more recent work illuminates the vital place that human agents, particularly transport labour played in shaping these mobilities (Behal and Linden 2006; Kerr 2006). It also explores how South Asian transport networks, labour migrations, and the recruitment of South Asian labour and capital were fundamentally tied to global transportation networks across the Indian Ocean and beyond (Bose 2006; Frietag 2011; Hoerder 2011).

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By F. Robert van der Linden, Ph.D., Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

As the afternoon sun was beginning to wane, some 200,000 excited people gathered at Valbuena airport in Mexico City were beginning to get anxious.  The crowd, including President Plutarco Calles and most of the government, were waiting for the arrival of the most famous aviator in the world, and he was two hours late.

Seven months earlier, on May 21, 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh, an obscure air mail pilot from Minnesota, captured the world’s imagination when he became the first person to fly non-stop, solo between New York and Paris, in his single–seat Ryan monoplane the NYP “Spirit of St. Louis.”  Although many others had crossed the Atlantic by air before this no one had done so directly between two major cities. The obvious conclusion to millions of people was that the age of practical air travel for the public was dawning.  While airlines had existed since the First World War, they were unprofitable and unreliable.  Most had failed, and those that did survive, did so as wards of the state receiving either direct or indirect subsidy for their very survival.

When Lindbergh landed in Paris, he was immediately surrounded by 150,000 well wishers.  The adulation continued throughout Europe and upon his return to the United States in June.  A calm rational individual, Lindbergh sought to use the power of his new-found celebrity to promote his vision of a world transformed by air travel.  During his subsequent aerial tour of the United States it is estimated that 1/3 of the population saw him and heard his message of the coming age of commercial air travel.  He hoped to repeat his discourse on his goodwill tour of Latin America and the Caribbean.

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By Alejandro Rascovan, IMICIHU/CONICET – FSOC/UBA

This post launches the new season of content at Mobility in History Blog! It is adapted from the conference paper and presentation that the author developed for the 2016 meeting of T2M in Mexico City. Alejandro is a Posdoc Fellow with Argentina’s CONICET and instructor at the University of Buenos Aires. His on-going work focuses on the trans-border mobilities at the Uruguay River and the border space between Argentina and Uruguay through a geopolitical framework.

Since the times the nation-states and their borders were defined (second half of the 19ht century) the Uruguay River has played the part of a border between countries. But, east-west mobilities through the river have also developed in a dual expression. On one side the regional mobilities that are possible thanks to the introduction of infrastructure (road and railway bridges, gas pipes and power lines) between Argentina and Uruguay and Argentina and Brazil, and on the other side, the local trans-border mobilities at the many twin cities.

We consider regional transport infrastructure (bridges) to be crucial, as they serve multiple scales, connecting cities and their populations, used for trafficking goods between nations, and allowing those goods to move through the continent to ports where they are shipped elsewhere. Therefore, regional infrastructure, set at the Uruguay River, which is also the border between Argentina and Uruguay and Argentina and Brazil, can be analyzed through a geopolitical framework to better comprehend those separate layers of mobilities. Geopolitics allows us to consider the political implications and the power struggle that involving national actors in the context of territory. Crossing theses borders implies a dual mobility, from neighbors and workers, small smugglers and doctor’s appointments to regional merchants and tourist. Between political geography and international relations, border mobilities can be comprehended as representations and expressions in the exercise of power in the territory. This means that a multi-scale gaze will be needed to review local-global configurations.

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Original version

By Kate McDonald, University of California, Santa Barbara

This post is the first installment of MHB's capsule series, which is intended to highlight scholarly essays that originally appeared in the print edition of Mobility in History. The author has agreed to revisit the original article and adapt it into a shorter piece for the blog. Links to the original version, available at Berghahn's MiH website, are located at the beginning and end of the post. -editors

 “Intermodality and Beyond: Toward a New History of Mobility in Japan” appeared in Mobility in History 5 (2014). The article considers what the history of mobility has to offer the modern history of transport and social life in the Japanese archipelago. The article begins with an overview of the modern history of transportation in Japan. The second half turns to the possibilities that have emerged from new “other-modal” and intermodal histories.

As in other parts of the world, the concept of an exclusive “Japanese” society defined by a unique culture, history, and geography dates back only to the late eighteenth century.  Traditional histories of transport in Japan adopt this historical notion of Japanese-ness as a transhistorical frame, and treat the story of transport as one piece of a larger story of Japan’s modern development. “Intermodality and Beyond” argues that the emergence of new other- and inter-modal histories presents rich possibilities for exploring the history of mobility in Japan as the story of constituting communities through transport rather than the operation of transport on a pre-constituted society. We have reached the point where a paradigm shift to transmodal and transnational histories of mobility is now possible.

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[This is first review of MBH book review section. Reviews are solicited from interested scholars on titles and themes associated with mobility (broadly defined). For instance, the following review explores historical impact of adding mobility to news/information through the introduction of electric telegraph in nineteenth-century colonial India]

Review

The News of Empire: Telegraphy, Journalism, and the Politics of the Reporting in Colonial India c.1830-1900, Bonea, A, New Delhi (India), Oxford University Press (First Published 2016) pp-376

ISBN: 0199467129 (Hardback) Price: 1644 INR (US$: 25)

Amelia Bonea’s The News of Empire: Telegraphy, Journalism, and the Politics of the Reporting in Colonial India c.1830-1900 is a welcome addition to the genre of social history of communication technology in South Asian history. The book offers the additional advantage of offering a fresh perspective to history of journalism in South Asia. As such, the book represents a successful combination of bringing together history of ‘technologies of communications and the politics of news reporting in nineteenth-century India’ (p-2).

Historiographically speaking, the aims and the content of the volume is inter-disciplinary. The book seeks an answer to an apparently simple and narrow question of ‘how technology and English language journalism intersected in colonial India’ (p-2). But as Dr Bonea succinctly argues in the introduction, there is no single or simple answer to the question. Indeed, any attempt to answer the question, as the volume successfully illustrates, requires bringing together two distinct historiographical narratives: one, history of technology and transmission of technology in colonial contexts; and two, the evolution of news reporting as a consequence of the development of communication technology.

The volume admirably tackles this objective by focussing on the ways in which technologies of communications such as telegraph ‘enabled articulation of certain practices and visions of journalism in colonial landscape that was set on controlling and even repressing the circulation of intelligence’ (p-3). In short, the volume represents a historiographical shift in both history of communication technology and history of mechanisms of news making, including the content and form of the news. Additionally, it makes wider, though largely implicit contributions to the ongoing debate on relations between technology and social change as well as the complex role of technology and ‘colonial modernity’.

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By Daniel Athias de Almeida and Sergio Fagerlande

This post is adapted from the conference paper and presentation that the authors developed for the 2016 meeting of T2M in Mexico City.

Daniel is a graduate student and a researcher in the Architecture Postgraduate Department of Architecture in the field of Project and Heritage at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (PROARQ - UFRJ), focusing on the study of history, mobility and tourism in the city of Guapimirim, Brazil.

Sergio is a PhD lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism and researcher at LAURBAM in the Urbanism Postgraduate Department at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (PROURB - UFRJ), lecturing on Urbanism, landscape architecture and the history of the cities, researching tourism in slums.

This post examines the historical process around the development of the city of Guapimirim, Brazil, and its relationship with transportation. The goal is to provide new strategies and possibilities in order to revive the old path of the railway and, at the same time, improve mobility through modal integration with the existing railway, bicycle systems and the current bus network. In order to understand the importance of the railways to local urban development, one must examine the whole region between the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area and Serra dos Orgãos mountain range, where Guapimirim is located. Originally, these spaces were connected by railroad in the nineteenth century, which promoted greater development in the area and fostered strong connections between the port with farming and mining zones.

The region played an important role in the development of railway systems in South America. In the area, the first rail line was built in 1856, connecting Mauá Port to Raíz da Serra de Petrópolis. A few years after the construction of the Mauá Railway, another line was built to connect Teresópolis, a popular destination, to Mauá Port, in the process passing through Guapimirim, stimulating the city’s growth.

Construction began on the Teresópois Railway in 1898 and was completed in 1906, after successfully crossing the Serra dos Orgãos mountain range. The endeavor imported tracks from Swtizerland to finish. Once opened, the line became a landmark for modernization, and spurred urban development and integration among the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Teresópolis, and Guapimirim. The railway served as a mode of transportation for commuters as well as tourists. Passing through the Serra dos Orgãos mountains provided scenic views of lush natural landscapes, pristine waterfalls and huge granite formations covered with vegetation. e, a place with scenic views, lush nature, pristine waterfalls and huge granite blocks covered with dense vegetation. The picturesque spaces and incredible biodiversity around Guapimirim made this place into a popular destination for famous artists, travelers, and explorers, including the famed German botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, even before the construction of the first railroad. Later, Henrique Bernardelli, a well-known painter, moved to Guapimirim in 1900, and lived there for thirty years, creating artwork inspired by the natural landscape of the region.

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By Govind Gopakumar, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Govind Gopakumar is Associate Professor at the Centre for Engineering in Society at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. His research is quite interdisciplinary and has focussed on the politics of urban infrastructure, predominantly in Indian cities. He has increasingly become very interested in the "auto-mobility turn". He is currently finishing a book manuscript on the installation of automobility in the Indian city of Bangalore. Prior to this he scripted and directed a film - Social Life of a Bus (https://youtu.be/hYxwSWfL3bI) - that examines the pulls and shoves of public transport in the context of rising automobility. More details about Govind's research can be seen at http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~govind/​

Bengaluru (formerly known as Bangalore) is a large metropolitan city in south-central India that is home to about 10 million people and their 6 million (largely) private vehicles. Of late, the city has generated a lot of attention internationally on account of its rapid ‘rise’ as the hub of India’s high technology industry and its prominence as a fast globalizing city. In the popular media, the ‘rise’ of Bengaluru has been a trigger for numerous investigations into the dynamics of Bengaluru’s infrastructures, especially its road infrastructures. In many of these accounts, the performance of the city’s infrastructures leaves much to be desired if the city is to take its global ambitions seriously. Recent social scientific investigations into the global tropes associated with recent infrastructure developments have shown a picture of stark unevenness with infrastructures targeting the aspirations of particular sections of society while neglecting others. In this context, it is surprising that congestion in the city is one largely unexamined phenomenon. This is particularly surprising because talk of congestion in the contemporary city of Bengaluru (given the explosive growth in private vehicles and the potential establishment of what John Urry has called a system of automobility), arguably more than any other city in India, is omnipresent in public discourse and popular culture. A critical investigation into congestion in the city is particularly relevant now given the overwhelming aspiration in the North and the South to construct the urban place as a ‘space of flows’ where frictions and blocks are minimized, where congestion is not just inconvenient it is deeply threatening to the constitution of what Baumann calls ‘liquid modernity’.

Against this backdrop, the ‘congested Bengaluru’ narrative often reads congestion in monolithic and instrumental terms as an epiphenomenon related to the exponential rise in vehicular population, itself an index of Bengaluru’s remarkable success in the era of globalized capitalist production. But a closer examination of the narrative reveals several complexities that defy a linear characterization of congestion solely as a manifestation of vehicular growth. Congestion in Bengaluru, as reported in newspapers is associated with sporadic events not necessarily associated solely with vehicular growth. Instances of traffic congestion occur during instances of flooding caused by the inability of local hydrological channels to function due to the alteration or erasure of several local water bodies and drainage channels from the urban fabric of the city. Congestion is also associated with the city’s unique topographical history that has resulted in the concentration of several government offices in the heart of the city close to densely populated habitation and commercial centres. How can one explain this contradiction? Heeding the transport historian Colin Divall’s call to create a ‘usable past’, this paper calls for a historicization of the manifestation of congestion in Bengaluru in order to begin grasping the complexities of the experience of congestion in contemporary Bengaluru.

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