Editorial
Gijs Mom, Georgine Clarsen, Dorit Müller, Nanny Kim

The Distant Sound of Mule Caravan Bells: Interview with Mr Li Zhengxiong, 19 August 2003
Ma Cunzhao

In retelling the history of “criminal tribe” settlements managed by the Salvation Army in Madras Presidency (colonial India) from 1911, I argue that neither the mobility–immobility relationship nor the compositional heterogeneity of (im)mobility practices can be adequately captured by relational dialecticism espoused by leading mobilities scholars. Rather than emerging as an opposition through dialectics, the relationship between (relative) mobility and containment may be characterized by overlapping hybridity and difference. This differential hybridity becomes apparent in two ways if mobility and containment are viewed as immanent gatherings of humans and nonhumans. First, the same entities may participate in gatherings of mobility and of containment, while producing different effects in each gathering. Here, nonhumans enter a gathering, and constitute (im)mobility practices, as actors that make history irreducibly differently from other actors that they may be entangled with. Second, modern technologies and amodern “institutions” may be indiscriminately drawn together in all gatherings.

Gatherings of Mobility and Immobility: Itinerant “Criminal Tribes” and Their Containment by the Salvation Army in Colonial South India
Saurabh Arora

In retelling the history of “criminal tribe” settlements managed by the Salvation Army in Madras Presidency (colonial India) from 1911, I argue that neither the mobility–immobility relationship nor the compositional heterogeneity of (im)mobility practices can be adequately captured by relational dialecticism espoused by leading mobilities scholars. Rather than emerging as an opposition through dialectics, the relationship between (relative) mobility and containment may be characterized by overlapping hybridity and difference. This differential hybridity becomes apparent in two ways if mobility and containment are viewed as immanent gatherings of humans and nonhumans. First, the same entities may participate in gatherings of mobility and of containment, while producing different effects in each gathering. Here, nonhumans enter a gathering, and constitute (im)mobility practices, as actors that make history irreducibly differently from other actors that they may be entangled with. Second, modern technologies and amodern “institutions” may be indiscriminately drawn together in all gatherings.

Transporting Viewers Beyond the “Hoe and the Machete”: The Rhetoric of Mobility in Cuban Mobile Cinema
Nicholas Balaisis

This article examines the Cuban mobile cinema campaign in the 1960s as a case study for thinking about the relationship between cinema and mobility. I examine the rhetoric around mobile cinema in Cuban journals such as Cine Cubano, and in the documentary film Por primera vez (For the first time, 1967). I argue that cinema is linked with mobility in two primary ways: as a virtual mobility stimulated by onscreen images, and as a more literal mobility expressed by the transportation of film into remote rural sites of exhibition. These two kinds of mobility reflect the hopes and ambitions of filmmakers and critics energized by the resurgent nationalism of the Cuban revolution, and the excitement of cinema as a “new” technology in rural Cuba.

History and Transport Policy: The Swiss Experience
Ueli Haefeli, Fritz Kobi and Ulrich Seewer

Based on analysis of two case studies in the Canton of Bern, this article examines the question of knowledge transfer from history to transport policy and planning in the recent past in Switzerland. It shows that for several reasons, direct knowledge transfer did not occur. In particular, historians have seldom become actively involved in transport planning and policy discourses, probably partly because the academic system offers no incentive to do so. However, historical knowledge has certainly influenced decision-making processes indirectly, via personal reflection of the actors in the world of practice or through Switzerland’s strongly developed modes of political participation. Because the potential for knowledge transfer to contribute to better policy solutions has not been fully utilized, we recommend strengthening the role of existing interfaces between science and policy.

Learning from a Contested Project in the Netherlands: The Clash over the Amelisweerd Forest, 1957–1982
Odette van de Riet and Bert Toussaint

The Amelisweerd case, a highly debated highway network expansion project from the late 1970s, has been widely portrayed as a symbolic mismatch between government and entrenched stakeholder opposition. The aim of this article is to learn from the case by unraveling the policy process using a multiactor policy analysis model. The result is that the policy process scores poorly on all the three applied criteria, and this has had a discernible negative effect on the level of stakeholder support for the policy proposals. Since then, major changes have taken place in the planning processes of infrastructural projects in the Netherlands. However, the potential for learning from Amelisweerd is much wider, as since the 1960s public projects are increasingly subject to public scrutiny and comment. Careful analysis from iconic cases like Amelisweerd can help current infrastructural policymakers and planning project managers as they develop fresh policies and projects.

The Role of Cycle Rickshaws in Urban Transport: Today and Tomorrow
Geetam Tiwari

Cycle rickshaws continue to play an important role in meeting the mobility demands in South Asian cities. Current transport policies, however, do not support their use. Rickshaws are viewed as a cause of congestion and a profession in which rickshaw owners exploit poor people. This article presents data from published studies to argue against those views. Data from Delhi metro users suggests that as cities expand their public transport services, rickshaws will continue as an important feeder mode in the future. Recent studies also suggest that if separate lanes are created for non-motorized vehicles (which can be used by bicycles as well), then rickshaws and motorized vehicles will experience less congestion and non-motorized vehicles will be exposed to lower traffic crash risk. This article advocates the collection of relevant data concerning rickshaw trips and the number of rickshaws in future travel surveys and that appropriate infrastructures should be designed to facilitate their movement.

Houston (Un)limited: Path-dependent Annexation and Highway Practices in an American Metropolis
Kyle Shelton

How do cities grow? And how do decisions made about mobility and territory impact and structure that growth? Focusing on Houston, Texas after the Second World War, this article looks at how decisions made by city officials helped cement the dual processes of annexation and highway building into the city’s growth structure. These strategies, while helping to explain how Houston become a leading metropolitan center during the second half of the twentieth century, also turned into path dependencies that limited Houston’s mobility choices and stretched the city’s ability to provide services to its citizens. The implementation of these two growth mechanisms shaped the unique development of the city and structured its relationships to the communities around it.

IDEAS IN MOTION

Notions of Mobility in Argentina: A Discussion of the Circulation of Ideas and Their Local Uses and Meanings
Dhan Zunino Singh and Maximiliano Velázquez

The following critical review of notions of mobility in Argentina is motivated by the rapid spread of this globalized term and how it is being appropriated by transport scholars, policymakers, and technicians. Our concern as sociologists – now involved in cultural history and urban planning – and as members of the Argentinean University Transport Network, is the lack of a profound discussion that allows us to talk about a mobility turn.

We argue that the movement from transport to mobility tends to be a semantic change mostly because social sciences and humanities do not lead it, as experienced in other countries. Moreover, we believe that the particular way in which the notions of mobility spread in Argentina must be understood in the context of circulation and reception of ideas, experts, capital and goods, and re-visiting center–periphery debates.

MOBILITY AND ART

Megafone.net
Antoni Abad

MUSEUM REVIEW

The Sea Plane Harbor: A Hangar Full of Estonian Maritime and Naval History
Aaro Sahari

FILM REVIEW

Cinema’s Journey into Homelessness: Leos Carax’s Holy Motors
Johannes Pause

BOOK REVIEWS

Dhiraj Murthy, Twitter: Social Communication in the Twitter Age. (Casey Brienza)
Ole B. Jensen, Staging Mobilities . (Fiona Ferbrache)
Aharon Kellerman, Daily Spatial Mobility: Physical and Virtual . (Simona Isabella)
Peter Merriman, Mobility, Space and Culture . (Thomas Birtchnell)
Guillermo Giucci, The Cultural Life of the Automobile: Roads to Modernity. (Georgine Clarsen)
Frank Steinbeck, Das Motorrad. Ein deutscher Sonderweg in die automobile Gesellschaft. (Christopher Neumaier)
Maarten Smaal, Politieke strijd om de prijs van de automobiliteit. De geschiedenis van een langdurend discours: 1895–2010. (Hans Jeekel)
Annette Vowinckel, Flugzeugentführungen. Eine Kulturgeschichte. (Christian Kehrt)
Philip D. Morgan, Maritime Slavery. (Paul Barrett)
Neil Archer, The French Road Movie: Space, Mobility, Identity. (Michael Gott)