RC21 CONFERENCE 2013
Resourceful cities
Berlin (Germany), 29-31 August 2013
Humboldt-University Berlin, Institute for Social Science, Dept. for Urban and Regional Sociology
From Global to Local - and Back Again? Mobilities and Place among Elites and the Middle Classes
There is an ongoing debate regarding the potential significance of the ‘mobilities paradigm’ for urban studies, especially in relation to the importance of residential place for both elites and the broader middle classes. On the one hand, writers such as Elliott and Urry (2010) have stressed how those they call ‘globals’, an elite super-rich, lead lives where they are always ‘up in the air’ in a state of near-permanent mobility, hardly ever touching terra firma. It is argued that this state of hyper-mobility has also permeated into the lives of the upper middle classes given that many senior professionals and managers are expected to travel abroad as part of their socio-spatial career trajectories, while other middle classes lead spatially compartmentalized ‘dual-lives’ whereby their workplace is at a considerable spatial distance from their home thereby necessitating lengthy commutes. Thus processes of deterritorialization and rootlessness are said to be prominent for elites and middle classes. It is noteworthy that several of the examples in Elliott and Urry’s Mobile Lives (2010) are taken from the narratives of academics – a group do not constitute part of an elite super-rich, but who nevertheless share routine long-distance travel with wealthier ‘globals’. On the other hand, research in several European cities and suburbs (Savage et al., 2005; Watt 2009; Hanquinet et al., 2012; Andreotti et al., forthcoming) has stressed the ongoing importance of residential place for the middle classes as a crucial site for class reproduction via educational choices over schools, as well as in relation to cultural practices more broadly and also as a source of identity. Savage’s concept of ‘elective belonging’ in particular captures the stasis within flux that is prominent within the middle classes’ experiences of residential neighbourhood. In addition, a combination of these residential choices, daily practices and educational strategies has contributed to the reshaping of some neighbourhoods in the image of the middle classes (Butler, 2003; Benson & Jackson, in press).
This session is therefore interested in receiving theoretical and empirical papers on the relationships between place and mobilities among elites and the middle classes in relation to various urban and suburban locations.
The following represent potential questions that could be highlighted:
How can place and mobilities be theorized?
How is power actualized through global mobilities and local practices?
To what extent are the broad middle classes ‘globals’? Or are the latter limited to a super-rich elite?
How far and in what urban/suburban contexts can the middle classes become ‘locals’?
How do global mobilities reshape urban and suburban places?
What kind of transnational practices and identities might elites and the middle classes be developing?
How do global mobilities intersect with local mobilities and practices?
How does gender affect place identities and mobility patterns?
What is the relationship between forms of belonging, global mobilities and local ties?
How are various forms of capital implicated both in place belonging and mobilities?
Session Organizers
Dr. Paul Watt, Birkbeck, University of London, Department of Geography, Environment & Development Studies, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, T: 020 3073 8371, Mob: 07788 415096, p.watt@bbk.ac.uk
Dr. Emma Jackson, University of Glasgow, School of Social and Political Sciences, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, Scotland, T: 01413306032, E: emma.Jackson.2@glasgow.ac.uk
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