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First, the author summarises the thesis of the post-industrial (PI) society and refers to some of the evidence. Second, the author shows that although modern Western societies are indeed changing in quite spectacular ways, the specific PI society is insufficiently precise and glosses over some exceptionally important aspects of recent change. Finally, the author returns to the future, so to speak, and consider whether there may be developing some current changes of time and space which are setting the ground for supposedly postmodern experiences. There is moreover plenty of empirical evidence to support elements of this thesis in modern Britain. Government policy is not the end of the matter though. One undoubted difficulty in the PI thesis is that there is considerable ambiguity in the very idea of a service itself. Culturally we live in a society where nostalgia, the vernacular and tradition mingle in a kind of pastiche with play, spectacle and transgression.

The article argues that the highly managed atmosphere of airport terminals is particularly characteristic of the 'global' era. Acknowledging that the thesis of airports as 'non-places' has been a useful provocation, the article contends that airports are in fact distinct spaces with particular kinds of atmosphere (of emotions, affects, passionate intensities). Moreover, these atmospheres are moving out into many other places that appear to be more and more similar to airports. Mapping connections between the transformation of airport terminals and globalization, the paper draws upon research based on ethnographic observation and interviews conducted at European airports to situate airport atmospherics in terms of extensive sequencing, information, consumer culture and ever-increasing technological intervention. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

A new mobilities paradigm emerged a decades or so ago in the context of significant theoretical shifts, methodological developments and novel research questions and approaches. We begin by considering what is meant by the idea of a “paradigm” from Thomas Kuhn. We then examine many ways in which this new paradigm transformed applied mobilities research over the past decade and how it might continue to reconfigure it. The new paradigm and three interconnected theoretical approaches are set out, before turning to assess the impact of the new paradigm upon emerging fields of social science by using various quantitative and qualitative measures. We examine the transformed ecology of this significant emergent field. Finally, the article explores the paradigm’s important relevance for applied research in urban transportation, climate change and energy transitions.

This chapter shows that most recent developments in its analysis have occurred outside mainstream sociological discourse. It explores that sociology develops in part through appropriating theoretical and empirical work conducted in neighbouring disciplines, and related social movements. The chapter suggests that sociology can never be understood in terms of the idea of a paradigm, or even of a scientific community, or communities. It argues that sociology's intellectual strength predominantly lies in its parasitism, its openness and relative lack of authority and control. The chapter also argues that sociological discourse is organised as follows: there is a multiplicity of perspectives with no common concept of 'society' which unifies them, and sociological concepts and propositions cannot be clearly demarcated from commonsense concepts and propositions. It concludes with some more general comments on the virtues of sociology's parasitic character.

Energy forms and their extensive scale are remarkably significant for the ways that societies are organized. This article shows the importance of how societies are ‘energized’ and especially the global growth of ‘fossil fuel societies’. Much social thought remains oblivious to the energy revolution realized over the past two to three centuries which set the ‘West’ onto a distinct trajectory. Energy is troubling for social thought because different energy systems with their ‘lock-ins’ are not subject to simple human intervention and control. Analyses are provided here of different fossil fuel societies, of coal and oil, with the latter enabling the liquid, mobilized 20th century. Consideration is paid to the possibilities of reducing fossil fuel dependence but it is shown how unlikely such a ‘powering down’ will be. The author demonstrates how energy is a massive problem for social theory and for 21st-century societies. Developing post-carbon theory and especially practice is far away but is especially urgent.

Cargo is moved from factories through global production networks via supply chains to consumers, but this process is hidden from them by what Raymond Williams termed the magic system of marketing and what Allan Sekula and Noel Burch call the forgotten space of containerization. This paper addresses recent concern that the mobilities paradigm has neglected two domains relevant to cargo: global production networks and global cultures of consumption. These domains are examined in relation to three key elements in this paper: distribution, consumption and marketing. In assessing moving consumption from the perspective of the mobilities paradigm, this paper recommends that the future of cargo, the ease of which consumers take utterly for granted, is far from clear-cut from a strategic foresight perspective.

This paper assesses possible futures concerning so-called 3D printing in relation to socio-technical systems and consumption and production. Drawing on an Economic and Social Research Council funded project, the paper details the results of research exploring possible futures of the manufacturing industry and impacts upon the transport of objects. Such ‘printing’, or ‘personal fabrication’, could permit many objects to be produced near to or even by consumers themselves on just-in-time ‘printing’ machines. Widely known about in engineering and design, the impacts of these technologies on social practices and transport have yet to be much examined by social science. These technologies may become as ubiquitous as networked computers, with consequences just as significant. The paper reports on this recent research that seeks to understand some economic, social and environmental implications of what may be a major new socio-technical system currently in the making and which might have major consequen...

This article assesses the use of ‘science fiction’ (SF) in visioning or prototyping the potential economic and social consequences of so-called 3D printing. What is becoming clear to many commentators as well as science fiction writers is how rapid prototyping, or 3D printing more generally, could permit many final objects to be made near to or even by consumers on just-in-time ‘printing’ machines. This revolution in making would have many implications for the economy-and-society in the future by seriously augmenting, or possibly replacing, current systems of manufactured production, long-distance transportation and consumption. These 3D technologies have featured in SF works, including Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, Ian McDonald's Brasyl, Charles Stross's Rule 34 and Cory Doctorow's Makers. The article reports on current research seeking to understand the implications of what may be a major new sociotechnical system in the making. Some creative uses of SF are presented in a professional workshop setting. As well the article documents the use of SF as a methodological prototype in forecasting alternative scenarios of the future. SF prototyping could be a powerful tool in the social science repertoire when put into action in forecasting possible technology and business futures.

This article is an edited transcript of a panel discussion on “mobility studies“ which was held as part of a workshop on mobility and community at Aberystwyth University on September 3, 2012. In the article the five panelists reflect upon the recent resurgence of research on mobility in the social sciences and humanities, emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary debates, and the ways in which established fields such as transport history, migration studies, and sociology are being reshaped by new research agendas. The panelists discuss the importance of engaging with issues of politics, justice, equality, global capital, secrecy, and representation, and they encourage researchers to focus on non-Western and non-hegemonic mobilities, as well as to produce “useable“ studies which engage policy-makers.

This paper shows how oil has been central to the mobile civilisation that developed around the world during the twentieth century. Various aspects of this oil civilisation are examined, including the development of centres of high carbon living such as Dubai. This paper explores the probable peaking of oil and its problematic consequences. It is shown how this has already had major economic and social consequences. New forms of indebtedness were directed to new kinds of property purchaser and the parcelling up of these debts into new financial packages. From the 1980s onwards many new American suburbs were built distant from city centres but rising oil prices led to the collapse of the mortgages of those living in oil-dependent suburbs and finance during 2007-8 onwards. Some writers consider whether a more generalised ‘peaking’ is now occurring at least in the global north, of oil, gas, food and water.

A central argument of much contemporary literature is that the advent of digital and mobile technologies creates new kinds of mobile lives, new socialities and new ways of relating to the self and others. In this paper I specifically examine how mobile lives unfold through social networks, facilitating the forming and reforming of connections people have with others, near and distant. I argue that movement itself is not so significant. Its importance rather stems from how it enables people to be connected with each other, to meet and to remeet over time and across space. Movement makes connections. These connections form patterns or networks, which many commentators see as the critical feature of contemporary life. Much travel thus involves making new connections and extending one’s network or sustaining one’s existing networks.

The Tourist Gaze [Urry J, 1990 (Sage, London)] is one of the most discussed and cited tourism books (with about 4000 citations on Google scholar). Whilst wide ranging in scope, the book is known for the Foucault-inspired concept of the tourist gaze that brings out the fundamentally visual and image-saturated nature of tourism encounters. However, some recent literature has critiqued this notion of the ‘tourist gaze’ for reducing tourism to visual experiences—to sight seeing—and neglecting the other senses, bodily experiences, and ‘adventure’. The influential ‘performance turn’ within tourist studies suggests that the doings of tourism are physical or corporeal and not merely visual, and it is necessary to regard ‘performing’ rather than ‘gazing’ as the dominant tourist research paradigm. Yet we argue here that there are, in fact, many similarities between the paradigms of gaze and of performance. They should ‘dance together’ rather than stare at each other at a distance. In this paper we rethink the tourist gaze in the light of this performance turn and of a Goffmanian dramaturgical sociology by examining the embodied and multisensuous nature of gazing as well as the complex social relations and fluid power geometries comprising performances of gazing. The Foucault-inspired notion of the tourist gaze can be enlivened—made more bodily and theatrical—by incorporating Goffman and post-Goffman analyses and aspects of nonrepresentational theory.

This article examines some major changes relating to the contemporary conditions of life upon Earth. It deals especially with emergent contradictions that stem from shifts within capitalism in the rich North over the course of the last century or so. These shifts involve moving from low-carbon to high-carbon economies/societies, from societies of discipline to societies of control, and more recently from specialized and differentiated zones of consumption to mobile, de-differentiated consumptions of excess. Societies become centres of conspicuous, wasteful consumption. The implications of such forms of ‘excess’ consumption are examined for clues as to the nature and characteristics of various futures. Special attention is paid to the interdependent system effects of climate change, the peaking of oil and exceptional growth of urban populations. It is argued that the 20th century has left a bleak legacy for the new century, with a very limited range of possible future scenarios which are briefly described.

OCIAL THEORY is faced by a new spectre haunting the ‘globe’ – thechanging of the world’s climate. Such changes are now thought to bebeyond doubt and, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (IPCC), very likely the product of human practices (IPCC, 2007).These practices have generated raised levels of ‘greenhouse gases’ in theatmosphere, which seem to be leading to increased temperatures, which willin turn transform future forms of human life around the world. Even attemptstomonitorand‘mitigate’climatechangearelikelytoinvolvedramaticchangesin social organization: the creation of a global assemblage of internationalagreements, carbon atoms, markets, technologies, weather events and socialpractices.Thereseemsnodoubt:the21stcenturyissettobeonewhereissuesofclimate,resourcesandenergyareparamount.Theworldofcultureandvirtu-ality has met its match; the material world apparently does matter and can‘bite back’. The economies and societies of whole continents may well havetransformedconditionsoflife.Andthehigh-carbonworld initiatedinthe20thcentury could turn out to be a mere passing moment in the long-term pattern-ing of human history. It is not so much post-modernism that we should bedebating but the conditions of possibility of ‘post-carbonism’.There are three broad positions or discourses within the climatechange literature.

Cosmopolitanism is the focus of much current debate. This literature, however, is marked by a relative paucity of detailed research that examines the impact of cosmopolitanism as a social force within different societies. In particular, two topics that have received little attention despite their utter importance for current global challenges are the scale and impact of cosmopolitanism in China and the significance of 'cosmopolitan innovation'. This paper explores both on the basis of evidence from over 70 interviews with parties involved in low-carbon innovation, a field that may be considered to be particularly propitious for cosmopolitan motivation. We argue that there is distinct evidence of cosmopolitanism in China but that this is a relatively fragile and elite development, despite China's increasingly deep integration into global networks and flows. Furthermore, the cosmopolitanism in evidence is a distinctly Chinese version, thereby offering important lessons regarding the nature of cosmopolitanism per se and the reciprocal challenge of China to the existing cosmopolitanism of the global North.

It sometimes seems as if all the world is on the move.1 The early retired, international students, terrorists, holidaymakers, business people, slaves, sports stars, asylum seekers, backpackers and ...

The ‘steel-and-petroleum’ car is one of the most significant contributors to anthropogenic environmental change especially with its continued rapid growth in the world's most rapidly developing countries. This paper examines the intersections of the flows of new fuel systems; new ways of producing car bodies and new systems of managing personal mobility; and especially how these could be governed on multiple levels to overturn this car system. Complexity theory is deployed to examine what might tip these governmentalities and flows into a post-car system.

In this paper I examine various sociologies of the future. I argue that one future, of global climate change, is now exceptionally significant. This future is based upon certain sociological presumptions and thus sociology is central to its emerging contours and to its analysis. I examine one aspect of such a future, the role of travel and especially automobility within this emerging dystopia. I use some formulations from complexity theory to examine what might constitute an alternative to global heating and the scenario of 'tribal trading'. It is suggested that one feasible alternative is a 'digital panopticon' and I examine some small changes that might tip the system to such a post-automobility system. But there is no free lunch here. It is argued that the world may be torn between two bleak scenarios as a consequence of the twentieth century's exceptional degree of resource use, between a Hobbesian war of all against all and an Orwellian digital panopticon. The twentieth century would seem to be reaping its bitter revenge.

In this paper, we consider the passenger experience of travel time, and its translation into a transport model of travel time, which is of great significance in the potential funding and construction of infrastructural projects. In the economic appraisals of such projects, which are often of massive scale and impact, it is presumed that travel time is wasted, dead, or empty, and therefore should be minimised. However, in this paper we show how travel time is filled with activities and fantasies. We show that there are multiple travel times and places, and not just a single measured clock time that has to be minimised in getting from point A to point B. Travel time is situated in the sociomaterial practices of travel, which include engaging with other passengers, interacting with wireless networks, views out of the window, things packed in one's bag, and so on. We describe and evaluate various ‘moving methods’ for researching places on-the-move, from survey to ethnography. Finally, we consider how to disrupt the assumption in transport appraisal that such time is empty and should be minimised, and suggest new approaches for presencing the richness of passenger travel time in transport modelling.

Objects and materials are on the move like never before, often at astonishing speeds and along hidden routeways. This collection opens to social scientific scrutiny the various systems which move objects about the world, examining their fateful implications for many people and places. Offering texts from key thinkers, the book presents case studies from around the world which report on efforts to establish, maintain, disrupt or transform the cargo-mobility systems which have grown so dramatically in scale and significance in recent decades

The past decade has seen striking increases in travel and in communications at‐a‐distance through mobile phone calls, text messaging and emailing. People in prosperous societies are both travelling...

Mobility has become an evocative keyword for the twenty‐first century and a powerful discourse that creates its own effects and contexts. The concept of mobilities encompasses both the large‐scale ...

It seems that a new paradigm is being formed within the social sciences, the ‘new mobilities’ paradigm. Some recent contributions to forming and stabilising this new paradigm include work from anthropology, cultural studies, geography, migration studies, science and technology studies, tourism and transport studies, and sociology. In this paper we draw out some characteristics, properties, and implications of this emergent paradigm, especially documenting some novel mobile theories and methods. We reflect on how far this paradigm has developed and thereby to extend and develop the ‘mobility turn’ within the social sciences.

‘Complexity theory’ seems to provide some metaphors, concepts and theories essential for examining the intractable disorderliness of the contemporary world. Relations across that world are complex, rich and non-linear, involving multiple negative and, more significantly, positive feedback loops. This article shows how globalization should be conceptualized as a series of adapting and co-evolving global systems, each characterized by unpredictability, irreversibility and co-evolution. Such systems lack finalized ‘equilibrium’ or ‘order’; and the many pools of order heighten overall disorder. They do not exhibit and sustain unchanging structural stability. Complexity elaborates how there is order and disorder within these various global systems. The global order is a complex world, unpredictable and irreversible, disorderly but not anarchic.