Dear all
Dr Caroline Mullen (Leeds ITS) and I invite your abstracts for the above proposed session at the International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), London, 29th August to 1st September 2017 (http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/Annual+international+conference.htm).
The session is sponsored by the Geographies of Justice Research Group (http://research.ncl.ac.uk/geographiesofjustice/).
Please send abstracts of 250-350 words to Caroline Mullen [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> and Tom Cohen [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> by 7th February 2017. Please be sure to include a title, your name(s) and affiliation(s).
Mobility and transport justice matters because of the impact and significance of mobility and transport systems for people and planet. So it is unsurprising that, although still in its infancy, mobility justice is emerging as a significant area of research and activity. This session aims to explore and debate pressing, and diverse questions in mobility justice, and so to contribute to understanding and development of the research area and ultimately to creating more just mobility systems.
Mobility and transport are vital in human welfare, freedoms and flourishing but, as the mobility system currently works in most places, some more than others are able to move freely, and are able to access and finance the transport they need or want. More than this, aspects of our mobility systems can exclude people through physical severance from infrastructure, borders or unaffordable, inaccessible transport. Transport also creates lethal pollution, injury and severe impacts on built and natural environments which are far from evenly distributed. Mobility's impacts and the possibilities for change influence the basic justice question of how transport and mobility should be planned and used. Thinking about mobility justice also involves explicit or implicit normative theories or concepts. For instance, normative concepts are needed in thinking about whether the supply of cheap and frequent flights should be protected at the costs of carbon emissions and health burdens of noise and local air pollution; does society have a collective responsibility to ensure public transport or mobility services are accessible to everyone regardless of cost; do quality of life and clean air in urban areas justify keeping cars out of cities? Until recently, various forms of economics dominated this theoretical space. There is however an emerging interest in questioning and rethinking the normative basis for mobility policy and planning. For example, forms of egalitarianism, sufficientarianism, capabilities approach, communitarianism, and virtue ethics all present challenges to traditional transport planning. These range from questioning the justice of how economic approaches aggregate and compare benefits and costs, to more fundamental debates about values of mobility and its impacts and questions about the sort of society in which we want to live. Yet, as much as they challenge, these theories of justice face their own questions. The first of these is why one theory should be used over another - how can these decisions be justified? This is no small matter since lives, welfare and freedom are at issue in mobility justice. Then there are questions of whether given theories are able to provide a coherent basis for mobility planning. The practical complexity of mobility, involving multiple activities and creating tangles of environmental, social, economic impacts may threaten the feasibility of some theories.
This session welcomes abstracts on any theoretically and empirically informed aspects of mobility justice. The topics invited are open, but some examples are:
* Can we define mobility need?
* How can we best define the "goods" of transport and mobility?
* Are there fundamental arguments that favour one theory of justice over others in the context of mobility and transport?
* Are there theories of justice which can reconcile social and environmental dilemmas in mobility?
* Can mobility justice be separated from other questions of justice and welfare (such as housing or employment justice)?
* Should mobility justice be conceived as a means to an end (wider justice) or as a valid goal in itself, and what are the consequences?
* Is individual choice in transport a tenet of justice or an incoherent distraction?
* How do we reconcile the benefits of mobility with its externalities given that the groups on the receiving end are very often different?
* Does freedom to travel matter more than dealing with mobility-related health inequalities?
* What are the implications for mobility systems of different theories of justice?
* Is migration a matter for mobility justice?
* Does inaction by others reduce our responsibility to tackle transport pollution?
* How can we design a just mobility system in the face of uncertainties about the economic, environmental and social implications of technological change in transport?
Tom Cohen PhD
Centre for Transport Studies
University College London
Chadwick Building
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
020 7679 2276 (internal: 32276)
07504 402113
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