The Mobile Lives Forum is pleased to announce the creation of a new thematic section of its website entitled ‘Southern Diaries’ with the aim of promoting mobilities research in the Global South.

Traditionally research has privileged the realities and problems of societies in the ‘North’ and the aim of Southern Diaries is to give greater visibility to lesser known issues and researchers in southern societies. From April 2017 this new thematic section will regularly feature research on a wide range of mobility issues.

Researchers and practitioners working on mobility-related issues in the Global South are invited to submit short notes (700 words) about any aspect of their work.

Submissions with a specific emphasis on people’s ways of life and aspirations and the challenges and opportunities of ongoing social and cultural transformations for sustainable mobility transitions are encouraged. So too are contributions about case studies and projects with a strong component of ‘public sociology’ (see below).

Selected contributors will be invited to submit full texts (1,500 words) for publication in the Mobile Lives Forum’s website and regular newsletter (reaching +10,000 academics and practitioners all over the world).

The deadline for this round of submissions is 31 March.

Please note that the contact address included in previous calls for participation was incorrect. The correct address is javier.caletrio (at) forumviesmobiles.org

Further information
About us
The Mobile Lives Forum is a research institute created in 2011 to foster critical research and debate about mobility futures. In collaboration with academic and civil society institutions worldwide we bring together practitioners, artists, scholars and the general public to discuss and raise awareness about the plurality of ideas of the good life in contemporary societies and the role of mobility in the pursuit of individual and collective aspirations. Through this dialogue we seek to inform policies for sustainable mobility transitions.

The Mobile Lives Forum is a not-for-profit organization based in Paris and supported by the state-owned SNCF (French railways).

 ‘Global South’
There are multiple, changing and contested conceptual and geographical understandings of the notion of ‘Global South’. Acknowledging this plurality of views, the ‘southern perspective’ encouraged by this initiative loosely refers to contexts, experiences and ways of framing research that can illuminate other realities ‘beyond the North’, their particularities but also their connections with other places and experiences. In adopting this loose definition we would also like to encourage submissions from peripheral areas in southern and eastern Europe.

Public social sciences
Mobilities research is being produced in multiple places and with different purposes. Some research is conducted by well-resourced universities, concerns mostly conceptual matters or high-profile policy issues, and tends to be disseminated through high ranking British and North American academic journals or as eye-catching media reports. Behind this world of highly visible, relatively well funded research, the everyday reality in poor universities and southern countries is often characterised on the one hand by intense teaching commitments, and on the other by a vocational engagement with local communities, neighbourhood associations, labour movements, environmental associations, and minority groups. While retaining the academic rigor and methodologies of sociology as a discipline, this style of doing research seeks to illuminate and address problems through a dialogue with different sections of the ‘public’. This kind of public engagement involves varieties of participatory action research and the development of alternative techniques of collaborative research. Since Michael Burawoy's 2004 Presidential address to the American Sociological Association, the term public sociology or public social science is widely used to describe the effort of these researchers ‘working tirelessly and invisibly in the trenches of civic society’. Public sociology is practiced in every society and exists wherever sociologists engage in a dialogue with a public. It is however in southern countries where it is most active. Latin America and South Africa, for example, are today epicentres of a publicly oriented social science.

Submissions will focus on mobility and sustainability, ways of life and aspirations. Submissions will consist of a short essay that could involve, for example, the description of projects informed by public sociology or the presentation of research that questions assumptions cherished by a particular public, or reorients a public’s focus to issues that are being overlooked. Ideally the case studies described would enrich discussions of mobility in the North.

Writing public sociology
Writing public sociology is not just writing in an accessible manner, avoiding jargon. It involves a familiarity with the lifeworld of a specific public, taking into consideration the ideas, knowledge, debates, and frames of reference of that public. It is about using a style and developing a content that resonates with the audience one wishes to engage with.
Authors are encouraged to accompany the text with audiovisual material (photos, videos, comic vignettes, sound recordings, etc.) when relevant.

Practical information
Submissions will be acknowledged on receipt and authors will be notified about the decision.
Submissions should be 700 words. Selected entries will be invited to submit the full text (1,500 words)
Submissions should be accompanied by a one-page cover letter including a brief biographical note (up to 100 words) and a brief introduction to the theme and relevance of the submitted text.

Who can participate: Submissions are encouraged by anyone working on mobility-related issues in the Global South. Practitioners and scholars from poorly resourced universities in Europe’s periphery and the Global South are particularly encouraged to submit their work.

Entries should be sent to javier.caletrio (at) forumviesmobiles.org

Please allow two weeks for receipt of submission acknowledgement.