*Apologies for cross-posting*

Call for papers / Session proposal to the Association of American Geographers Annual Conference, Denver, 2020

Wojciech Kębłowski, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Cosmopolis), Université libre de Bruxelles (IGEAT), Brussels, Belgium
Wladimir Sgibnev, Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography (IfL), Leipzig, Germany

Mobilising, producing and contesting public transport from below: NUMTOTS, metrophiles, revolutionaries

While public transport (PT) is a multi-layered and complex phenomenon, research into PT continues to be dominated by economistic and technocratic approaches geared towards efficiency and rationality, which supposedly justifies the predominantly top-down fashion in which PT is designed, produced and managed (Kębłowski & Bassens, 2018). We would, however, advance that PT should also be viewed as a site of bottom-up interests and contestations organised by diverse social actors, groups and movements. Importantly, many of them approach mobility as a means of discussing broader patterns of uneven development and struggling for more democratic decision-making and appropriation of space in Global North and South (Armano et al., 2013; Barghouti, 2009, Larrabure, 2016). We argue that embracing the bottom-up actors engaged in PT opens the pathways towards researching PT as a set of intense and intimate sites for encountering cultural diversity, negotiating normativities, shaping potential mobility futures, and bringing socio-economic cleavages into the spotlight of academics and practitioners alike – all what makes public transport a truly public and collective endeavour.

This conviction builds on an ever-expanding body of critical literature in transport geography and mobilities, which situate movement in the context of space and power (Sheller & Urry, 2006; Kwan & Schwanen, 2016). In this vein, we side with approaches conscious of how class, race, gender shape mobility practices (Law, 1999; Venter, Vokolkova, & Michalek, 2007), alongside social relations and their contestations (Levy, 2013). This includes an exploration of regulatory frameworks, divergent logics and discourses of governing mobility, and the capacity of citizens and workers to participate in shaping transport policies (Timms et al., 2014; Rekhviashvili & Sgibnev, 2018).

This approach allows to invite contributions addressing one or more of the following themes/objectives, pertaining to the core of public transport-related conflicts:
(1) Not only to criticise prevalent technocratic and a-political PT policies, but also to augment the conceptualisation of PT by emphasising its aesthetics, normativities, political economies, complexity and non-linearity, as Temenos et al (2017) have called for;
(2) To expand spatial and ethnographical analyses of bottom-up PT actors, as diverse as PT consultants and lobbyists, passengers, workers, activists, NGOs, enthusiasts, collectors, online forum participants, or public intellectuals;
(3) To learn how diverse bottom-up actors engaged in PT pursue (conflicting, normatively understood) goals in environmental, economic, political or spatial/social justice terms, and which conflicts, structures and actor constellations are involved in this process;
(4) To empirically explore experiences, normativities, contestations, self-positionings and knowledge flows related to PT, and their roles for the construction of different policy trajectories, and (lack of) attempts at socially and environmentally just mobility transitions.
(5) To understand which ideologies, assumptions, knowledge inequalities govern our ideas of present and future mobilities (Nikolaeva et al 2018);
(6) To critically reflect on the “publicness” of PT, as compared to other forms of “collective” and “commoned” mobilities.

Practicalities
We welcome contributions addressing one or more of the themes outlined above, without regional or disciplinary restrictions. If interested, please submit an abstract (max. 250 words) to Wojciech Kębłowski ([log in to unmask]) and Wladimir Sgibnev ([log in to unmask]) by October 11, 2019. We will notify you of your acceptance by October 25, 2019. All accepted contributors need to register for the conference and provide their AAG PIN (Personal Identification Number, obtained after registration for the conference) to the organisers by 10 November 2019 in order to be included in the session.

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