Paper short abstract:

This paper deals with the experience of travelling along the Euroroute E67 and the image of mobility/connectedness that a non-flying anthropologist has of mobility in the Baltic states.

Paper long abstract:

This paper deals with the experience of travelling along the Euroroute E67. It addresses somewhat undesired diversions from both the road and the image of mobility/connectedness that a non-flying anthropologist has of mobility. The E67 (the ‘Via Baltica’) is the terrestrial supply line between the Baltic states and the rest of the EU. For a non-flying anthropologist, it, however, acts as a place of delay and frustration, due to infrastructure quality lacunae with symbolic and practical importance in representing the disconnection of the Baltic states, including Baltic anthropology, from the European 'mainland'. Beginning with the Ingoldian notion of ‘lines’, I discuss these symbolic and practical aspects based on current political developments. These include EU funding issues, as well as the impact that special political geography – represented, for example, by Nato’s so-called ‘Suwałki gap’ – has had on Baltic international relations and senses of self, whether in person or mediated by vernacular mappings of these routes. In practically relying on public transport infrastructure in what seems to be a form of dissidence with regards to the normal hate-carbon-use-carbon-nonetheless academic mobility, I discuss how journeys on ‘bus lines’ (over which we have little control) can highlight the affective disconnectedness which Baltic anthropology suffers. Further, based on subversion of normal bus line practice, I show how it is possible to make such journeys ‘doable’, and how transport bricolage becomes important for mobility in an aviation-favouring world. Finally, I consider some of the apparent promises to the situation ‘Rail Baltica’ offers.

Paper short abstract:

In the XXI Century America the Amish keep using buggies as the main vehicle. Shunning cars, considered as one of the harmful aspects of Modernity, the Amish (and the outsiders alike) view buggies as part of their identity. Moreover, different types of buggies indicate also diverse Amish subgroups.

Paper long abstract:

The Amish are the members of a traditionalist Anabaptist church, which emphasizes the aloofness from the larger society, shunning all the aspects of Modernity that they consider dangerous for the unity of their community. Consequently, cars, which are seen, along with television, and the internet, fashion, political engagement, and public schools, as one of the "great separators" of the (post)modern world, are forbidden, according to Amish rules. Indeed, owning cars would allow the members to move too easily far from the community. Since that, the Old Order Amish keep driving buggies in the XXI Century America, sharing the rural roads of their settlements with cars and motorcycles that represent contemporary status symbols.

In this paper, I maintain that carriages, viewed as alternative vehicles, are both symbols of interreligious and intra-religious distinction. Indeed, from a socio-cultural perspective, on the one hand, buggies, with beards and bonnets, are part of the popular imaginary on the Amish, and likely the most evident aspects of their peculiar identity; on the other hand, there are many types, shapes and colors of carriages, which express differences between Amish (sub)groups.

This paper is based on long term anthropological research, conducted in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, where the author has lived for several months in an Amish family of buggymakers, and all the Amish use a common type of gray buggy; and in Kishacoquillas Valley, Pennsylvania, where three Amish groups (Byler, Nebraska, and Renno) live in the area, and distinguish themselves by using respectively, yellow, white, and black carriages.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores subversive uses of mass transit as responses to post-authoritarian state restrictions on street trading. It focuses on translocations and transformations of diurnal patterns of private trade and commoditization of stigmatised bodies on a human-facilitated public bus network.

Paper long abstract:

Mass transit marks another step in the globalisation of the citizenry in metropolitan Vietnam. The development of a reliable and accessible city-wide bus network over the past decade has involved more than repairing tarmac and redesigning routes to mitigate congestion and enable circulation. As a human-facilitated transport system the Saigon Bus network has also offered employment to drivers, conductors, ticket inspectors, vehicle mechanics, fuel station attendants, office staff, among other jobs that no longer characterise mass transit elsewhere. Beyond infrastructural and material transformations the public bus system has opened up new social spaces for stranger-interaction on vehicles and at stops as well as new ways of being mobile for citizens who lack alternative transport options. This paper focuses on subversive uses of public spaces of mass transit in the context of post-war and post-reform Ho Chi Minh City, one of Southeast Asia's most rapidly urbanising regions. Drawing on my ongoing fieldwork project among undocumented migrants, upwardly mobile residents and mass transit riders, I explore trade-scapes of the public bus as an auto-anthropocene. Firstly, I examine the translocation and transformation of diurnal patterns of private small-scale trade on the mass transit network as a subversive response to state regulations that restrict street-side informal trading. Secondly, I consider the politicisation of disability and right to freedom of movement for vulnerable/shadow citizenry reflected in the commoditisation of non-normative and stigmatised bodies in mass transit trade-scapes. The paper concludes to what extent the reach of the post-authoritarian state constrains public action.

Paper short abstract:

A planned 15cm elevation of a road in a Montenegrin Village turns the road into a playground where versions of the state and what is the role of citizens in that state is tested and played out thought formal and informal encounters on and around the paved surface.

Paper long abstract:

Infrastructure buildings are often described as sites of interaction where the ideas of the state are produced and shaped. Roads with their regulations, crossings, speed limits, traffic wardens and policemen are classic manifestations of state effects capable of shaping a driver and pedestrian alike into a willing or unwilling, but generally law-abiding citizen. However, at the moment when the road is not yet made, different kinds of state effects may be produced, where the individual power may or may not be at equals with that of the state. This presentation will illustrate how different citizens in a small village of Montenegro choose two different approaches (one slightly more formal than the other) in order to avoid various troubles that they think the planned elevation of the road by 15cm might bring to their homes. One group of citizens are organising themselves for a collective action, organise meetings among themselves and with the representatives of the state institutions. Meanwhile another group is not doing much but relies on a single person and his laid-back friendly relationships with the workers who actually work on the street. The road thus turns into a playground where versions of the state and what is the role of citizens in that state is tested and played out in many dimensions.

Paper short abstract:

The paper looks at how members of a women-only motorbike club in Delhi use city space and riding for self-expression, activism, and personal growth. Novel mobile subjectivities emerge that engage with Delhi road-scapes as something more than just dangerous spaces for women.

Paper long abstract:

The paper investigates the experiences of the members of an all-women motorcycle club in Delhi, the Bikerni. Since the tragic rape and homicide of a young woman in December 2012, Delhi has gained the infamous reputation of being India's rape capital, and a dangerous place for women to navigate on their own. The media, as well as the Indian and international narrative about the city, depict a reality where threat of harassment and physical violence are at the core of the mobility experience for women. Drawing from feminist geography and mobility theory, the paper relates to the panel's themes by exploring how, for the members of the Bikerni, the road can be an avenue for self-expression and critical engagement with models of womanhood. On the road, novel and mobile subjectivities emerge drawing from feminist ideologies and notions of empowerment that find form through activism, professional choices that centre on biking, and emotional and affective investment in one's vehicle. Additionally, gendered declinations of the 'biker' identity connect the members of the club to a broader, transnational community with its own rules and ideologies to which the women in this study allegedly adhere, and that both reinforce and shape those very same subjectivities. Roads and city space are thus not exclusively a dangerous territory for women to navigate, embedded as they are in broader socio-cultural process such as patriarchal modes of relations, but also an origin point for the development of novel subjectivities that actively reproduce and reconstruct conceptions of womanhood.

Paper short abstract:

Utility cyclists in Dublin experience precarious entitlement to space. Namely, they have an entitlement to space but it is rendered precarious due to various factors. To deal with this, cyclists either privatise their vulnerability or engage in different ways of provoking responsibility in others.

Paper long abstract:

In this grounded theory study, precarious entitlement was identified as a main concern for utility cyclists in Dublin through the gathering and analysis of qualitative interview data and other supplementary media. Precarious entitlement is conceptualised as the phenomenon when one has an entitlement to something that is rendered precarious due to various factors. It was interpreted that utility cyclists in Dublin experience this in relation to space. Three factors impinge on this experience: 'precarious space' upon which spatial entitlement is allocated, 'precarious recognition' of entitlement by others and 'precarious protection' for entitlement through law and by law enforcement. It was conceptualised that utility cyclists may deal with this phenomenon in primarily two distinct ways. First, utility cyclists dealt with precarious entitlement by taking personal responsibility for the vulnerability created by precarious entitlement in their conduct (i.e. by 'privatising vulnerability'). This involved enduring transgression from others of entitlement, anticipating disregard by others and refraining from using or insisting upon spatial entitlement. Second, utility cyclists dealt with precarious entitlement by engaging in various ways of provoking a sense of responsibility in others to recognise and respect their spatial entitlements and vulnerability. This involved indicating and punishing the transgressions of others of entitlement, asserting entitlement in the face of potential disregard by others, compelling awareness in others of one's presence in a particular space, and garnering favour in other road users as a means of provoking them to act more responsibly and respectfully.

Paper short abstract:

What's the difference between walking and moving with an automated speed? How have the roads of Capitalism transitioned an engagement of the Material to the Virtual? A reflexion on paralleling practise-led enquiries into Post-Internet Hitchhikers and Penan Youth in post-logged forests. A response.

Paper long abstract:

This paper introduces the notion of 'Motion Blur' as the allegoric concept of how 'The Market' (Speculative Economics) abstracts and commodifies through the process of alienation. Posing that the Anthropocene is pixelated, blurry, lost of tangibility and fleeting, this Sensorial Ethnography explores the significance of the mediated engagement of informants on the road. Heralding one of anthropology's foundational binaries of 'Agency and System,' we track the routes (not roots) of alternatives to virtual engagement with material ecosystems in two paralleling field sites. This (re)search 'follows in the footsteps' of Nicholas Mirzoeff's (2014) 'Visualising the Anthropocene' and Marc Augé's (1995) 'Non-Places'.

The Post-Internet Hitchhikers redefine the 'share economy' into a 'share community' via a praxis of social-media and user-generated digital platforms, substantiating a non-monetised material economy. For 'the borderless ones', the road persists as a 'meeting place' despite the increasing presence of digital platforms substantiating alternatives. In response to Neo-liberal conceptions of profit, the 'Paths of Progress' are contextualised as a site of counter-cultural community.

For the Penan youth in Malaysia, government constructed logging roads evidence the shift of the intergenerational relations with the landscape. For the first generation of indigenous inhabitants born after the deforestation of Sarawak's primary forests, nomadic migration on foot was replaced with motorbikes on the logging road between Government village settlements. Aware of the consequences of imposed models of 'centre / periphery' landscape, a network of villages return to the footpath. A response.

Paper short abstract:

A comparative ethnography of perambulatory forms of car-driving, this paper develops a critique of IR theorizing that assumes rationale actors who move in order to get from A to B, and that is based upon a kind of aerial-centrism.

Paper long abstract:

Roads are often conceptualised as banal and, thereby, especially effective means by which the national project is inscribed in subjectivities. However, they have other, and potentially disruptive qualities too. They lie betwixt and between national centres. They intersect national territories. Despite repair and renewal, they are often the remains and accretions of other anteceding political projects. And, in this respect roads may be loci of non-hegemonic national phenomenologies and choreographies of driving. Drawing on case studies from Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the West Bank, this paper explores these qualities of roads. In particular, focussing on perambulatory forms of driving them, I explore roads as sites for the formulation of alternative conceptualisations of the national space and critique of the nation-state. More broadly, and through this I develop a critique of IR theorizing that assumes rationale actors who move in order to get from A to B, and that is based upon a kind of aerial-centrism. Viewed from behind the steering wheels of wandering drivers the paper aims to show how conceptualisation of national territory can be very different.

Paper short abstract:

Based on a fruitful interconnection between historiography and ethnography applied to severe Arctic settings, the study provides a valid example of what constitutes the successful user collective in a remote/periphery area.

Paper long abstract:

Although the Arctic region has become a multinational global issue relatively recently, a remarkable increase in human activity in this area is already a given reality rather than future prospect: current interventions have led to growth in industry, military, and tourism accompanied by a proliferation of transport, information and communication technologies. Today's relations with the Arctic can be described by the triad "extreme - conquest - technology," where extreme is a given reality and the key characteristic of the environment, conquest is a proactive action to prevail over the aggressive nature of the region, and technology is the means to implement this action.

Our data comes from the combination of historical and ethnographic investigations in the form of the "biographies of artifacts and practices / BoAP" approach (Hyysalo 2010, Hyysalo et al. 2016), into the technology and related practices of user inventiveness in the transport sector in the USSR/Russia. In the course of our work, we employ the concepts of "proximal design" (Usenyuk et al. 2016) and "hybrid collective" (Verhaegh et al. 2016) and put forward not only users' ability to adjust, repair and redesign their machines, but the very ability to create totally new kinds of technology and, eventually, to come up with enduring design principles without the participation of design professionals. To illustrate this, we present two case studies of collective tinkering in remote locations of the Russian North. Finally, we suggest specific features of innovative user communities and related infrastructure that become clearly visible and relevant in periphery/remote localities.