Paper short abstract:

In this presentation I discuss my attempts to develop a visual anthropology of cycling and cycling city-making. Based on research in Vienna, I discuss how I use filmmaking and film elicitation to investigate what drives people to transform themselves and others into cyclists.

Paper long abstract:

Since the reports of a global “bicycle boom” in the pandemic year 2020, I have started to observe what happens in initiatives that promote sustainable urban mobility. This line of research has so far included participant observation in Vienna’s lively bicycle advocacy scene, meetings with cyclists and cycling activists in other cities, and experiment with different approaches to filmmaking and film elicitation in spaces where people meet around the bicycle. In this presentation I discuss the short research film Women on the Move (Helen Vaaks 2023), which I use as a prompt in elicitation interviews with the trainers and learners of cycling courses in Vienna to discover what drives them to transform themselves and others into cyclists, which questions matter to them and what their interests in the topic are. The film was recorded in 2022 in collaboration with members of the Viennese cycling school FahrSicherRad and the social organization Caritas Wien.

The method of elicitation has a long history in visual anthropology as a tool of co-interpreting situations and co-evaluating and re-editing films. Drawing on the recently articulated common concerns approach, I suggest that the method can also be productively used as a tool of investigating common concerns in the exploratory stage of a research project.