Mimi Sheller's lecture: Pandemic (Im)mobilities, Mobility Disruptions and Low-Carbon Transitions

11 Marzo 2021
Online Lecture
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Online Lecture by prof. Mimi Sheller (Drexel University, USA) in the framework of the Urbeur-Urban Studies PhD programme, Department of Sociology and Social Research.

 

Abstract
Viral mobilities have unleashed not just a disruption of human mobilities, but also a vast intensification of existing uneven relations of (im)mobilities. Under the exigency to de-mobilize our lives, we are forced to adopt new routines, new habits, and new ways of stilling ourselves, our economies, and our social interactions. Millions of people have been thrown out of work, and suddenly we are all made aware of the fundamental premise on which modern societies are built: constant but unequal movement.
 
The pandemic response starkly exposes how complex, unpredictable and poorly understood risks are central issues of contemporary government, that are shaking up and reproblematizing settled - and long inadequate - socio-political common-sense understandings of liberty, sovereignty, and responsibility. Who moves and who doesn't; who has to and who doesn't; when and where; and who gets to choose and how - all these questions of mobility justice thus become central political issues of the age.
 
Could the COVID-19 pandemic be the push we need to implement the low-carbon transition that scientists have warned us is necessary to stop the global climate emergency, or is it a massive and terrible distraction from, and/or complication of, that programme? Central to these complex issues of freedom or compulsion to move or not move, Covid-19 may presage an unfamiliar reorientation of politics and the governing of risk, including climate change.