Livedifference: Everyday Encounters Moving with Difference: Encounters on the Street Simon Cook 23 May 2014, Sheffield @SimonIanCook.

Livedifference:

Everyday Encounters

Moving with Difference:Encounters on the Street

Simon Cook

23 May 2014, Sheffield @SimonIanCook

Livedifference:

Everyday Encounters

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Encounter and Mobilities

• Encounters research is concerned by how we live with difference

• Mobility has not been taken seriously in such discussions

• Mobilities are “somehow ‘in-between’ places – as encouraging interaction elsewhere - but devoid of their own effects, social interactions and civic” meanings

(Wilson, 2011: p.634)

Livedifference:

Everyday Encounters

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Challenging Encounters - Mobile Encounters

• Movement is incredibly important and worthy of study

• Two strands of mobile encounters:

1. Encounters during mobility

2. Encounters of mobility

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Everyday Encounters

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Encounter During Mobility

• Recent work has studied the sociality and propinquities of collective travelling

• Helen Wilson (2011) on multicultural encounters of bus passengering

• Passengering is a relational practice; cohabiting with, coproducing with and encountering others

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Everyday Encounters

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Encounter of Mobility

• Encounters of mobility asks important questions about mobile citizenship

• The micromovements of encounter are political actions

• Encounters of mobility are also embedded

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Everyday Encounters

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Encounter of Mobility

• Brown (2012) on mountain bikers ‘and walkers’ physical enactments

• Aldred and Jungenickle (2012) on cyclists ‘adherence to the Highway Code

• Spinney (2007) on cyclists ‘and drivers’ tools of encounter

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Everyday Encounters

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Runners and Pedestrians

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The Street and Codes of Conduct

• There are no natural conventions or codes of conduct for sharing the space of the street.

• Runners are often deemed responsible

Hockey and Allen-Collinson, 2007; 2013

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Everyday Encounters

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Perspectives on Mobile Social Order

Encounters with responsibility:

• Runners

• Pedestrians

• Shared duty

Responsible Runners

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Runners as Minority …

“No, I see it as my responsibility. I think everybody else is trying to use the environment in a relaxing way and there is me trying to use it in a more, probably productive but personal way so I think it is my job to not interrupt their free time in the way that because, because I can do that but I wouldn't expect a hundred people to move out of their way to avoid me and my free time … I think that would be selfish because clearly there aren't as many runners as there are dog walkers for example … we are probably inconveniencing their space.”

John – Go Along

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… but NOT deviant

Author: “So do you think you're misusing space as a runner- using it for something it wasn't built for perhaps?”

John: “No, because I think these places where built for it! I think these days, perhaps not originally, obviously this is a manor house park, but at some point somebody went - 'we'll turn that into a public park' and they must have known that people that want to go for a run are gonna use that; and if they didn't - they weren't thinking.”

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Everyday Encounters

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Speed

• “I think I would take responsibility because I’m the one moving faster”

Herbert – Go Along

• “It my responsibility to make sure we don’t hit each other because I’m going faster.”

Ben – Video Ethnography

Responsible Pedestrians

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Everyday Encounters

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Speed

• “Because they’re walking and I’m running, they can get out of my way.”

Dan – Video Ethnography

Shared Duty

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Everyday Encounters

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The Diplomatic Viewpoint

• “I always think it is our responsibility as much as anyone else’s.”

Ed – Go Along

• “Well it [the responsibility] would be both of ours”

Jackie – Video Ethnography

Passing Pedestrians

Livedifference:

Everyday Encounters

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Spatial Tactics

• Choosing a side

• Stepping Down

• Slaloming

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Everyday Encounters

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Choosing a Side

“I kind of like duck to one side as an indication saying I’m leaving you space to get past this side – kind of take the hint or I will run into you”

Steve – Video Ethnography

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Everyday Encounters

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Choosing a Side

A) Approaching pedestrian on the right-hand side

B.Notice pedestrian is heading for runner’s line of movement

C) On a collision course

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Choosing a Side

D) Choosing a side E. Pedestrian noticing the switch

F) Space successfully negotiated

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Everyday Encounters

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Stepping Down

A) Approaching pedestrian and dog from behind. Weighing up unpredictability of the dog with the empty road

B.Deciding to step down C) Stepping back up after accomplishing passing by

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Everyday Encounters

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Stepping Down

• “I would much rather be the person who got in the road than move somebody else into the road because I would feel like that would be my responsibility. I mean they are not going to die but say if something happened in that second, that would be my fault.”

John – Go Along

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Slaloming

A) Approaching from behind

b) Aiming to pass by on the left

C) On a collision course

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Slaloming

D) Change in direction E. Overtaking on the right

F) Return to original position

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Slaloming

“I saw it from a while off. I just squeezed through, it would take less time to squeeze through than go round to the left and I won’t have to go back on myself.”

Dan – Video Ethnography

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Passing Pedestrians

• No consensus

• Solutions are made momentarily and on the run

• Not random or mindless choices (although often unreflexive)

• There is a value-action gap

Mobile Citizenship

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Right to Space and Mobile Citizenship

• Physical movement would suggest runners subordinate to pedestrians

Mobilities enhancing Encounter

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Benefits/Challenges

• New forms / spaces of encounter to study

• Focus on the process not outcome of encounters

• What is desired from encounters?

• The ‘stranger’ as productive

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Questions?

Simon Cook

Royal Holloway University of London

[email protected]

@SimonIanCook