Communications and Mobility

Communications and Mobility is a unique, interdisciplinary look at mobility, territory, communication, and transport in the 21st century with extended case studies of three icons of this era: the mobile phone, the migrant, and the container box.

• Urges scholars in media and communication to return to broader conceptions of the field that include mobility of all kinds—information, people, and commodities
• Embraces perspectives from media studies, science and technology studies, sociology, media anthropology, and cultural geography
• Discusses ideas of virtual and embodied mobility, network geographies, de-territorialization, sedentarism, nomadology, connectivity, containment, and exclusion
• Integrates the often-neglected transport studies into contemporary communication studies and theories of globalization

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Redefining Communications 1

Part I The Return of Geopolitics 19

1 Communications, Transport, and Territory 21

2 Constituting Europe: Empires, Nations, and Techno]zones 37

Part II Reconceptualizing Communications: Mobilities and Geographies 57

3 Sedentarism, Nomadology, and “New Mobilities” 59

4 Disaggregating Mobilities: Zoning, Exclusion, and Containment 77

5 Geography, Topography, and Topology: Networks and Infrastructures 95

6 The Virtual and the Actual: Being There, Disembodiment, and Deterritorialization 113

Part III The Mobility of People, Information, and Commodities: Case Studies in Communications Geography 131

7 Migration: Changing Paradigms, Embodied Mobilities, and Material Practices 133

8 Mobile Communications and Ubiquitous Connectivity: Technologies of Transformation? 159

9 Containerization as Globalization: The Mobility of Commodities 199

Index 233

“In sum, this book delivers a rich and nuanced illumination of the impact of the inseparable material and virtual dimensions of media and communications in our contemporary world.” -- Mobile Media and Communication Volume 8 (1) 2020

The book "weaves together perspectives on communication, mobility, territory and transport from various disciplines" and " offers a new and broader theoretical framework... historicizing and culturally contextualising communications, which will deepen and enrich readers` understanding of technologies and mobilities in the contemporary world" – European Journal of Cultural Studies, First Published 13 Jan 2020

David Morley is Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK. His work has been translated into 22 languages, and his publications include Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies (1992), Home Territories: Media, Mobility, and Identity (2000), and Media, Modernity and Technology: The Geography of the New (2006). He serves on the editorial/advisory boards of a number of journals, including Cultural Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, and Television and New Media.

Communications and Mobility is a unique, interdisciplinary look at mobility, territory, communication, and transport in the 21^st century with extended case studies of three icons of this era: the migrant, the mobile phone, and the container box. It urges scholars in media and communication to return to broader conceptions of the field that include mobility of all kinds, including information, people, and commodities.

Drawing together the North American and European traditions of materialist communications studies, this book embraces a wide range of perspectives from media studies, science and technology studies, sociology, transport studies, media anthropology, and cultural geography. The book's first two sections outline the author's theoretical and conceptual agenda and reframe key concepts within media and communication in light of new mobilities and contemporary geographies. In the final section, the author uses migrants, mobile phones, and shipping containers as case studies which illustrate his expanded definition of communication in the world today. Transcending traditional boundaries of discipline, technology, and location, Communications and Mobility provides readers with a revitalized understanding of contemporary communication studies.