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Cook, S. (2014) Accomplishing Road-Running: Negotiating Space, Mobile Politics and Order on the Street. Presented at AAG Annual Conference 2014, Tampa, Florida (08-12 April) in the session ‘Geographies of Mobility V: Climate Change, Disaster and Resilience’.
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AAG 2014Geographies of
Mobility V
Accomplishing Road-Running: Negotiating Space, Mobile Politics and Order on the Street
Simon Cook
09 April 2014 Tampa, Florida
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Mapping Running Routes
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Training Diaries
Go-Along
Mobile-Video-Ethnography-
Elicitation
Interpreted from interviews
Running Routes
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Running the Gauntlet
“I don’t really like it when it comes to running on the pavements, and sharing it with other people because you have to get out of their way and they have to get out of your way and they don’t see you and crossing the road rather too frequently is quite dangerous because I think driver’s expect runners to get out the way, not to be there.”
Tim – Video Ethnography
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The Street and Codes of Conduct
• There are no natural conventions or codes of conduct for sharing the same spaces.
• Runners are often deemed responsible
Hockey and Allen-Collinson, 2007; 2013
Negotiating Space
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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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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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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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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
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Spatial Strategies
• Choosing a side
• Stepping Down
• Slaloming
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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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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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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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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
• Geographies of encounter
• Right to space
• Mobile citizenship
• Physical movement would suggest runners subordinate to pedestrians
• But what else affects being ‘in place’?
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Developing the Research
• ‘Within cities, [groups] have been discursively and physically excluded from the city’
(Till, 2012: p.8)
• ‘The idea of ordinariness … fuses legal structures, normative orders and the experiences of individuals, social groups and communities’
(Staeheli et al, 2012: p.628)
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Questions?
Simon Cook
Royal Holloway University of London
@SimonIanCook
