Mobilities

Mobility is both the realistic and idealistic principle of advanced modernity. Mobility in space and time is one of the basic requirements of everyday life; it is the “movens” of professional and social integration and thus an important factor in social differentiation. Mobility as a practice of delocalization touches all areas of life and thus culture in its dynamics as a process that develops and manifests itself in everyday life.

The increasing and increasingly global movement of people, goods, ideas, knowledge, information and practices in late modernity requires the reformulation of scientific practices and terms to describe phenomena.

In this sense, Mobile Culture Studies (MCS) is conceived as an international and transdisciplinary project that (1) deals with mobility across disciplines, (2) sees itself as a mobile principle of scientific, artistic and everyday participation, (3) pursues the humanistic claim to accompany in a dialogical way people, things and ideas as objects of scientific and human interest in their movements and mobility, and (4) pursues the democratic claim to make the everyday world visible in its relevance and thus to point out urgencies and political issues. According to its understanding of cultural studies, MCS links four research and action contexts. They concern mobility as a research topic, mobility as a heuristic principle, mobility as a methodological principle, and mobility as a mode of communication in the field of scientific debate.