GaWC Research Bulletin 251.pdf (456.09 kB)
Air space: towards a social and cultural geography of global air travel
journal contribution
posted on 2009-05-18, 11:53 authored by Peter Adey, Lucy Budd, Phil HubbardGeographic research into commercial aviation has traditionally been undertaken within the field of
transport geography. While such studies have shed light on the increasingly complex morphology of
global air routes, this paper argues such approaches often downplay crucial questions concerning the
social production and consumption of different spaces of air travel. Drawing on ideas from the newlyemergent
‘mobilities' paradigm, this paper identifies some alternative geographies of air travel,
arguing that socially- and culturally-inflected perspectives may help reveal the iniquitous imprints of
global air travel at a variety of spatial scales. We suggest that there is much to be gained by adopting
such perspectives, and argue that work on the social dimensions of air travel is vital in a discipline
where air transport is routinely described as an enabler of globalisation, yet is often treated as an
abstract, and oddly disembodied, space of flows.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Geography and Environment
Citation
ADEY, P., BUDD, L.C.S. and HUBBARD, P., 2007. Air space: towards a social and cultural geography of global air travel. GaWC Research Bulletin, 251Publisher
Loughborough UniversityVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publication date
2007Notes
This bulletin is also available at: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/rb/rb251.html. A later version of this Research Bulletin has been published in Progress in Human Geography, 31 (6) 2007, 773-791, under the title 'Flying Lessons: Exploring the Social and Cultural Geographies of Global Air Travel' doi:10.1177/0309132507083508. Please refer to the published version when quoting the paper.Language
- en