Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

180

Are Mobility and Hybridization Possibilities for a Better World?

RC14 Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture (host committee)

Language: English

One of the most helpful category for understanding the 21st century is mobility: a category including “the diverse mobilities of peoples, objects, images, information and wastes” (Urry, 2000) analyzing their complex interdependencies and social consequences. The converging mobile technologies have made a mobile world where the connections between physical travel and modes of communication are complex and extensive. In a mobility context even the physical changes can be understood like de-materializing connections; people, machines, images, information, money, ideas are all in movement, making and remaking connections all around the world, producing inexperienced hybridization. 
So the movement connecting the sense of belonging and mobility integrates in some enclaves the hybridization of physical and digital worlds by a process that can be positive or negative: on the one hand, a process of appropriation and belonging, on the other hand, a condition of de-rooting and exclusion that changes the places into “ghettos”.
If it is easy to find a connection between mobility and an extended identity (to manage these increasing activities about physical, cognitive, imaginary and emotional spheres) what scenario could/would we imagine for the future? What issues can emerge from mobility in the future? Are digital communication, information, and knowledge, all promoted by mobility, and hybridization efficient tools for transforming today’s world into a better world? Or are they only instruments for extending the existing inequalities, hegemonies and ideologies? We welcome theoretical and empirical contributions that deal with the issues of mobility and hybridization in everyday life. Posters: