T HEORIES AND E XISTING K NOWLEDGE

The many moving parts of the new mobilities turn include the ethics of mobilities (Bergmann and Sager 2008), the power associated with access to mobilities (Urry 2012, Cresswell and Merriman 2011) and the mobility of the elite dependent on the

immobilisation of others (Urry 2012, Elliott and Urry 2010). The need for a multi- disciplinary, holistic approach to mobility studies to adequately accommodate the pace of different mobilities and the place of ‘place’ in mobility studies, means that Urry has usefully described the turn to mobilities as necessary: “Thus mobilities develop into a distinct field with characteristic struggles, tastes and habituses. It is a site of multiple intersecting contestations”(Elliott and Urry 2010:59). Urry focuses on the ‘network capital’ constantly forming for mobile people in the ‘rich north’ who have agency, a construct of mobility similar to a New Zealand senior movanner’s contextual reality.

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They are driving modern, potentially fast vehicles and are dependent on the

infrastructures of mobility such as roads, petrol stations, signage and technological devices. He defines motility as the potential to be mobile and using what is available to become mobile oneself (Urry 2007a:38). I have observed senior movanners creating and sustaining network capital as Urry describes and the concept of network capital I argue, makes a social roadland for senior movanners on New Zealand roads.

These pluralities of ethics, power, immobility, pace and access, refer to not only people, but finances, information, ideas and objects (Canzler et al. 2007b:1). There is mobility of people, things, money, culture, ideas (Cresswell 2011:551,554, Urry

2007b:16). The theoretical relevance to this thesis is the focus on mobility as cultural and social, and the meanings intrinsic to mobilities. The day to day practices of

mobility are signifying practices which can be defined and given meaning through alternative, marginal mobility studies instead of high-tech hypermobility research characterized by the car, plane, internet and mobile communications devices (Jensen 2009:xv,xviii, Cresswell 2011:153). My study is a hybrid one; the vans senior

movanners drive fall into the category of high-tech hypermobility, as does the

communication technology they use, but their pace is not hyper and senior movanners’ status, like their mobility itself, is that of transition (Jobes 1984:187).

Greenblatt believes it is increasingly important to understand both change and cultural stability, otherwise the point of both is missed (2010b:250-253). His manifesto sets out five key premises for the study of mobility: firstly, to research literal movement and its related conditions, such as the vehicles, controls, and costs so that the reality of being mobile can be understood (2010b:250). Secondly, his manifesto of mobility studies includes seeking out the ‘hidden’ practices of mobility, both real and

metaphysical; thirdly, paying attention to the physical zones of contact and exchange; fourthly, accounting for the tension between individual agency and structures of control and how it is negotiated on the ground, and finally, understanding mobility by exploring what it means to be rooted because the two inform each other (2010b:250- 252). Mobilities’ relationship with the sedentary can reveal the hidden social meanings

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behind mobility (Kellerman 2006:9) so mobility cannot be studied in isolation: “Mobility and fixity, flow and settledness; they presuppose each other” (Massey 2005:95).

Although Greenblatt is talking about mobility and rootedness on a large scale, his last manifesto can help guide the research of smaller scale mobility studies such as that of senior motor homers. In fact, he believes such local ethnographies are a necessary investment before cultural mobility theory can emerge (2010a:16). By fulfilling the anthropological tradition of ‘participation with’, ‘walking with’ (Ingold 2004:330-331) and observation of, people going about their daily lives, this thesis about mobile older people in New Zealand explores the premises of Greenblatt’s model and also of

Cresswell’s model which is outlined below. Many movanners who are not full-timers move between a state of fixedness in residential homes and travelling in their motor homes; all movanners come face-to-face with structures of power and there are hidden and meaningful practices of mobility in what they are doing.

Cresswell emphasises that the social sciences’ interest in mobilities is not new (2008:129). He believes anthropology can contribute because of its long tradition of holistic research and argues that enlightenment about the politics of mobility will occur when it is studied holistically and across disciplines, particularly to build bridges with those involved in transport geography who tend to focus on how we get from A to B and think less about the significance of moving (2011:554). Both these developments he hopes will help to expose the powers intrinsically situated in mobilities, which should be a central focus of any study of the new mobilities (2008:130). He supports studies which range across scales of mobility and make unlikely connections. The web surrounding mobilities is comprised of strands of power about access to mobility systems, how that access in turn impedes the mobility of others, speed versus others’ slowness, and who has to stay still because others are mobile (2008:131). Cresswell states three ways to unveil these hidden power dynamics: firstly by studying the way we are moving from A to B, secondly by looking at the meaning we attach to these movements we are creating, and thirdly, the actual practice of movement as

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experienced by the body (2008:130). His ideas can usefully be applied to movanners’ mobilities to look at the material: how fast, how far, comfort levels, and frequency; the meaning, the narratives and discourses created around the mobility, and lastly the embodied practices of the journey as experienced in many diverse ways by movanners.

Cresswell discusses Adey’s way of looking at mobility as a relationship to the person moving that defines their identity, “an orientation to oneself, to others and to the world” (Cresswell 2011:552). This is similar to language we saw earlier used by Clifford who also asked “what skills of survival, communication and tolerance are being

improvised in today’s cosmopolitan experiences”(Clifford 1997:11). “These subjects are defined by representational schemes that lie beyond the scale of the individual” (Cresswell and Merriman 2011:9). The ‘subjects’ in my research, senior movanners, are generalized as a group by both their age and the mode of their motorhome transport, and as such are often caricatured as doddery, queue-creating, visual polluting ‘oldies’, despite driving modern forms of transport. These informants, although aware of the way they are perceived by others (for example, in their constant reminders to each other to pull over and not hold up other traffic), do not let it prevent what they are doing. Furthermore, although mobility is normally seen as a product of agency, not all mobility is desired; mobility can result from a position of powerlessness rather than individual agency and therefore is not inherently liberating (Pinder

2011:178). Some movanning individuals are living full time in their motor homes because they have lost their houses.