Everyday Mobilities in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Diaries (Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture)

✍ Scribed by Colin G. Pooley, Marilyn E. Pooley

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 247
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book uses diaries written by ordinary British people over the past two centuries to examine and explain the nature and extent of everyday mobilities, such as travel to school, to work, to shop or to visit friends, and to explore the meanings attached to these mobilities. After a critical evaluation of diary writing, the ways in which mobility changed over time, interacted with new forms of transport technology, and varied from place to place are examined. Further chapters focus on the roles of family and life course, gender, income and class, and journey purpose in shaping mobilities, including immobility. It is argued that easy and frequent everyday mobilities were experienced by most of the diarists studied, that travellers could exercise their own agency to adapt easily to new forms of transport technology, but that factors such as gender, class, and location also created significant mobility inequalities.

✦ Table of Contents

Preface
Contents
About the Authors
Abbreviations
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Setting the Scene
1.2 The Significance of the Mundane
1.3 The Significance of Travel and Transport
1.4 Identifying Sources
1.5 The Aims and Organisation of the Book
References
Chapter 2: The Value of Diary Writing
2.1 What Is a Diary?
2.2 What Can Diaries Contribute to Mobility Studies?
2.3 Selecting and Analysing the Diaries
References
Chapter 3: Mobility Change over Time
3.1 How Can Diaries Illuminate Mobility Change over Time?
3.2 The Impact of Technological Change
3.3 The Persistence of Older Technologies
References
Chapter 4: Location Matters
4.1 Introduction: Space, Place, and Mobility
4.2 Residential Change and Mobility Change
4.3 The Exceptionalism of London
References
Chapter 5: Mobility, Family, and the Life Course
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Dependent Mobilities
5.3 Mobility Whilst Caring
5.4 Independent Mobilities
5.5 Disrupted Mobilities
References
Chapter 6: Gendered Mobilities: The Female Experience
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Women Walking
6.3 Female Experiences of Public Transport
6.4 Travelling Privately
References
Chapter 7: Money Matters
7.1 Introduction
7.2 The Constraints of Poverty
7.3 Those Who Just Managed
7.4 What Mobilities Does Money Buy?
References
Chapter 8: The Significance of Journey Purpose
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Routine and Required Journeys
8.3 Discretionary Travel
References
Chapter 9: Immobility
9.1 Introduction: Approaches to Immobility
9.2 Immobility Whilst Travelling
9.3 Immobility that Prevents Travel
References
Chapter 10: Conclusions
10.1 The End of a Journey
References
Appendix: The Diarists
Index