MECM90003 Chap.1 Mobility, Modernity and Moorings
Mobility, Modernity and Moorings
The opening week treats migration and media as twin lenses on a society organised around movement. It introduces the mobilities paradigm through the 2006 editorial by Hannam, Sheller and Urry, which counts people, objects, capital and information as things that move and insists that every flow depends on fixed infrastructure.
The week also asks how modernity came to be told as a story of movement, why migration has been read as both threat and opportunity, and what the move from broadcasting to digital networks has done to the tie between media and the state. Read it first even if you present later in semester, because almost every later week calls back to its vocabulary.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Mobility as a social concept: movements of people, objects, capital and information at every scale
- 02
Moorings and motility: the infrastructure that enables movement and the uneven capacity to use it
- 03
Modernity as movement: progress, transformation and discovery told through metaphors of travel
- 04
Migration between threat and opportunity in public meaning
- 05
Two circulations: transport of bodies and goods alongside the circulation of images and information
- 06
From national broadcast media to borderless platforms, and what changes for the nation state
Worked example · free
Reading an airport through moorings and motility
- 1Identify the flows: travellers, freight, money and flight information all pass through the airport, so mobility is broader than people moving.
- 1Identify the moorings: runways, terminals, baggage systems and booking databases stay fixed so that those flows can run.
- 1Compare motility: a frequent flyer with the right passport and a cleaner on a night shift use the same building with very different capacities to move.
- 1Conclude: the airport shows movement depending on fixity and unevenly shared, which is the editorial's case for studying mobilities and immobilities together.
Key terms
- Twin optics
- Twin optics is the subject's term for using migration and media together as two ways of understanding a society organised around movement.
- Moorings
- Moorings are the fixed spatial, infrastructural and institutional settings that configure and enable flows.
- Modernity
- Modernity, as Giddens defines it, is the set of social forms that took shape in Europe from roughly the 1600s and later reached most of the world.
- Motility
- Motility is a person's or group's capacity to be mobile, shaped by resources, rules and access.
- Two circulations
- Two circulations is the lecture's name for the parallel acceleration of transported people and goods and of circulated images and information under modernity.
Mobility, Modernity and Moorings FAQ
What does mobility mean in this subject?
It covers far more than migration. Following Hannam, Sheller and Urry, the term spans global movements of people, objects, capital and information and the small daily movements of commuting or walking through public space. It also includes the fixed infrastructures that make those movements possible, so analysis always looks at what stays still as well as what moves.
Why are migration and media studied together?
The lecture argues that modernity accelerated two circulations at once: cheaper transport moved people and goods, and new technologies moved images and information. Studying them together shows how a contemporary society built on movement works, from who travels to how news about travellers reaches audiences and shapes their responses.
Has the internet made the nation state irrelevant?
Not in this subject's account. Platforms do operate across borders and unsettle state control over information, but states still regulate, license and block, and audiences still meet much content through national frames. The Week 1 claim is that national identity is now mediated through transnational networks, which is a shift rather than a disappearance.
What are the essential readings for Week 1?
The subject guide lists three: Hannam, Sheller and Urry's 2006 editorial on mobilities, immobilities and moorings; Preibisch, Dodd and Su on the capabilities approach within the migration and development nexus; and McQuire's 2019 handbook chapter on media and the state. Further reading covers speed, borders, the media city and classic studies of migration.
Assessment move
Build a three-column habit from this first week: what moves, what stays fixed so it can move, and who can use it. Apply it to any place you pass this week, such as a tram stop, a shopping centre or a campus library, and write two lines for each column.
The habit is the core of the site analysis task later in semester, and it gives you a quick test for any reflective essay paragraph: if it names only flows, add the moorings and the inequality. If you present early in semester, this week's concepts also give you a vocabulary for describing any site before you add the reading for your own week.
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