30 research outputs found
Navigating disruption: mobile society and hurricanes Juan and Igor: a travelogue
In the course of a decade, two record-breaking hurricanes made landfall in Atlantic
Canada: Juan (2003) and Igor (2010). During each hurricane, mobility networks central
to the movement of people and goods (i.e. road, marine, air and rail) were disrupted,
interrupting emergency services, commercial operations and personal transport. In some
cases, alternate transport modes and routes emerged, while in other cases people and
goods were rendered immobile.
The anchoring idea for my research is that fossil fuel-powered transport contributes to
climate change and climate change disrupts transport. The energetic boomerang comes
full circle with severe weather events disrupting complex, weather-exposed transport
networks. While linking specific weather events to climate change is tenuous, I explore
these hurricanes as examples of the type of conditions (e.g. high winds, intense
precipitation, storm surges) that are expected under a changing climate. To build societal
resilience to extreme weather events, we need both theoretical and applied approaches to
transport that incorporate recognition of climate change.
Through this project I ask what responses and frames, particularly related to socialecological
interactions, emerge when mobility networks are impacted by hurricanes. I
examine sources of resilience and vulnerability (e.g. social, ecological, infrastructural), as
well as ask how greater social and ecological resilience can be achieved. Using an
inductive case study approach and drawing on media articles, legislative transcripts,
policy documents and semi-structured interviews with key informants, I identify and
analyze the resulting responses and frames as they pertain to social-ecological resilience
and vulnerability.
This research is grounded within the mobilities literature and informed by the disaster
literature to elaborate an ecopolitics of mobility. I complement the applied areas of
sustainable mobility (i.e. climate change mitigation) (Banister 2008) and resilience (i.e.
transport, infrastructure, social-ecological) (Brown 2014; Folke 2010), with the
theoretically oriented mobilities paradigm (Sheller and Urry 2006), including the politics
of mobility (Cresswell 2010). Further, I inflect the politics of mobility, which provides a
nuanced approach to the analysis of power within mobility systems, with Foucault’s work
on governmentality and circulation of societies and ecologies.
In terms of practical contributions, I find that in the aftermath of Hurricanes Juan and Igor,
reinstatement of mobility was an uppermost priority with a dominant tension between the
frame ‘we’ve never seen anything like it’ and ‘we need to get things back to normal as
quickly as possible.’ I develop a list of practices used for managing mobility in the
preparation, response, recovery and mitigation phases of disaster, as well compare the
resiliencies and vulnerabilities of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland’s mobility networks.
In the case of Nova Scotia, a key source of vulnerability in the context of Hurricane Juan
was the entanglement of trees and power lines. Key sources of resilience include the cultural instinct to batten down the hatches, the adaptable role of transit and the
coordination of emergency services. Residents successfully, if somewhat precariously,
governed their own mobility (i.e. governmobility). Further, the experience of successive
intentional, technical and ecological adversities fostered a culture of all-hazards disaster
readiness.
In the case of Newfoundland and Labrador, a key source of vulnerability in the context of
Hurricane Igor was the scale of road washouts combined with limited routes, modes (e.g.
car, truck), fuel types and fuel storage. Key sources of resilience were coordination and
cooperation among different levels of government, the private sector and residents
demonstrating a high capacity to restore the road network to functionality within ten days
and coordination among residents to cope in the interim.
Based on the empirical case studies, I develop and elucidate three ideas that are valuable
in reconceptualizing the social and environmental power dynamics inherent in transport
networks: mobility webs, the ecopolitics of mobility and climate routing. I describe this
set of concepts as an ecopolitical approach to mobility. Borrowing from the ecological
concept of food webs, I use the term mobility webs to reflect the environmentally exposed,
but also diverse and adaptable dimensions of contemporary transport networks arguing
for an approach that cooperates with, rather than dominates, the environment.
To underscore the view that transport networks and ecological flows are interwoven and,
in an anthropogenic age, co-constructed, I forward the concept of an ecopolitics of
mobility. Adapting Cresswell’s (2010) six elements of the politics of mobility – motive
force, velocity, rhythm, route, experience and friction – to the interface of the
environment and contemporary social-technical assemblages of mobility, I analyze socialecological
power dynamics, including related sources of resilience and vulnerability to
disrupt and reframe interactions between mobility and the environment.
Informed by the disaster sociology of Freudenburg (2009), Klinenberg (2004) and
Murphy (2009), I consider the possibilities for an ecologically reflexive modernization in
the field of transport, extending the focus of transport resilience from restoring the status
quo to include reflecting on the role of mobility in contemporary society (Beck 2015). I
adapt the marine navigation concept of weather routing – the practice of altering a ship’s
course to take maximum advantage of tidal, current and wind conditions to reduce the
physical resistance of the ship moving through water – and posit the concept of climate
routing. As conceived, climate routing involves six measures: creating a transport
resilience task force, deliberating decentralization, internalizing externalities, planning for
green and blue flows, rebranding redundancy and thinking flex. Primary considerations
are lessening social-ecological contention, increasing resilience, questioning mobility
practices and maintaining or increasing quality of life.
In sum, my research offers innovative contributions by orienting mobilities research to
social-ecological considerations – extending previous work on sustainable mobility even
further – and orienting disaster sociology to mobility and related transport considerations
Special Issue: Canadian Mobilities/Contentious Mobilities
This special issue of Canadian Journal of Sociology on ‘Contentious Mobilities’ showcases Canadian scholarship that investigates mobilities in the context of unequal power relations. Mobilities become contentious when they
confront the systematic exclusion of others, advance unconventional mobile practices and defy or destabilize existing power relations. Increasingly, mobilities are contentious in relation to rapidly changing economies, societies and environments. This special issue stages an overdue encounter between the mobilities paradigm and research on sociopolitical contention. Simultaneously, this special issue addresses an empirical gap, featuring Canada as a prolific and influential site for leading-edge research. Five key themes emerge amongst the diverse papers in this issue: life and death, employment-related mobility, intersectionality/in(visibility), governance, and automobility. Further, we identify five potential topics for Canadian mobilities, including climate change, disaster, technology and travel, the good city and methods
LTP-triggered cholesterol redistribution activates Cdc42 and drives AMPA receptor synaptic delivery
Neurotransmitter receptor trafficking during synaptic plasticity requires the concerted action of multiple signaling pathways and the protein transport machinery. However, little is known about the contribution of lipid metabolism during these processes. In this paper, we addressed the question of the role of cholesterol in synaptic changes during long-term potentiation (LTP). We found that N-methyl-d-aspartate-type glutamate receptor (NMDAR) activation during LTP induction leads to a rapid and sustained loss or redistribution of intracellular cholesterol in the neuron. A reduction in cholesterol, in turn, leads to the activation of Cdc42 and the mobilization of GluA1-containing α-amino-3-hydroxy-5- methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid-type glutamate receptors (AMPARs) from Rab11-recycling endosomes into the synaptic membrane, leading to synaptic potentiation. This process is accompanied by an increase of NMDAR function and an enhancement of LTP. These results imply that cholesterol acts as a sensor of NMDAR activation and as a trigger of downstream signaling to engage small GTPase (guanosine triphosphatase) activation and AMPAR synaptic delivery during LTP.Peer Reviewe
LTP-triggered cholesterol redistribution activates Cdc42 and drives AMPA receptor synaptic delivery
Vital mobilities:circulating blood via fictionalized vignettes
How do we move things when it really matters? Drawn from research encounters, this article traces the journey of blood from donor to recipient through nine fictionalized vignettes interwoven throughout the article. This article makes two key contributions. First, by using blood as both exemplar and metaphor, this article experiments with fictionalized vignettes to illustrate the ‘non-visible … non-obvious … non-verbal’ vein-to-vein journey entailed in blood donation as a vital mobility. Blood supply chains rely upon and constitute complex and geographically expansive infrastructure circuits. Blood has a societal circulation and can be described as hemosocial. Second, it introduces and theorizes the concept of vital mobilities, extending Adey’s work on emergency mobilities. I distinguish vital mobilities in two ways: they are non-optional material and/ or energetic movements that safeguard life, and they constitute ongoing circuits of care that can be ramped up in case of wide-spread crisis, and are also required in everyday contexts. Overall, this article contributes to cultural geography by demonstrating how non-traditional qualitative methods can effectively be used to represent and communicate dynamic temporalities, spatialities and rhythms of vital mobilities such as blood. © The Author(s) 2018