Mapping the lines: An exploration of mobility and urban spaces amongst bicycle couriers.

摘要

Recent perspectives in social theory have highlighted the need for space to be understood as active in the patterning of social life. In this thesis, I consider how space in related to the patterning of corporeal mobility in cities by drawing upon interviews conducted with bicycle couriers. I show how space and mobility are articulated towards one another through the anticipatory interface of the cognitive map. The interviews also suggest that in addition to anticipation, mobility is also largely creative and circumstantial. The popular interpretation of such creativity as resistance to a spatial structure is specifically rejected in favor of interpreting this creativity as improvisation. This interpretation stems from the theoretical understanding of urban spaces as not closed systems but diagrammatic assemblages that are open to a degree of play at the margins. From this perspective, I conclude that improvisation is not the deconstruction of spatial meaning but the means by which the normative dimension of spaces become established.Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses u26 Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2004 .B69. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 43-03, page: 0745. Adviser: Daniel Ou27Connor. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2004.