Mobilities I: Catching Up

December 14, 2023 Jeremiah Hendren

Mobilities I: Catching Up

Cresswell, Tim
Progress in Human Geography 35, no. 4 (2011): 550-558
https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132510383348

The Earth seems to be moving. Quite literally. As I write, incomprehensible gallons of oil continue to spurt out through the Earth’s crust which was ruptured by the ingenuity of the oil industry. The oil that is consumed by a world on the move is, itself, on the move and no one seems quite sure where it is going or when it will get there. The fishing industry of the Gulf of Mexico as well as the tourist industry that relies on clean beaches along its margins are braced for the worst. In April 2010, Eyjafjallajo¨kull, a volcano in Iceland, erupted, stranding hundreds of thousands of air passengers on either side of the Atlantic ocean, including many geographers attending the annual conference of the Association of American Geographers in Washington, DC. Meteorologists and atmospheric scientists applied models of ash dispersal developed following the nuclear accident in Chernobyl. The level of uncertainty in these models proved to be quite high given the uncertainties surrounding our understanding of turbulence and the lack of empirical measurement of the ash cloud itself. Cut flowers in Kenya could not be delivered to their markets in western Europe before they wilted and died. Stranded travellers suddenly discovered older, slower forms of transport booking rooms on the Queen Mary or on the container ships that carry 90% of the world’s things around the world. Earlier, a devastating earthquake in Haiti provided a challenge for the logistical logic of aid agencies and the military who tried to organize relief efforts in a country without a recognizable infrastructure. People, things and ideas arrived from all corners of the world to help a people who were immobilized

Tim Cresswell

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