Cycling

A Sociology of Vélomobility

Peter Cox

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781315533674
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

Cycling: A Sociology of Vélomobility explores cycling as a sociological phenomenon. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, it considers the interaction of materials, competencies and meanings that comprise a variety of cycling practices. What might appear at first to be self-evident actions are shown to be constructed through the interplay of numerous social and political forces. Using a theoretical framework from mobilities studies, its central themes respond to the question of what it is about cycling that provokes so much interest and passion, both positive and negative.

Individual chapters consider how cycling has appeared as theme and illustration in social theory, as well as the legacies of these theorizations. The book expands on the image of cycling practices as the product of an assemblage of technology, rider and environment. Riding spaces as material technologies are found to be as important as the machinery of the cycle, and a distinction is made between routes and rides to help interpret aspects of journey-making. Ideas of both affordance and script are used to explore how elements interact in performance to create sensory and experiential scapes. Consideration is also given to the changing identities of cycling practices in historical and geographical perspective.

The book adds to existing research by extending the theorization of cycling mobilities. It engages with both current and past debates on the place of cycling in mobility systems and the problems of researching, analyzing and communicating ephemeral mobile experiences.

Chapter 1

Towards a sociology of cycles and cycling

Introduction

“What is it about the bike?” What is it about cycling that prompts so much interest, even devotion, popularly and academically? This question was posed by Professor Monika Büscher, Director of the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University, in her opening address to the 2016 symposium of the Cycling and Society Research Group. The annual symposium shares studies on cycling from a range of social scientific perspectives drawing on an international selection of contributors. That the network was in its 13th year and 15th symposium, independent of any formal research centres or professional association funding, indicated a level of participant support beyond that which might be necessitated by academic obligation. Yet even this pales into insignificance when put against the purely enthusiast-led International Cycling History Conference series, meeting annually since 1980 and in its Proceedings, publishing what has become an invaluable resource. So, just what is it about the bike that makes it so fascinating for so many?

The question is my starting place to attempt one exploration of the complex social and individual relationships surrounding the myriad uses of this simple technology. Analysis of the forces that have shaped production, distribution and consumption of cycles in different contexts are crucial to understand cycling (Bijker 1995; Rosen 2002), as are the politics of cycling and cycling provision (Furness 2010; Golub et al. 2016; Hoffman 2016; Lugo 2018). The work of this text, however, is to engage with cycles and cycling from the user perspective, rather than treating the bicycle as an object of study (compare Vivanco 2013). Even when cycles become static objects for admiration in museums and galleries, it is still the stories of uses and users that tie the observers to the lives of the objects in use (Gramlich, Maier and Koschke 2016; Gundler 2017).

Sociologies of cycling connect individual and social riders and their riding with the broader contexts of the societies and histories in and through which they move. Their actions are woven into, and shaped by, the structures, cultures and historical patterns surrounding them and that they create through their actions. The relationship between cycling and society is both recursive and dialectic. To engage with cycling in all its myriad varieties, we need to engage with sociological analysis.

To understand cycles in use, in any of their uses, we have to understand cycling as not just the physical act of riding a bike, but as part of a network of objects and activities that make the act possible. First and self-evidently, cycling is an action that not only requires a machine and rider but also places in which and through which to ride. Second, cycling is a performance. Undertaken alone or with others, it always interacts with other persons and spaces. Because it almost always takes place in public spaces, to ride is to interact with the histories of those spaces, whether on or off-road, on dedicated infrastructure or not. Cycling is a social activity even when undertaken alone. In sum, to cycle is to be part of a system of mobility, referred to here as vélomobility.

Büscher’s question prompted a series of replies from symposium participants (see Box 1.1). These observations reflect a deep complexity in understandings of, and relationships to, cycles and cycling. The range of responses reflects the breadth of analyzes among respondents, and the depth and breadth of studies that accompany the broader cultural resurgence of interest in cycling over recent decades (Pucher and Buehler 2017). This growth, and the forms it has taken in different nations and across class, gender and cultural divides, is the subject of numerous individual studies. To cover the entire literature is far beyond the scope of any single book. No doubt it will be the subject of future historical studies, just as the bike boom of the 1890s is today, see for example Finison (2014) or Friss (2015).

The diversity of answers given to Büscher’s question continue to echo the list of potential images of cycling outlined in the “Introduction” to Cycling and Society (Horton, Cox and Rosen 2007), the work that came out of the first of the symposia. In it, we recognized how, even when limited within the social sciences, cycling studies could not be contained within any specific disciplinary frame. The multiple approaches found in the recent expansion of work on cycling encourage interdisciplinary communication. Not confined by disciplinary boundaries, studies embrace a variety of methodological approaches. In collating their Cycling Futures volume, Bonham and Johnson (2015) note that not only do cycling studies cross academic disciplines, but that the range of relevant studies moves between radically different ontological and epistemological positions, an issue explored in relation to research in the next chapter.

Before a sociology of vélomobility can be properly developed, it is useful to consider two other parallel areas. The first surrounds some basic questions of language: the terms and definitions at the heart of the book. A brief examination of the changing use of language in relation to cycling can reveal much about its understanding. Second, before locating this study within existing literature on the sociology of cycling it will be useful to see a number of examples where academic social science has used cycling and cycles as means to explore its own ideas. These studies are not themselves necessarily concerned with examining specific cycling practices, but use cycles and cycling as a conduit through which to make other arguments. Nevertheless, their currency locates cycling as a sociological object, and inevitably connects it with specific theoretical discussions.

Starting with Polanyi’s (1962) use of cycling to illustrate and explain tacit knowledge, we can move to Illich’s (1973, 1974) references to the bicycle as an archetypal convivial technology, through Bijker’s (1995) analysis of the social construction of cycle technology, and on to its employment as an illustration of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) conceptualization of machine and assemblage. Between them, these studies create a heritage of thought attached to or associated with cycling practices. Whether or not one concurs that cycling and cycles are entirely an appropriate illustration of their analyses, these debates present us with inherited frameworks of thought. Not only do they reveal particular attitudes and presumptions about cycling as a practice and its capacity as exemplar or material demonstration of an idea, but they also provide conceptual and theoretical vocabularies through which to interrogate existing and historical social practices of cycling.

Box 1.1 What is it about the bike?

Autonomy;

Lets you see hidden bits of the city;

Pain;

Rhythm;

Simplicity with a history of simplicity;

Balance;

Exposure;

Inclusive;

Becomes part of you;

Almost human; Touched by you;

Independence;

Eccentricity;

Freedom;

A wider roaming range;

Mundane;

Out of sync with the momentum of automobility;

Authenticity;

Affording the joy of flow;

Continuous movement;

Playful, associated with childhood;

Risky;

Zen-like self-abnegation;

Challenges hegemonic things;

Fixed gear means you’ve got to keep moving;

Skill;

Un-gendering;

The histories of all these things

A discovery as much as an Invention;

Highly diverse and individualized;

DIY and cheap vs. professional and expensive;

Minimalistic aesthetics;

Expresses meaning and values;

Sociocultural signifier

(Büscher 2016)

What becomes clear through this literature is that the bicycle’s impact is not just as an inert item of technology, but, in Bruno Latour’s terminology, an “actant” (Akrich and Latour 1992). The bicycle as an artefact has produced effects, possibilities of human mobility and even sociality, in ways not envisaged by any specific person. Agency can be present without wilfulness.

Whether through the creation of a social imagination of autonomous travel, or through the practical capacities provided by cycling mobility and their consequent effects on the shaping of urban space, the incorporation of cycles and cycling into wider mobility practices and social life has shaped our histories in a variety of ways. These effects may be obvious as, for example, in the effects of the bicycle as a vehicle of women’s emancipation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Conversely, they may be subtler, as in the transformation of city space as witnessed during the last decade in New York (Sadik-Kahn and Solomonow 2016). Echoing Bennett (2010), the bicycle as an object has vitality. In other words, it possesses the capacity to affect, to make change. The cycle has agency. It has agency not only in the world but also as a motif within social theory: thinking about cycles and cycling has enabled scholars to better articulate their own conceptualization of the world. Discussion will turn to these in due course. Conversely, the cycle has enabled other social forces and agendas to be mobilized and acted out. Bicycles and cycling have historically served as a canvas onto which social concerns could be projected (Longhurst 2015). As a starting point for consideration of these changing perceptions, we turn to the first element: the language of cycling and an explanation of the terminology adopted in this work.

Cycles, cyclists and cycling

Novel technologies spawn new words. The terminologies applied to different forms of human-powered wheeled machinery are notoriously muddled and changeable. Perhaps the most striking example is draisine. The term originally referred to Karl von Drais’ patented machine of 1817, widely acknowledged as the first vehicle with two wheels in-line (Hadland and Lessing 2014). It was propelled by scooting or striding, hence the descriptive term by which it was formally named, Laufsmachine, or running machine. By 1920, the same term, draisine, described pedal-powered four wheelers built to run on rails (GFED 1920). Originally designed as railway service vehicles, today they enjoy a resurgence as tourist attractions running on otherwise abandoned lines, continuing to be referred to as draisines in French and German.

The French “Velocipede” was another nineteenth-century neologism, highlighting the increase in speed and the use of feet for power (Hadland and Lessing 2014). Adopted to describe the new pedal-driven machines of the 1860s it was rapidly shortened to “Vélo” as a universal descriptor. The Dutch “Fiets” is most commonly thought to be a derivation of “vietse”, a dialect verb to move quickly, coincident with the French vitesse (Sanders 1996). The French wording of Drais’ patent described his innovation as a “Machine a courir á grande vitesse”, again emphasizing its speed compared with unaided human movement.

Simplest of all, was referring to the machine as “a wheel”. The term was commonly used in English into the first half of the twentieth century and carries on in the German use of “Rad”. It could thus be used to describe both Karl von Drais’ running machine of 1817 and the 1860s innovation of pedal drive (foot power utilizing a crank to turn the wheel) with which it is conventionally connected in English usage. Adapting the Greek “Kyklos” provided the term “cycle” to which could usefully be appended prefixes such as bi-, tri-, di- and quadri-, to indicate the range of design variations proliferating in the years of experimentation from the 1870s onwards. “Cycle” was originally used as an adjective to velocipede but overtook its parent noun to become a generic term. As Hickman (2016) points out “In 1893, only five years after it was founded in Yorkshire, the Bicycle Touring Club rebranded itself as the Cyclists’ Touring Club to become inclusive of tricyclists”.

Bicycle and bike, together with derivatives in other languages (e.g. bicicletta, bici) have since become the default terminology. However, with the resurgence of a range of different cycle designs, especially those that do not have two wheels, this language is increasingly problematic. During the late 1980s, UK activists argued strongly for the use of cycle rather than bicycle or bike, on the ground that it might disrupt the negative assumptions that had become associated with the latter term, especially the dismissive tone often imputed to the word “bike” (McGurn 1987). At a time when the conventional diamond framed two-wheeler had become unfashionable and cycling relegated to something for children or those who could not afford any other means of transport, a shift of language might enable a break with existing unexamined expectations. To strengthen the arguments for a modal shift in transport away from the car towards cycling would require, they asserted, a diverse range of cycling design solutions. Calling this diversity “bicycles” would misrepresent it. In a subsequent creative shift, the same group of activists, launching a new subscriber-only magazine, used the title Bike Culture Quarterly (McGurn 1993) to emphasize the ironic juxtaposition of the two terms. In more recent parallel arguments over infrastructure provision and its impact on social inclusion, Hickman (2016), Andrews and Clement (2016) and Williams (2016) have all argued that the continued use of “bicycle” as an unconsidered default in discussions about cycling has unforeseen effects. Interventions designed around the mechanical and dimensional properties of a traditional two-wheeler may be unsuitable for use by other forms of tricycle, handcycle, or other machines suitably adapted for inclusive use. Inclusive cycling provision also needs inclusive cycling language (Parkin 2018).

As a term, cycling has both connotative (associational) and denotive (descriptive) dimensions. In denotive form, cycling is little more than the act of turning the pedals. Further denotive meanings of cycling necessarily require contextualization and greater description. The very multiplicity of possible practices that could be described as (denotive function) cycling, from professional sport to children’s play and to transport to work render it ambiguous at the very least. Even denotively, there are many cyclings. Similarly, the connotative functions of the term not only depend on the different activities described, but also on the perspectives of those using it. Throughout this study, therefore, we should be aware of the background variety of cyclings that can be conjured up and the necessity to be specific when the occasion demands. In this book, the terms cycles, cyclists and cycling are generally used wherever possible in order to be generically inclusive. The triple terminology also alerts us to the complex configuration of elements that necessarily goes into cycling. Whereas Vivanco (2013) identified the bicycle as a suitable subject for anthropological enquiry, the task undertaken in this book is to shift the focus from the object itself to the practices through which it is used.

Finally, while considering language, the terms velomobile (English) and velomobiel (Dutch) have been deliberately adopted by a group of manufacturers as a descriptive term for the class of human-powered-vehicle, usually three or even four wheeled, enclosed in an integral bodyshell (see velombiel.nl). While an immensely important class of cycles, the language necessarily complicates any discussion of “vélomobility”. The decision in this work, therefore, is to follow Furness (2007), Pesses (2010) and Koglin (2013) and retain the accented form (vélomobility) in generic discussion of cycling mobilities, except when specifically referring to velomobiles. How cycles, cyclists and cycling may come together to comprise a system that may legitimately be referred to as vélomobility will be considered after locating this study among other relevant social science discussions.

Polanyi’s cyclist: a case study in tacit knowledge

When Polanyi (1962: 601) turned his attention to the problem of kn...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of boxes
• List of figures
• Introduction
• 1 Towards a sociology of cycles and cycling
• 2 Researching cycling
• 3 Materials: cycle technologies
• 4 Environments: material spaces of cycling
• 5 Exploring (im)material space
• 6 Competencies: riding alone
• 7 Riding together
• 8 Meanings, representations and identities
• 9 Riding the city: public meanings and cycling advocacy
• Index