Abstract
Along with urbanisation and modernisation, the use of second homes has increased in the Western world. This can be seen as part of the increasing mobility of people in society, but also as part of a search for stillness and escape from modern urban society. Recently, scholars in geography and other disciplines have argued that mobility and fixity are two sides of the same coin. This paper aims to explore the complex, manifold and often paradoxical relationship between mobility and immobility in practices of dwelling and seeking stillness in a highly mobile society. It elaborates on how mobility and stillness, in both space and time, are intertwined and mutually influence each other by analysing second home usage of old cottages that formally were dwelling houses of poor tenant smallholdings in Sweden. How do mobility and stillness exist and interact at these cottages and what parts do the cottages themselves have in this? This is studied through interviews with cottage users on their daily life practices and encounters with history and materiality at the cottages. These cottages are easily thought of as places of immobility where time has stood still. However, the paper shows that these cottages are places that continuously emerge through entanglements of mobility and stillness and of present and past times. The practices and experiences of mobility and stillness at the cottage are much integrated in and directed by the cottages’ specific geography, history and materiality, and the activities and thinking of their users because of these characteristics. The users go to the cottage to be at a place where they, with the help of the preserved materiality and history of the cottages, can feel rooted and still. At the same time the cottages offer imaginary time travels and experiences of other times and lifestyles.
Highlights
Picture yourself strolling down a small gravel road in the seemingly uninhabited Swedish countryside
This is done by exploring practices connected to movement and stillness at old cottages used as second homes in Sweden
The decades around the 1950s were times of change for these dwellings in terms of mobility. Their modern history is an account of a decrease of mobility in an otherwise highly, and increasingly so, mobile society. It is a story of how they became part of another type of mobility that was enmeshed with strives for stillness and continuity, as second homes
Summary
Picture yourself strolling down a small gravel road in the seemingly uninhabited Swedish countryside. This paper aims to provide a much needed engagement with the complex, manifold and often paradoxical interrelationship between mobility and immobility in practices of dwelling and seeking stillness in what is often experienced as a highly mobile and rapidly changing society This is done by exploring practices connected to movement and stillness at old cottages used as second homes in Sweden. Looking at the cottage described above, there are not many signs of mobility or movement, except the wind in the trees, someone having her morning coffee on the steps in front of the house, the industrious work of someone clearing the land in the garden or re-erecting an old stonewall, and a car parked somewhere nearby While these dwellings can be perceived as immobile or slow places, and are highly valued for those characteristics, their existence is a much more complex configuration of various practices of both mobility and stillness than they might appear at first sight. Social constructivist perspectives and the cultural turn developed and great attention was paid to discourses and representations and how these influenced people and places
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