No paradigm to mobilize: the new mobilities paradigm is not a paradigm

Abstract

ABSTRACT In an essay published in 2006 in Environment and Planning A and in a second essay published in 2016 in this journal, Mimi Sheller and John Urry have made the case for the emergence of a new social science paradigm – “the new mobilities paradigm”. Sheller and Urry argue that the spectrum of published mobility-related theory and empirical research, taken in its entirety, may be described as a paradigm. This use of the term “paradigm” only minimally resembles Thomas Kuhn’s description of a paradigm. Moreover, the mobilities literature they cite in support of the claim that a mobilities paradigm is emerging in the social sciences is informed not by a mobilities paradigm but by a diversity of extant social science paradigms. As described by Sheller and Urry, the central theoretical characteristic of this paradigm has been to conceptualize mobility as composed of complex social systems. The term “the new mobilities paradigm” is a misnomer; it is not a mobilities paradigm but a systems theory paradigm with a mobility focus. Given the continued academic prestige attached to the designation “paradigm” since the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, there are symbolic and material benefits to be gained in describing the theory and research cited by Sheller and Urry as a “paradigm”. Nevertheless, the general acceptance of the paradigm claim by mobility scholars stands in the way of adequately conceptualizing what kind of intellectual endeavor mobility studies might be, as well as efforts to “mobilize” mobility scholarship.