Recreational mobility on a busy street: visual studies of alterity by doing jogging and doing dog-walking

Abstract

This paper studies recreational mobility as it unfolds as an integral part of the heterogeneity of practices staged in front of a camera on a busy street in Stockholm, Sweden. By analyzing the production- and recognition-work of ‘doing-jogging/dog-walking-in-the-city’ we argue that recreational mobility accomplishes something more than walking in these settings. In the modern layout of a condensed city, mobility is prioritized due to its utility. In this context, recreational mobility, in all its forms, becomes what anthropologists and sociologists describe as an ‘othered’ – and as such it exists as an odd curiosity. While this puts recreational mobility at a marginal position it also enables us to better understand mobility in general – though the alterity of recreational mobility. Based on the empirical observations the paper highlights three findings in relation to recreational mobility: (1) its nestedness within everyday mobility; (2) its work of being different than ordinary use of the space – as alterity; and (3) its role as a methodological challenge, especially for studies of on-street level mobility, where different teleologies of mobility and different modalities coexist. Here the materiality of the street and the assemblages play a crucial role as observable materialities within the production- and recognition-work of doing more than walking.