Abstract
AbstractMobilities scholarship has paid considerable attention to the forms of presence enabled by air travel in hypermobile organisations (Elliott & Urry, 2010; Strengers, 2015; Storme et al., 2017). However, there has been less focus on the absences that these presences simultaneously generate. This chapter develops the concept of ‘absent presences’ enabled through the practices and policies of academic hypermobility. The chapter draws on qualitative interviews with 24 Australian-based academics, alongside a review of university policies that are relevant to air travel. We use these data to explore ‘absent presence’ in academic air travel. First, we suggest that there is an assumption in academia that embodied presence is required for authentic modes of knowledge sharing and networking, primarily at conferences and meetings. Yet this type of presence abroad requires that one is absent from home for extended periods. Second, we show how absent presence exists in academic policies concerning air travel. In university strategic plans, air travel is present as a means and measure of academic success. In university sustainability policies, however, air travel’s environmental impacts are often absent from consideration. We conclude by discussing the implications of absent presence in academic work life, as well as university policy and practice more broadly.
Highlights
Over the past fifteen years, the mobilities paradigm has focused primarily on the movement of people and objects across space and time (Sheller & Urry, 2006)
This paper has identified how mobility can be understood as having an absence-presence dualism; on the one hand, with aspects that are observed and foregrounded in academic practice and policy, and, on the other hand, with those that are less obvious
This absent presence concept captures many of the inequities and unsustainabilities of contemporary academia
Summary
Over the past fifteen years, the mobilities paradigm has focused primarily on the movement of people and objects across space and time (Sheller & Urry, 2006). Travel facilitates the acquisition of new knowledge, as interacting with those from other institutions and incorporating new ways of thinking into one’s own research have become a highly normalised academic practice (Petersen, 2018) Travel of this kind is an opportunity to develop (as well as a reflection of ) ‘network capital’, considered a highly prized commodity amongst academics, as well as professionals more broadly (Larsen et al, 2008). University sustainability policies appear to have been ‘immobilised’ when it comes to considerations of the environmental consequences of air travel for climate change Is it that these policies are not taken seriously, or have other policies—which tend to encourage academics to fly—rendered them less visible, and more absent from discussions about the sustainability of academic life?. The chapter draws on our research on academic air travel and virtual collaboration in Australian universities to develop the concept of absent present mobilities and uncover some of its effects on environmental sustainability and equity. We discuss what the concept of absent present mobilities might offer researchers in the future, as a way to confront inequalities in mobility and the potential for alternative scholarship
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