IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rmobxx/v17y2022i3p349-365.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Practical aeromobilities: making sense of environmentalist air-travel

Author

Listed:
  • Johannes Volden
  • Arve Hansen

Abstract

Flying has become an increasingly contested form of consumption, but ‘green’ consumers often continue to fly. This paper provides novel insights into the stubbornness of air-travel by specifically studying the obstacles that environmentally conscious consumers face when trying to limit or eliminate aeromobility. Through in-depth interviews with Norwegian environmental organization workers – conceptualised as particularly self-reflexive when it comes to environmentally contested forms of consumption – we analyse how environmentalists negotiate one of the most environmentally destructive aspects of their consumption patterns. To explore how the social embeddedness of flying complicates the reduction of air-travel in these accounts, we draw on a combination of mobilities and social practice approaches. The participants considered flying to be problematic, but also often necessary in specific practices. Various expectations related to convenience, time, and sociality, led to a certain ‘lock-in’ of (aero)mobility. Zooming out to consider broader practice geographies, we argue that aeromobility contributes to the tempo-spatial expansion of many practices, changing their contents, meanings, and the contexts in which they unfold. To achieve sustainable mobility, we suggest that attention must be shifted from the air-travels of individual consumers to the broader practices in which aeromobility is embedded.

Suggested Citation

  • Johannes Volden & Arve Hansen, 2022. "Practical aeromobilities: making sense of environmentalist air-travel," Mobilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(3), pages 349-365, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rmobxx:v:17:y:2022:i:3:p:349-365
    DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2021.1985381
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17450101.2021.1985381
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17450101.2021.1985381?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maeder, Stefanie & Stauffacher, Michael & Knaus, Florian, 2023. "Zooming in and out on everyday mobility practices in a rural, mountainous area of Switzerland," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rmobxx:v:17:y:2022:i:3:p:349-365. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rmob20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.