The many paths ahead: toward an interdisciplinary framework for Critical Cycling Studies

This essay outlines our vision for Critical Cycling Studies (CCS), a framework for cycling-related research. At the core of CCS is a focus on interdisciplinarity and the reconceptualisation of cycles as “interfaces” that mediate the experiences of cycle users. CCS focuses not only on the object of the cycle as a physical interface, but also on the experience of cycling as a figurative “interface technology”: that is, cycling as a form of situated knowledge rooted in practice that mediates between cyclists, non-cyclists, and the ecological, social, political, and cultural environments in which cycling occurs, and which shapes the bodily, sensory, cognitive, and emotional states of cyclists. In moving from an object-oriented focus to a broader conceptual perspective on cycling, CCS adopts a fundamentally interdisciplinary approach that accounts for cycling as a complex, multi-valent experience and phenomenon. Research in cycling studies is already to some degree interdisciplinary; however, many existing approaches in cycling studies more closely resemble “cross-disciplinary” work, insofar as such research involves exchange between related disciplines with shared methodologies and objectives. To address this problem, this essay explores some fundamental difficulties of interdisciplinarity as such and proposes that CCS should in part adopt perspectives from the humanities, which have a long history of bridging distinct methodologies and overcoming disciplinary boundaries. On this basis, CCS is introduced as a humanities-informed, self-reflexive, and dynamic framework for research into cycles and cycling that invites revision and expansion by all contributors. CCS advocates an openness to boundary-crossing forms of interdisciplinarity, a willingness to reflect critically on one’s methods and disciplinary assumptions, and an awareness of the ways in which issues of power, class, gender, access, geography, culture, and identity have shaped and continue to shape cycling-related research and the experiences of cycle users themselves.