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‘Coming Out’ to ‘Hit the Road’: Temporal, Spatial and Affective Mobilities of Taxi Drivers and Day Trippers in K unming, C hina
Author(s) -
NOTAR BETH E.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
city and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1548-744X
pISSN - 0893-0465
DOI - 10.1111/ciso.12001
Subject(s) - socioeconomic status , embodied cognition , mobilities , nothing , identity (music) , space (punctuation) , geography , sociology , psychology , demography , computer science , aesthetics , art , social science , population , philosophy , epistemology , artificial intelligence , operating system
This article examines how people narrate the relationship between physical and socioeconomic mobility in contemporary urban C hina. To do so, it looks at the mobility of two different groups of drivers in the southwestern C hinese city of K unming: taxi drivers and “day trippers.” While a taxi driver and a day tripper engage in the same activity of driving their own vehicles, their experiences of mobility, their status identity and their views of the country and the city diverge due to their differently embodied practices in time as well as in space. The comparison underscores that there is nothing inherent in the relationship between mobility, status and freedom.