Travel

Travel writing appears to be the most oxymoronic of genres: the practice of writing and reading typically requires stasis and travel writing emerges from movement. From the concurrent physical and emotional journeys of Ella Maillart and Annemarie Schwarzenbach to the instantaneous digital discourses of contemporary urban travellers, and from the challenges of writing in the extreme conditions of the Antarctic to those of updating guidebooks via Google Streetview, this book examines the tensions between actual journeys and their resultant texts. Writing on the Move asks questions about the meaning of ‘movement’ – and what counts as ‘travel writing’ – in an age of virtual journeying and enforced immobility.

Most social science studies on automobility have focused on the production, usage, identity construction and aesthetic improvements of personal means of transportation. What happens if we shift the focus to the labour, knowledge and social relations that go into the unavoidable moments of maintenance and repair? Taking motorcycling in Romania as an ethnographic entry point, this book documents how bikers handle the inevitable moments of malfunction and breakdown. Using both mobile and sedentary research methods, the book describes the joys and troubles experienced by amateur mechanics, professional mechanics and untechnical men and women when fixing bikes.