Peter Cox
I formerly taught on the Sociology and the Politics programmes at Chester, with particular responsibility in the areas of Social Change and Social Movements and the Politics of Sustainability. My research is primarily in the area of sustainable mobility, with particular reference to the sociology of cycling.
Phone: +44 7443 525889
Address: Department of Social and Political Science
University of Chester
Parkgate Road
Chester UK
CH1 4BJ
Phone: +44 7443 525889
Address: Department of Social and Political Science
University of Chester
Parkgate Road
Chester UK
CH1 4BJ
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This paper explores the possibilities and problems inherent in formulating vélomobility as a system, not merely as a vehicular substitution within continued patterns of spatial and economic inequality perpetuated by existing automobilities. It pays special attention to how a mobility system might be aligned with the need for degrowth as a way to think and act beyond the unsustainable carbon economy.
Books by Peter Cox
materials, competencies and meanings that comprise a variety of cycling practices. What might appear at first to be self-evident actions are shown to be constructed through the interplay of numerous social and political forces. The book adds to existing research by extending the theorisation of cycling mobilities. It engages with both current and past debates on the place of cycling in mobility systems and the problems of researching, analysing and communicating ephemeral mobile experiences.
"Transport is rapidly becoming one of the most problematic areas for sustainability. The current trends for personal mobility are shaped by the dominant practices of the industrialised nations: the private car as both symbol and tool of the freedom of the modern world. Indeed, in Fordism, part of the very process of twentieth century industrialisation is defined by the rise of the motor industry, its practices and achievements.
However, the demands of sustainability in relation to people’s everyday transport require a radical restructuring of our practices of mobility. The current dominance of automobility as the default mode of transport cannot be sustained in either environmental or social terms. The costs are destructive. Climate change, the destabilising effects of global geopolitics skewed by the demands of oil extraction, localised air pollution, congestion, noise, the severance of communities, the anti-sociality inherent in automobility are simply fragments of the complex and systematic problems of over-reliance on the private car.
‘Transport differs from other problems because it gets worse rather than better with economic development’ (Peñalosa 2005). The words of the former mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, provide both the rationale for this book and the starting points for its arguments.
Examining how people move around on an everyday, mundane basis it is clear that there are immense problems wherever we look. Whilst large numbers of people suffer from an inability to access basic services, lacking adequate or affordable transport to reach health care, markets, and access to similar opportunities, equally vast numbers who do have access to means of transport spend their travel time stationary, sitting in congested cities, while around them the air quality is degraded, streets become unsafe, and the transport sector provides an ever-increasing share of emissions contributing to human-induced climate change. These problems do not relate to the degree of development or wealth of cities; they are to be found in different forms across the globe.
The book brings together, for the first time, analyses of cycling from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including history, sociology, geography, planning, engineering and technology. The book redresses the past neglect of cycling as a topic for sustained analysis by treating it as a varied and complex practice which matters greatly to contemporary social, cultural and political theory and action.
Cycling and Society demonstrates the incredible diversity of contemporary cycling, both within and across cultures. With cycling increasingly promoted as a solution to numerous social problems across a wide range of policy areas in car-dominated societies, this book helps to open up a new field of cycling studies.
Contents: Introduction: cycling and society, Dave Horton, Peter Cox and Paul Rosen; Cycling the city: non-place and the sensory construction of meaning in a mobile practice, Justin Spinney; Capitalising on curiosity: women's professional cycle racing in the late 19th century, Clare Simpson; Barriers to cycling: an exploration of quantitative analyses, John Parkin, Tim Ryley and Tim Jones; Hell is other cyclists: rethinking transport and identity, David Skinner and Paul Rosen; The Flaneur on wheels?, Nicholas Oddy; Bicycles don't evolve: velomobiles and the modelling of transport technologies, Peter Cox with Frederick Van De Walle; Fear of cycling, Dave Horton; Men, women and the bicycle: gender and social geography of cycling in the late 19th century, Philip Gordon Mackintosh and Glenn Norcliffe; Bicycle messengers: image, identity and community, Ben Fincham; Index.
Drawing on activist practices and arguments, it locates these within the convergence of a number of academic disciplines and demonstrates how interdisciplinary analysis is essential for understanding the complexity of contemporary social movement activism.
Papers by Peter Cox
This paper explores the possibilities and problems inherent in formulating vélomobility as a system, not merely as a vehicular substitution within continued patterns of spatial and economic inequality perpetuated by existing automobilities. It pays special attention to how a mobility system might be aligned with the need for degrowth as a way to think and act beyond the unsustainable carbon economy.
materials, competencies and meanings that comprise a variety of cycling practices. What might appear at first to be self-evident actions are shown to be constructed through the interplay of numerous social and political forces. The book adds to existing research by extending the theorisation of cycling mobilities. It engages with both current and past debates on the place of cycling in mobility systems and the problems of researching, analysing and communicating ephemeral mobile experiences.
"Transport is rapidly becoming one of the most problematic areas for sustainability. The current trends for personal mobility are shaped by the dominant practices of the industrialised nations: the private car as both symbol and tool of the freedom of the modern world. Indeed, in Fordism, part of the very process of twentieth century industrialisation is defined by the rise of the motor industry, its practices and achievements.
However, the demands of sustainability in relation to people’s everyday transport require a radical restructuring of our practices of mobility. The current dominance of automobility as the default mode of transport cannot be sustained in either environmental or social terms. The costs are destructive. Climate change, the destabilising effects of global geopolitics skewed by the demands of oil extraction, localised air pollution, congestion, noise, the severance of communities, the anti-sociality inherent in automobility are simply fragments of the complex and systematic problems of over-reliance on the private car.
‘Transport differs from other problems because it gets worse rather than better with economic development’ (Peñalosa 2005). The words of the former mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, provide both the rationale for this book and the starting points for its arguments.
Examining how people move around on an everyday, mundane basis it is clear that there are immense problems wherever we look. Whilst large numbers of people suffer from an inability to access basic services, lacking adequate or affordable transport to reach health care, markets, and access to similar opportunities, equally vast numbers who do have access to means of transport spend their travel time stationary, sitting in congested cities, while around them the air quality is degraded, streets become unsafe, and the transport sector provides an ever-increasing share of emissions contributing to human-induced climate change. These problems do not relate to the degree of development or wealth of cities; they are to be found in different forms across the globe.
The book brings together, for the first time, analyses of cycling from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including history, sociology, geography, planning, engineering and technology. The book redresses the past neglect of cycling as a topic for sustained analysis by treating it as a varied and complex practice which matters greatly to contemporary social, cultural and political theory and action.
Cycling and Society demonstrates the incredible diversity of contemporary cycling, both within and across cultures. With cycling increasingly promoted as a solution to numerous social problems across a wide range of policy areas in car-dominated societies, this book helps to open up a new field of cycling studies.
Contents: Introduction: cycling and society, Dave Horton, Peter Cox and Paul Rosen; Cycling the city: non-place and the sensory construction of meaning in a mobile practice, Justin Spinney; Capitalising on curiosity: women's professional cycle racing in the late 19th century, Clare Simpson; Barriers to cycling: an exploration of quantitative analyses, John Parkin, Tim Ryley and Tim Jones; Hell is other cyclists: rethinking transport and identity, David Skinner and Paul Rosen; The Flaneur on wheels?, Nicholas Oddy; Bicycles don't evolve: velomobiles and the modelling of transport technologies, Peter Cox with Frederick Van De Walle; Fear of cycling, Dave Horton; Men, women and the bicycle: gender and social geography of cycling in the late 19th century, Philip Gordon Mackintosh and Glenn Norcliffe; Bicycle messengers: image, identity and community, Ben Fincham; Index.
Drawing on activist practices and arguments, it locates these within the convergence of a number of academic disciplines and demonstrates how interdisciplinary analysis is essential for understanding the complexity of contemporary social movement activism.
Existing thinking on the role of cycling in mobility decarbonisation has largely been framed within a pragmatic approach, focussing on urban cycling. This allows the easy fix of short inner-city journeys substitution to produce dramatic and visible results. However, this focus on cycling cities and urban mobility has unfortunate side effects. Over-concentration on high-density residential spaces with immediate local access to services distracts from more intractable problems in peri-urban and non-urban spaces; suggesting that cycling is not a solution for these conditions. This paper argues that rather than approaches to design and planning for cycling that start from an assumption of high-density urban locations, arguments for future low carbon mobility could make a more profound contribution to deep decarbonisation by adopting rural proofing measures. In other words, by examining how cycling, including e-cycling and advanced cycle design, can provide vital transport in the context of more difficult scenarios and longer journeys. Instead of working out how policies for short-distance urban travel might be adapted for the peri- and non-urban, by starting with cycling policies for the peri- and non-urban location, shorter distance provision is already guaranteed.
It considers in particular the interplay between cycling technologies and infrastructure and asks how we ensure that we are planning and building for the future and not the past?
(Slides with attached notes)
(Slides in Portugese, notes in English)
This paper examines how cyclovia (and similar actions) and Covid -19 lockdowns act as experiential prefiguration, transformations of everyday life for a wide population, and their potential as a means of creating insight to possible change and the extent to which they have created momentum for it in a number of European Cities. It expands this to consider the role of such actions in working towards degrowth mobility alternatives as practical possibilities.
At the same time, investigations were undertaken using conventional analyses of photographic and written archive materials to locate current practices in historical contexts. During the course of this investigation it became clear that there were also film documentary sources that could inform this research. This then raised a question as to whether existing historical film sources could be “read” and interpreted as a form of ‘naturally occurring data’ using the same analytical frameworks deployed for the interpretation of the video field notes captured in the investigation of sensory experiences.
This chapter outlines the methodological procedures involved in this analysis and the result of initial attempts to deploy these in relation to historical sources. By connecting approaches developed in the context of digital recording of mobile experience to extant analogue film sources it considers whether such connections can enable a richer understanding of historical mobile subjects. While visual analysis suggests that film-makers’ intentions, especially in framing and editing their subject matter, are always inescapable, interpretative practices applied to digital recordings of public space today suggest there may be value in considering incidental “background” mobilities in historical documentary film and incidentally explains how a critical sociologist comes to be developing historical research tools.