Environmentalism and the bicycle

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4329008
AutoresDave Horton (Lancaster University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2006
Volumen15
Número1
Páginas41-58
Fecha de publicación2006-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEnvironmental Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0964-4016 • E-ISSN: 1743-8934
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09644010500418712
OpenAlexW2099906659
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas67
Referencias citadas29

In the United Kingdom, the bicycle has played a role in the oppositional cultures of various social movements; feminism and socialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, post-1960s anarchism and, most recently, environmentalism. This article discusses the significance of the bicycle to the discourse and practice of the contemporary environmental movement. At the level of discourse, the bicycle is mobilised routinely in constructing the green visions to which environmentalism aspires; and in practice, use of the bicycle organises and helps to sustain the distinctive 'green lifestyles' of environmental activists. Thus, as an object both utilised discursively in green talk and texts, and actually ridden by green practitioners, the bicycle powerfully enables the articulation of an alternative society, a green vision of sustainability. The case of the bicycle demonstrates how 'ordinary' materialities can contribute to the development and performance of antagonistic cultural and political identities. Acknowledgments A serious debt is obviously owed to those activists whose everyday lives form the basis for this article. Earlier versions of this article were presented to the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University, and to the British Sociological Association Annual Conference at the University of York, both in March 2004; many thanks to participants at both events for stimulating debate and helpful comments. Particular thanks to Sue Holden, Paul Rosen, Bronislaw Szerszynski and John Urry for their very supportive and useful suggestions, to the two Environmental Politics reviewers, and to the ESRC for research funding. Notes 1. Obviously, the bicycle is not always and everywhere political; the importance of specific material artefacts to specific kinds of politics does not make those artefacts political per se. Objects cannot be stripped away from their cultural locations, the sites where they are made meaningful, and different cultures attach very different meanings to 'the same' kinds of object. 2. For a more recent critique of speed, and a similar call for societies, including cars, to slow down, see Honoré (2004 Honoré, C. 2004. In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed, London: Orion. [Google Scholar]: 97-110). 3. The other six being the condom, ceiling fan, clothes-line, public library, ladybird and pad thai. 4. In Lancaster, for example, beyond the presence of Dynamo, a cycle campaign group, Friends of the Earth activists and Green Party councillors have contributed importantly to improving cycling provision. 5. Research exploring intra-urban mobility in the United Kingdom across the twentieth century finds use of the independent, personalised modes of the bicycle and car to be consistently higher among boys and men (Pooley et al., 2004 Pooley, C., Turnbull, J. and Adams, M. January 2004. "'The impact of new transport technologies on intra-urban mobility: a view from the past'". January, Lancaster University. paper presented to Alternative Mobility Futures [Google Scholar]). 6. Environmentalism not only politicises materialities, such as the car and nuclear power, perceived as wholly antithetical to green visions; it also tends to problematise even those objects such as the computer which are widely recognised as nowadays central to environmental activism and green lifestyles (see Pickerill, 2003 Pickerill, J. 2003. Cyberprotest: Environmental Activism Online, Manchester: Manchester University Press. [Google Scholar]; Horton, 2004 Horton, D. 2004. 'Local environmentalism and the internet'. Environmental Politics, 13(4): 735-754. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). 7. Iain Boal (2002 Boal, I. A. 2002. "'The world of the bicycle'". In Critical Mass: Bicycling's Defiant Celebration, Edited by: Carlsson. 167-174. Oakland, CA: AK Press. [Google Scholar]: 173) notes that the bicycle 'is thought of as a green mode of transportation, yet it is intimately linked to the history and culture of automobilism and to the development of ecologically destructive roads', and that the bicycle is 'a cause of exploitation (rubber slavery)' (see also Wheatcroft, 2003 Wheatcroft, G. 2003. Le Tour: A History of the Tour de France 1903-2003, London: Simon and Schuster. [Google Scholar]: 29, 55). Mick Hamer (1987 Hamer, M. 1987. Wheels Within Wheels: A Study of the Road Lobby, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. [Google Scholar]: Ch. 3) elaborates some of the ways in which, at the turn of the twentieth century, advocates of the bicycle played a crucial role in the development of the United Kingdom's road infrastructure. 8. Although not a task for this paper, it would be worth exploring the effects of cycling from other perspectives; medical studies have shown the positive health effects of cycling, but its effects on psychology, or perceptions of the 'local environment' and 'the natural world', for example, remain poorly understood. 9. On, for example, the increased distances between the homes of marriage partners enabled by the bicycle, after 1887, see P. J. Perry (1969 Perry, P. J. 1969. 'Working-class isolation and mobility in rural Dorset, 1837-1936: a study of marriage distances'. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 46: 121-141. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Perry (1969 Perry, P. J. 1969. 'Working-class isolation and mobility in rural Dorset, 1837-1936: a study of marriage distances'. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 46: 121-141. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 133-4) notes: 'Before the coming of the bicycle the countryman generally travelled on foot...Dependence on walking, however, much restricted the area of frequent and everyday contact...It was this situation that the bicycle, inter alia, transformed'. 10. In the United Kingdom in 2001, 62% of trips between 1 and 2 miles were made by car (Beecroft et al., 2002 Beecroft, M., Chatterjee, K. and Lyons, G. 2002. Transport Visions: Local Travel, London: Landor. [Google Scholar]: 31). 'Progressive' transport policy tends to see the bicycle as an alternative to the car for such local journeys; indeed, policy literature tends to take 'cycling distance' as potentially anything under 5 miles. 11. On the blurring of boundaries between 'public' and 'private' induced by car dominated mobility, see Sheller and Urry (2003a Sheller, M. and Urry, J. 2003a. 'Mobile transformations of "public" and "private' life". Theory, Culture and Society, 20(3): 115-133. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 12. Though that is increasingly true of the car (see Putnam, 2000 Putnam, R. D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon and Schuster. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, 2002 Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions. 2002. Transport Trends 2001, London: HMSO. [Google Scholar]). 13. Marcus Jones (2001 Jones, M. 2001. 'Promoting cycling in the UK: problems experienced by the practitioners'. World Transport Policy and Practice, 7(3): 7-12. [Google Scholar]: 8) notes the related policy-relevant point that 'By getting adults out of cars and out and about in the streets [cycling] also helps to improve the vitality and security of the urban environment'. 14. Cycling as a demonstration to others is particularly well illustrated by the tendency among some activists to go out of their way to pedal past stationary motorised traffic. An environmental activist is also generally happy to be identifiable as a cyclist away from her or his machine; whether carrying panniers, still wearing a fluorescent jacket or helmet, or with trouser clips still in place, it is not embarrassing but good to look as if you have recently arrived by bicycle. 15. Interestingly, this kind of bicycle, which manufacturers term the 'hybrid' or 'city-bike', currently accounts for the fastest growing category of bicycle sales (see http://www.bikebiz. co.uk/infozone/stats.php, accessed 14 July 2005). 16. On similar expressions of guilt among car-owning participants in the cycle protest event, Critical Mass, see Blickstein and Hanson (2001 Blickstein, S. and Hanson, S. 2001. 'Critical Mass: forging a politics of sustainable mobility in the information age'. Transportation, 28(4): 347-362. [Crossref], [Web of Science (R)] , [Google Scholar]: 360). 17. Bicycles are used for 27% of all trips in the Netherlands (Larsen, 2002 Larsen, J. 2002. "'Bicycle production breaks 100 million'". In The Earth Policy Reader, Edited by: Brown, Larsen and Fischlowitz-Roberts. 129-132. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company. Available at: http://www.earth-policy.org/Books (Accessed 8 February 2004) [Google Scholar]: 132). 18. However, like environmental activists, pro-cycling policy is going against and attempting to reverse very dominant and well-entrenched mobility orderings and social patterns. Perhaps much more so than other northern European societies such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany, the United Kingdom has become 'locked-in' to systems of automobility (Sheller & Urry, 2003b Sheller, M. and Urry, J. 2003b. "'The city and the car'". In Delivering Sustainable Transport: A Social Science Perspective, Edited by: Root. 171-189. Oxford: Elsevier. [Google Scholar]; Urry, 2003 Urry, J. 2003. Global Complexity, Cambridge: Polity. [Google Scholar]). And despite increasing pro-cycling rhetoric, car ownership and driving continue to grow more popular than ever. But the fact remains that, at least at the level of rhetoric, cycling is today clearly endorsed by government

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