Mobility and Sedentariness. Practices, Categories, Discourse

Since 19th century, mobility has become a prominent topic for different and highly controversial discourses. Discourses of the interwar period manifest this ambivalence in a particularly clear way. Within this context mobility represents a characteristic moment of social progress but simultaneously a symptom of crisis. It at once manifests freedom and passion but also compulsion and hardship. Mobility and sedentariness are evoked as functions of the nature of a person, groups, or people, alternately perceived as rootedness, wanderlust, virtue/vice, or degeneration. Mobility constitutes the dichotomies of traditional (substantially sedentary) and modern (substantially mobile) society, of rural areas and modern cities. The focus, frames, typologies and categories of these discourses seem extremely persistent. This is especially true regarding the assumption of an increase in mobility during modernity. The (contemporary) finding of drastically and permanently decreased mobility following World War I has gone remarkably unnoticed. This project analyses the production of mobility and sedentariness with all of its disputed and varying meanings and connotations, achieved through conflict and consensus. It focuses on those practices which define and distinguish and try to establish a hierarchy. To analyse the varying efficacy of these practices it is necessary to not only consider scholarly, political and demographic discourses, but also to include a broad variety of more or less successful representations. It must consider explicit and implicit representations, manifested in practices. The project systematically reconstructs and compares a spectrum of variations and contrasts. The construction of a space of possibilities to be mobile or sedentary allows the analysis of the interrelation and interaction of different practices, perspectives and strategies. The project focuses on forms of mobility/sedentariness within the geographic area of Austria 1918-1938, but also considers relevant developments since the end of 19th century. The concentration lies in labour-related forms of more or less mobility/sedentariness: sales, trade, and agricultural work. It must also include all the deeply disputed distinctions and ambiguities surrounding work, unemployment and wandering and drifting without (official) purpose.