10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17045
application/pdf
2038-3460
17045
1
en
Andrés Felipe Valderrama Pineda
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Giuseppina Pellegrino, The Politics of Proximity. Mobility and Immobility in Practice, Ashgate Publishing, 2011
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
3
Book Reviews
2012-06-16
2023-05-25
2012-06-16
2023-07-10
143-145
TS
Andrés Felipe Valderrama Pineda
2012/06/16
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17045
143
Technical University of Denmark
2038-3460
1
en
145
Giuseppina Pellegrino, The Politics of Proximity. Mobility and Immobility in Practice, Ashgate Publishing, 2011
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17045/15939
3
                                                                    BOOK REVIEWS       143




In political sciences and philosophy                 Giuseppina Pellegrino
the trend is now focused on                  The Politics of Proximity. Mobility
deliberative democracy. The high                and Immobility in Practice
epistemic challenge, recognized by
Vinck throughout his book, needs                2011, Ashgate Publishing, 157 pp.
high level of reflection and not only
participation. These forums are not
the panacea as he describes them,                Andrés Felipe Valderrama Pineda
but I think they need as much                    (Technical University of Denmark)
expertise, know-how and assessment
as the research on nanotechnologies.
These participative devices could            The Politics of Proximity, edited by
offer good public spaces to confront         Giuseppina Pellegrino, is one of the
the different actors, following and          most salient contributions to the field
defending different definitions of           of mobility studies and to sociology
nanotechnologies.      Among      the        in general published in the last few
requirements of a deliberative               years. The main reason for this is that
democracy, in fact, the main point is        it takes up seriously the question
the obligation to present arguments.         “why do we move so much?” This
In one of the more prominent theory          question is pertinent at a moment in
of the argument (Toulmin, 1958), an          history when two contradictory
argument is composed of different            developments are happening: on the
steps. The first one is precisely to         one hand, we have now all the
agree on data and definitions. It            technological development necessary
would certainly be a way to continue         to reduce corporeal travel and at the
Vinck’s book.                                same time remain connected; on the
                                             other hand, the same technologies
References                                   could support the old dream of living
                                             in the countryside and still be part of
Callon, M., Lascoumes, P. and Barthe, Y.     the urbanity, being permanently
    (2001) Agir dans un monde incertain,
                                             connected. However, never in history
    Seuil, Paris.
Toulmin, S.E. (1958) The Uses of Argument,   humans have travelled so much, and
    Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.   never in history humans have
                                             crammed so much into dense and
                                             expensive cities. Why does this
                                             happen? Why do we pay so much
                                             money to live in cities and travel in
                                             them and between them so often? In
                                             short, why do we take so much pain
                   ***                       to be in proximity? This is the
                                             question for the politics of proximity
                                             that the various authors of this
                                             excellent compilation take up and
144 TECNOSCIENZA – 3 (1)




    discuss.                                   missed summary conclusion to the
    The short and concise foreword by          book.
    John Urry sets the stage for the book,     Buscema’s ambitious attempt to
    while      Giuseppina       Pellegrino’s   bring together Marxists theories,
    accomplished introduction presents         Foucaultdian bio-politics and a
    the main questions to be addressed         superficial reference to social
    in the book and its contributions.         movements in Mexico is incomplete
    The main contributions are four:           and even dangerous. It misses the
    first, to take up and discuss “the         opportunity to discuss one of the
    inescapably political character of         most salient aspects of the politics of
    proximity”; second, the need to            mobility/immobility at a global scale:
    move ahead with (apply and discuss)        that for many communities and
    John Urry’s principles for a sociology     groups immobility is the result of
    of mobility and a mobile sociology;        confinement and aggression. They
    third, to perform analyses that take       have not chosen to be immobile, but
    into account the “sociotechnical           have been forced to do so because
    constitution of our everyday life”;        they are allowed to move only under
    and fourth, to focus on “practice as       certain conditions.
    the situated and material locus of         Gerharz elaborates how some of the
    proximity and mobility”.                   inhabitants of Jaffna, in Sri Lanka,
    Three parts constitute the body of         became immobile and disconnected
    the edited volume. The first is            during the war. She describes and
    dedicated to the theoretical discus-       discusses the various identity clashes
    sion of proximity and mobility. The        occurring when a ceasefire was
    other     two     present     empirical    enforced and emigrants from the city
    contributions dealing with diverse         could return after years of exile in
    methods: the second part focuses on        various countries of North America
    issues of identity; the third on global    and Europe. Unfortunately, she – as
    firms and urban landscapes. For            a Western anthropologist – chooses
    space reasons I will not discuss here      to be “stranged” by the way local
    all the contributions, but I will focus    traditional persons could not
    on some aspects that caught my             understand the Western customs
    attention.                                 appropriated by the emigrants.
    Marchetti’s contribution is a brilliant    Gerharz missed the opportunity to
    summary of Urry’s theories and a           discuss some of the Western
    useful discussion on the role of           perversions, though she reports some
    physical and social space. Engelbrekt      allusions to them, as for instance in
    presents the notion of attainable          the following remarkable description
    reach as a useful tool to discuss the      by a professor in Jaffna: “Before the
    politics of proximity. Lamentably,         ceasefire, Jaffna was a closed prison.
    neither of these two excellent             Now it has become an open market”.
    theoretical contributions is taken up      Shuffling the adjectives could
    in the empirical cases, nor in a much-     provokingly inspire more symmetry:
                                                                BOOK REVIEWS      145




open prison, closed market!                social and economic aspects, become
In stark contrast to the sufferings of     bounded in particular experiences of
people from Jaffna, in another             mobility along fixed routines. Just
contribution Gherardi discusses how        like in Jaffna during the war in Sri
middle and top managers suffer or          Lanka, in Chile Roberto, Francisco,
enjoy the hyper-mobility required in       Catalina and Rodrigo – the
their jobs. She ably shows how top         protagonists of Jirón’s empirical
managers regard their hyper-mobility       account – are trapped in the open
as a resource and source of                prisons of their mobile routines.
enjoyment, because they are able to
establish homes in many places.
Meanwhile, middle managers – who
are also compelled to travel or re-
settle, but have fewer resources –
suffer the dislocations of multi-
territoriality.
I would have loved to see the
managers and the inhabitants of
Jaffna treated in the same way as
sources of knowledge. In the book,
however, the latters are “stranged”
while the formers are not. As
mobilities studies grow in number of
case     studies     and     theoretical
sophistication, it would be desirable
the complete abandonment of the
old Eurocentric mania of treating
Western and non-Western peoples as
ontologically different.
Finally, Paola Jirón’s compelling
analysis of mobility practices in
Santiago de Chile is worthy of note.
This is because it neatly deploys the
mobility/proximity analytical spirit to
show how people can be “confined
in their mobility experiences” (and
thus making the point that Buscema
misses). These experiences are
constituted by a set of choices in
which socio-economic aspects play a
role. However, the very soul of this
contribution is to illustrate how those
abstract and sometimes quantifiable
