Sensing interrail mobility: Towards multimodal methodologies

On the following pages, I discuss the theoretical and methodological underpinnings behind this doctoral work, and clarify the relations between the six publications submitted as parts of this PhD-bypublication. This dissertation focuses on the European train travel phenomenon, interrail. Previous interrail studies have been based on motivational theories (Schönhammer, 1993), satisfaction studies (Fernandes, Sarmento & Matias, 2013) or structural anthropology (Hartmann, 1995; Klingbeil, 1994) through which the phenomenon has been reduced to an expression of underlying social or cultural structures (Franklin, 2004). In these studies, interrailers are represented as relatively ‘lifeless’ actors resembling the generic passenger in transport studies (Cresswell, 2006). I want to break from this distanced understanding of interrail(ers), and subsequently draw on three relevant research fields: performative tourism studies (Ateljevic, Pritchard & Morgan 2007; Edensor, 2000; Haldrup & Larsen, 2010); non-representational theories (Anderson & Harrison, 2012; Dewsbury, 2010; Thrift, 2008), and finally, the sociological ‘turn’ towards mobilities (Edensor, 2007b; Hannam, Butler & Paris, 2014; Urry, 2000). Through this departure point, I animate interrail as a constructed, situated and sensuous travel experience emerging through everyday material and affective practices. This extends the deexotic presumption that tourism experiences should not be disconnected from the plodding of everyday life (Larsen, 2008). However, this optic requires new thoughtful concepts and sensitive methods to describe and understand the inconspicuous dimensions of mobile tourist experiences. This PhD contributes to ongoing reflexive and critical tourism studies through the development of multimodal methods. This dissertation opens with a reflective prelude that describes the project’s history, the practical reasons for specific choices and, not least, the coincidences that shaped this work. Here I remind the reader that although PhD theses often go directly to the aim of the research design, there are countless influential relations, frustrations, derailed ideas, formalities, everyday and highly practical ‘backgrounds’ behind the writing of PhD theses. These details, far from innocent, are central to the construction of academic work. By reading this introduction I hope the reader will have a clearer understanding of the relations that shaped this project. Chapter 2 describes the methods behind this doctoral work, and in so doing reflects upon the methodological contributions that grow out of the project. I develop the concept of ‘distorted representation’ as a reflexive framework around which to understand the influence of sensuousness, performativity and materiality in visual fieldwork (Publication 4). In addition, I propose a manifesto for a novel audiobased tourism research agendum (Publication 5) based on the application of new technologies to capture, distribute, and analyse the role of sounds in tourism experiences. Chapter 3 presents tourism research in relation to the sensuous. More specifically, I position this review in relation to tourism mobility, and discuss how mobility has been represented from different ontological viewpoints. My goal with this presentation is to illustrate how tourism mobility does not have a singular, stable essence, but is given meaning by the way it is conceptually and methodologically engaged with (Publication 1). In this chapter I argue that the sensuousness of mobility is under-researched, and more often than not, highly text-based and focused on the symbolic and conspicuous elements of tourist experiences. In trying to nuance this tendency, I suggest that nonrepresentational theories (Thrift, 2008) work as a contemporary framework through which the sensuous, the affective, the multimodal and the embodied everyday can be creatively reanimated and studied anew (Publication 3 and 6). Chapter 4 discusses the challenges and prospects in working with multimodal methodologies and non-representational theories in tourism research. Out of this discussion I draw three promising future research directions based on respectively: multimodal methodologies; vibrant relational materialism and mobility design. The project concludes by summarising how tourism can be studied anew and what novel knowledge forms and values can be generated by applying non-representational theories in tourism research. The conclusion shortly outlines the primary contributions of this doctoral work.