Vincent Kaufmann

A study on how to take control of the demands of modern life through the lens of rhythm. We live in a world increasingly saturated—with signs, norms, objects, and demands—and that overstimulation contributes to our daily sense of alienation. In this manifesto, the authors argue that the path to emancipation lies in our capacity to reclaim political agency over our rhythms, both individual and collective. A Manifesto for a Rhythm Politics explores the fundamentally spatial and territorial dimensions of time, as well as the temporal dynamics of spatial forms, to sketch the contours of a rhythmology. Rather than simply opposing fullness to emptiness, slowness to acceleration, or overwork to boredom, they invite us to reflect on what enables us to breathe and what awakens our desire. By returning to the original meaning of rhythm—a way of flowing—the book offers a dynamic understanding of societies. It allows us to bridge measurement and lived experience, and to recognize the role of spontaneity, randomness, disorganization, and disorder alongside regularity. On a practical level, rhythm provides tools to address diverse issues such as traffic congestion, personal burnout, and the management of crowds. Ultimately, a politics of rhythm advocates for a choreographic approach to emancipation—one that embraces different ways of living while composing a shared world.

Mobility, which has represented a critical scientific category and political driver, is currently under strong public scrutiny: has mobility lost its potential for social cohesion and political integration? Europe Beyond Mobility: Mobilities, Social Cohesion and Political Integration assesses this question by focusing on the European integration process, conceptualized as a political project for the promotion of different flows of mobility.Mobility has been a fundamental tool for territorial strength and political integration among European countries. Based on a realistic understanding of the potentials and limits of mobility, this book pleads for a "resonant mobility" in the interest of a renovated European integration process. It examines how, in opposition to those advocating for national borders and mobility restrictions, the EU needs to explore new regulatory models which limit mobility’s adverse social, economic, and environmental impacts and make accessible the benefits of alternative flow models. It also provides an analytical framework for the study of current trends of mobility limitation, migration restriction and re-bordering, and offers a complementary and innovative framework for the study of globalization.Europe Beyond Mobility will be of interest to academics and students as well as policy makers and practitioners internationally in the fields of mobility, migration and border studies.

Mobility, which has represented a critical scientific category and political driver, is currently under strong public scrutiny: has mobility lost its potential for social cohesion and political integration? Europe Beyond Mobility: Mobilities, Social Cohesion and Political Integration assesses this question by focusing on the European integration process, conceptualized as a political project for the promotion of different flows of mobility.Mobility has been a fundamental tool for territorial strength and political integration among European countries. Based on a realistic understanding of the potentials and limits of mobility, this book pleads for a "resonant mobility" in the interest of a renovated European integration process. It examines how, in opposition to those advocating for national borders and mobility restrictions, the EU needs to explore new regulatory models which limit mobility’s adverse social, economic, and environmental impacts and make accessible the benefits of alternative flow models. It also provides an analytical framework for the study of current trends of mobility limitation, migration restriction and re-bordering, and offers a complementary and innovative framework for the study of globalization.Europe Beyond Mobility will be of interest to academics and students as well as policy makers and practitioners internationally in the fields of mobility, migration and border studies.

Conditions for travel have changed and are still changing the world ? a world experiencing what John Urry calls the ?mobility turn?. Since World War Two we have been moving faster and going further ? a fact that has profoundly changed our way of experiencing both the world and ourselves. The explosion of low-cost travel options has similarly had an important impact on the economy, adding to the globalization of markets and transformations in modes of production. It is no longer possible to think of nation-states as autonomous vis-a-vis one another, nor of cities or regions as homogenous spaces delimited by clear-cut borders. Societies, like Western cities, are redefining themselves through mobility. What does this mean for the city ? for its governability and governance? In this book Vincent Kaufmann assesses the urban implications of the mobility turn. He explores the modern urban phenomenon from the point of view of the mobility capacities of its players ? their motility. He asks that the reader consider the idea of a city or region as the product or an arrangement of a specific set of motilities. Re-Thinking the City seeks to identify how the motility of individuals, goods, and information acts as an organizing principle ? or rather, the organizing principle ? of contemporary urban change, and then aims to examine the consequences for urban governance by exploring the channels through which individual and collective motility can be regulated.

All too often, mobility is evoked as a preferred indicator in explanations of space-time compression and its impact. However, in failing to clearly distinguish speed potentials from their use, such analyses veer towards technological determinism, or else towards the normative domain. In order to avoid this trap, the motivations underlying mobility must be explored. This groundbreaking examination is carried out through a discussion of the following general question: to what extent can the speed potentials generated by technological transportation systems be considered as vectors of social change? It also provides an opportunity to study in greater depth the little-known field of the sociology of mobility. Following an examination of the existing controversies surrounding social fluidification, it proposes to rethink mobility using the new concept of motility. Current contributions to and research results in this new area are included and the book indicates possible new research directions, opening the way to a new form of general sociology.

Conditions for travel have changed and are still changing the world – a world experiencing what John Urry calls the `mobility turn’. Since World War Two we have been moving faster and going further – a fact that has profoundly changed our way of experiencing both the world and ourselves. The explosion of low-cost travel options has similarly had an important impact on the economy, adding to the globalization of markets and transformations in modes of production. It is no longer possible to think of nation-states as autonomous vis-a-vis one another, nor of cities or regions as homogenous spaces delimited by clear-cut borders. Societies, like Western cities, are redefining themselves through mobility. What does this mean for the city – for its governability and governance? In this book Vincent Kaufmann assesses the urban implications of the mobility turn. He explores the modern urban phenomenon from the point of view of the mobility capacities of its players – their motility. He asks that the reader consider the idea of a city or region as the product or an arrangement of a specific set of motilities. Re-Thinking the City seeks to identify how the motility of individuals, goods, and information acts as an organizing principle – or rather, the organizing principle – of contemporary urban change, and then aims to examine the consequences for urban governance by exploring the channels through which individual and collective motility can be regulated.

Writer, artist, filmmaker, provocateur, revolutionary, and impresario of the Situationist International, Guy Debord shunned the apparatus of publicity he dissected so brilliantly in his most influential work, The Society of the Spectacle. In this ambitious and innovative biography, Vincent Kaufmann places Debord's very hostility toward the inquisitive, biographical gaze at the center of an investigation into his subject's diverse output-from his earliest films to his landmark works of social theory and political provocation-and the poetic sensibility that informed both his work and his life.Instead of providing a conventional day-to-day account of Debord's life, Kaufmann deftly locates his subject within the historical and intellectual context of the radical social, political, and artistic movements in which he participated. He traces Debord's development as an intellectual: his involvement with the lettrist movement in the early 1950s, his central role in the Situationist International from 1957 to 1971 and in the events of May 1968, and the productive and frequently misunderstood period between the dissolution of the situationists and his suicide, during which time Debord clarified the rules of his war against inauthenticity.As Kaufmann makes clear, for Debord political thought and action were inseparable from aesthetics and poetic expression. Whether envisioning the recovery of a lost, protocommunist age of authenticity and transparency in The Society of the Spectacle or critically assessing the possibility of revolution against postmodern capitalism two decades later, Debord advocated and practiced an art of defiance, a concurrently martial and melancholic poetics. Avoiding the mythologies about Debord that both admirers and critics have cultivated, Kaufmann provides a groundbreaking and generous assessment of Debord and his uncompromising struggle against a corrupt civilization.

All too often, mobility is evoked as a preferred indicator in explanations of space-time compression and its impact. However, in failing to clearly distinguish speed potentials from their use, such analyses veer towards technological determinism, or else towards the normative domain. In order to avoid this trap, the motivations underlying mobility must be explored. This groundbreaking examination is carried out through a discussion of the following general question: to what extent can the speed potentials generated by technological transportation systems be considered as vectors of social change? It also provides an opportunity to study in greater depth the little-known field of the sociology of mobility. Following an examination of the existing controversies surrounding social fluidification, it proposes to rethink mobility using the new concept of motility. Current contributions to and research results in this new area are included and the book indicates possible new research directions, opening the way to a new form of general sociology.