The Dictionary of Human Geography

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but that he pushed this displacement to its

limits to create what they call ‘lines of escape’.

Minorliteratureis about the conscious use

of displacement to call into question and

change dominant modes of writing and using

language. By extension, minor theory is intent

on making alternativesubjectivities,spatial-

itiesand temporalities. It seeks to rework

major theory from within, destabilizing

received modes of knowing and the power/

knowledge that produces and frames their

objects. What is constituted as major or minor

is historically and geographically specific.

Deleuze and Guattari make clear that the

major and minor are not different languages

but, rather, different ways of working with the

same language. This work – or play – can

enliven and renovate language (and theory)

so that it is made to express something new

because the limits of its traditional forms are

breached.

The idea of ‘becoming’ is crucial to Deleuze

and Guattari’s notion of the minor. ‘Becom-

ing’ suggests change and mutability, but also

movement that ruptures, decomposes and

recomposes. ‘Becoming’ invokes temporality,

but its space is one of betweenness. Both work

against the sort of dualism that would pit

major against minor, or vice versa, but if the

notion of becoming is to produce a critical

politics, it must be understood as positioned

somewhere (Braidotti, 1994; Katz, 1996). As

a mode of thinking relationally, minor theory

offers a means to reframe and move through

theoretical impasses between, say,marxism

andfeminismor local and global (cf. Massey,

Allen and Sarre, 1999; Anderson 2000b). It

can be a powerful strategy for recognizing and

re-imagining difference; of thinkingrace

throughclassthroughgender, for instance,

and through the iterative displacements such

work calls forth, creating new spaces of and for

political practice and engagement. ck

Suggested reading

Anderson(2000b);Massey,AllenandSarre(1999).

mobility There are two main uses of the term

inhuman geography: (1) the movement of

people, ideas or goods acrossterritory(phys-

ical mobility); and (2) change in social status

(social mobility). Reflecting current interest,

the journalMobilitieswas instituted in 2006.

Human mobility occurs over varying tem-

poral and spatialscales, withmigrationre-

ferring to mobility that involves a change in

residential location, whether within a city or

across continents and daily mobility, including

commuting, referring to movements that do

not entail a change of residence. Involving any

one of a variety of means (e.g. feet, automo-

bile, train, bicycle, airplane, wheelchair), mo-

bility incurs costs in both time and money. As

the costs of mobility have fallen (for example,

the cost of sending a letter; the cost of travel

between London and Mumbai), the separation

between places has shrunk, a process known as

time–space convergence, which has contrib-

uted greatly toglobalization. In addition to

incurring costs, mobility – the ability to move

between and among places, whether on a daily

basis or over thelife course–alsoconfers

benefits; indeed, humans could not exist with-

out some form of mobility, and at every geo-

graphical scale we have been consuming ever

more of it. Because mobility is important for

accessibility,itisoftenconsideredanimport-

ant component of independence and quality of

life (Hanson and Pratt, 1995), such that popu-

lations who lack the temporal or financial re-

sources required for mobility (e.g. the elderly,

childrenor working parents with young chil-

dren) become the focus of concern and mobil-

ity-enhancing programmes.

With the advent of telecommunications,

physical mobility is no longer required for

spatial interaction, and geographers have

devoted considerable attention to understand-

ing the complex relationship between physical

mobility and virtual mobility (e.g. shopping

for books on theinternetafter browsing in a

local bookstore). Whereas physical mobility

does not requirenetworks(one need not

cross a meadow on a path), it is certainly

enhanced by them, as movement is easier on

a network than off of one. Virtual mobility

does rely on network structures. For both

physical and virtual mobility, networks are

crucially important in channelling and shap-

ing mobility patterns.

Social mobility, which refers to upward or

downward changes in the socio-economic sta-

tus of individuals orhouseholds, has drawn

considerable attention inurbanandsocial

geography. Of particular interest has been

the relationship between social mobility and

spatial mobility; in theories associated with

thechicago schoolof urban sociology: for

example, the upward social mobility that

accompanied the assimilation of immigrants

into American society took place via residential

movement ever outwards from the urban core.

Like other forms of mobility, social mobility

also involves networks; the size, social compos-

ition and spatial location of a person’s network

of social contacts can affect the probability of

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MOBILITY