Networking mobility as urban counter power 1

Abstract

This essay advances the ongoing debate surrounding the civic and political implications of emerging urban mobility afforded by proliferating mobile media and data technologies. It offers a critical interrogation of the articulation of (counter-)public and (contentious) politics in the increasingly networked, mobile and datafied settings of cities. Situated at the intersection of Foucauldian studies and sociological research on digitally enabled mobility, a nuanced approach is put forth to conceptualise the (trans)formation of networked mobile activism among tech savvy urban dwellers in contesting and challenging the hegemonic power manifested in institutionalized mobility. The concept of mobile otherness is invoked to offer a useful conceptual lens in exploring the contours and consequences of networked mobile activism with reference to its real-world exemplifiers, implications, and limitations. In this renewed understanding, networked mobile activism is reconceptualized as a practice of counter power by perpetually creating and modifying itself to counter a normalizing power in motion. The chapter thus highlights the new ways in which grassroots urban mobility emerges in resisting and intervening in the initiatives of institutionalized mobility that subjugate citizens, particularly amidst times of urban policing, state repression, and datafied surveillance.