Cycling: A Sociology of Vélomobility explores cycling as a sociological phenomenon. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, it considers the interaction of materials, competencies and meanings that comprise a variety of cycling practices. What might appear at first to be self-evident actions are shown to be constructed through the interplay of numerous social and political forces. Using a theoretical framework from mobilities studies, its central themes respond to the question of what it is about cycling that provokes so much interest and passion, both positive and negative. Individual chapters consider how cycling has appeared as theme and illustration in social theory, as well as the legacies of these theorizations. The book expands on the image of cycling practices as the product of an assemblage of technology, rider and environment. Riding spaces as material technologies are found to be as important as the machinery of the cycle, and a distinction is made between routes and rides to help interpret aspects of journey-making. Ideas of both affordance and script are used to explore how elements interact in performance to create sensory and experiential scapes. Consideration is also given to the changing identities of cycling practices in historical and geographical perspective. The book adds to existing research by extending the theorization of cycling mobilities. It engages with both current and past debates on the place of cycling in mobility systems and the problems of researching, analyzing and communicating ephemeral mobile experiences.

Objective: The present qualitative study explored health perceptions, diet and the social construction of obesity and how this relates to the initiation and maintenance of a healthier diet in UK Pakistani women.Design: Pakistani women in Greater Manchester participated in focus group and one-to-one discussions. Semi-structured interviews employing fictional vignettes and body shape images were used to explore the participants’ beliefs and practices regarding diet, overweight/obesity and the risk of type 2 diabetes. Transcripts were analysed using phenomenological and sociological approaches.Setting: Interviews took place either in local community and Pakistani resource centres or in private homes.Subjects: First- and second-generation women who were both active in the community and housebound. The women spoke English and/or Urdu.Results: The fifty-five participants lacked the motivation to address weight gain and were unsure how to do so. There was a limited awareness of the link between weight gain and type 2 diabetes. Other barriers included the influence of Islam, culture and familial expectations on home cooking, perceptions that weight gain is inevitable (owing to ageing, childbirth or divine predestination) and the prioritisation of family concerns over individual lifestyle changes. As the findings of the present research did not correspond to existing educational and behaviour change models, a new Health Action Transition conceptual model is proposed.Conclusions: Health education programmes that aim to address obesity and its associated risks in the South Asian community must take into account the complex beliefs and practices and the multiple dimensions of religion, ethnic and social identity within this population. The present study provides further insight into these factors and proposes a novel model for use in designing and implementing education interventions for British Pakistani women.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the autonomous mobility provided by bicycles and tricycles created a mobile imaginary that paved the way for automobility. Through the course of the twentieth century, the growth and decline of cycling mobilities was inseparably entangled with the rise of a range of motor-mobilities (two and four wheeled). Yet cycling persists and is championed widely as a contender for future mobility in post-growth societies. However, the hegemonic position reached by automobility as a dominant system has led to closure of political non-car mobility imaginaries. Reaching targets for Carbon reduction. will entail dramatic transformation of mobility scapes. This paper explores the possibilities and problems inherent in formulating vélomobility as a system of autonomobility, paying special attention to its alignment with the range of radical alternatives clustered around degrowth and pluriversal thought as promising ways to think and act beyond the unsustainable carbon economy. It first examines the challenges of imagining vélomobility not just as a set of practices but cognitively, through its conceptual construction not as an inverse of automobility but as challenge to the political underpinnings of automobility. Second, it considers vélomobility through a set of propositions to reimagine mobility regimes and assess relevant resources from political theory. The final section reverses the gaze and asks what the reconsideration of vélomobility as described previously can bring to the broader discussion of autonomobility.

Cycle tourism poses a number of problems both for academics analysing it as a phenomenon and for those engaged in the management of it. Cycle tourism and cycling more broadly emerge at a nexus of contrasting and often competing agendas. These cross not only administrative policy boundaries, but frequently, as a mobile mode of tourism, geographical boundaries. Further, since the bicycle is also used for quotidian travel, policies designed to facilitate tourism may impact on more mundane activity. This article describes, compares and assesses a number of different strategies used to promote cycle tourism in Wallonia and Flanders. It notes the merits of different strategies employed not only in their capacity to facilitate Belgium as a cycle-tourism destination, but also, through this approach, to encourage and facilitate the specific use of the bicycle as a means of transport fitting with wider social and environmental agendas. It draws on user perspectives and considers the impact of mapping, routing guides and global positioning system (GPS) facilitated travel on the user. The article concludes that both approaches examined have distinctive merits, and that the most important considerations in best provision are the consistency and integration.

In the interwar period, cyclists, the most numerous road users, came into increasing conflict with motorists. The debate around road safety and casualties reveals significant differences between the social and political capital available to different classes of road users, despite their legal equality. Drawing on the coverage of the conflict by the Cyclists' Touring Club (CTC) through their monthly Gazette and on the parliamentary record, this article examines how cyclists understood the problem of increasing accident rates and the solutions proffered in press and parliament to address them. The paper considers cyclists in terms of class, representation, power, and status. It further examines how these factors shaped perceptions of the issues at stake in the safety debate in relation to the governance of road space and the appropriate behaviors and responsibilities of road users.