From Stabilitas Loci to Mobilitas Loci: Networked Mobility and the Transformation of Place

Abstract

This paper explores the notion of place in relation to networked mobility and mobile phone use. Two key arguments are developed. The first is that the experience of place persists and remains an important consideration in relation to mobile phone use. The ‘domestication’ approach to understanding the development and uses of new technologies is considered useful in explaining this persistence. The second is that networked mobility actually forces a renegotiation of place, and leads to significantly altered understandings of place and place-making. This is theorised as a shift from a traditional understanding of place as stable and fixed (stabilitas loci), to a reconceptualisation of place as experienced in and understood through mobility (mobilitas loci). The paper concludes by sketching some of the potential, and possible implications, that this renewed understanding of place might have for future studies of networked mobility.

Keywords

• networked and place
• mobile phones