Marcoux, Jean-Sebastian; (2001) The experience of mobility. An anthropological analysis of tenants' displacements in Montreal. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis explores the experience of mobility through the process of house moving in Montreal. It is a study grounded in an ethnographic fieldwork that took place between September 1997 and July 1999. Data were collected through participant observation, by accompanying people throughout the process of their move, and assisting them in their move. It examines a range of anthropological issues such as the distribution of power in relation to residential groups, the constitution of subjectivity in motion, the relations coming into existence on the move as well as the role of material culture. It also looks at the construction of ageing brought about by mobility. The experience of mobility is situated in its broader context. The political and economic conditions which make it possible are analysed as well as the social categories in the light of which the experience takes on its meanings. As such, the thesis challenges major Western ideological and philosophical preconceptions regarding stability. It demonstrates how stability has progressively been normalised in the Western world against the threat that the moving crisis represents; how, in other words, remaining in place has become a norm of domestic life as well as its condition. The ethnographic evidence recognises that moving in Montreal is often apprehended as a crisis, not to say dreaded. It shows how moving is considered to be a crisis. It also reveals, however, that it is a crisis that is often taken to be worth going through. The thesis thus explores how people use mobility and how they cope with it. In that sense, it acknowledges the role played by objects; those objects with which people move and which are at the heart of the creation and the re-creation of a sense of place. One contribution of this thesis is to emphasises how people in Montreal, tenants in particular, use space and movement across space to construct themselves as subjects. Far from resulting from a lack of attachment to place, moving appears to be understandable as a dwelling practice, not to say rational in the Montreal context. It becomes a means to take advantage of the renting system. At least, it is a attempt to make the best of it.

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