In this article we argue that the mobilities turn and its studies of the performativity of everyday (im)mobilities enable new forms of sociological inquiry, explanation and engagement. New kinds of researchable entities arise, opening up a new or rediscovered realm of the empirical, and new avenues for critique. The mobilities paradigm not only remedies the academic neglect of various movements, of people, objects, information and ideas. It also gathers new empirical sensitivities, analytical orientations, methods and motivations to examine important social and material phenomena and fold social science insight into responses. After an outline of the mobilities paradigm, this article provides a wide-ranging review of emergent `mobile methods' of studying (im)mobilities. We discuss some of the new researchable entities they engender and explore important implications for the relationship between the empirical, theory, critique, and engagement.

This article assesses some potential approaches to museums and cities propelled by a theoretical preoccupation with modernity as a condition of speed. Here, one can extrapolate two variants in the writings and interventions of Marinetti, Simmel, Virilio, and writers in the postmodern tradition: (a) the museum is slow, it is a brake on modernity, it is modernity’s sedentary other and (b) the museum is fast, it is as quick as the city, reflecting modernity’s impulse toward acceleration. To finesse these approaches, the article will move toward the method of rhythmanalysis and an emphasis on time—space considerations. It is Lefebvre’s teasing last snippets on the concept of rhythm, the article will argue, presaged by Benjamin’s approach to the variant tempos of modernity in The Arcades Project, that point to a fuller and more advanced approach to urban—museological relations and the multiple rhythms that feature in both.

This paper argues that rather than simply enabling studies of regulation and embodiment, rhythm can facilitate reintegration of the apparently separate dimensions of mobile experience enabling them, as Cresswell says, to ‘make sense together’. Taking a critical lead from Lefebvre's engagement with Lacan, it argues that in order for this to happen a more active and reflexive sense of listening to rhythm is needed than that provided by Lefebvre. Drawing on a conception of listening developed by Ihde, Nancy and LaBelle the paper concludes by exploring some ways in which the rhythms of the railway station produce experiences which are simultaneously affectively embodied and deeply socially and culturally meaningful.

It seems that a new paradigm is being formed within the social sciences, the ‘new mobilities’ paradigm. Some recent contributions to forming and stabilising this new paradigm include work from anthropology, cultural studies, geography, migration studies, science and technology studies, tourism and transport studies, and sociology. In this paper we draw out some characteristics, properties, and implications of this emergent paradigm, especially documenting some novel mobile theories and methods. We reflect on how far this paradigm has developed and thereby to extend and develop the ‘mobility turn’ within the social sciences.

This article explores aspects of travelling times. First, it is argued that there is something about contemporary times in which travelling assumes a greater significance within many people's lives, even at a time when more communication devices are readily ‘at-hand’. Also, it is shown that there are multiple kinds of time involved in the process of travel and not just the measured clock-time that people seek to minimize in getting from A to B. It is further shown that the problem for travellers and, indeed, for non travellers is coordinating multiple and inconsistent times through complex communications and scheduling tools. Thus travel time involves sets of activities that require examination since the time is not always wasted, dead or empty. These points are demonstrated with regard to walking, train travel and even car journeys.