ABSTRACT

The literature on globalisation is now quite bewildering in its breadth and complexity. Distilling the essence of this literature is thus nigh on impossible, yet one clear implication is that the contemporary world is characterised by new spatial formations in which network morphologies hold sway. From the communication infrastructures of global communications companies to the office structures of the advanced producer services, from the global web of airline routes to the movements of global migration, it seems we live in a world where everything flows. Given this, it has been argued that social scientists’ traditional concern with the fixed and sedentary is being superseded by a preoccupation with the mobile and fluid. Bauman (2001) thus writes of liquidity as the defining characteristic of contemporary society: liquids may not bind or unite, but are extraordinarily mobile. These flows ooze, seep and flow around the world, often spilling over the ‘dams’ and ‘defences’ designed to impede their progress (such as immigration controls and border tariffs). The use of hydraulic metaphors implies a need for theories able to make sense of these new ‘geographies of flow’: a point underlined by Urry’s (2000) recent proposal for a ‘new mobilities’ paradigm.