Sociology of Cycling

The disadvantages of over-reliance on the private car become more apparent as congestion increases and transportation emissions rise. The literature suggests that cycling may support the development of sustainable cities, and needs to be more vigorously promoted as a widespread form of contemporary urban transport than currently evident. This research project will interrogate cycling policy and its practice in Western Australia. The original empirical contribution will utilise a primarily qualitative approach. The proposed methodology for this study consists of; 1) content analysis of key cycling policy documents; 2) case studies of local cycling implementation, and 3) focus groups with participants from a variety of transport mode preferences. The research will develop a broad theoretical framework informed by critical political economy and the cycling-related mobility, anthropology, public health, planning, and transportation literature. I review the regime of automobility (the private car and the infrastructure that supports it). Thirdly, I discuss aspects of cycling, and the politicisation of transportation choice. Overall, the proposed research will investigate variations in, and understandings of cycling culture, with a specific focus on the barriers to, and opportunities for increased cycling in Perth.

Competitive cycling has always been particularly popular in the Benelux, France and Italy, but has spread first continetally and then globally in recent decades. But how global is actually competitive cycling today? In this article we analyze the globalization of road cycling for men. 
 
Wielrennen is van oudsher vooral populair in de Benelux, Frankrijk en Italië. Vanuit deze landen verspreidde de wielersport zich over de wereld. Maar hoe mondiaal is de wielersport vandaag de dag eigenlijk? In dit artikel analyseren wij de mondialisering van het wegwielrennen voor mannen.

Un elemento acompaña al viaje de forma ineludible: el mapa. Cuando la popularidad de la bicicleta creció durante los últimos años del siglo XIX, la visión del espacio urbano y rural de los ciclistas se plasmó también en una particular cartografía. Mapas para ciclistas, hechos por ciclistas como Joaquim Bordons .

A B S T R A C T This article compares the current state of cycling in London to the Amsterdam cycling transition of the 1970s, applying the Multi-Level Perspective to identify potential pathways and obstacles to the wider adoption of the cycling niche in London. Our approach is two-pronged, consisting of a historical perspective to analyse the cycling transition in Amsterdam, and a policy analysis in contemporary London, based on semi-structured interviews with respondents involved in London's cycling policy. We identify factors that reinforce cycling's niche status in London, thus making the wider adoption of cycling more challenging than it was in Amsterdam. Based on our comparison, we also highlight policy, infrastructure and cultural changes that will aid in promoting a cycling transition in London.

There is strong evidence that athletes have approached the improvement of their performance with intelligence and creativity from the very beginnings of formal competition. This has involved the evolution of training methods, the development of equipment and experimentation with diet. However, the introduction of significant prizes in events such as the ancient Olympics quickly corrupted the noble goals of seeking athletic perfection for itself or as a tribute to the Gods. Certainly in the ancient Olympic Games competitors used a variety of herbs and funguses as stimulants and hallucinogenics. Philostratus, a 3rd-2nd Century BC sophist, reveals that doctors helped athletes prepare for their events at Olympia and advised cooks in the preparation of concoctions containing such ingredients as the juice of the opium poppy to deaden pain. However evidence is hard to come by as they carefully hid their efforts from the Hellanodikai, the judges, as athletes continue to do (König, 2008; Papagelopoulos, Mavrogenis, and Soucacos, 2004). It is possible that the English word ‘doping’ originates in the Dutch word dop, a viscous opium juice, probably similar to that used by the ancient Greeks (Bowers, 1998).

This article develops the concept of " smart velomobility " that is concerned with networked practices, systems and technologies of cycling. The concept draws on velomobility, Smart Mobility/Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), Smart Cities and the Internet of Things (IoT). The article presents results from an empirical study, where 80 riders of a networked fleet of e-bikes discuss their experience of smart velomobility. The results show how digital and physical mobilities merge, the way riders of the networked fleet interact with the data, how they share the data and how they feel tracked (privacy). The conclusion sketches out future research of " smart velomobilities " and also points out the policy and innovation potential of cycling as active, sustainable and networked mode of transport in the context of Smart Cities and the Internet of Things. Crown

El cantón de Osa, ubicado en el Pacífico Sur, es uno de los más extensos en territorio, aunque poco poblado en relación a su densidad, caracterizándose por un entorno rural, predominantemente agropecuario, aunque el turismo y sector servicios ha estado en constante aumento durante los últimos diez años.

Así mismo, Osa concentra la casi totalidad del tránsito vehicular que comunica el Pacífico sur con el resto del territorio nacional, pero también la región de Panamá con Costa Rica y el resto de la región centroamericana por contar con las dos rutas principales: la carretera Interamericana Sur, que funciona desde la década de 1960 y la Costanera Sur, habilitada desde el 2008.

Esto implica necesariamente el tránsito por el cantón y sus principales centros de población de miles de vehículos y sobre todo del transporte de carga que siguen las rutas mencionadas, que a partir del 2010, con la conclusión de la Costanera, generó un flujo mayor de vehículos por Osa.

El resultado ha sido el paulatino aumento de siniestros de tránsito que involucran a gran cantidad de personas lesionadas y fallecidas en carretera producto, entre otros factores, del exceso de velocidad, desconocimiento de las rutas, condiciones climáticas, fatiga, monotonía de la carretera, condiciones que se abordarán a lo largo del presente informe.

Sin embargo, no son solamente las personas en tránsito las que están expuestas a los incidentes de tránsito, sino también usuarios locales, siendo el alcohol y la imprudencia de conductores y motociclistas dos elementos centrales que se desprenden de las estadísticas en los últimos años.

Se abordará desde una óptica particular, aunque de manera inicial, el tema del ciclismo no recreativo, sino como medio de transporte cotidiano, históricamente arraigado entre la población del cantón de Osa, que lo convierte en rasgo particular y distintivo presente en todas las rutas, nacionales y cantonales, dentro de la zona de estudio, con particular énfasis en los centros de población.

Los y las usuarias de bicicleta, en conjunto con los peatones, son los segmentos más vulnerables entre la población en carretera y los menos abordados y comprendidos en cuanto a sus comportamientos, actitudes y hábitos referidos a la seguridad vial, por tanto serán tema de análisis.

La consulta y el acompañamiento a instituciones que de una u otra forma se relacionan al tema de la seguridad vial (Municipalidad, Poder Judicial, Policía de Tránsito, CCSS, Ministerio de Salud, Fuerza Pública, etc.), sectores sociales y empresariales, fueron consultados en cuanto a sus inquietudes y propuestas relacionados con la seguridad vial en las carreteras de Osa.

Why did cycling become professional as early as the late nineteenth century, while other sports (such as rugby) and other sport events (such as the Olympic Games) remained amateur until the 1980s? Why are the organizers of the most important bicycle races private companies, while in other sports such as soccer the main event organizer is a nonprofit organization? To what extent have bicycle races changed since the late nineteenth century? And how does cycling reflect long-term economic changes? The history of professional road cycling helps answer these questions and understand many related phenomena. This chapter provides a long-term, historical perspective on (1) professional road cycling’s economic agents, i.e., the public, race organizers, team sponsors and riders, and the relationships amongst them; (2) cycling’s governing body, the International Cycling Union; and (3) professional cycling’s final product, i.e., the show of bicycle races. More precisely, the chapter mostly focuses on the history of male professional road cycling in Western Europe since the late nineteenth century. It is founded on both an analysis of quantitative time series on the Grand Tours (and, to some extent, the classics) and a review of the existing literature on the history of professional cycling, whether economic history, institutional history, cultural history, or sport history.

This paper demonstrates the evolving nature of qualitative field research and is structured upon themes emerging from the data. Following an initial critique of concepts, data was collected progressively at Bikeability training events in a primary school through observations of cycling practice, interviews with parents and questionnaires with children. The research developed from an initial curiosity about cycle training and its effectiveness to reduce accident rates, progressing to investigating parents’ attitudes to Bikeability and whether the cycle training has a positive effect on children’s learning experience, not least their ability ride a bicycle. The researcher also discovered that Bikeability has potential to improve a child’s understanding of a range of concepts encountered across the school curriculum such as mechanical understanding and forces, as well as developing self-confidence, vigilance and awareness to be safe on the roads. Interestingly, it was observed that varying degrees of parental support for Bikeability had a significant effect on children’s ability, interest levels and cycling habits than first anticipated.

State leaders in the Arabian Peninsula have increasingly sought to host globalized sporting events to broadcast a cosmopolitan and modern image of the region. These efforts are typically interpreted as examples of states exercising 'soft power'. This article challenges the state-centric assumptions built into the soft power approach by employing an event ethnography of the 2016 UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Doha. Advancing a more grounded geopolitics of elite sport in the Gulf, I examine how geopolitical identity narratives about Qatar, and the Gulf region more broadly, circulate at various scales and through countless contingent encounters at the event. I ask specifically how these identity narratives are constructed and challenged, both materially and discursively by athletes, spectators and urban residents. Sporting events, I argue, are key sites of geopolitical encounter: where subjects and spaces are not predetermined, but actively constituted through people's interactions in the host cities and countries.

Contents : 1. French Cycling: Issues and Themes
2. The Early Years: Cycling in Search of an Identity (1869-91)
3. Towards Sporting Modernity: Sport as the Driver of Cycling  (1891-1902)
4. The Belle Epoque and the Great War: Industry, Sport, Utility and Leisure (1903-1918)
5. Cycling between the Wars: Sport, Recreation, Ideology (1919-39)
6. From Defeat to the New France: Sport and Society, Cycling and Everyday Life  (1940-1959)
7. Cycling's Glory Years and their Mediatization (1960-80)
8. Cycling in Transformation: Industry, Recreation, Sport (1980-2000)
9. French Cycling in Quest of a New Identity (2000-11)
10.  A Sense of Cycling in France / French Cycling
END

Der vorliegende Sammelband ist eine anerkennenswerte studentische Leistung, die im Bachelorstudiengang Geographie am Geographischen Institut der Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen im Rahmen des „Integrativen Projekts“ (5. Fachsemester) im Wintersemester 2010/2011 erbracht wurde. Grundlage der empirischen Forschungsarbeit war das vom Bundeswirtschaftsministerium im Rahmen des Programms „IKT für Elektromobilität“ geförderte Projekt „eE-Tour Allgäu – effiziente Elektromobilität und Tourismus“. Die Arbeitsgruppen Humangeographie unter Leitung von Prof. Dr. Rainer Rothfuß und Geoinformatik, geleitet von Prof. Dr. Volker Hochschild, widmeten sich in diesem Forschungs- und Entwicklungsverbundprojekt der Fragestellung nach der Nutzerakzeptanz und räumlichen Mustern von Elektromobilität sowie den Einsatzmöglichkeiten Geographischer Informationssysteme (GIS) zur Standortanalyse für Ladestationen sowie zur energiebezogenen Routenoptimierung für E-Fahrzeuge.

This paper concerns the co-constitution of citizens and environments, and how the association of outdoor spaces produced as particular ‘natures’ with particular performative norms produces distinct spatialities of inclusion and exclusion. These issues are explored in relation to the moral geographies of outdoor access, whereby the realisation of citizen entitlements to perform outdoor activity depend on the spatial production of norms, practices and identities in relation to various ‘natures’. Using mountain biking as an example, the paper explores how particular subjectivities become placed in the ‘nature domesticated’ of purpose-built trail centres and displaced from the ‘nature wild’ of mountains. Trail centres are positioned as places of play, ignorance and recklessness in which mountain bikers can belong, whilst mountains are constituted as places of responsibility, quiet contemplation and seriousness, in which mountain bikers are out of place. Such spatialisation, setting practices of play and responsibility in opposition to each other, is flagged as problematic in relation to the actualisation of citizenship entitlements, and in turn meeting a range of societal goals for health, wellbeing and ecological knowledges. Despite arguments that play is generative (rather than the ‘other’) of responsibility, there is evidence to suggest that such a dichotomy could become more materially realised, with implications for the ability of citizens to access and share space, and to translate their knowledge and experience from one ‘nature’ to another.

The number of cities offering bikeshare has increased rapidly, from just a handful in the late 1990s to over 800 currently. This paper provides a review of recent bikeshare literature. Several
themes have begun to emerge from studies examining bikeshare. Convenience is the major motivator for bikeshare use. Financial savings has been found to motivate those on a low income and the distance one lives from a docking station is an important predictor for bikeshare membership. In a range of countries, it has been found that just under 50% of bikeshare members use the system less than once a month. Men use bikeshare more than women, but the imbalance is not as dramatic as private bike riding (at least in low cycling countries). Commuting is the most common trip purpose for annual members. Users are less likely than private cyclists to wear helmets, but in countries with mandatory helmet legislation, usage levels have suffered. Bikeshare users appear less likely to be injured than private bike riders. Future directions include integration with ebikes, GPS (global positioning system), dockless systems and improved public transport integration. Greater research is required to quantify the impacts of bikeshare, in terms of mode choice, emissions, congestion and health.

Die kulturelle Symbolik des Radfahrens entfaltet sich in Frankreich zwischen Komödie und Tragödie. Das Alltagsrad muss erst Mode werden, um sich durchzusetzen Auf dem Pariser Messegelände fand kürzlich zum zweiten Mal die französische Fahrradmesse Salon du Cycle[1] statt. Im Gegensatz zum Automobil gibt es beim Fahrrad echte Innovationen zu bestaunen. Mit Nabendynamos und LED-Scheinwerfern bleibt das Licht auch bei Regen an. Unplattbare Reifen lassen Pannen der Vergangenheit angehören. Hydraulische Bremsen pressen die Bremsbacken ohne Reibungsverlust des Bowdenzugs an die Felge. Neuartige Edel-Schaltungen ehemaliger Porsche-Ingenieure versprechen wartungsfreien Betrieb. Manche Fahrräder wiegen nur noch 6 anstatt 16 Kilo. Sogar die alte ölige Fahrradkette lässt sich durch einen Riemenantrieb ersetzen. Das Fahrrad ist zum Designobjekt und Innovationsträger geworden. E-Bikes: Am Batteriendesign zeigt sich ein kultureller Bruch Und jedes Jahr steigen die Verkäufe der Elektroräder[2], die dem Auto auf urbanen Mittelstrecken Konkurrenz machen. Wen wundert es da, dass auch Patrick Blain, Präsident des französischen Autoherstellerverbands Comité des Constructeurs Français d'Automobiles (CCFA[3]) über die Messe schlenderte und das Elektrobike eines deutschen Autoherstellers genau unter die Lupe nahm.

This article explores the contemporary co-production of bicycle practices in Copenhagen and the heterogeneous work involved in making a city pro-cycling. Attention is given as much to the sayings and doings of everyday commuters, as to planners, physical designs and campaigns. I ask: why, and how, are cycling practices continually (re)produced in Copenhagen and how can they attract so many practitioners? The first section discusses and employs practice theory, as it is well suited for examining practices of cycling. The second section explores how Copenhagen Municipality designed and scripted a cycle-friendly space by installing bike infrastructure, promoting cultural meanings and nourishing user competences. I argue that this is done through a heterogeneous process of normalizing and mainstreaming cycling and making alliances with other commuters. The third section shows how cyclists co-produce cycling practices by performing cycling and by enlisting and passing on knowledge to new practitioners. The concluding highlights the potentials of practice theory to fully understand cycling, and it unravels some of the problems of Copenhagenizing low-cycling cities.

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. The book adds to existing research by extending the theorisation of cycling mobilities. It engages with both current and past debates on the place of cycling in mobility systems and the problems of researching, analysing and communicating ephemeral mobile experiences.

In recent years, bicycle infrastructure has emerged as a valued part of urban development policy in many American cities, and a process that depends on the normalization of cycling practice in three respects. First, the various ‘less confrontational’ mutations of Critical Mass have redefined the politics of cycling in cultural and consumerist terms. Second, this ‘bike culture’ is mediated through Internet networks that generate concepts of proper cycling practice. Third, both spatial models and standards of ‘correct’ ridership circulate through these networks, linking ‘bike culture’ to institutional networks of implementation. While positive from the standpoint of increased ridership, this may reinscribe the exclusions that are constitutive of the contemporary American city and may limit cycling’s egalitarian potential.

This paper is concerned with the Bicycle Culture in Beirut where the aim is to nurture and celebrate the two-wheeled culture. It targets the young generation and the existing bikers of Beirut, hoping to reshape the way they experience their city. It looks into cultures that embrace the bicycle and how they are structured as well as other cities that are preparing for a newborn culture of pedals. On another hand, it contextualizes the topic whilst evaluating the transportation trends of Beirutis and the social structure of the city through research that is both qualitative and quantitative. It uses findings from conducted surveys and interviews with local urban bikers as well as case studies to come up with solutions on two levels, aesthetically, and strategically.

This dissertation considers the precarity and politics of the everyday lives of sport for development participants within a post-genocide Rwanda. Pushing beyond sport for development research that has traditionally centered on organizations, policies, and approaches, this study is grounded within its participants’ lived experiences. Extracting from ethnographic field research in rural Rwanda, this dissertation’s process-oriented sociological inquiry seeks to invert such hegemonic positions, by taking “recipients” from passive objectivity as beneficiaries of development, to “active” agents in their every day lives. This dissertation presents the dramatic processual complexities of ‘choice,’ or lack of choice, for participants in a sport for development program. By using their bodies, cyclists from within this
particular program choose to subject themselves to the structures, ambitions, and processes of those in power, uncertain if such aims align with personal aspirations. This dissertation, then, contributes to an
understanding of this exploration of ‘choice’ from within a development organization. Such reflexive methodological inquiry highlights the ways in which the cyclists are active agents of their own life narratives, disrupting the tightly bounded meta-narratives of a post-conflict nation and a
development organization working from within it. This dissertation reveals the power relations that structure the lives of many ordinary Rwandans and, in particular, my participants. By providing space for cyclists to resist, rich cultural and historical understandings of the underpinning mechanisms influencing their identities, processes, and actions are uncovered. Such agency does not negate the hegemonic system exclusively bound to my participants, but rather acknowledges the tangled-up power hierarchies
and grand narratives structural forms of inequality ultimately produce. This dissertation focuses on the agency created, employed, and exploited by these cyclists in their everyday life, and contests sport for development as a means of social development by asking the question: does sport really matter?

From the tea-laden fields of the mountainous northwest to the rolling roads of the southeast, this dissertation reveals the inconsistencies between grand narratives and those of the participants, as well as the mechanisms of resistance developed and implemented by the cyclists themselves. As a result, this study exposes the bicycle not as a symbol of freedom but as a tactical tool used by the cyclists. This is an ethnography about how people use certain mechanisms in particular contexts to make do, and how
meaning is given to those mechanisms through how those people identify themselves in relation to such tangled spaces. On the African continent broadly, and in Rwanda in particular, identity is complicated, fragmented, and formed through multiple webs of interaction and meaning. Sometimes these conflict and disrupt. The disruption is not neat, but messy, complex, and contextual.

[PT] A desigualdade de gênero no espaço urbano se expressa, também, através de padrões de mobilidade e modos de deslocamento. Com base em dados quantitativos e qualitativos sobre o uso de bicicletas na cidade de São Paulo, este artigo é fruto de pesquisa de mestrado e investiga porque o uso da bicicleta é tão incomum entre mulheres em grandes cidades brasileiras. Busca responder duas perguntas: quais características das cidades impedem as mulheres de usarem bicicletas, e o que significa falar de mobilidade ativa e gênero no contexto brasileiro? Para tal, baseia-se em literatura recente nos campos de sociologia urbana e estudos de gênero para desenvolver discussão sobre porque mulheres usam ou não usam bicicletas em contextos urbanos. Também apresenta metodologia para estudar mobilidade e analisar a infraestrutura urbana que considera fatores culturais e subjetivos que embasam as escolhas das pessoas de como se locomover na cidade, e que estão na base de como relações de gênero impactam os usos diferentes que mulheres e homens fazem da cidade.

[EN] The gender inequality in the urban space expresses itself also through mobility patterns and travel modes. Based on quantitative and qualitative data on the use of bicycles as means of transportation in the city of São Paulo, this paper presents the results of a master’s degree dissertation and looks at the phenomenon of scarce cycling rates among women living in large Brazilian cities. It tries to address two questions: which are the features of a city that hinder women from cycling as means of transportation, and what does it mean to talk about active mobility and gender in the Brazilian context. To do so, the research is based on the recent literature on urban sociology and gender studies to discuss why women adopt or not bicycles in urban contexts. It also presents a methodology to study mobility and analyze the urban infrastructure that considers cultural and subjective aspects that lay under the choice people make on how to move in the city, which are on the base of how gender relations impact the different uses women and men make out of the city.

Draft chapter for Cox, P. and Koglin, T. (2020) The Politics of Cycling Infrastructure Bristol: Policy Press

As a growing number of authors demonstrate, ‘infrastructure is never neutral and always inherently political’ (Nolte 2016, p. 441, compare McFarlane and Rutherford, 2008; Young and Keil, 2009). Moreover, as Sheller (2018, p. 97) argues, ‘The politics of infrastructure concerns the politics of mobility’. Infrastructures of all types, whether hard (as in material structures) or soft (as in skills and knowledge) are those systems that support action. Infrastructures for cycling are not limited to dedicated or designated cycleways but are inseparable from wider mobility infrastructures. Building cycling infrastructures is not just a matter of providing physical spaces, but also of building the skills, competencies and confidences required for moving in public spaces.

If infrastructure is inherently political, then the ways in which different infrastructures permit some courses of action and deny others, how they route and reroute mobile practices, and how and what any given infrastructure makes possible, are matters of justice and injustice (Sheller, 2018). This chapter seeks to engage with a selected range of current theorisations of the politics of infrastructure, and to apply them to specific cases of cycle-specific infrastructures. It subsequently relates the ideas of social and spatial justice arising from these perspectives to bell hooks’ consideration of marginalisation, to consider how the patterns of marginalisation and mainstreaming revealed in the contributions to this volume might be understood through a lens of a critical and radical politics.

1. L'aggettivo "ciclabile" fa riferimento a tipi di spazi materiali (luoghi, infrastrutture, ecc.) disponibili a essere percorsi o fruiti attraverso l'uso della bicicletta; tale aggettivo, pertanto, risulta improprio quando associato a un termine che identifica una dimensione concettuale, come nel caso della parola "mobilità".

The purpose of this study is to increase our understanding of the variables that influence cycling to school. Eight students aged between 11-16, from a high school located in the northwest of England participated in a process of semi-structured interviews and focus groups as part of the case study. Both methods included a process of ‘mapping’ to help generate data, enrich discussion and contextualise the research process. To make sense of the data, a narrative analysis was implemented. At the interpersonal level, students reported negative and positive influences from parents towards cycling. Despite this, they had little influence on their decision to cycle. It was also noted that peer engagement when cycling to school was an influence to cycle greater distances however this was only a minor influence which initiated performance in the activity and was not essential for continued participation. The mapping element facilitated discussions about the environment and danger with students stating that cycling led to greater enjoyment, making it an attractive option compared to other forms of transportation. Whilst distance was an issue, varied terrain was mentioned in conjunction with distance, but this was mostly seen as enjoyable, liberating and occasionally risky. The paper offers some critical thoughts about how we might reconceptualise cycling and see its exciting and enabling qualities above and beyond mere transportation.

So far, this thesis has been concerned with two main tasks. One involves the utopia of building a different future than the one the system of automobility has already made possible. The proposition I make is that this divergent future could be conceived around slower, humancentred, as well as human-powered urban mobilities, where the bicycle plays a central role.

Why is there strategy, not just brute force, in cycling competitions? What are the recurring strategic interactions amongst riders? And what can economists learn from riders’ behaviors? Cycling may be one of the most strategically interesting sports, hence its nickname “chess on wheels.” Professional riders’ performances crucially depend on their interactions with other riders, which may not be the case in most sports in athletics, swimming, or skiing. Most interactions between riders are not pure confrontation, zero-sum games, as is the case in boxing, fencing, martial arts, or tennis. In cycling, two rival riders may lawfully ally against some third rider, while such three-player interactions do not exist in football, basketball, or soccer. And cycling being an individual sport run amongst teams, it opens up opportunities of strategic behavior both within and between teams. This chapter provides an overview on (1) the main reasons why bicycle races are strategic, and it then presents several game theory analyses of strategic interactions between riders: (2) attack timing strategy, (3) cooperation and noncooperation in breakaways and in the peloton, (4) sprint strategy and (5) three-player interactions. It is founded on examples of strategic interactions between riders that occurred in the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, the Vuelta a España, and other races.

During the past two decades, there has been a significant growth of sociological studies into the ‘body pedagogics’ of cultural transmission, reproduction and change. Rejecting the tendency to over-valorise cognitive information, these investigations have explored the importance of corporeal capacities, habits and techniques in the processes associated with belonging to specific ‘ways of life’. Focused on practical issues associated with ‘knowing how’ to operate within specific cultures, however, body pedagogic analyses have been less effective at accounting for the incarnation of cultural values. Addressing this limitation, with reference to the radically diverse norms involved historically and contemporarily in ‘vélo worlds’, I develop Dewey’s pragmatist transactionalism by arguing that the social, material and intellectual processes involved in learning physical techniques inevitably entail a concurrent entanglement with, and development of, values.

In January 2012 a moral panic about ‘hoon cyclists’ erupted after sports celebrity Shane Warne had an altercation with a cyclist on St Kilda Road, Melbourne. Warne took to Twitter and posted an account of the event. The altercation served to focus tensions around the positioning of the cyclist in Australian automobility. The concept of ‘acute event’ is combined with a longer history of other kinds of media event, such as ‘moral panics’, to better understand events that are discursively mediated. The role of Warne in the resulting ‘cyclist hoon’ moral panic acute event is an example of the organisational role of ‘celebrity’ in participatory media. Warne’s account of cycling affectively resonates with the other car drivers as the privileged subjects of Australian automobility. This affective resonance organised the discursive field of the moral panic acute event. In this case, the techniques of social media celebrity (to produce an authentic ‘ordinariness’) also produce an affective resonance of Warne’s experience of cyclists as a driver. The folk devil figure of the ‘hoon cyclist’ challenges the hegemonic norms of car-based automobility.

The use of the bicycle in the city of São Paulo for purposes of mobility is not a new phenomenon, much less brought and/or based on existing infrastructure. Cyclists have faced the city streets for more than 10 years, and have had growing influence in the participation of public mobility policies concerning cycling. However, the inclusion of cycling as a key element in the design of municipal policies during the years 2012-2016 gave academic, social, economic and cultural visibility to the bicycle. This emergence gave way to a wave of new cyclists and affected the urban bike scene in the city. This research contemplated two objectives: the first one was to understand how the bicycle is used by the various social actors of the city, and its impact regarding lifestyles, sociabilities, appropriation of urban space, and the intrinsically corporal aspect that tangents the cycling experience. The second objective was the differentiated empirical construction of a contemporary research problem guided by the New Mobilities Paradigm and the Mobile Methods, supported by the recent field of knowledge of the Sociology of Mobility. Unlike the predominant discourse related to the bicycle, in which the "new" modal is associated with freedom, simplicity, economy, ease, and practicality, the results found point out that this is only one facet of the experience of cyclists in a city with a high index of inequality as São Paulo, circumscribed to a group of cyclists that circulate in certain social spaces. Making use of the concept of motility arising from a critical view based on the New Mobilities Paradigm, it is argued that although the bicycle has been associated in recent years with freedom and right to the city by its users, in many cases the city experience by cycling is aggressive, uncomfortable, dangerous and harmful to health. The bicycle is the only instrument through which an impoverished portion of the population, living in peripheral regions, is able to access work, leisure, goods, and services of the city. On the other hand, residents of central districts enjoy the largest percentage of existing bicycle infrastructure and use the bicycle as another mode of transportation in their range of options. The research also enabled some methodological innovations, in the form of a tool developed for data collection. Finally, when thinking about the planning of a public policy that concerns the Urban Mobility System, it is necessary to pinpoint the bicycle as one more device inserted within a collective transportation system that did not include the exponential growth of the city and its metropolitan region, making it disconnected, obsolete and at the margin of the daily needs of its users. In order for the bicycle's benefits to impact the city's population on a large scale, it is essential that it be designed and planned as an element adding to the complex mobility network of São Paulo - amid transport rail systems, buses, private cars, and walk -, and not simply as a tool that serves this systems.

Social change is at the center of solutions to the problems of the environment. Yet social change is sometimes elusively described. Through empirical inquiries guided by socialization theories, the present article aims to identify different types of individual changes.
These individual changes are observed and discussed in French bicycle community workshops. These places aim to replace cars with bicycles. Everyone is offered the opportunity to learn how to repair his own bicycle. Without a motor, the bicycle is moved by the force of its user and is easier to repair than a car. The goal of the bicycle community workshops is to allow individuals to gain more control over the tools they use daily.
In these workshops, individuals start or continue to transform their lives and not only their travel habits. In the words of Berger and Luckmann, these places constitute laboratories of transformation. That is why I conducted 40 qualitative interviews and one-month as a participant observer in two bicycle community workshops.
The result is a precise description both of social change on an individual scale and of a new agent of socialization. Bicycle community workshops may be seeds for a more sustainable future.

Since the turn of the 21st century, cycling has been reconsidered as utilitarian transport. Starting generally from a very low percentage of modal share, it has surged in many major cities of the Global North. Cycling is being progressively integrated into mobility and urban planning programmes and infrastructure, although allocated budgets remain small compared to those for motor transport. However, this is not enough to turn cities into cycling spaces. Becoming an urban cyclist requires a variety of skills and sets of knowledge achieved through di erent forms of socialization. "Becoming" expresses the focus on this process, which can vary with culture, gender and social space, but also with topography, technical developments like electri cation, residential and occupational location, the social environments in which riders grew up and national or local campaigns to promote cycling. This volume uses qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods and is based on eldwork conducted in Australia, France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK. It focuses on the acquisition of skills and competences and supplements existing work by linking cycling practices to individual life courses and to gender and social inequalities. Through a multidisciplinary approach utilizing the di erent perspectives of the authors as anthropologists, geographers, linguists, sociologists and urban planners, it sheds light on geographical and sociological di erences to help understand factors likely to facilitate or curb urban cycling practices.

In this chapter I use Lefebvre's production of space ideas to analyze the production of nature and expand Lefebvrian ecological analysis. I apply the concepts of spatial practice, representational spaces, representations of space and Lefebvre's historical approach to the production of urban space to illuminate the production of nature. More than Lefebvre's observations on nature, I rely on his forward thinking critique of the car, and put Lefebvre's ideas in conversation with the new mobilities paradigm and recent research on the globalizing system of car travel. To advance research on the production of nature, and draw on the spirit of Lefebvre's car critique, I examine how nature is produced by cycling in Canada. My results suggest cycling can reassemble nature in the city outside the parameters of hegemonic automobility and neoliberal capitalism. I propose that automobility, in the form of early twentieth century parkways in North America, can ecologically inspire the expansion of cycling nature in the city. The chapter concludes by suggesting a line of future Lefebvrian ecological analysis about combining the production of nature with differential space.

In western societies, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic restrictions created a boom in cycling activity and business. This article reports findings from an Australia-wide survey that invited responses from those who changed their cycling behaviour during the pandemic lockdowns. The survey premise was that the pandemic lockdowns in each state presented the conditions of a ‘natural experiment’ to test whether the reduction in automobile traffic affected how cyclists reported experiencing the cycling environment. The survey was in the field from 3 August to 16 September 2020 with purposive sampling. A total of 699 respondents participated, with 444 complete surveys. Key questions we seek to address include: Did cycling activity increase during the pandemic shutdowns? How did cyclists from under-represented groups experience the pandemic lockdowns? The findings are twofold. First, cycling activity increased among most respondents during pandemic lockdowns for exercise and wellbeing, but not fo...