Speakers
Description
In the last two decades, flying has become relatively widespread yet unequally distributed in Polish society. Passenger numbers rebounded after the COVID slump and will soon reach record highs. At the same time, flying is increasingly problematized due to the carbon emissions it generates. Resolving the tensions between the growth dynamic and the need to reduce emissions requires knowledge about how high-carbon practices spread and get embedded in societies.
In this article, we study the recent and ongoing changes in the social practice of flying through the lens of mobility biographies. We qualitatively analyze 38 in-depth interviews conducted in Poland's Poznan and Tricity urban areas. We analyze them using mobility links, i.e., the social networks, skills, dispositions, and social practices connected with flying. We situate their dynamic co-development in the context of broader socio-technical changes in aeromobility described using desk research methods.
The post-socialist context and its socio-political transformations provide a particularly interesting case to study such changes. The socialist and capitalist periods (and periods within them) had different travel regulations, international migration patterns, and levels of air travel access. In consequence, subsequent generations were socialized to mobility in markedly different conditions.
The study adds to emerging research on mobility biographies in long-distance travel and broader efforts to understand mobility practices and socio-technical systems dynamics. Contrary to previous applications, it focuses on long-distance rather than daily travel (following Mattioli, 2020) and goes beyond the individual perspective to use biographies as insights into the dynamics of social practice and related socio-technical systems (following Greene & Rau, 2018).
We close the presentation by reflecting on how this accelerated growth process and the further embedding of flying in society conflict with the need to mitigate climate change.
The presentation is part of a research project funded by the National Science Centre in Poland (2020/37/B/HS4/03931).
Biography
Michał Czepkiewicz is a geographer working at the EUROREG – Centre for European Regional and Local Studies at the University of Warsaw and at the Faculty of Sociology of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. His interests include urban planning, mobility, tourism, greenhouse gas emissions, well-being, and degrowth. His work combines qualitative and quantitative methods from geography, geoinformation, and sociology. He leads a research project on the mobility of inhabitants of Polish cities and its impacts on climate change.
