Mobilities and Complexities by Ole B. Jensen Sven Kesselring Mimi Sheller

Author:Ole B. Jensen, Sven Kesselring, Mimi Sheller [Ole B. Jensen, Sven Kesselring, Mimi Sheller]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9780429892691
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2018-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

Vignette 2: 2009–11

John Urry was (in)famous for his extremely short text- or twitter-like emails that got straight to the point in one or two sentences, with no unnecessary chit chat or formality – indeed, why write ‘very’ when ‘v’ does the job? Wordy emails seemed to annoy him; they were a waste of one’s time to write and read. I was therefore puzzled when I received a substantive email from John one day in 2009. The content was mind-blowing, too, with John asking me to be the co-author of the next edition of the classic and much cited The Tourist Gaze. The email was – despite its many words – characteristic of his email style as well as his generosity and humbleness. He wrote that SAGE had approached him to do a new version but that he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to do it because he thought the structure of the book was cracking somehow and he was not fully up to date on the current debates in tourist studies.

Then he told me that he had thought to himself with whom have I worked on tourism most in recent years and with whom would it be fun to make the new edition with? It turned out that I was apparently that person! In addition to some general editing, he suggested that I could add two extra chapters: one on tourism and photography and one on tourism and multiple mobilities/types of performances. In the end, he told me that we would share 50/50 advances and earnings, although the publisher would probably insist that he figured as the first author. Finally, he wrote that he would not be at all offended if I declined the offer.

Jubilant, I promptly replied: ‘I would love to co-write the new edition of The Tourist Gaze with you.’

I knew from my time as a research assistant (2003–2004) at Lancaster University that John and I were effective and productive together – even when I moved to Roskilde University and we wrote together at a distance. There was no meeting, no phone or Skype call to agree upon this project and outline the main tasks ahead – we knew each other well enough to rely on emails, and emails and digital networking were crucial throughout as we never phoned or Skyped and we only met face to face on two occasions during the two years in which we wrote the book. We must have sent hundreds of emails where we talked through problems with, and changes to, specific chapters; and emails ‘transported’ our track-changed word documents with our edited and new chapters. This allowed us to write together, despite the fact that we never rubbed shoulders in front of a computer. This is somewhat striking given the significance of intermittent meetings and verbal talk in much of John Urry’s writing on distanciated social networks. In contrast, affordances and practices of digital co-working, of emailing, sharing documents electronically, and co-writing and co-editing a text through ‘track changing’ in a shared Word document are less discussed in his work.

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