Page - 12 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 3/2017

12 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 3 2o17 Rainer Kazig, Damien Masson, Rachel Thomas | Atmospheres and Mobility with focus on sedentary practices, but also to consider everyday life mobilities. He also puts forward the political dimension of this perspective, but also stresses the role of experiences in this process. To associate atmospheres to this research question would be very helpful in the way that it allows to qualify as well the emotional dimension of these experiences as the sensual qualities of the environment and their relation. It would contribute to getting a differentiated understanding of the environmental qualities that are at stake in the emergence of mobility as emotional and meaningful practices in the process of the construction of identities. It might concern everydayness, or less ordinary mobilities like leisure mobilities, but also political move- ments or even ceremonies that very often imply mobile practices and that can all be supposed to contribute to the identity formation. A further interesting challenge for the culturalisation of the research on atmospheres and mobility consists in linking it with the research on globalisation. A part of the research on cultural globalisation deals with the question of homogenisation of spaces and practices mostly in the urban world (Nederveen Pieterse 2015). The global success of fast-food restaurants is often used as an emblematic illustration of this trend. But it also includes spaces of mobility or mobile practices at different levels like the septicization or aestheticization of public spaces, the re-emergence of tramways and cycling as modes of urban transport or the celebration of inter- national events such as Universal Exhibitions or Olympic Games. To introduce the concept of atmospheres to the research on cultural globalisation means to question its sensual and affective dimension and to get a better phenomenal understanding of this process. It would reveal if and how far the international or global spread of ideas and concepts of urban practices goes along with the emergence of similar sensual qualities and affective states at different places, and really means a process of homogenisation. The introduction of this concept could answer the question if place specific conditions and performances lead, at the phenomenal and experiential level, to the emergence of quite different spaces and practices that are only labelled with the same term. The concept of atmospheres could be useful to get a more humanistic understanding of the process of internationalisation and globalisation. And – to put it the other way round – the link of the research on atmospheres with concerns of globalisation raises, at a general level, the question of the possibilities of the mobility of atmospheres that we mentioned above. III Mobile and atmospheric methodological engagements Even if this issue does not focus explicitly on methodological issues, the development of the field of research at the crossroad of research on atmospheres and research on mobilities never- theless goes along with important methodological challenges. Both fields of research have to deal with “researchable entities” (Büscher & Urry 2009: 99) that are – each in a specific manner – relatively new for social science and need the development of new methods and new research designs in order to establish them as fields of empirical research. The challenge for the research on mobilities was to develop mobile methods that make it possible to grasp people, objects or information on the move. As mobility studies emerged in social science, they were since the beginning linked to methodological issues and systematically went along with methodological innovations (Büscher & Urry 2009, Büscher et al. 2011). In this context, a variety of methods like go-alongs (Kusenbach 2003), drive-alongs (Laurier 2004), mobile video ethnography (Frers 2007), autoethnographic methods (Wylie 2005) and multi-