Western Modernity and Mobility
The modern individual is, above all else, a mobile human being.
The explorations of mobility in this book are, for the most part, explorations of mobility in the last two hundred years in the Western world. Mobility seems self-evidently central to Western modernity. Indeed the word modern seems to evoke images of technological mobility—the car, the plane, the spaceship. It also signifies a world of increased movement of people on a global scale. Perhaps most importantly, though, it suggests a way of thinking in terms of mobility—a metaphysics of mobility that is Distinct from what came before it.