John Urry was a British sociologist who helped found the mobilities paradigm, an approach that argued sociology had wrongly treated societies as fixed, bounded, and sedentary and needed instead to place the movement of people, objects, information, and ideas at the center of social analysis. In The Tourist Gaze (1990) he examined tourism as a socially organized way of looking, shaped by expectations, media images, and markers, that structures how tourists perceive and consume places, and his later work extended these concerns to systems of transport, communication, and global mobility more broadly. Urry's mobilities approach influenced sociology, geography, and transport studies by treating movement itself, rather than only the fixed places movement connects, as a proper object of social scientific analysis.
Facts
Nationality / Culture Defining ContributionHelped found the mobilities paradigm in sociology, arguing that social analysis should treat the movement of people, objects, information and ideas as a central object of study rather than treating societies as fixed and bounded. 1 Notable WorkThe Tourist Gaze (1990); The End of Organized Capitalism (1987, with Scott Lash); Mobilities (2007) 1 In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. John Urry (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLead section, birth date
John Richard Urry (; 1 June 1946, London, 18 March 2016, Lancaster) was a British sociologist who served as a professor at Lancaster University.
Lead section, birth year
John Richard Urry (; 1 June 1946, London, 18 March 2016, Lancaster) was a British sociologist who served as a professor at Lancaster University.
Lead section, birthplace
John Richard Urry (; 1 June 1946, London, 18 March 2016, Lancaster) was a British sociologist who served as a professor at Lancaster University.
Lead section, nationality
John Richard Urry (; 1 June 1946, London, 18 March 2016, Lancaster) was a British sociologist who served as a professor at Lancaster University.
Lead section, death date
John Richard Urry (; 1 June 1946, London, 18 March 2016, Lancaster) was a British sociologist who served as a professor at Lancaster University.
Lead section, death year
John Richard Urry (; 1 June 1946, London, 18 March 2016, Lancaster) was a British sociologist who served as a professor at Lancaster University.
Lead section, death place
John Richard Urry (; 1 June 1946, London, 18 March 2016, Lancaster) was a British sociologist who served as a professor at Lancaster University.
Research areas section, mobility
Fourthly, Urry had various research projects and publications relating to the changing nature of mobility.
Consumer and tourism services section
The economic, social, environmental and cultural implications of such developments can be seen in The Tourist Gaze (1990, 2002: 2nd edn.), Consuming Places (1995), Touring Cultures (1997, edited with Chris Rojek), Tourism Mobilities (2004, edited with Mimi Sheller), and Performing Tourist Places (with J-O Barenholdt, M Haldrup, J. Larsen).
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