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Gender and Bicycling Aesthetics: the potentiel for the sustainable city of gender construction processes across cycling practices, equipment and infrastructure.

Description du projet

Les intersections entre genre et cyclisme

Jusqu’aux années 1900, les bicyclettes étaient largement considérées comme des accessoires masculins. Aujourd’hui, le vélo est un vecteur des modes de vie durables et, par conséquent, un facteur de mobilité durable. Son développement et sa diffusion restent toutefois entravés par des normes de genre. Pour créer des villes plus durables, il est essentiel de comprendre les intersections entre le genre, l’esthétique et les pratiques, équipements et infrastructures cyclistes. Le projet SENCyclo, financé par l’UE, examinera comment l’expérience esthétique crée une tension avec les règles prédominantes de la féminité et de la masculinité, affectant la formation et la déconstruction du genre. En se concentrant sur les politiques cyclistes françaises et suisses, il développera une méthode innovante, interdisciplinaire, comparative et multi-niveaux pour étudier les résonances sensibles entre les infrastructures, l’environnement, les équipements et les organismes chargés de l’égalité des sexes.

Objectif

Moving towards sustainable mobility will require improved understanding of the gendering processes across cycling mobility as the bicycle is a vector of sustainable lifestyles but gender norms still restrict its development. Research on gender and mobility neglects the sensitive materiality through which gender is constructed, and aesthetical approach of mobility infrastructure takes little interest so far in gender. To investigate how gender intersects with aesthetics in the ongoing formation of bicycling practices, equipment and infrastructure will lead to a better understanding of the potential of gender dynamics as an agent of change in creating more sustainable cities. The aesthetical experience of the bicycle has a key role in the continuous infrastructuring processes of bicycling practices, equipment and infrastructure. My main hypothesis is that the aesthetical experience also creates a tension with the dominant norms of feminity/masculinity, impacting the ongoing gender formation and deconstruction. The deconstruction of these unequal political categories constitutes an important step towards the development of more systemically sustainable cities.
Focusing on French and Swiss cities at different stages in the implementation of their cycling policies, the research will develop an original interdisciplinary, comparative and multi-scale approach that deploys the concept of social imaginary to explore the spatial (micro)practices in relation to cycling materialities and ambiances, embodied experiences, meanings and representations, drawing on object-based, visual and mobile methodologies. It will cast light on affective and sensible resonances between infrastructure, environment, equipment and gendered bodies. In the longer term, to investigate the aesthetical dimension of mobility participates in the effort in research to overcome the curiously immaterial and disembodied conceptions of sustainability.

Coordinateur

UNIVERSITE GUSTAVE EIFFEL
Contribution nette de l'UE
€ 196 707,84
Adresse
5 BOULEVARD DESCARTES CAMPUS DE MARNE-LA-VALLE
77454 Marne-La-Vallee
France

Voir sur la carte

Région
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Seine-et-Marne
Type d’activité
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Liens
Coût total
€ 196 707,84