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Towards an Intersectional Approach to Men, Masculinities and (Un)sustainable Mobility: The Case of Cycling and Modal Conflicts

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Abstract

This chapter discusses cycling promotion and modal conflicts in public space with a particular focus on men, masculinities and transport planning. It draws on three interrelated examples: interviews with cyclists about cycling, media reports on cycling and cyclists’ online discussions on vulnerability. The first two examples illustrate how men and masculinities can be framed as both solutions and obstacles to achieving more sustainable mobilities through more cycling. The third example demonstrates how cycling implies a particularly vulnerable and conflicting position in the traffic hierarchy with implications for men and masculinities. The conflicts over urban space exemplified here illustrate how traditional transport planning has prioritized automobility and, by doing so, reproduced male norms in the transport sector. It is argued that using an intersectional analytical lens can be a fruitful way to challenge existing norms.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    However, in recent reports on cyclist safety, men have been singled out as vulnerable road users, and as being at risk to a much greater extent than women. A study from the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute found that “[f]atalities of males account for two-thirds of the cases” (Ekström and Linder 2017:35).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Feminist Social Studies, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden

    Dag Balkmar

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  1. Dag Balkmar
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Correspondence to Dag Balkmar .

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  1. Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

    Christina Lindkvist Scholten

  2. K2 – Swedish Knowledge Centre for Public Transport, Lund, Sweden

    Christina Lindkvist Scholten

  3. Department of Education, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Tanja Joelsson

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Balkmar, D. (2019). Towards an Intersectional Approach to Men, Masculinities and (Un)sustainable Mobility: The Case of Cycling and Modal Conflicts. In: Scholten, C.L., Joelsson, T. (eds) Integrating Gender into Transport Planning. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05042-9_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05042-9_9

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