A SENSE OF BALANCE: URBAN CYCLING AS EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING IN EMERGING ASPIRATIONSCAPES

Cycling entails and requires a multi-sensory experience in which the sense of balance is fundamental. This paper explores the significance of such sense for the reawakened interest in the bicycle as both vehicle and symbol of sustainability. It offers an ethnographic analysis of Ciudad para Todos, an activist group in Guadalajara, Mexico, whose members had no previous background in activism. I analyse their path as a learning process entailing an intersubjective experience similar to cycling, where navigation requires imitation and a heightened perception of several senses. Among these, equilibroception helps gauge one’s movement, direction, and acceleration. In appreciating the speed of cycling and its benefits, some CpT activists engage in a vernacular version of the ‘slow movement’, attempting to balance needs and wants. The process shapes new aspirationscapes that substantiate their public performances, campaigns, and their individual lives.


Raúl Acosta-García (DPhil, U. of Oxford) is a social anthropologist conducting research in Spain, Brazil and Mexico. His project ‘Aspirational Activism in Urban Latin America’ is funded by the German Research Council (DFG).

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