The Unstable Lives of Bicycles: The ‘Unbecoming’ of Design Objects
研究了哥本哈根被忽视和‘半死’的自行车，揭示它们如何从有用对象迅速变成废物，挑战了自行车作为可持续实践的常规认知。
A predictable byproduct of any ‘successful’ mobility system is the breakdown and destruction of once desired, fashionable, shiny, and useful objects, yet mobilities scholars have largely ignored such issues. In this paper we document and analyze ethnographically neglected and ‘half-dead’ bikes in Copenhagen as we encounter them in racks, on the pavement, and when the municipality attempts to clear them out or recycle them. We are theoretically informed by ideas that see consumer objects as having a social and material life beyond their initial production and sale. They are constantly in a process, (un)becoming, and marked by that life. Where cycling is normally conceived of as a sustainable and environmentally friendly practice, this study shows that many bikes are ill treated and quickly become waste, and ‘matter out place’.