1 Passenger communicationTravel can be an isolating experience. One of the most ubiqitous ways of thinkingabout the experience of railway travel during the 19th century was the idea that thebody became ` an anonymised parcel of flesh which was shunted from place to place,just like other goods. Each of these bodies passively avoided others'' (Thrift, 1996,page 266). Yet mobilities are rarely experienced alone or in isolation from other people.Indeed, one of the figures that unite many different types of mobility is that of `beingwith'. In the process of travel, we temporarily submit ourselves to become part of amobile collective. To become a passenger always involves a `being with'. One of thecentral themes running through research on mobilities is how being mobile with otherpeople mobilises a series of relational practices. Car travel might involve finely honedinteractional textures between driver and passenger (Laurier et al, 2008), or improvisa-tional choreography between the driver and other car drivers (Katz, 1999). Research onwalking in the city has similarly pointed to the skilful tactics developed by pedestriansto accomplish moving through the urban environment (Edensor, 2000; Middleton,2009). Similarly, others have looked at the myriad of diverse practices that are enactedin order to become a passenger, such as packing, preparing, and moving with luggage(Bissell, 2009; Watts, 2008), or purchasing tickets (Dodge and Kitchin, 2004), throughto the various mobile practices that passengers at transport terminals undertake, partic-ularly at airports (Adey, 2008; Cresswell, 2006; Fuller and Harley, 2004; Gottdiener, 2001;Lloyd, 2003; Pascoe, 2001). Indeed, travelling by public transport, particularly by trainand bus, is often characterised by the sheer density of people being transported togetherin close proximity.

These relations between people on the move are, of course, diverse and must bedifferentiated (Crang, 2002). The relationships between a driver and passenger in thecontext of a car journey might differ significantly from the unacquainted passengerstravelling together by plane, which itself contrasts with the sense of familiarity thatmight develop between passengers who commute by the same bus, tube, or train on a

Passenger mobilities: affective atmospheres and the socialityof public transport

David BissellResearch School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200,Australia; e-mail: david.bissell@anu.edu.auReceived 14 April 2009; in revised form 20 July 2009

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2010, volume 28, pages 270 ^ 289

Abstract. This paper takes as its starting point the centrality of nonrepresentational registers ofcommunication and comprehension to understanding how everyday experiences of travelling withothers by public transport unfolds. Drawing on extensive primary research, it explores how differentaffective atmospheres erupt and decay in the space of the train carriage; the modes of affectivetransmission that might take place; and the character of the collectives that are mobilised and coherethrough these atmospheres. Acknowledging that these atmospheres have powerful effects, this paperfocuses on the trajectories of particular misanthropic affective relations; and how such negativerelations emerge from a complex set of forces which prime passengers to act. Yet this call to actionis often met with a reticent passivity that transposes these negative affective relations, often in waysthat intensify their force. In expanding the realm of that which is often taken to constitute the `social',the paper concludes by considering how the demands of collective responsibility fold throughcontemporary understandings of community.

doi:10.1068/d3909

daily basis. Many researchers have described how the degree of acquaintance thatcharacterises these relationships, to a large part, mediates the type of communicationthat takes place between passengers.Whilst friends travelling together might interact inparticularly playful, less-inhibited ways with each other (Symes, 2008), where passengersare travelling with people with whom they are unacquainted with, verbal communicationtends to be curtailed (Schivelbusch, 1979). Indeed, the tension that exists between theisolation of travelling unaccompanied with the parallel imbrications within a collective ofother passengers has been explored from a number of different perspectives. The juxta-posed alienation and `being-with'öwhat Fujii (1999) describes as `intimate alienation'öthat might be symptomatic of individual travel is a potent theme that runs through manyof Edward Hopper's canvases which depict spaces of transit (Slater, 2002). Such tensionsare described well by Schivelbusch (1979) who describes how, whilst the railway carriageinitially transformed the experience of the private individual into a mass public, ` the face-to-face relationship ... becomes unbearable because there no longer is a reason for suchcommunication'' (page 80).

Whilst verbal communication with proximate unacquainted passengers might becurtailed, many researchers have looked at how people travelling unaccompanied canmaintain social contact at a distance. Both Urry (2003) and Wittel (2001) point to howsocial life is increasingly `networked', taking place through new technologies of com-munication (see also Green, 2002).Whilst they argue that such sociality at a distance isjuxtaposed with moments of face-to-face copresence, these technologiesöparticularly themobile phone and Wi-Fi-enabled laptops (see Mackenzie, 2006)öhave transformedthe scope and reach of social life on the move (see Green, 2002; Jain, 2006). Yet thisalleged decline in verbal communication between passengers certainly does not precludethe significance of being with others whilst on the move. Indeed, some might argue thatsuch a trend is symptomatic of the sociocultural context within which these observationswere situated and might be rather different outside of an Anglo-European context(see Diski, 2004; Edensor, 2004). But just because communication might not be vocaldoes not mean that other forms of communication are less significant. What I want tosuggest in this paper is that there are other equally important registers of communicationat play which have often been overlooked in research that has investigated the socialityof passengers travelling together.

This paper takes, as its starting point, the centrality of nonrepresentational modesof communication and comprehension to understanding how everyday experiences oftravelling with others on public transport unfold. Rather than focusing on the narrowlydiscursive or symbolic constitution of text and talk, or how conversational practicesand interjections might facilitate the practical dimensions of travel, as is often the casein car travel (Laurier, 2005), this paper highlights how precognitive, prediscursiveaffective registers of communication whilst travelling on public transport can signifi-cantly impact on the journey experience and what passengers can do. Affective' ratherthan `emotional' since to think through the emotional' dimensions of experiencepresumes the existence of a body that is able to reflexively interpret and make senseof her or his world. If emotion is concerned with the subject, affect on the other handis not bound to particular individual bodies. Attending to affect in spaces of publictransport is hugely important since it prompts us to consider what passengers can dorather than what passengers are assumed to be. Rather than addressing the figure ofthe passenger through a series of taken-for-granted assumptions that often render theminert and lifeless, such as the `PAX' of planners and modellers (1) (Cresswell, 2006),starting from the perspective of affect allows us to consider the affective relations that(1) `PAX' is the abbreviation used by the airline industry to refer to `generic' passengers in anaggregate manner.

Affective atmospheres and the sociality of public transport 271

emerge between passengers and, consequently, the capacity of different passengers toaffect and be affected. As Conradson and Latham put it, affect might be understoodas the ` energetic outcome of encounters between bodies in particular places'' (2007,page 232). As such, the frustrations and irritations, the delights and excitements whichare so often a part of travelling with other unacquainted travellers, begin to flicker intoview and mediate this experience much more explicitly.

Exploring relations between passengers through affect rather than more discursiveanalytical approaches is useful since it expands the realm of what constitutes the`social' above and beyond that which has traditionally been taken to be the `human'.Where others have focused on the presence or absence of conversational textures orother explicit interaction as a way of considering social formations, thinking throughaffect draws attention to the importance of considering some of the nonhuman forcesthat mobilise and mediate these relations.(2) Affect decentres the individual passengerfrom analysis, and instead prompts us to think about how different configurationsof objects, technologies, and bodies come together to form different experiences of`being with' whilst on the move. Indeed, thinking through affect helps us to attend toand account for the changeability of different journeying experiences, particularly thosethat are experienced on a routine basis.

Since affect emerges as a relation between bodies, objects, and technologies, it hasdistinctly spatial characteristics. Indeed, many geographers inspired by nonrepresenta-tional theory have highlighted the transverse qualities of affect in that it travels betweenthings. Following others, we might consider how particular spatialised affective fieldsemerge through the transmission of affect. Conradson and Latham suggest that such`affective fields' reflect ` the coming together of people, buildings, technologies andvarious forms of non-human life in particular geographical settings'' (2007, page 238).These affective fields are ` temporary configurations of energy and feeling that arise butthen dissipate, before perhaps being re-animated elsewhere'' (page 238). Such affectivefields might also align with the idea of an `affective atmosphere' which McCormackdescribes as being ` something distributed yet palpable, a quality of environmentalimmersion that registers in and through sensing bodies whilst also remaining diffuse,in the air, ethereal'' (2008, page 413). Or, as Bo« hme suggests, atmospheres ` seem to fillthe space with a certain tone of feeling like a haze'' (1993, page 114). Yet these affectiveatmospheres are perceived and sensed through the body. As Urry argues, ` atmosphereis in the relationship of peoples and objects. It is something sensed often throughmovement and experienced in a tactile kind of way'' (2007, page 73).

In this paper I argue that communication and the formation of different sociabil-ities in technologies of transit take place in part on an affective level through theformation and dissipation of different affective atmospheres. Whilst these atmos-pheres are invisible, nonrepresentational, they form part of the ubiquitous backdropof everyday life on the move. However, rather than being inert, background, orephemeral phenomena, atmospheres are forceful and affect the ways in which weinhabit these spaces. As such, affective atmospheres are central to everyday conductwhilst on the move since different atmospheres facilitate and restrict particular prac-tices and, in doing so, precipitate particular structures of feeling (Williams, 1977).Where Foucault (1977) describes the disciplining effects of material spatial arrange-ments, the immateriality of atmosphere might serve as an equally powerful disciplinaryforce. As Edvardsson et al suggest, ` perception of an atmosphere defines what onemust cope with, and suggests directions for how to behave within a social setting''(2003, page 378). The emergence of particular affective atmospheres has the capacity to(2) However, many have addressed the nonhuman without invoking affect (for example, see Ingold,2002; Law, 2004; Murdoch, 1997).

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modify passengers not only on a psychological but also on a biological level.(3) AsBrennan notes, whilst the transmission of any affect, whether positive or negative, issocial or psychological in origin, it ` is also responsible for bodily changes, as in a whiffof the room's atmosphere, some longer lasting. In other words, the transmission of affect,if only for an instant, alters the biochemistry of the subject. The `atmosphere' or theenvironment literally gets into the individual'' (2004, page 1). Affective atmospherestherefore modify passengers' possible field of actions, changing their capacity to feeland act. Finally, and a word of qualification, it is also essential to note that, in spatialisingaffect through the notion of atmosphere, affect is not reified as a `thing'öa determinateand determining presence that would have the dangerous effect of ushering in structur-alism through the back door. Far from `thingy', affective atmospheres must be understoodas the relational potential for things to act or change in a particular space. Possibly themost effective way of grasping the idea of an affective atmosphere is therefore to thinkof it as a propensity: a pull or a charge that might emerge in a particular space whichmight (or might not) generate particular events and actions, feelings and emotions.

The following section of this paper describes how different arrangements of travel-ling-with generate different affective atmospheres. The third section moves forwardto consider how particular misanthropic atmospheres emerge and have the capacity toproduce new collectives and cultivate particular dispositions. The fourth section con-siders how such charged dispositions might be pacified in various ways. The paperconcludes by considering how more convivial arrangements might be allowed toemerge, but how the imbrication with different collectives opens up new spaces ofethical negotiation.

Whilst this paper speaks to spaces of public transport more broadly, the empiricalspaces of this paper focus on railway travel. Research was undertaken as part of athree-year research project on everyday practices of railway travel in Britain. Thisresearch was primarily undertaken along the East Coast Mainline between Londonand Edinburgh between 2005 and 2007 and, for the excerpts drawn on in this paper,involved semistructured interviews with forty-six passengers in addition to extensiveautoethnographic participatory observation on many different trains along this lineand at different times during the day.

2 The emergence of affective atmospheresWritings on temporarily dwelling amongst other unknown passengers within the spaceof the railway carriage have tended to explore the intricacies and issues relating toverbal communication. Published in 1862, The Railway Traveller's Handy Book pro-vides the uninitiated traveller with a series of helpful suggestions for interacting withother passengers, particularly highlighting topics of conversation which should beavoided: chiefly politics, religion, and, perhaps unsurprisingly for the time, railwayaccidents. Indeed, the anxieties often associated with conversational social interactionwith unknown others is one of the key themes that emerges through Simmel's (1950)writings on strategies of preserving `personal space' most notably through a blaseattitude towards others. Similarly, Goffman's (1971) writings on social codes and ritualsthat come into play in conversational interaction provide another useful way of consid-ering how unknown others conduct themselves based on an allegiance to a particularaccepted moral order. Yet the sociality of the railway carriage is conditioned asmuch by affective communication as by these more discursive modes of interaction.

(3) Of course, I am not implying the existence of a Cartesian divide between body and psyche. Thisis merely to invite us to think about how affects might impact upon or reveal themselves throughthe body in a number of different ways: shooting through both noncognitive feelings andexpressions, and shaping the event of cognitive thought.

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Whilst practices of conversation certainly contribute to the emergence of particularaffective atmospheres that condense within the railway carriage, other more affectiveregisters of communication play a pivotal role in the creation of social formations.

Thrift, drawing on the work of Gabriel Tarde, argues that one of the most sig-nificant modes of affective communication is that of ` imitative contagion'' (2008,page 231) which helps us to understand not only how particular affective atmospherescoalesce, but also how they are diffused through and touch bodies. Such an under-standing relies on thinking about bodies as being susceptible but accepts that much ofthis susceptibility takes place at a semiconscious level. This therefore disrupts the ideaof individualistic agentive, mindful, and regulated communication, towards thinkingabout modes of communication that we are less aware of and have less control over.Of course, the semiconscious operation of such communication introduces a significantdilemma: namely, how can we recognise let alone narrate and attend to such events?Yet three events from the railway carriage each point to how particular affects might becommunicated and transmitted, in part, through contagion. This movement and trans-mission of affect are crucial in understanding how particular affective atmosphereserupt and coalesce in the space of the carriage, and, crucially, how particular collectivesemerge.

First, much has been written about the use of the railway carriage as a mobile officewhere travel time is put to use to engage in work-related practices (Holley et al, 2008;Lyons and Urry, 2005; Urry, 2007). Through this literature it is often suggested that thetime ^ space of the railway journey is an ideal environment within which passengers cancarry out work. Whilst much has been said about how the increasing prevalence oflocative technologies (Green, 2002), together with `hotdesking' infrastructures (Brownand O'Hara, 2003) and `open offices' (Harrison et al, 2003), can help people undertakeincreasingly footloose working practices, considerably less has been said about how theaffective atmospheres within the railway carriage might be instrumental in facilitatingsuch practices.

Through interviews with passengers, many hinted at how an effective workingenvironment is made possible not only through a range of object materialitiesömobilephones, personal digital assistants, laptops, tables, and so forthöbut the practices ofothers. This passenger who travels regularly between Newcastle and London hints athow processes of mimesis work to facilitate his own work:

Leo: ` I think in first class, I think the people who travel first class on the maintend to be business travellers. Not always but usually and they're quite focused.They've got stuff to do when they get on the train. And they just get on and doit and then get off again really. Sometimes you get groups of people who traveltogether in first class but they tend to be business travellers.''Me: ` Do you find that that almost focuses you a little bit?''Leo: ` Probably, but I'm quite a focused person anyway when I need to be.Because I've got quite limited time so I know I've got to get something donewithin a certain time so I do it. But being with other people who are all workingI would say helps me stay fixed on the task in hand. I'm less ... I'll be less temptedto sit back and chill.''

Through this account, we get a sense that in addition to the focused attitude that heapproaches his travel time with, the busyness of other passengers assists in sustaininghis own practices. This is not conscious, reflective emulation of what others are doing,but rather that the practices and demeanour of other proximate passengers, togetherwith the quietness of the carriage, generate an affective atmosphere that effectivelyprimes him to act in a particular way. In this instance, he is primed to continueworking rather than engaging in a different activity. The affective atmosphere is

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transmitted in part through the visual apprehension of other passengers, but is alsosensed through less-agentive modes of communication. Furthermore, it is worth con-sidering how the temporal unfolding of such atmospheres might be very particular tothe time ^ space of the railway journey. Since the railway carriage comprises a multi-plicity of individual itineraries, many people might not be `sharing' a journey, but havemultiple overlapping journeys. As such, regular transformations in the atmospheremight occur as different passengers alight and join the train at different places, makingthe railway carriage a very different work environment to more stationary locations.

Second, in other circumstances, the transmission of certain affects which assist ingenerating a particular atmosphere are intensified depending on the time of travel.Energetic affects related to excitement and expectancy might characterise the spaceof the railway carriage on a Friday evening as recounted by this passenger:

Luke: ` Yeah. In fact I quite enjoy travelling for that reasonöon a Friday. Just 'cosI know ... it's usually quite fullöthere's usually a bit of an atmosphere. Sometimes,particularly when I get to York and I change from York, there's nearly alwaysyou know, kind of, not groups of drunks, but groups of blokes who are out fora drink in Leeds and that's kind of interesting, for me. It makes you feel like,`right, it's the weekend, I can relax now.' ''

As Ahmed (2004b) suggests, particular affects might intensify as they circulate. There-fore, whilst the habitual rhythm of the working week might have already primed thebody to feel in a particular way, here we get a sense of these positive affects beingaugmented in the railway carriage as they move between Luke and his fellow passen-gers, prompting him to feel more uplifted and relaxed. Considering that the face is oneof the most important sites of affect, or ` affect in process'' (Thrift, 2004, page 61),affect here might be communicated through common, involuntary facial expressionssuch as contented smiles (see also Ekman and Rosenberg, 1997). These infectiousaffects might be complemented by excitable speech and chatter, perhaps punctuatedwith bursts of laughter. The sensing of a particular euphoric atmosphere here thereforeemerges through the eruption and circulation of these dynamic affects and the impres-sions that they leave on the body. These affective atmospheres make a difference tohow the journey is experienced which one can imagine as being rather different on aMonday morning.

Third, a different and rather less positive type of affective atmosphere might eruptin the space of the railway carriage when the train stops unexpectedly. As the itinerantpredictability of travel time gives way to an erratic and faltering trickle of informationfrom the train staff, the emergent condition of uncertainty gives rise to a series ofnegative affects associated with frustration and annoyance. In the event of the delay,the comfort associated with anticipated schedules and sequences of events are brutallyscrambled and the routines and habits which enable regular passengers to travelwithout much reflective thought are ruptured:

`The wait here seems like an eternity. People are looking around, making eyecontact with each other, sighing. Eyebrows raised and hands nervously on neck.We're going to miss our connection. I can feel adrenaline coursing around mybody; waves of frustration are hitting me; but I feel strangely inert. I don't wantto make conversation. My eyes are staring into space and I feel paralysed''(autoethnographic participant observation, Ely ^Norwich, 4 April 2006, 20:16).Following Spinoza, the affective atmosphere that emerges in the unexpected stop is

both kinetic and dynamic (see McCormack, 2008). Kinetic affects emerge as the slow-ing and eventual halting of the train cause a change in the disposition of passengers.The slowness of the train here becomes out of sync with the desired or expectedspeed of passengers, their itineraries and aspirations, which generates negative affects

Affective atmospheres and the sociality of public transport 275

associated with frustration. Again, these affects might be registered through a series ofinvoluntary facial expressions: raised eyebrows and pursed lips, for example. Kineticaffects communicated by the stopping of the train are augmented by dynamic affectsthat erupt between passengers, giving rise to a particular affective atmosphere withinthe train carriage. This transmission of affect between bodies literally changes theirbiochemical properties: the release of adrenaline and particular neurotransmitters,tensed muscles, quickening heartbeat, the sinking feeling in the stomach, flushed face,beads of sweat forming on the forehead, all of which again change the capacity of thepassenger to affect and be affected.

In each of these three events the most significant communication between passengersand other bodies takes place through affective rather than discursive, conversationalregisters. Importantly, this communication does not take place on a wholly consciousor interpretative level. As Wegner notes, we live in a ` suggested society'' in which ` thecausal influences people have on themselves and each other, as they are understood,capture only a small part of the actual causal flux of social relations'' (Wegner, 2002,page 314; cited in Thrift, 2008, page 240). Affects in the railway carriage emerge throughthe coming together of specific object materialities, technologies, bodies, and practicesat particular times and in particular spaces. These affects are infectious. In these events,passengers do not consciously choose to feel in a particular way. The quietude of theworking carriage, the joy erupting in the Friday evening carriage, the anxiety flaring upin the delayed carriage move through passengers semiconsciously, and in doing so, modifytheir capacity to affect and be affected. In each of these cases, as affect is transmittedbetween bodies, the affective atmosphere of the carriage is intensified as it ripples out overspace.

Importantly, and contrary to the modernist illusion of the bounded and containedself, the emergence of these atmospheres generates significant collectives. Where thesociality of the railway carriage has traditionally focused on the presence (or absence)of conversational interaction between individual passengers, focusing on affectivecommunication and the emergence of affective atmospheres forces us to think through`the social' as not being reduced to or taken to be the product of particular individuals.Brennan (2004), taking inspiration from work on crowd dynamics (see Bion, 1961;Le Bon, 1952; McDougall, 1920), draws our attention to the significance of theseaffective ties that bind groups together. These affective ties ` involve subjects andobjects, but without residing positively within them'' (Ahmed, 2004a, page 119). Thisis ` a sociality without determinate borders'', as Massumi puts it (2002, page 9), wheredivisions between things become difficult to make out. These affective relations thatgenerate collectives envelop changing chemical compounds, technological apparatus inthe form of the carriage, complex circuits of infrastructure that enable mechanicalmovement to occur, and so on. Yet, if one is pushed to think through the relationsbetween bodies, these affective atmospheres have the capacity to bring passengerstogether. As Conradson and Latham note, ``within a collective, affect may also workto align and mobilise individuals into certain formations'' (2007, page 235). We mightthink of how communally experienced adversity through the event of the delay galva-nises the `passenger body' where the eruption of frustration in the carriage generatesshared dispositions. This temporarily aligns individuals with each other, intensifyingattachments to one another, and reduces the distance between them.

3 Splintered collectivesTo return to the opening claim, `being with' is a hugely significant characteristic oftrain travel. The train carriage is an intense coming together of people and things inclose proximity. In many ethnographic accounts of public transport, it is the diversity

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of unacquainted bodies that inhabit and move through these spaces that lends them aparticular feel but which also gives rise to particular modes of `being with' [compareAuge (2002) with Hutchinson (2000), for example]. It is a place where people submitthemselves for a multitude of reasons, echoed in Schivelbusch's (1979) assertion that thetrain assists in democratising space. Infinite difference is shot through the `passengerbody'. Yet this `passenger body', understood as a collective of individuals, objects, andtechnologies, can be approached from a number of different angles. Within the railwayindustry the passenger body is often dissected according to the three purposive typol-ogies of `business travel', commuter travel', and `leisure travel' (Passenger Focus, 2009;see also Lyons et al, 2007). Indeed, others have devised more elaborate passengerprofiles identifying groups such as the ` functional traveller, day tripper, train lover,leisure ^ hedonistic traveller, and family traveller'' (Pas and Huber, 1992). Further still,others have discussed how class' might operate as a particular mode of social splinter-ing when travelling by train (Lo« fgren, 2008). These categorisations may themselves behugely affective, prompting passengers to behave in certain ways or conform to aparticular repertoire of performances and comportments. But this of course is depend-ent on the extent to which passengers can and do reflexively interpret their travelpractices according to such classifications. Whilst much social science research ontravel time mirrors industry's and policy makers' propensity to condense this diversityto a series of rather crude aggregates (for example, see Wardman, 1998), thinking throughthe emergence and impact of affective atmospheres prompts us to think through howother collectives might materialise; and the implications that this has on understandingsociality.

The events in the previous section highlight how the emergence of particularaffective atmospheres has the capacity to bring people closer together. As Ahmednotes, ` emotions work by sticking figures together ... a sticking that creates the veryeffect of a collective'' (2004a, page 119). In such events we might consider how partic-ular suspicions or anxieties emergent from the assumption or perception of `difference'between individual passengers might be temporarily disrupted and overridden. Herethe power of affect lies in its capacity to open up bodies, intensifying positive relationsbetween them. Reflecting on the examples in the previous section, we might considerhow particular affective collectives might emerge through generational belonging,which might be enhanced through specific materialities such as alcohol. Yet theappearance or assumption of such an affirmative collective seems to belie much ofwhat is often written about the prosaic experience of public transport. We rarelyencounter passengers who testify to the joyfulness of the daily rail commute. Indeed,Conradson and Latham (2007) point out that the rather more harrowing side ofLondon's `buzz' might present itself in the frustrations and discontent that emergesthough long and repetitive commutes by public transport. In this instance, the fatiguingeffects of routine travel might deplete the capacity of the body to experience morepositive affects.

The experience of being with others in spaces of public transport often generatesparticularly uncongenial relations between passengers [see Holmes and Reeves (2003)for a satirical take on this]. But why should this be so? Thrift (2005) suggests thatdysphoric affects more generally stem from and are associated with feelings of unease andforeboding that other writers have argued are increasingly symptomatic of urban living(Davis, 2002). Accounting for such misanthropy, Thrift notes that ` a certain amount ofdislike of one's fellow citizens is, given the social-cum-biological-cum-technologicalmake-up of human beings, inescapable: the ubiquity of aggression is an inevitableby-product of living in cities'' (2005, page 134). Indeed, one could see how it is easyto translate such understandings to the space of the train carriage where ` certain kinds

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of violence'' might have ` become engrained in our `nature' '' (Thrift, 2005, page 134). Theremight be an instrumental dimension to this. Over time and engrained in habit, such amisanthropic disposition might constitute a strategy for dealing with the stresses andstrains of travelling with others. In order to secure the comfort of a seat, or to makesure one is at the front of a queue in order to get to one's destination quicker, for example,then small acts of violenceöcutting up, barging, pushing, and shovingömight have totake place which disrupt more congenial choreographies of movement as illustrated by thepassenger, Jack, below:

`After doing this journey for what ... eight years now, other people just sort of meltinto the background. You're just focused on getting to work, and if I didn't make aneffort to get to the door to get a seat, someone else would and they'd get a seatinstead of me. Sometimes I agree, it's not pretty, but everyone's the same really.If you don't make that effort you're standing for the whole journey.''Yet such a wilful misanthropy conceals how the fatiguing effects of everyday life

can change the body's capacity to affect and be affected. Indeed, this points to animportant consideration about how affective atmospheres are differently experiencedby `individual' passengers. Whilst there is no strict division between individual andenvironment, Brennan argues that ` we may influence the registration of the transmittedaffect in a variety of ways; affects are not received or registered in a vacuum ... . Thus,the content one person gives to the affect of anger, or depression or anxiety may be verydifferent from the content given to the same affect by another'' (2004, page 6). As such,the body of the passenger burnt out by the demands of an exhausting day might have amuch greater capacity for irritation than a different body which might be less enervated.Put simply, the fatigued body might have a lower threshold to be irritated. This differ-ential susceptibility to be affected is therefore conditioned by the particular person'simbrication into other relations of practice and performance.

Such misanthropic dispositions might reveal themselves through particular eventsin the railway carriage. Indeed, many of my research respondents who were regularpassengers when prompted had little trouble in identifying aspects of dwelling withothers in the railway carriage that grieved them. Their inventories often includedpractices that they found intrusive, such as other people's mobile phone conversationsand the olefactory displeasures of experiencing other people's pungent food. Indeed,Fisher argues that such events ` mark out the radius of the will'' (2002, page 171), whereirritation and anger emerge as a response to one's own perceived worth. Indeed, itmight be tempting to see irritability as ` the response of the will when it is baffled andunable to achieve its goal'' (Fisher, 2002, page 14). But an understanding that priori-tises the maintenance and preservation of a wilful, bounded individual obscures howsuch experiences are registered, apprehended, and responded to by collectives thattranscend individual bodies.

Frustration here is transmitted through contagion and is distributed across variouspassengers. As Hemmings suggests, ` it is transferred to others and doubles back,increasing its original intensity'' (2005, page 552). Similarly, such an instrumental under-standing seems to fail when other passenger grievances are encountered. At the otherend of my respondents' inventories were repeated a series of seemingly incidental acts ofnail clipping, sniffing, sighing, coughing, tapping fingers on the table; through to thebare presence of other people. This suggests a move from considering a particular eventof violation to highlighting the importance of latent disposition and orientation in theformation of particular collectives. Significantly, these are not acts of violence that canbe disciplined and quiesced through institutional channels as such. Indeed, to claim thatthe mere existence of others generates affects associated with misanthropy suggeststhat these negative affective atmospheres that emerge in the railway carriage are rather

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more complex than merely the erosion or intrusion of personal space. Far from theformation of collectives, such events demonstrate the ability of affects to splinter anddistance passengers. Illustrating the complexities of affective transmission, Brennanargues that ` the act of directing negative affects to the other severs my kin tie withher by objectifying her. I make her into an object by directing these affects toward her,because the act marks her with affects that I reject in myself ... . I assume that she doesnot feel as I do'' (2004, page 119).

Misanthropy as a particular disposition is not just a product of the stresses andstrains of commuting; passengers are also primed to act in particular ways throughother prompts. There are many other bodies of influence that can shape the passengerequally forcefully. Indeed, these other communicative registers that run concurrentto discursive registers rely on the transmission of affect. Affects are attached to ideasand this does not happen by chance. Rather, these affective signals are intentionallyengineered into these materials so that they achieve maximum effect. This is powerfullyillustrated in a poster (figure 1) displayed at one large railway station. Whilst postersand publicity material are generally regarded to operate in a principally discursivemanner, they also carry a powerful affective charge which then plays a role in influenc-ing the type of atmosphere that emerges. This particular poster, intended to reduce theproportion of commuters who travel with season tickets that cover only a small part oftheir total journey where ticket checks are infrequent, demonstrates how a particularbrand of authoritarian capitalism engineers affect as a strategy to maximise revenue.(4)

Figure 1. `Dodger', Norwich station, December 2008 (author's photograph).(4) Such affects that are in part generated through the perception of financial injustices also hintat how other affective intolerances might be intensified by the high cost of rail travel.

Affective atmospheres and the sociality of public transport 279

Crucially, these materials have the capacity to reconfigure the affective relationsbetween passengers. Using affectively charged words such as `dodger' splinters thepassenger body along different collective lines. In constructing the binary betweenthe dodger as `other' and the implied `respectable' passengers, the dodger is framedas a common threat. But the problem here is that there is no visual identifier whichmarks these passengers out. Indeed, the absence of visibility potentially serves not tosplinter the passenger body between `good passengers' and `bad passengers', but intro-duces the possibility that any of our fellow passengers might be fraudulent (see Ahmed,2004a). The affective relation between passengers might therefore emerge as one charac-terised by suspicion and mistrust. Indeed, we could extend the reach of such affectiveengineering to include the range of incessant audio announcements at stations and ontrains that ask passengers to report any `suspicious behaviour' to members of staff.This poster attempts to change passengers' disposition to each other: a call to action,priming the passenger to act and respond to unacquainted others that privileges theseassumptions. Indeed, the power of this negative affect lies in its inability to be locatedin any particular body. As Ahmed suggests, ` it is the failure of [affects] to be located ina body, object or figures that allows [affects] to (re)produce the effect that they do''(2004b, page 124). It is these atmospheres of suspicion and mistrust generated in partby such objects and signs that serve to open up distance between passengers.

Understanding the effect of these misanthropic affects is hugely important inconsidering being with unacquainted others in the spaces of public transport. Whilstaffective atmospheres are not interpreted in the same way by all passengers, affectworks to align bodies together in particular ways, giving the impression of differentcollectives. Indeed, these collectives often emerge and cohere in the face of particularlymisanthropic practices. Furthermore, these affective dispositions to some extent can bestrategically engineered and intensified by transport providers through particularpowerful discursive media. It is these negative affects associated with anger, mistrust,and frustration that prime passengers for action.

4 Collective passivityBut very often, nothing happens. Very rarely, in the face of negative affects thatcondense and cohere in the carriage, is a resolution achieved that quells such negativeaffects. The leaky personal stereo continues to agitate; the irksome mobile phoneconversation is still in full sway; the whiffy fast-food odour remains suspended in theair; and the ticket is still invalid. Further still, other practices have the capacity togenerate more intense negative affects of anger, frustration, or even fear (see DfT,2008). The etching on the window with a knife; the wisp of smoke from a lightedcigarette; the utterance of frequent obscenities exacerbated by the six cans of lagereach serve to augment the negative affects which touch others in the carriage.These intense, angry, negative affects, a ``high-spirited, active, and energetic responseto the world'' (Fisher, 2002, page 15), mobilise and prime the rest of the passengerbody for action who witness and are punched by these affects. Yet no response comes.Why is this? How to account for such a reticence to act?

In part, this might be construed as falling short where we have a responsibility torespond to these affects. Indeed, such an imperative to respond to these affectiveingresses is demanded explicitly by service providers' visual materials, instructingpassengers to `trust their senses'.(5) For some a failure to respond through actionmight emerge from a lack of trust in one's ability to cognitively reflect on sensoryregistration. Such a figure might share aspects of Aristotle's ``in-irascible man'' (sic)(5) In the wake of the July 2005 tube bombings in London, Transport for London has run ahigh-profile poster campaign instructing passengers to ``trust your senses''.

280 D Bissell

who ``lacks confidence in his own judgements and perceptions and will have a tendencyto accept the judgements and perceptions of others as correct'' (Homiak, 1999, page 307).Whilst the uncomfortable atmosphere might be experienced as a distinctly irked collective,in part intensified by the raised eyebrows, huffing, pursed lips, and other gestures ofrecognition, if other passengers are not intervening, doubts emerge as to whether theregistration of such affects are touching others as forcefully; doubts that are testified to bythis passenger:

Me: ` So did you ask them if they wouldn't mind turning it off [their stereo]?''Carol: ``Um, I'd have liked to have had the courage to. But I didn't and I supposeI didn't want to make myself look, I don't know, like a target for them to havea go at me with. And other people might be thinking that I've overreacted andthen I'm the one with the problem. So it's then I was thinking `is it just me?' But I'msure they would have been thankful thinking about it now so going back to yourearlier question, maybe it was me not being a responsible train traveller.''

This is an impasse brought about by unease of mutual incomprehension, but one wherepassivity is still equated with apathy. Here it is important to recognise how affectsthat emerge through these events do not conform to the same hierarchical schema thatassesses events from a legal perspective. The affective intensity that erupts through suchevents is not necessarily proportional to the magnitude of their apparent severity.Qualitative differences between events have the capacity to affect in different ways.Thus, whilst smoking on trains is taken to be a serious criminal offence, regulated bysystems of institutional governance, repetitive tapping of fingers on a table or passen-gers pressing their feet against the back of one's seat might generate much more intenseaggravation precisely because there might be less justification for retaliation. Theaffective field generated by different practices might spread throughout the wholecarriage, as in the case of loud music; or touch only a single passenger, as in thecase of feet pressing against the seat. Similarly, the force of such negative affects mightbe mediated by the extent to which the practices that give rise to them are perceived asmalicious or inadvertent. Whilst clearly a problematic dualism embedded within aparticular understanding of intentionality, this relies on the extent to which the perpe-trators are aware that they are affecting others. This might be further mediated by ahost of other variances, from regular passengers through to occasional travellers,generation divides and so forth. Different travellers might harbour different assump-tions of what practices are deemed `acceptable', if we were to follow Goffman (1963).Alternatively, such negative affects might emerge through the frustration of beingaffected by something seemingly so inconsequential, or the irritation associated withthe injustice of being the only person apparently touched by such an affect.

And yet Aristotle's in-irascible man is characterised by weakness and ``does not feelanger when he should'' (Fisher, 2002, page 173). Since waves of anger are certainlypresent in these events, this reticence to respond to the affective charge of anger mightemerge through other affects which present themselves. The processes of cognitivereflection that temper action might be infused with more fearful affects that aretransmitted in part through media discourses. Reports of such atrocious eventsas people being pushed onto railway tracks in response to confronting so-called`antisocial behaviour' loom large in the public consciousness (Hines and Yeoman,2008), serving to create a ` distributed space of expectancy existing as a diffuse fieldof potential'' (McCormack, 2008, page 423). The circulation of such discourses there-fore carries an affective charge, heightening their expectancy and mobilising affectsof fear. In this case it is these affects of fear that disrupt the call to act. As Fishersuggests, in fear ` we are overwhelmed by something outside ourselves or by somethingthat we believe may damage or destroy us'' (2002, page 15). When we speak of being

Affective atmospheres and the sociality of public transport 281

`gripped' by fear, the body is held ransom to this affect and its potential for actionis curtailed. Even with this excuse of self-preservation, apathy is not necessarily anunethical disposition. Actively choosing to be passive, where apathy as described byKant as ` the state of no passion'', might be a highly desirable disposition ` when passionis understood not as joy and pleasure but as waves of negative affect'' (Brennan, 2004,page 129). Being with others in the railway carriage might be all the more pleasant ifthey are intentionally ignored and blotted out, perhaps through an Goffmanesque` involvement shield'' (1963, page 40) involving reading material or the ubiquitouspersonal stereo (Bull, 2007) to maintain ` civil inattention'' (Goffman, 1963). If wewere to follow Bauman, we might conclude that such intentional strategies of passivityassist in `` `desocializing' the potentially social space around, or preventing the physicalspace in which one moves from turning into a social one'' (1993, page 155). In doing so` joy and enjoyment may intensify when feeling is not blunted by the [negative] affects''(Brennan, 2004, page 129).

Yet both Bauman's and Goffman's understanding of what constitutes the `social' islimited to the interactional configurations of bodies and the performances that theyundertake. Here, the `social' is a visible construct that can be `read off ' from bodiesthrough the management of their conduct. Expanding the remit of what constitutes thesocial to include prepersonal affects enables us to consider how, even through passivitywhere bodies might not be engaged in intentional, active practices, intense negativeaffects still have the capacity to temper the lived experience of being with others.Furthermore, these dynamic affective atmospheres that coalesce and collapse in thetrain carriage do not necessarily map neatly onto the onset and cessation of partic-ular events. Whilst the rowdy mobile phone conversation might generate particularlyintense negative affects during the duration of the conversation itself, these negativeaffects do not necessarily dissipate at the end of the call. Instead, they have thecapacity to simmer long afterwards. After being told off for using her telephone tooloudly, Helen describes how particular negative affective relations remained long afterthe event itself:

`But I was ... ohhhh, I was seething! [angrily] You know, I felt like a naughty child.Oh yes. I was seething for quite some time. And I put my headphones on and 'cos Iwas seething about her and I was seething about him sitting in front of me as well.You know, I was watching him to see if he was going to have some misdemeanourthat I could have a go at him with.''

In her case a field of expectancy persists long after the event itself. The belittlingexperience of being `told off ' by a fellow passenger generates a particularly negativeshameful affect, illustrated by her allusion to feeling like a `naughty child'. Shamegenerates a particular set of relations between bodies. As Ahmed suggests, ` whenshamed, one's body seems to burn up with the negation that is perceived; and shameimpresses upon the skin as an intense feeling of the subject `being against itself ' ''(2004b, page 103). This vulnerability through exposure is intensified as the event ofshaming is being witnessed by others. Her desire to detect a practice that would justifyretaliation illustrates an attempt to transform shame into a different affect, therebyrearranging the relations between bodies. Yet the potency of shame can rise only if thebody cares about the interest of others. As Probyn writes, ` shame illuminates ourintense attachment to the world, our desire to be connected with others, and theknowledge that, as merely human, we will sometimes fail in our attempts to maintainthose connections'' (2005, page 14).

For the witnesses, and particularly if a verbal intervention is not forthcoming, thisvirtual field of expectancyöthat the event itself, such as a mobile phone call, has thepotential to actualise again at any timeömight hold the body in a restless suspense.

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But there is a temporal arc implicated in these affective fields. Whilst Fisher (2002)makes a rather clear-cut distinction between `occasioned' event-like passions and under-lying `dispositional' passions, a distinction between the affects emergent from the eventitself and their haunting presence in the aftermath might be a useful way of consideringhow intense negative affects remain relatively stubborn, perhaps decaying only slowlyover time. As Fisher notes, ` anger acts instantaneously and cools with time'' (2002,page 181, emphasis added). Conversely, a stream of multiple events that generatefrustration might serve to increase these negative affects over time. Indeed, routineexposure to such events that generate negative affect might serve to alter the body'sdisposition towards other passengers more generally. Yet the expectation that suchevents will occur might bring about a more or less tolerant disposition: either a toleranceof other passengers, or a steady gathering force of hatred for other passengers.

In short, the precise shape of affective emergence and modulation is unpredictable.There are, however, ways that affects might be kept in check to prevent them fromtaking such a firm hold of the body. Attending to the event and subjecting it toreflection might be a way in which ``one lets go of the affect by examining its courseor allowing the course of other, calmer feelings to assert itself '' (Brennan, 2004,page 128). Indeed the passenger above actively attempts to exorcise the negative affectswhen she follows her earlier expression of anger with the admittance: ` but I was like`this is stupid!' Calm down.''Alternatively, such affects might be purposively channelledin other directions. The cathartic effect of testifying to one's frustration and angerthrough conversation with others might combine with other spaces that bear witnessto these affects, such as the letters columns of free newspapers, often distributed atrailway stations. Indeed, a challenge for cultural theorists and transport planners alikeis to consider how such spaces can be better `ventilated', to use Sloterdijk's term (2005,cited in Thrift, 2006), which can dissipate negative affects more effectively, and fosternew modes of being together.(6)

5 Collective affectsIn an age of increased carbon conscience, and in an attempt to encourage a `greener'mobile future (see Urry, 2008), the imperative of switching from reliance on automobilitiesto public transport is a common thread that weaves through much contemporary govern-ment ideology. Whilst the comfort of habit is often invoked as a trenchant hurdle thatneeds to be broken down, such idealistic mantras often fail to acknowledge that thereticence of such a switch for many might be tempered by the necessity to surrenderparticular freedoms that have often been associated with automobility throughout the 20thcentury. Such freedoms, particularly within the context of urban driving, are oftenmore illusory than they are substantive (Katz, 1999; Michael, 1998). Yet the supposedflexibility and autonomy of the car driver contrast markedly with the masochism of therailway passenger who must acquiesce not only to the regulatory fixity of timetablesand scheduling (Morse, 1998) but offer herself or himself up to become part of a mobilepublic.

In the face of widespread and rapid social change and technological innovation,particularly during the latter half of the 20th century, it is intriguing to consider howthe spatial configuration and arrangement of the railway carriage remain a resolutely

(6) Perhaps the most explicit recent attempt to dissipate such negative affects is the Transport forLondon campaign Together for London (TfL, 2008), designed to promote a greater sense ofawareness of how particular practices generate such affects. This promotion of positive practicescontrasts with the approach of other transport operators such as Sydney's CityRail whose recentcampaign aimed to highlight the undesirable ``beastly behaviour'' of passengers through eightstylised caricatures (RailCorp, 2008).

Affective atmospheres and the sociality of public transport 283

modernist assemblage. As de Certeau describes, ` the unchanging traveller is pigeonholed,numbered and regulated in the grid of the railway car, which is a perfect actualisationof the rational utopia'' (2002, page 111). Unacquainted bodies still jostle uneasily againsteach other together on rows of seats that face each other. Schivelbusch's (1979) observa-tions on the mild discomfort of being with unknown others in the 19th-century railwaycarriage, together with much writing on the status of the individual within the crowdat the turn of the 20th century, particularly through Simmel and Benjamin, still holda surprising degree of analytical legitimacy today.(7)

Consequently, it is perhaps easy to appreciate how `the passenger' as an ` anony-mised parcel of flesh'' (Thrift, 1996, page 266) has become the dominant unit of analysisfor social scientific thought which has attended to the embodied experience of being onthe move (although see McCormack, 2008). Yet invoking such an analytical figure atonce implies the existence of a bounded, autonomous, reflexive, self-determined `indi-vidual' whilst at the same time downplays the significance of other materialities andforces that do not conform to this schema. Consequently, social scientific thinkingabout the sociality of mobilities has tended to privilege the discursive registers of textand talk that flicker through and across different intersecting networks (Larsen et al,2006; Urry, 2007). Where materialities beyond bodies are invokedömost notablytechnological apparatuses and infrastructuresötheir role is primarily functional andinstrumental in extending the scale, frequency, and spontaneity through which suchdiscursive (and often overtly productivist) socialities can take place. Within thisversion of sociality, spaces of public transport might be characterised by their relativeabsence of sociality.

Yet what this paper has demonstrated is that there are communicative registersat play within these spaces that transcend the limiting grammars and vocabulariesof discourse. This opens up and expands the remit of what constitutes the `social' byreconfiguring the relations between technologies, matter, and bodies. More specifically,in this paper I have argued that attending to and understanding affective registersof communication at play within spaces of public transport that transcend individualbodies allows us to consider how particular hybrid constellations of bodies and objectsare generated and sustained that eschew the dualistic conventions of the human/non-human. Far from incidental, these powerful but often overlooked affective modulationshave the capacity to generate significant material effects. Put simply, affective atmos-pheres that coalesce and collapse, erupt and dissipate within the railway carriage cansignificantly temper the experience of the railway journey. Through the movement ofaffect, dispositions become fostered and bodies become primed to act in different ways.But in contrast to much work on the sociality of mobilities, such atmospheres arenot the outcome of conversational practices; rather they emerge through the complexinterplay of technologies, matter, and bodies.

But where does this leave us in thinking about passengers? Recognising that theseautonomous affects give rise to particular collectives and social formations is not sayingthat becoming a passenger absolves the body of responsibility; that particular disposi-tions will inevitably cohere and condense. This is certainly not to advocate the notionthat we should be ` unalloyedly nice'' to all things at all times (Thrift, 2005, page 140).Equally, it is not about suggesting that we should attempt to engage in moreöwhathave traditionally been construed asö`sociable' practices with other passengers. Manypassengers might indeed seek solace from the quietude and anomie of solitary travel.

(7) Although the type of closed-off railway compartment that draws Schivelbusch's attention is, ofcourse, very different to the configuration of most modern railway carriages in the UK with theircentre aisles and (increasingly in the UK) airline-style seating.

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Indeed, as Laurier and Philo remind us, people have ` a right to be left alone in public''(2006, page 199). On the other hand, the emergence of negative, misanthropic affectsthat are very often the hallmark of travelling by public transport might be one ofthe powerful contributing factors that make it a less-than-desirable option, deterringpeople from making the switch from private forms of transport.(8) Preventing com-monly diagnosed forms of antisocial behaviouröparticularly malicious or explicit actsof destructivenessöis an imperative of public transport providers; and embodied in theUK government's wider Respect Agenda (Home Office, undated) and Respect ActionPlan (Home Office, 2006). Yet, in addition to presuming the existence of a normativeframework for `desirable' social conduct, such attention overlooks the low-grademalice that often simmers in these spaces, erupting and rendered visible in smallacts of violence. This is significant because, over time, exposure to and imbricationwithin such affectual atmospheres has the capacity to wear the body down. Whilstoften held to be symptomatic of the kinaesthetic ``reeks and jiggles'' of submitting tothe technology of transport itself, as Hutchinson (2000) puts it, lethargy, weariness,and fatigue might equally emerge from the routine misanthropism that seems to besuch a characteristic part of the public transport experience.(9)

Coexistence; being-with others is an integral aspect of railway travel. Yet dwellingwithin the transient community that characterises spaces of public transport is argu-ably something that we need to understand better. Whilst it might be easy to suggestthat, since passengers are united in their motivation to travel from A to B, travelling onpublic transport constitutes a common experience, such an instrumental character-isation obscures the diversity that is shot through the passenger body criss-crossedwith multiple expectancy, use of travel time, rationale, thresholds, and so on. As such,aspirations of positive belonging motivated by assumptions of unity, agreement, andcommon-being (for example, see Mackenzie and Dalby, 2003) are inherently unsatis-factory. Following from Nancy's (1991) discussion of the ` inoperative community'',Welsh and Panelli are keen to stress how the collective of community should valorise` togetherness'' over ` sameness'' as ` community cannot be a construction but is theevent-of-being-with, or that which constitutes being'' (2007, page 351). In part, thismight be about recognising the fluid relations that passengers have with the transientcommunity of the railway carriage: specifically, an oscillation between the need to bepart of a community, perhaps during the event of a delay, and the ` surprise and satis-faction when relative independence from community is reaffirmed'' (Panelli and Welch,2005, page 1608).

(8) Interestingly the Great Britain National Passenger Survey (a longitudinal survey undertaken byPassenger Focus for the Department for Transport which consults over 50 000 passengers everyyear on issues of satisfaction) does not give passengers an opportunity to discuss aspects of theirjourney experience that are mediated by other passengers. This may revolve around the perceptionthat `social' problems are outside the remit of what train operating companies can intervene in.(9) Whilst it might be all too easy to make general claims here, I am, of course, wary of holding upthe empirical evidence of these passengers who travel along the East Coast Main Line as exem-plary of the experience of railway travelöand indeed `public transport' as a collectiveömoregenerally. The overwhelmingly negative sentiments expressed by research participants throughoutthis paper might be testament to an amalgamation of social-cum-economic-cum-political factors,such as how the perceived high cost of railway travel mediates expectations of the journey, forexample. Such sentiments contrast with other research on railway travel that has tended to extolthe virtues of the physical separation of work and home (Mokhtarian and Salomon, 2001). Theparticularity of these opinions also inevitably reflects the particular range of passengers I talked towhich reflects my sampling strategy (which included recruitment on web-based discussion groups,contacts with businesses in the northeast of England whose workers travel to London, and snow-balling from these and university-based contacts). It could be anticipated that research conductedon other lines would generate a series of alternative experiences.

Affective atmospheres and the sociality of public transport 285

But this invokes the illusion of an individual, reflexive passenger with a capacity forresponsibility; to ` act autonomously according to conscience'' (Diprose, 2008, page 619).Yet, as this paper has described, a greater attention to affective modulations and theirforce that transcend the individual takes the onus of responsibility and primary ethicalagency away from individual passengers towards a more collective rendering of res-ponsibility that envelops humans and non-humans within the emergence of affectiveatmospheres. Here, the sociality of the railway carriage is tangled up as much with theagentive force of music players, signage, paper tickets, and seat backs, as with `indi-vidual' bodies. In this respect, the spaces of public transport present an arena for anethics in process to emerge, rather than hostage to a prescriptive, circumscribed`morality'. Such ` a caring for belonging'' (Massumi, 2002, page 255) is visible in thelight-touch gestures of generosity that flicker between passengers and objects (see alsoLaurier and Philo, 2006). These events of kindness, which Brennan (2004, page 124)describes as ``the refusal to pass on or transmit negative affects and the attempt toprevent the pain they cause to others'', illustrate a collective sense of conviviality, butone that operates through affective registers.

But what about the injustices that are narrated through the folds of this paper?Thrift (2005) hopes for a transposition of negative affects of misanthropy to moreenabling, positive affects associated with kindness and compassion. Yet I would suggestthat the response to particular negative atmospheresöaffects associated with frustra-tion, irritability, or angeröalso render visible a care for life and a demand to respond.Being imbricated within such affective atmospheres reveals an interest in the event.Events of being rattled, shaken, or knocked therefore contain within them an ethicalpotential, opening up opportunities for repair and offering a potential to redraw andnegotiate the field of what might be possible. Reminiscent of Rancie© re's `politics ofdisagreement', the sociality of public transport is therefore a collective accomplishment.To be sure, I am certainly not condoning or valorising events of injustice and hurt.Rather I am suggesting that these spaces of negotiation are ` sites of ethical responsi-bility'' (Popke, 2009, page 84) with the capacity to redraw our ethical orientation, andpotentially enhance our affective capacities.

Acknowledgements. I would like to thank the four referees and the journal editors for theirextremely generous and perceptive comments which have helped to tighten the paper. This paperhas also benefitted hugely from the input of staff and students at Manchester MetropolitanUniversity's Manchester Institute of Social and Spatial Transformations seminar series, and theSchool of Geography and the Environment seminar series at the University of Oxford.

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