![]() ![]() ![]() John’s work set agendas and often mapped out the potential for complex fields through long lists of qualities, attributes and facets of a potential area of study. John’s work is well signalled by its incredible accessibility, rarely burdened by the weighty jargon and obfuscating sentences of others. He was supportive, kindly, inclusive and yet challenging somehow ferociously inquisitive and unassuming at the same time. I don’t believe many of us thought about John quite like that as much as we respected his stature, physical (he was very tall) and intellectual. To some extent, they also reflect the curiosity with which he understood society’s need to connect, to yearn for proximity, to desire what he called ‘meetingness’ in such a great deal of his writing.ĭeleuze once described Foucault as a kind of atmosphere or a presence, how he filled a room. ![]() These spaces and spacings (some more formal than others) are important because they mark John’s informality he was just so approachable and always ready to subvert authority. As is evident in the hundreds of tributes and testimonials to his memory gathered already, his work influenced so many people through his talks at conferences, his published words in the pages of journals and his many books, and in conversations across viva examination tables, PhD juries and supervisory meetings, as well as the offices, corridors, cars, gardens and bars of in-between. John Urry was an extraordinary, generous and compelling force. ![]()
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