Practical Management of Mobility: The Case of the Emergency Medical System

In an attempt to understand some of the issues involved in the problem of mobility, the author examines the notion of mobility by locating it in the actual and local context where people try to deal with it as their practical problem, following ethnomethodological policy. This way of understanding the local character of mobility has two advantages: one is that it allows us to understand the notion in terms of the social organization of activities as part of which it is managed by relevant members, rather than understanding it in a purely theoretical manner. The other advantage is that it offers us a detailed and concrete understanding of the environment in relation to people's activities that potentially can be used as a basis for some sensitive tools for designing or redesigning the environment in terms of its specific arrangement of mobility. Detailed observations are made on the emergency medical system to illustrate the complex temporal and spatial arrangements involved in moving a patient from one place to another, providing necessary medical treatment on the way, and coordinating different expertise in organizationally and geographically different locations.