Automobilities (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)

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Automobilities � SAGE

Automobilities Edited by Mike Featherstone, Nigel Thrift and John Urry Contellts 1

Mike Featherstone

Introduction

John Urr)

The 'System' of AutomobiJity

2S

Nigel Thr�fi

Driving in the City

41

Tim Dant

The Driver-car

61

Jorg Beckmanll

Mobility and Safety

81

Tim Edel/sur

AutomobiJity and National Identity: Representation, Geography and Driving Practice

101

Cars and Nations: Anglo-German Perspectives on Automobility between the World Wars

121

Driving Places: Marc Auge, Non-places, and the Geographies of England's Ml Motorway

145

'rhree Ages of the Automobile: The Cultural Logics of the Car

169

Auto Couture: Thinking the Car in Post-war France

197

Mimi Sheller

Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car

221

Michael BuL!

Automobility and the Power of Sound

24:3

Eric Lallrier

Doing Office Work on the Motol\la\

261

Rudy Koshar

Peter Merriman

David Cart man David IngLis

Index

279

London

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Automobilities An Introduction

Mike Featherstone

The Car System

T

HERE HAS been an upsurge of interest in recent years in the signifi­ cance of flows, movement and mobility in social life. 1 Yet it could be argued that one of the dominant forms of mobility, automobility, has been a neglected topic within sociology, cultural studies and related disci­ plines. There are of course noted exceptions. Roland Barthes ( 1 972: 88), for example, suggests that because cars are both used and 'consumed in image' by the whole population they should be seen as 'the exact equival­ ent of the great Gothic cathedrals' (Urry, 2000: 58). Certainly cars have high visibility in the social landscape and cultural i maginary over the last century. One billion cars were manufactured in the course of the 20th century and there are currently over 700 million cars moving around the world (Urry, 2004/this i ssue). The visibility and influence of the car as a key object of mass production (Fordism) and mass consumption, the i mpact on spatial organization through roads, city layout, suburban housing and shopping malls, are undisputed. There is a powerful socio-economic and technological complex at work sustaining the car and although some are beginning to talk about the post-car, it is the end of the steel and petroleum car, not a world free from cars, they allude to. The term automobility works off the combination of autonomy, and mobility. In its broadest sense we can think of many automobilities - modes of autonomous, self-directed movement. The auto in the term automobile initially referred to a self-propelled vehicle (a carriage without a horse). The autonomy was not j ust through the motor, but the capacity for independent motorized self-steering movement freed from the confines of a rail track. The promise here is for self-steering autonomy and capacity to search out the open road or off-road, encapsulated in vehicles which afford not only •

Theory, Culture & Society 2004 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 21(4/5): 1-24 DOl: 10.1177/0263276404046058

2

Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

speed and mobility, but act as comforting protected and enclosed private spaces, increasingly a platform for communications media, that can be enjoyed alone or in the company of significant others. Not only an attract­ ive marketing image in which cars are positioned traversing the wild parts of the p l anet such as deserts and mountain passes, but something which also speaks to powerful cultural dreams of adventure and freedom: the capacity to go anywhere, to move and dwell without asking permission, the self-directed life free from the surveillance of the authorities (cf. Bell, 1 976; Cohan and Hark, 1997; Eyerman and Lofgren, 1995). Yet as John Urry (2004) argues in his piece on 'The "system" of Auto­ mobility', in this issue, however tempting it is to emphasize the dwel ling in movement, the various forms of emotional and sensory habitation of the hybrid car-driver, the focus shou l d be in the first instance on the system. For Urry automobility should be seen as a 'self-organizing autopoetic, non­ linear system' which links together cars, car-drivers, roads, petrol eum supplies and other 'novel objects, technologies and signs', in an expanding re l atively stable system which generates uni ntended consequences . Social life has become locked into the modes of mobility that automobility generates and presupposes. Something w hich as the 20th century unfo lded has seen a shift from public transport (railways, buses, trams, ships etc .) to the private car. As time-space structures becomes refigured there is a concomitant shift in forms of sociality, living together and inhabitation. Automobility makes possible the division of the home from the work place, of business and industrial districts from homes, of retail outlets from city centres . It encourages and demands an intense flexibility as peop le seek to juggle and schedule their daily set of work , family and leisure journeys, not around the train timetable, but on the calculation of the vagaries of traffic flows. This schedule juggling is also made all the more difficult in terms of the calculation of journey Limes. Traffic jams have increasingly become parL of the d riving experience around the world - we think of the regular 100 kilometre plus tailbacks in Sao Paulo, or the movie Traffic Jam about a Japanese salary man and his family whose pl anned trip Lo the country goes disasterously wrong (dir. MiLsuo Kurotsuchi, 199 1 ). With the increase in traffic volume, as complexity theory suggests, a smal l fluctuation, can produce large disruptive effects which move across the system of traffic in ways which are difficul t to p redict (see Th rift, 1999; Urry, 2003) .2 The split second people take to slow down to view an acci dent can produce l engthy tailback s on motorways working at ful l capaci ty. The compound effects of the rise in the numbers of vehicles in terms of congestion, pollution, environment and quality of l ife a long with the massive numbers of road deaths and injuries, are increasingly seen as effects of the global automo­ bile system which draw in more specialist professionals and experts who seek to identify, register, calculate and plan.

Featherstone

-

Introduction

3

T.'affic Accidents

The recent WHO World Report on Road Traffic Injury Precenlion estimates that 1 .2 million people are now killed in road crashes every year and between 20 and 50 million injured. It is suggested that over the next 20 years the figures will increase by 65 percent making road traffic injuries the third leading contributor to the global burden of disease and injury (WHO, 2(04). The estimated global cost of road crashes is currently $5 1 8 billion per year. The death and injury figures and CDP cost burden is also increas­ ing disproport ionatel y faster for non-Western countries.;} The W H O report seeks to redefine what we euphemistically refer to as traffic 'accidents' as a public health issue. It argues that crash i njury is a predictable and preventable human-made problem which can be rationally analysed and controlled." The figures for global deaths and injuries resu lting from motor traffic are staggering and the WHO public health objectives are laudable, but it would be useful to try to consider a little more the social and cultural framing of the problem. A s Virilio ( 1 999a, 1 99%) argues each new tech­ nology produces its own integral accident, something which is rarely envis­ aged or costed, when safety certificates are granted. In effect as Jorg Beckmann (2004/this issue) reflects in his article 'Mobi l ity and Safety': 'automobility "works," because its accidents are denied'. The traffic accident is denied because it is not seen as a normal social occurrence, but more as an aberration. The victims are dispatched to the hospital, the car to the repair garage or scrapyard and the road is quickly cleansed of traces of the crash by the accident services and the 'normalcy' of traffic flow restored. The accident then becomes mobil i zed within an information network as legal and medical specialists along with safety experts pour over the accounts and information, to produce the case history which is then archived and entered into the statistical database. The aim of the accident recon­ struction industry being to produce better forms of mobility governance in the pursuit of the elusive elimination of all casualties. Yet the expert discourses with their 'rational social accounting', and cost peliormance economics, continually run up against the publ ic's experience of the immed iacy of automobile deaths and injuries and protest at the irrational sacrifice of life . Expert and legal discourses are pushed into the background and made to give way to examples of 'reflexive' direct action as we find in the case of parents or teenagers protesting against the loss of a child or friend. Such events can become marked by attaching Rowers, poems, mementos to lampposts, fences or trees near the death-site of a young person killed crossing the road. In effect they endeavour to inscribe the site as a place of tragedy and remembrance, by refusing to erase the incident from public memory and allow drivers to relax back into the normal traffic flow. In some instances the disturbing tragic situation'> of the victims and/or negl i­ gence of drivers may attract media attention and resul t in local and national press campaigns and even wider 'moral panics'.()

4

Theory, Culture & SocietJ 2](415)

According to the WHO Report the traditional view, which is sti ll widely held today, is that road safety i s the sole responsibility of individual road users, and the answer is to encourage road users to adopt 'error-free' behaviour. As road traffic deaths and casualties become defined health issue, there are more forceful attempts by experts and various commissions to shift away the responsibility from the individual to the 'system'. From a systems point of view a key obvious factor about serious and fatal crashes is the vulnerability of the human body. This is clear in the case of pedestrians, whose tolerance to i njury i ncreases dramatically over 30 kilometres per hour (km/h) and whose risk of being killed in a col lision with a vehicle travelling over 50 km/h is about 80 percent (WHO, 2004: 1 1 ). Likewise the tolerance level for car occupants wearing seatbelts in well­ designed cars is 70 km/h for frontal i mpacts and 50 km/h for side-impacts. Given that the pedestrian and cyclist deaths form a high proportion of traffic deaths (making up the majority in countries outside the West), the obvious solution would be to slow down the traffic, or design vehicles i ncapable of speeds in excess of the vulnerabi lity l i m i ts of the human body. It is salutary to recall that we used to have laws which were more attuned to vulnerable bodies - the Engl ish Highway Law of 1835, for example laid down a maximum speed of 4 mph (Elias, 1995: 2 1 ) to regulate horse-drawn and other traffic. In the early decades of the 20th century the appearance of the early automobiles and the fascination with speed, along with the subsequent mass market for motor cars, developed and utilized by Henry Ford and others, radically changed this situation. As Elias (1995: 1 7) remarks Thus started the Illass product ion of 11I0tor cars, thei r mass use on the h ighways

of the industrializing countries, and l1Iass murder. One person . .. 1899. In 1974. the motor cars of the world killed alto­ 230,276 people. �

was killed by a car in gether

To update the figures: in 2002 i t was estimated that 1 , 180,000 people were

killed. This regular murder of human beings and frequent physical injury is largely accepted as something unavoidable. Indeed it has become banal, something unworthy of reporting in the media, except in the case of dramatic human interest tragedies, such as those involving newly married couples or children; or i ncidents which result in a high nu mber of people killed, such as a mountain coach crash, or a multiple vehicle 'pile-up' in fog etc. The current annual death totals from road crashes can be broken down into totals for different countries. a To take some examples for last year (2003): The United Kingdom 343 1, France 5732, Viet Nam 12,864, Brazil over 30,000, China 104,0009. If fatalities per 100,000 population are considered, the W H O produces a death rates as follows: EI Salvador 42.4, WHO 'Africa Region' 28.3, Viet Naill 27.0, Brazil 24.4, Russia 19.9, Korea 20.9, United States 1 5.2, Japan 8.2 and U n i ted Kingdom 5.9.10 Accident prevention research tends to focus upon three main systemic factors which

Featherstone - Introduction

5

are seen as contri buting to the death rate: the driver, vehicl e and road design (here they follow the classic analysis of William Haddon] unior [ 1 968]). For our purposes it i s the attitude, knowledge and competence of the vehicl e driver which is of i nterest. Norbert Elias (1995) argues from his analysi s of the differences in death rates over time and between countries, that there are different social standards of self-regulation in operation. I n effect different driv i ng codes are evident which become part o f a person's habitus. H i s mode of analysis here i s similar to that used in The Civilizing Process ( 1 994): over t i me we see a shift in the structure of interdependen­ c ies which is accompanied by a move from external forms of bodily and emotional controls, which were set out in manners books and learned with difficul ty, to internalized forms of self-restraint which become incorporated into the habitus. Li kewise we see a move in many countries towards the formalization of the H i ghway Code, I I a code which spells out the formal rules of the road (how to i nterpret the v isible system of road signs wh ich act as external constraints - road markings, no overtaking signs, speed l i mit signs, traffic l i ghts etc . , along with the legal penalties to be incurred for infringement. Ideally, such external constraints become less needed, or unnecessary, as the social standard of driving becomes accepted and operates at the level of i nternalized self-restraint. The Diversity of Cal' Cultures and Motorscapes

This suggests that despite the globalization of the motor car, we are far from a uniform global driving behaviour, as there are different driving codes in operation i n different countries. Indeed the argument can be taken further to point to the di versity of ear cultures. Miller (2001 : 2). For example, suggests we should take i nto account 'the humanity of the ear" that it makes li ttle sense to focus on the car as a vehicle of destruction w ithout also considering the ways i n which it has 'become an integral part of the cultural env ironment with which we see ourselves as human' (Miller. 2001: 2). Th i s makes the automobile both part o f the vast transportation system with aU its dangers, but also part of i nti mate and personal l i fe, as something subjected to a great variety of cultural uses, practices and coding. For example, Diana Young (200 1 ) argues that in the Aboriginal people in Pitjan­ tjatjara, South Australia, the car has been assimilated into their material culture and should be regarded as more a means to resist alienation than a sign of alienation (Young, 200]). Tim Edensor (2004/this issue) i n his article 'Automobil ity and N ational Identity', i nvestigates the di fferent 'national automobilities', 'mundane motorscapes' and 'everyday habi tual pel{ormances of dri ving', which operate in British and Indian car cultures. The motorized landscape contributes to our sense of place, of 'being in the world' within a familiar context. Road signs, street lighting, telephone booths, architecture of petrol/gas stations and roadside cafes/d iners all contribute to our sense of national identity. In England, Edensor (2004/th is issue) mentions that ('hurch steeples and towers i nscribe a familiar 'faithscape'. In contrast, the

6

Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

indian motorscape has more of a blurred boundary between the road and the surrounding land. While the British state upholds and enforces an elaborate driving regulatory apparatus and highway code, In I ndia the paucity of formal rules laid down by the state are made up for by widely observed conventions (e.g. lack of mirrors, means that sounding the horn is necessary when overtaking). There is also a different fluid street choreog­ raphy in operation in India with a vast assortment of vehicles that use the street - h andcars, bullock -carts, cars, bicycles, motorbikes, auto and cycle­ rick shaws, buses all moving at different speeds with slower users gravitat­ i ng to the side of the road, which makes for different modes of visibility, awareness contexts, conventions and performance skills. Following this emphasis on seeing the car as a cultural process, that like many objects it is stamped with a national identity, Rudi Koshar (2004/this issue) in his piece 'Cars and N ations: Anglo-German Perspec­ tives on Automobility between the Worl d Wars', also emphasizes that not only do things belong to nations, but they have histories too. Koshar points to the way in which the British and German cars of the interwar years were closely involved with the histories of the nations that produced them. Rather than seeing the Mercedes as continuing to operate as a thing belonging to a nation, Koshar emphasizes the process of exchange and synthesis across national borders, whereby it emerged as a relatively stable 'i ntercultural' symbol of automotive quali ty. Certainly within those writers close to the British car industry, the Mercedes persistence as a German automotive symbol, caused many tensions and anxieties. In terms of David Gartman's (2004/this issue) developmental scheme in his article 'Three Ages of the Automobile: the Cul tural Logic of the Car', the Mercedes belongs to the age of class distinction. Gartman argues that there has been a shift in the way the car is constructed as a consumer object over ti me and it is possible to detect three main phases, each of which can be related to a particular theoretical model of consumption. He sees the first age ( 1 900-1 925), as the era of the large, specialist crafted l uxury car, in which they operate as upper class status symbols in elaborate distinction games (Pierre Bourdieu's ( 1 984) theory in Distinction is used here). The second stage, the era of mass consumption ( 1 925-1960), sees the appear­ ance of the simple functional , mass produced car (the La Salle, the Chevrolet, Vol kswagen Beetle etc.), and is approached via the standardized mass culture, pseudo-individual ity theories of the Frank furt School . In the third stage, ( 1960-present) the car is seen as a part of a fragmented series of subcultures in which customizing, 'flexible specialization' and product differentiation dominate to the extent that a whole range of new types of vehicles emerge - 'compacts, subcompacts, intermediate-size cars, muscle cars (powelful performance cars), pony cars (sporty, youth-orientated cars), sports cars and personal luxury cars', with each targeted to small niche markets). This third stage of diverse products, branding and 'lifesty le choices' is analysed by using postmodernist theory. For Gartman (2004), this third phase is the one in which some of the contradictions of the

Featherstone

-

Introduction

7

automobile system become more manifest. People seek vehicles to express/complement their individuality and given that in the United States there are already more automobiles than licensed drivers this means traffic jams and gridlock. In addition, given the retreat in to subcultures and life­ style enclaves, there is a decline in civility with people finding it more difficult to identify with the other drivers. David I nglis (2004/this issue) in his article 'Auto Couture: Thinking the Car in Post-war France', explores the ways in which the car became seen by intellectuals as a fascinating and contested symbol of modernism, A mericanization and consumerism. For theorists such as Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard, the motor-car was 'the epitome of objects' which was 'colonizing more and more areas of everyday life'. It entailed the 'triumph of geometric space' over the 'lived spaces of communal associ­ ation', heralding a 'French high-road to Americanization'. Yet, as Inglis (2004) reminds us, other theorists such as Michel de Certeau emphasizes more the unintended consequences, subversion and resistance which couldn't be eradicated from the 'automobile system' of the city planners. The regular mishaps, missed turn-offs, unofficial practices, habits of pedestrians etc., turned geometric spaces back into lived places - some­ thing which is also discussed by Nigel Thrift (2004/this issue) in his piece on 'Driving in the City'. The writings of French intellectuals on the automobile are interesting in the way they present strongly contrasting views about the modern urban consumer society. For example, Le Corbusier's influential modernist mani­ festo L'Urbanisme ( 1924) outlined the new glass and concrete urban utopia of Paris with its high rise buildings, shopping centres, aerial highways and subterranean garages. Le Corbusier's reaction to the density, noise and fury of the traffic in Paris, was to advocate that we embrace i t - to ask us to seek new ideals of beauty which were congruent with a work of speeding vehicles on concrete highways, to feel the rapture and pleasure of being at the centre of so much power and speed (Inglis, 2004). Yet for others, such as Marc Auge writing from an anthropological perspective, Le Corbusier world amounted to the prospect of a 'supermodernity', based upon increased mobility, speeding-up of information flows and connectivity. A world, which as Peter Merriman (2004/this issue) delineates in his piece 'Driving Places; Marc Auge, Non-Places and the Geography of England's M l Motorway', produces new spaces of circulation, communication and consumption such as airports, motorways, theme parks, hotels (especially motels), department stores, malls, tourist spaces, in which space becomes flattened out and abstracted, which Auge; refers to as 'non-places'. Merriman (2004) argues that A uge overstates the newness and difference associated with non-places and misses the ways in which these spaces are produced, used and experi­ enced in multiple ways. For Auge the motorway is seen as an archetypal non-place. Yet rather than 'being in the middle of nowhere', the geographies of the motorway landscape is complex and heterogeneous. Merriman (2004) argues that motorways, such as England's first the M l , opened in 1959,

8

Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

should not be seen as concrete empty spaces. Rather, the MI has generated a whole set of histories over the forty five years or so of its existence. In effect we don't need a new descriptor 'non-place', a new species of place to account for experiences of boredom, isolation and detachment, which for Merriman (2004) should not be associated with spaces of mobility and could be as easily associated with spaces of dwelling, work and home. Yet the experience of driving cannot be held as a neutral factor and as Edensor (2004) argues, driving slowly in a car with the windows wound down, through an Indian street full of activity, sensations and distractions, is a very different autoscape from a Western urban motorway with its under­ passes and flyovers designed to minimize aesthetic interruptions. The experience of driving through the city, Richard Sennett ( 1 994: 1 5) remarks is symptomatic of how urban space has become 'a mere function of motion', encouraging a 'tactile sterility' in which the body is 'pacified' by rapid movement without arousal (cited in Edensor, 2004). One thinks here of the dominance of the car in certain cities such as Los Angeles, where nearly half the land amounts to car-only environments (Urry, 2000: 193). The urban motOI"Way or freeway, as a featureless space to pass through on the way to somewhere else, could be taken to suggest that driving in the city is a much impoverished experience when compared to walking (for a critique of this position and the work of de Certeau see Nigel Thrift [2004]/this issue). The Car as a Communications Platform for Multi-Tasking

This fal ls in line with a dominant image we have of driving in the city: of the urban freeways, where driving entails focusing on the road ahead, with minimal peripheral information from the featureless drab concrete to excite the gaze.12 H ere the act of driving can become just one of a series of multi pie activities, each carried out with varying degrees of distraction within the car. The automobile becomes a new form of communications platform with a complex set of possibil ities. One li ne of communication for the driver goes out through the windscreen, windows and mirrors to the i nter-automobile moving figuration of cars, and invol ve interactions and modes of presen­ tation of the auto-self to others in the temporary 'fluid choreography' of the shifting reference group of traffic. Other li nes of mediated communication such as telephone and Internet, go in and out to link the driver to distant significant others to help the daily business get done (co-workers, c lients, friends, family, lovers etc.). Yet others come in via radio or television, or are physically imported as recordings (CDs, tapes etc.). All these forms of communication can be enjoyed in the increasingly elaborate or customized, sealed sound-booth which is the car (for a discussion of the car as media/mediated see H ay and Packer, 2004). The car, then, becomes not j ust a vehicle for independent travel, but a platform for multi-tasking. In his piece 'Doing Officework on the Motorway', Eric Laurier (2004/this issue) discusses the ways in which the car can become a mobile office. Laurier examines the case study of a car­ based mobile worker Ally, whose workload and itinerary meant that she had

Feath erstone

-

Introduction

9

to work while drivi ng. A lly regularly worked her way through sets of printed­ off email s balanced on her lap while travelli ng fairly rapidly on the motorway. She also would hold selected documents on the steering wheel i n front of her while making 'phone calls t o clients'. t 3 M ichael Bull (2004/this issue) in his piece 'Automobility and the Power of Sound', examines the ways in which the experience of the aural has become the definitive form of car habitation for many contemporary car drivers. Many drivers auto­ matically switch on the radio when they get into the car and talk about the feeling of discomfort if they spend time in the cars alone with the sound of the engine. Mediated sound, therefore, becomes a component part of what it is to drive. It provides a 'sonic envelope', a sealed world which functions as a personal ized listening environment. This form of management of experi­ ence provides a greater sense of time control, to the extent that drivers often prefer driving alone; in effect the car becomes a sort of refuge. Bull (2004) refers to Adorno's work on television in which he discusses the way in which it provides something familiar in a world threateningly devoid of warmth. For Bull the experience of driving is one in which the mediated role of sound prov ides the 'warmth' associated with various normative conceptions of 'home', in contrast to the 'chill' associated with everyday urban public space. In effect people use sound in a desire to make the public spaces of the city conform to their notion of intimate, domestic private space. This brings out Baudrillard's ( 1 996: 67) depiction of the paradoxical ambiguous nature of the automobile: it is simultaneously a dwell ing place and a projectile; he adds: T h e car r i v a l s t h e house a s an al ternative zone o f e\eryday l ife: t he car. too. i s a l l abode, hut an except i onal one; i t i s a closed realm of inti macy. but olle released from the constrains t hat usually apply t o the i ll t i macy of tht' hOlIlt'.

once endowed w i t h a forlllal freedom of great intens i t v . . .

Baudri l lard's remarks suggest the car as cosy cocoon belies the engineer­ ing design input which make it a projectile, something with the potential of a weapon. Yet great engineering energy also goes into making the car a command centre, an enclosed dwelling space of control in which at the touch of a finger the balance can be shifted from a communications module via phone, television, I nternet etc., a place of work and instrumental tasking. to a place of refuge, to enjoy the comforting emotional decontrol via the sound system. Part of the enjoyment of driving, despite the hazards of traffic and potential crashes is this sense of being in control, of the communicative world and comforti ng refuge zone as something wh ich can be opened, closed and blended at the touch of a switch. Something which requires the gener­ ation of a new set of dispositions and competences, a more fiexible driving habitus in which the senses are reconfigured and extended through the tech­ nology, in which drivers learn to inhabit technology in nell ways. Something which increasingly depends on the software.

10

Theory, Culture & Society- 2 1 (4/5)

The Car-Driver-Software Assemblage

Nigel Thrift (2004lthis issue) points to the ways in which automobiles become more and more hybrid entities in which the separation between the human and machine becomes blurred. It is not just the driver who possesses intelligence and has intentional ity and capacity to act, the governance of the car is increasingly delegated to the machinic complex of the car which is able to sense its environment, make j udgements and act accordingly. Now software controls works a complex feedback system to govern engine management, break ing, suspension, wipers, lights, speed via cruise control, parking manoeuvres, speech recognition systems, communications and entertainment, sound systems, heating and conditioning, in-car navigation and security. The software platform of the car becomes an increasingly important selling point for manufacturers which can command greater loyalty, as vehicles designed for multitas king and comfortable intensive dwelling become familiar 'to hand' environments to which our bodies and sensorium become attuned and habituated. Hence new software environ­ ments are coupled with careful ergonomic design dedicated to making new and friend lier interfaces, in which the car software remembers the driver's unique set of physical characteristics and adjusts seats, instruments, controls etc. The corollary of intelligent vehicles is intelligent roads which communicate with vehicles and manage and control traffic flow. Such vehicle management systems also have a potential panoptic, tracking function. The car under software surveillance and communication (trans­ mitter for unique chip vehicle identifier 'tagging', satellite geo-positioning systems etc.), not only uses information technology for the driver to find out where she or he is, the system can also find out where the car is. The driver uses digital systems to survey herlhi s world, but al l the time the driving system has the vehicle under survei llance. The automobi le is one everyday object where human beings regularly encounter new technologies in their everyday l i ves and learn to 'inhabit technology'. More and more aspects of everyday driving becomes a mediated process in which technology ceases to be a visible tool or technique, but becomes a world in which the boundaries and interfaces between humans and technological systems become blurred, refigured and difficult to disen­ tangle. The automobile becomes a world in the sense that we not only use the mobil ity of motor technology, the internal combustion engine, to travel to thi ngs and places; we also use micromotors and embedded chips in the driving environment to bri ng things and places to us. We look out of the windscreen to see the world to be driven through (see Morse, ] 990). But we also consult the instrument data screen with its increasingly sophisticated, but 'user friendly' graphics. We consult the screen of the geo-positioning system to find out where we are, where to go and how to get there. We keep a sidewise glance and ear attuned to the television screen positioned for passengers to watch. Here we think of Viril io's discussion of television as the stationary vehicle (Virilio, ] 999b; see also Featherstone, 1 998). The logic of digital computer i magery means that we don't need the car to be

Featherstone

-

Introduction

11

used to visit the country, for one day it will be 'the country that visits us' (Thrift, 2004; Virilio, 1 995: 1 5 1) . Paradoxically w e can be speeding down the motorway. yet w e are accustomed to a mode of dwelling in motion in \\hich digital com­ munications speed data to us which is increasingly refigured into image formats which can simulate and enhance our perception of the world outside. Something we find in the computer-driven aircraft, such as the sophisticated fighter jet with its head-up display data projections onto the cockpit windscreen or helmet visor of the pilot, of Right information, or a simplified 'humanized' simulated version of the complexities of the speedi ng world outside. The limited human eye and brain processing powers are just not good enough to handle the complex information flows and it is increas­ ingly the intelligent technologies which see and reformat the world for us. The logic of this prospective worlding process is for the driver to become the pilot and the automobile to become a sort of datasuit wrap. [ t is not just that the driver-car is a hybrid assemblage of man and machine, but that the software revolution of car driving has made possible an increasing disengagement of the driver from the work of doing driving. As Jorg Beckmann (2004) remarks 'if the future car-driver is indeed replaced by an aUla-pilot one wou ld even want to reconsider the notion of the car-driver hybrid, since this very traffic-unit is now just as much a screen-worker hybrid in an auto-office, a web-surfer hybrid encapsulated by a rolling play-station, or a phone-speaker hybrid in a moveable phone booth'. For Beckmann the price of handing over agency to the intelligent vehicle system marks a shift from automobility which functions around inde­ pen dence to the autopilot hybrid which suffers isolation . This increasing isolation from other traffic and the physical surroundings outside the car, which occurs as other multitasking activities take over. can lead not only to "absenteeism', but also to accidents. Beckmann (2004) mentions that car collisions frequently occur while d" ivers are engaged in activities other than driving (dialing a telephone number, fiddling with the radio. television or CD deck, listening to music, surfing the web etc.). This shift from subconscious reactions to electronic adjustments of speed and direction, which allegedly free the car driver from the tiresome act of d" iving, create a whole new series of problems around trust. We see a shift in the mode of trust from trusting other dri\ers (that they wil l see and avoid your vehicle, not cause you to swerve or crash through aggres­ sive or unpredictable behaviour), to trust in the experts I\ho designed the software systems which automatically pilot the car. \\'ell-designed auto­ piloted cars should never crash. Hence there is a potential shift away from trust in the mobile social figuration of car ch'ivers which lie call traffic and which depends on communication via different types of vehicle signs and signals along with embodied signs and gestures from the driver (hand waving, thumbs-up signs, deliberate mimed gestures of looking in the mirror etc.). towards trust in the software. Yet el en if such systems become wide­ spread there is the danger that some drivers will refuse to switch on the new

12

Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

technology and operative with d ifferent codes of trust and mistrust. It i s then not just the overdependence on software systems and reaping the multi­ tasking benefits (passengering while one should be driving), but also the d i fferent regimes of trust and trust-switching which can cause communi­ cation problems which can lead to acci dents. A further remi nder of Virilio's statement that the integral accident accompanies each new 'advance' i n technology. The Communicative Car and the Driver's Two Bodies

This problem of deciphering which trust code is operative, becomes more apparent when we look at car driving as a form of embodied communication. It is evident that the car-driver has two visible communicative bodies - her own human body and the body of the car which she is driving. 1 4 At one end of the continuum the co-incident action of the two may be visibly evident - one can peer down into an open-top car from a larger vehicle and see the driver 'doing driving' and watch the car respond to her various body commands. At the other end of the continuum we have opacity, the driver who is concealed behind tinted windows is i nvisible and purely the object of speculative deductions through the external driving behaviour move­ ments of the vehicle.15 Unlike the everyday presentation of self (Goffman, 197 1 ) where 'facework' and bodily gestures can be potentially carefully scrutinized1 6 by co-present others in face-to-face interactions, the usual mode of automobile communication entails impaired or restricted communication. The human body i s enclosed within a metal body and the spoken word, eye contact and facial expressions are usually difficult or impossible to establish. Gestures, such as the use of driver's hand s ignals with the arm extended out of the window work within certain parameters of road design, speed and traffic volume. Once the volume and speed of traffic intensify, communication via signals such as motorized flash ing lights to ind icate i ntention to turn or overtake become i mportant to counter ambiguity. Other communications of i ntent or forms of automobile civi lity such as turn-taking, letting someone in, or turn in front of you, often are managed or confirmed with a flash of the headlights or 'mimed' deliberate hand waves. I nfractions of automobile civility such as suddenly pulling out to overtake, refusing to move out of the fast lane, can give rise to similar i nformal but recognized signals or gestures. Here anger at assumed rule-breakers, or drivers who dawdle in the way of vehicles i n a hurry, can also be conveyed through sudden and aggressive movements of the car, tailgating, overtaking on the inside, pulling alongside and gesturing at the other driver etc. Drivers develop competence in swi tching between communicative modes: human to human via body gestures and a range of car to human signalling via the car's formal signal devices and informal codes and conven­ tions. They also have to learn the capacity to read and mentally log minor, but potentially threatening, signs of erratic, id iosyncratic or dangerous driving behaviour in the shifting figuration of speedi ng traffic which one is

Fealherslone

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Introduction

13

a part. James J. Gibson ( 1 982: 1 30; Dant, 2004) refers to this capacity to handle the complexities of driving as needing a level of information process­ ing which he characterizes as 'astounding'. Yet as Tim Dant (20041this issue) points out in his contribution 'The Driver-Car', driving is a skill which very few people cannot learn; an embodied skill which becomes largely habitual and taken for granted. This embodied orientation to a world of rapid moving object from the perspective of being seated in a vehicle, is largely a visual ability. But as Dant (2004) reminds us, following Merleau-Ponty, visual perception must be understood as an orientation of the whole body to the world through which it moves. Perception of the visual field is always complemented by the kinaesthesia of the body, the 'feel' of the car. For Dant (2004) the driver-car complex shou ld be seen 'neither as a thing nor as a person; i t is an assembled social being that takes on properties of both and cannot exist without both'. He argues that to think of the driver-car as an assemblage is preferable to seeing it as a hybrid. Assemblages can be sepa­ rated and endlessly reformed, whereas the term 'hybrid' suggests a perma­ nent combining of similar types of objects. I i When we consider the embodied experience of riding in the car, it is not surprising that people respond to the thrum of the engine, the smell of the interior, the feel of the car seat, given that the kinaesthetic pleasures of the car ride are often experienced from infancy onwards. As Mimi Sheller (2004/this issue) remarks in her piece 'Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car', the embodied emotional responses to driving are central to under­ standing the place of the car within different car cultures. She quotes one driver as remarking 'When I am driving, I am nearly always happy. Driving towards virtually anywhere makes me exci ted, expectant: full of hope.' This sense of freedom of movement, the pull of the open road, the expectancy of new experiences, all are central to the advertising and consumer culture images of car travel. They speak to many people's actual experiences and hoped for potential of the car. This is particularly the case for women, whose relationship to the car was for a long time depicted by men as based on a form of 'technological incomprehension' which made them ill-suited to driving, as we find in the multitudinous male jokes about 'women drivers'. Yet with the i ncrease in the numbers of working women, the separation of home from work, the need for mothers to transport children to school and friends and the key role women have in organizing household consumption, the car has become essential in j uggling the everyday time economy. For many women the car is central to the logistics of maintaining mundane everyday household relationships. At the same time i t can also be the avenue of escape or inversion of this routine multi-tasking. It has the potential to provide a liminal inversion of everyday concerns. For some of the young working-women in Norway studied by Pauline Garvey (200 1 ) the car offered a release from domesticity, the potential of 'a dramat ic "fli p" across from accepted and conventional behaviour'. This sense of the car as a vehicle for 'doing something crazy' in one's own time and space, such as turning the sound system up and singing at the top of one's voice, swerving

14

Theory; Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5 j

a round w h i l e d ri ving d ru n k , or park i ng i n a l ay-by and having sex i n the back seat, is part of the freedom assoc i ated w i t h the car. The car as a dev ice for a w hole range of emotional expressi v i ty is something which the consu mer c u l ture adverti sers u nderstand wel l . Cars n o t only offer consumer culture comforts and forms of k inaes­ thetic and ergonomic design, which suggest a comfortable and effect i ve pri vate 'home' space, they also encourage i dent ification. Dri vers are asked to identify w i th the particular 'aHordances' 1 8 w h i c h are presented as charac­ teri stics of d i fferen t brands: the smooth ride of a Rolls Royce, the hard ride and close to the road fee l of an MG sports-car, or the more bou ncier ride of a Renaul t ( Edensor, 2004). The att u nement to this sensi b i l i ty which is w ide­ spread w i t h i n car cul tures, is partic ularly evident in part icular groups such as A merican teenage hot-rodders, or car c ustomisers a nd restorers, the aficionados of a part i c u l ar classic model etc. A round each spec ialist or classic type of car a whole c ul tural world develops w ith i ts own form of spec i a l i s t k nowledge and publi cations, practices and argot, which seek to explore and define the deta i ls of car anatomy, 'look', sty l i ng, i m age and ride. A world which offers the p l easu res of common k now ledge and distinctive classifications, which work with shared embodied habitus and mem bershi p, through car talk as much as car drivi ng. Yet cars need to be driven to be enjoyed and contemporary car d ri vers are asked to exercise i ncreas i ng emotional control as the volume of daily traffic i nc reases and journey t i me l e ngthens. Of course the comforts of m u l t i ­ tas k i n g a n d comforts o f t h e c a r a s home, offer compensati ons a n d potential relaxation. Yet when cars or olher dri vers do no l s e e m to rec i p roc ale, when thi ngs go wrong, or the driver's status i s not con firmed, dri v i ng c i v i l i ty can break down (Lupton, 1 999). One example here i s the case of 'road rage', which emerged i n the m id - 1 990s ( M ichael, 200 1 ). On the surface road rage appears to be the total loss of emotional control, in which an angry dri ver d isregards the usual notions of auto-ci v i l i ty and gi ves way to rec kl ess and aggressive manoeu v res or chasing another car dri ver who is seen as perpe­ trator of some drivi ng i n fraction or disrespectful gesture. The combi nation of emotional contro l and de-control i s i n terest i ng here. Road rage s i m u l ­ taneously i nvolves a l oss o f sel f-contro l a n d d isregard for driving conven­ t ions, it also i nvolves greater dri v i ng s k i l l to weave through the traffic in a h igh speed chase, or tai lgat ing another car.

Speeding: the Race, the Chase and the Crash Th i s combi nation of express ive and i nstrumental action should not be s urpri sing to anyone who has watched a Hollywood action movie or A merican detecti ve television serif'S, as they invariably conta i n a car c hase w i th cars been thrown around the road at h igh speed, squea l i ng t i res, gri m­ ac i n g faces on the edge of l os i ng control and the i ne v i table crash of the v i l lai n's car at the end, someti mes en hanced by explod i n g petro l and burn out. G i ve n the U ni ted States' global dom i nance over med ia i n d ustries, the spectacu l ar car chase a nd crash have become a recognizable global

Featherstone - I ntroduction

15

vernacular. We thi nk here of movies such as Bullitt. (dir. Peter Yates, 1 968), The French Connection (dir. William Fried k i n , 1 97 1 ) Gone in 60 Seconds ( d i r. H . B . Hal i k i , 1 974) Smoke)' and the Bandit (dir. Hal Needham, 1 977), Mad Max ( d i !'. George M iller, 1979), Lethal Weapons 4 ( d i r. R ichard Donner, 1 998) , Gone in 60 Seconds ( remake, d i r. Dominic Sena, 2000), The Fast and the Furious (dir. R ob Cohen, 200 1 ), The Matrix Reloaded (dir. Wachowski B rothers, 2003), Ronin (dit'. John Frankenheimer, 1 998). 1 0 In one sense we should not be surprised that car chases are so central a part of car culture, given that raci ng and the quest to attain high speeds were prominent from the early days of the automobile. The first motor car race took place in 1 895, organized by the Chicago Times Herald (Elias, 1 995: 1 7) . Henry Ford, who began production with the Model A automo­ bile, soon followed with the Model B touring car and to advertise it he entered i t i nto races, himself maki ng a successful attempt to break the speed record (Wollen, 2002: 1 8) . From these early beg i n n ings there has been a constant quest for i ncreased automobile speed and the demonstration of driving skills i n a series of public events which have consistently drawn in the crowds and media coverage: motor races, ralli es. drag racing, hot­ roddi ng. This process has culminating in the Formula One Grand Prix races which attract massive crowds around the world and are present as global television spectacles. Speed has been described as 'the mechan ical soul of modernity' and modern identity seems to i nvolve movement between the home and the road and various i ntermed iaries forms of 'dwelli ng i n movement' and 'static vehicles' which speed i mages to u s (McQuire, 1 998; see also Millar and Schwarz, 1 998) . Peter Wollen (2002: 1 4) mentions the work of the psychoanalyst Michael Bal int, who in his book Thrills and Regressions ( 1 959) discussed the category of thrills associated with high speed and especially motor raci ng. Tn try i ng to theorize the psychology of movement, fol lowing Freud, he noted two types of movement which create exci tement: passive (being rocked and swinging) and act ive (romping, wrestl i ng, gelting wild on the other). Car driving can produce both types of movement, the roc k i ng feel of the steadily driven car, or the more sudden and dramati c 'thrill' movements of reckless speedi ng. Bali n t further notes that the latter form of dri v i ng typically gives rise to two react ions. Some people feel uneasy at the prospect of speed and aggressive dri v i ng - they grip the wheel tightly, hug the k erb; they live i n a world 'structured by physical proximity and touch' and are aware of the dangers. Others, delight i n thrills and quickly seek to acquire the requisite level of necessary skill. These are the daring ch'ivers, who seek 'effortless accompl ishment', whose world depends more on sight and the negotiation of hazardous object. They are willing to expose themselves and others to risk, under the illusion that they can overcome any obstacle. While we can all potentially switch between these positions, the 'daring drivers' category would seem to be more closely I inked to some types of car crashes. Young men are i nvolved i n and are seen to cause a disproportionately high percentage of car crashes and it is this group i n which one would expect

16

Theor)', Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

dari ng driving and sense of invincibility to be more common ( Faith, 1 997) . It is this group which produces racing drivers and would-be racing drivers. Peopl e who adm i re the tricky daring manoeuvre of a Senna or Schumaker on the motor racing circuit (in the sports commentator's jargon: 'how did he do that!') and seek to emulate it. 2 o For those who live in relatively unexcit­ ing societies, which seek to control many forms of aggression and violence, daring skilfu l driving can offer a form of 'sport on the roads' (cf. El ias's argu ment i n Quest /or Excitement; Elias and Dunn ing, 1 986).2 1 The dark side of the speeding car, whether in the stad ium racetrack or on the roads, is the crash and the inevitable serious injuries and death. As Peter Wollen argues 'The c rash is irretrievably established at the centre of car culture' (Wollen, 2002: 1 7; see also Boyne, 1 999) . While the road death and injury statist ics are rarely dwelled upon i n the media, a dramatic crash, especially of a celebrity, captures the publ ic imagination. The 'untimely death' of those who stand as icons of worldly success and are presented as exemplars of 'the happy life' or 'happy life gone wrong' are a source of endless fascination. H ere we think of the deaths of movie stars and celebrities such as Isadora Duncan, Tom Mix, James Dean, Jayne Mansfield, Marc Bolan, Grace Kelly and Princess Diana ( Brottman, 200 1 ). The public death of a celebrity has become one of the most emotionally disturbing and fascinating contemporary events ( B rottman and Sharrett, 2002: 207). The celebrity who is often accredited with charismatic powers and a special expressivity under the gaze of the public, suddenly loses his or her revelatory power and becomes a broken disfigured body. The term accident is often preferred to car crash, as it doesn't suggest the attribution of blame and poi nts to the intrus ion of fate into life. The spl it second conjunction of events which give rise to a car crash, the potential to enjoy a 'lucky' or 'narrow' escape, or succumb to a 'freak accident', the sense that [or people who seek to challenge their fate on the road death i s inev itable (James Dean being the archetypical case here), the playing with fate,22 the reintroduction of metaphysics and the religious into l i fe. The quest for the accident, to live life on the edge of the crash and to explore and enjoy the aesthetic possibilities, is the subject of lG. Ballard ( 1 975) controversial novel Crash , which was made into a mov ie directed by David C ronenberg ( 1 996). 2:1 For Ballard the car dri ver lives within 'a huge metallized d ream' which depends on 'our sense of speed, drama and aggression, the worlds of adver­ tising and consumer goods, engineering and mass manufacture, and the shared experience of movi ng together through an elaborately signalled land­ scape' (cited in Wollen 2002: 1 6 ) . A world of traffic overload in which motor­ ways would eventually become the dominant feature of the landscape. Given that a culture of the car amounted to a culture of death, the only way out for Ballard would be to dehumanize driving with electronically controlled cars and traffic flow. This vision of Ballard, relates back to our earlier discussion of the shift towards the software-dominated car as an auto-pi lot vehicle. Yet the

Featherstone

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I ntro duc ti o n

17

impl ication of the Ballard version i s that the driver would not be able to switch-off the electronic governi ng controls and drive manually. Cars become de-humanized and driverless and move through electronically sentient roads according to the rhythms dictated by the master-traffic programmers. This i s one prospective version of the post-car. Not the death of the car with its replacement by publi c transport which is the forlorn dream of some environmental ists, nor the end of the 'steel and petroleum' car discussed by 10hn Urry (2004), but the end of one sense of the 'auto' in automobility: the autonomy to drive when, where and how one wants. At the same time this prospect seems to derive from a centred vision of a unitary car culture following the alleged panoptic logic of modernity. It is also a vision founded on Western economies with their pattern of traffic Hows. I n actuality, there are many car cultures and variations. In the same way that public health reform is i ncreasingly difficult to initiate uniformly in the South, or countries outside the West, it is hard to i magine car crashes becoming a public health i ssue commanding the necessary governmental resources to i mplement the costly 'smart road infrastructures' needed to control smart cars. There are many impediments even for the most vigilant state seeki ng to i mplement comprehensive registration, surveillance moni­ toring and roadworthiness testing regimes. It could well be that the vast majority of old and new cars moving around the world today and in the future, will remain 'unsmart' cars with minimal software. This brings us back to the irreconcilable tension between the investment of states and other agencies in regulating driving systems, and the wide range of ways of using cars which are manifest i n the variety of durable car cultures. Notes I woul d l ikf" to thank Roy Boyne, M ike Hf"pwotth. N igf"l Thrift. John Urry and Couzt' Vf"nn for thf"ir helpful comments on an earlier version of thf" i ntroduction. A lso N f"al Curtis and Susan Manthorpf" madf" a major contribution in bringing thf" issuf" togetlw!". The idea for the issuf" partl y derivf"s from discussions about car df"aths in Brazil with Arnaldo A ugusto Franco de Siqueira and Ana Zahira Bassit at thf" Univf"rsity of Sao Paulo.

1. HNe we think of tlw arguments of John Crry (2000) that sociology should focus on mOVf"mf"nt. travel and mobility as opposf"d to sf"ttlf"d boundf"d i nstitutions (;;f"f" also Ff"athf"rstonf", 1 995, 2000: Lash and U rry, 1 994: Rojf"k and Urry. 1 997). This 'altf"rnativf" paradigm' in sociology can be traced back in Frf"nch sociology to thf" work of Gabriel Tarde, who sought to develop a sociology attunf"d to i nnovation and ("t'f"ation, as opposed to the focus on social reproduction as Wf" finu in his contt'm­ porary E milt' Durkheim (st'e Allit'z. 200 1 : Latour. 2002: Tof"ws. 200:3). In thf" Gt'rman social and cultural science tradition thert' is tht' Lebensphilosophie of Diltht'y and Simmel. both of whom drew on the philosophy of liff" of Got'tht'. In philosophy this emphasis upon life. becoming, monism and differf"nct' can bf" tracf"u hack to Lf"ibniz's 'monodology". Bergson's vital ism has bf"f"n a significant landmark in the f"arly 20th cent ury (5f"f" Lash, 2005). More rf"cf"ntly thf" Df"lf'>uzian vocabu­ lary with its f"mphasis upon flows, becoming. lines of flight. d('>(f"rritorialization has bf"f"11 influf"l1tial (Sf"f" TheOf); Culture &: Societ) spf"cial Sf"etiol1 on Ddf"uzf" f"u ikU

18

Theory, Culture & Society 2] (4/5)

by Goodchild, 1997). There are also interesting parallels with complexity theory (Thrift, 1999; Urry, 2003). Theor)', Culture & Society currently has a series of special issues and sections in process on neo-vitalism, complexity theory, Tarde and 'life'. The first, on 'Vital Processes' will be published in December 2004 (see Fraser et aI., 2004, forthcoming). 2. See also U lrich Beck's theory of 'second modernity' as 'reflexive modernity' (Beck et aI., 2003) in which we have 'totally normal chaos' regulated by non-linear systems with more disequilibria through feedback loops which induce greater unin­ tended consequences and unpredictability (see Lash, 2002). 3. It is not only the poorer countries which suITer higher rates of casualties and effects on their GOP, but motor vehicle crashes have a disproportionate impact on poorer people everywhere, as they comprise the majority of casualties and lack ongoing support in the case of long-term injuries (WHO. 2004: 4). 4. The report argues that road traffic injury should be seen alongside heart disease, cancer and stroke as a public health problem that could be prevented which responds well to intervention (WHO, 2004: 19). To take one example: preventing pedestrian and cyclists' death and injury. In Europe 66 percent of fatally injured pedestrians are struck by the fronts of cars. Regular performance tests for vehicle fronts and the implementation of a relatively cheap modification (estimated at 10 euros if added in the manufacturing process) could result in a decline of 20 percent of these deaths (WHO, 2004: 26). Yet other popular modifications such as Roo Bars and Bull Bars, tubular additional elaborate fenders/bumpers which may have some function in country areas to protect drivers who hit animals, in city and suburban areas can result in more severe injuries for pedestrian casualties than with conventional cars. Here they function more as display-ware, as fashionable 'sporty' accessories to the trend for more 'muscular' rugged looking 4-Wheel Drive or SUY s (sports utility vehicles) . .5. See Box 1 . 1 . 'The human tragedies behind road crash statistics' for an account of the long term personal and social costs of a particular crash (WHO, 2004: 6). 6. This process goes back a long way: in the late 1 890s/early 1900s Singer (1995) remarks that there was a good deal of anxiety about the perils of modern urban life and in particular the terror of big-city traffic. particularly the hazards of the electric trolley. Sensational newspapers were fond of d isplaying dramatic drawings of pedes­ trian deaths, speaking of the 'slaughter' of 'massacred innocents' under the wheels of the trolley car. This was soon follo\\ ed by similar concerns about the automo­ bile. The nervousness and fear about the violence. suddenness and randomness of accidental death in the metropolis through big-city traffic can be related to the intensification of stimuli, the shocks and tensions which Simmel, Benjamin and Kracauer noted. In addition to the sensationalism of the media in portraying sLlch incidents, we have the quest for direct experience of sensation and the aesthetics of driving and the crash in relation to Ballard's (1974) novel, which is discussed below. 7. The use of term 'murder' by Norbert Elias to refer to motor crash deaths may strike some as a little strong. But. then, the whole topic of violence control and civilizing processes and the key question 'how can we learn to stop killing each other' is central to his work (see Elias. 1 994). 8. The road deaths and injuries statistics clearly impose major problems for comparability in terms of the different regimes of collecting data in operation around the world. This includes different definitions of accidents, different length

Featherstone

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I nt rod u ct io n

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of t i me of death after an accident that can still count as a t raffic death. v igi l anc E' of rE'porting accidents. TIlE' W H O rE'port (2004: ch. 2 ) gOE'S into t hese i s sues i n dE'tail and p ro v i des figurE's adj uS\E'd for underreporti ng.

9. It wa� rE'ported that C h i na introducE'd t hE' nation's first t raffic safE't y law in May 2004 i n an E'IIort to curb road carnagE' t hat claims dof'E' t o :300 l ives a day nation­ wide. The new law w i l l makE' drivers rE'sponsiblE' for all accidE'nts involving pede�­ t rian;; or non-motorizE'd vehicles such as bi cycl E' s , no matt E'r I\ho was at faul t . Zhang J ianfei, hE'ad of t he hi gh wa y department at t h e M inis t ry of Communication "tatE'd that ' O u r nation only has two percent of the world's cars but t raffic dE'aths duE' to ac c i dE' n t s make up 1 .5 p e rc E' n t of the world's t raffic fatali t ies and for many ),E'ars has ranked as no. 1 in the w orl d '. About 104,000 peop l e were ki lled i n t raff ic acci­ dents in China in 2003. Zhang c i ted incompetent dri v ing and a l ac k of road safety on the part of d riv e r s as the main reasons behi nd Chi na's chaotic roads. The nell" l a w will see Chinese pedes t r ian s enjoy the right of way at d e s igna te d crossings. This w i l l nlE'an cars w i l l havE' to stop for people crossing instead of the prE'sent pract ice of largely Ignonng pedestri an s . - Sapa-AFP 28 A pri l 2004. cited in m o t oring.c o . za . 10.

Fatalit ies per 1 00,000 population are a relat i ve l y crude instrunlE'nt for given the d ifferences i n classification and reporti ng practices in dilfE'rE'nt countries. Elias's ( 1 995: 23) researc h is based on a rate worked out from t ilE' numbers of people k illed per 1 0.000 rE'gistered vehicles (private cars and taxis ) . This rate has t he a dv a nt agE' of relating deaths to the volume of c ars . b u t i t doE'S not give a "ense of the volume or density of the n u mber of pedestrians. cyclists and other vehides, incl uding non -re gis t ere d cars, which are likely to be on the road at a g i v en time. These latter categories of pedestrians and other small v e h i cl es arE' part icularly rE'l eva n t in making sense of t hE' statistics in sonlE' of the count ries out::;idE' of the Wes t . comparison. even

1 1 . I n t ilE' U K tilE' f irs t version o f The Highwoy Code. which " u bse q u ent lv went many edit ions, was published Iw H M SO in tl1E' 1 930". . Similar driving cudes exist i n many other societies. In Brazil in t he face of public and go v e rn mE'nt a l concern about the high road death figures The High lca l CadI' w a s redrawn and elaboratE'd i n t hE' year 2000. In China (See foot note 8) t h E' Higlmay DE'partn1E'nt in conj u nction w i t h the Governn1E'nt has sought to spE'li out more formally t he ru l es of driving conduct and tl1E' responsibility for drivers in acc id ents - efIE'c t i ve h de fin i ng t hE' code more precisely and i m po s in g legal pE'nalties for infringemenb. t hrough

1 2 . De Certeau's preference for wal k i ng over driv i n g in t he c i ty. makes sense i f WP the driver by t he st andard of th e /{nne ur. or person out to experiencE' t hE' "ensat ions of the city and be opE'n to i nformation f l o w s. ThE' dril E'r movE''' through t ilt' city focusing on thE' road al1E'ad. wrapped in a metal and gla;;s �11E'] ] cut off from sE'nsations and i n formation. YE't one can en v i sag e the oppositE' sit uation. II'Ilt'rE' cars are used to l i n k thE' driver t o the I\'orld oUh i d e . Cars can lw USE'd for rE'c ip roc a l display a n d visibility o f statu::;. i n w h i c h driving i s slowed
n. Making calls via mobilE' ' p ho ne s whilE' dri v i ng ha" become ("ommon. alt hough in many co u n trie s lE' gi sl ati o n to control use has been i m pl E' m e n t E'd . A forE'runrlE'r

of m o b i l e

p hones was the use of CB radio - oftE'n bv truc kE'r". L'nl ike mohilE' ' ph o n es

20

Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

the CB radio could be used for conversations between people in the immediate driving figuration (unknown as well as known others). The movie Convoy (dir. Sam Pekhinpah, 1 978) heroicized the independent 'free citizen' CB trucker (see Packer, 2002 ) . 1 4. The notion of two bodies derives from J ohn O'Neill's (2004) book Five Bodies. One could also think of various theorizations of the relationship between the inner body (working of internal organs, health) and the outer body (display, presentation of self) (Featherstone, 1 982) with reference to the car's communicative display possibilities. Clearly cars have an internal body which can be interpreted by other drivers as healthy or sick. Here we t hink of the state of what is under the bonnet and out of sight (the engine, transmission, steering and other devices) which are made visible in its performance and behaviour, especially when things go wrong the car can slow down, move erratically, stop, emit black smoke or even burst into flames and burn out. Old cars and new cars often have visible characteristics that mark their age. But there is also the other inner car, the driving and passenger compartment which carries the driver along with other humans and animals whose bodies may have varying degrees of visibility to outside viewers. 1 5 . These possibilities for communication or everyday ethnography, are further dependent upon the speed of the other vehicle and traffic density. The potential for scrutiny of other drivers and passengers are clearly greater in slow moving traffic or a gridlock jam, yet the possibilities of seeing the driver 'doing driving', execut­ ing bizarre or bravura moves is also lower. More open roads, freeways with low or medium density traffic permitting higher speed, carries greater driving display possibilities. Here we think of young drivers who make a diagonal traverse move through an imperceptible gap from the inside to outside lane of six lanes of traffic on the Marginal Pinheiros in Sao Paulo. 16. This is not to imply that interactants are constantly scrutinizing each others behaviour and reflexively monitoring their own performances as we find in the self­ help literature of the 'how to read a person's facial expressions like a book' type (d. here the classification of facial expressions by Ekman, 2003; Ekman and Friesen, 2003; see also Featherstone, 1 982). One problem with such approaches is that they can neglect the ways in which much of everyday interactions operate with low reHexivity, with judgements operated below the level of consciousness guided by the habitus. See N igel Thrift's (2000: 36) discussion in which he emphasizes that 'probably 95 percent of embodied thought is non-cognitive, yet probably 95 percent of academic thought has concentrated on the cognitive dimension of the conscious "I"'. 1 7. Likewise Dant (2004) is not keen to use the term 'cyborg', which for him should refer exclusively to feedback systems incorporated into the body that are used as replacements or enhancements of human body functions (see Featherstone and Burrows, 1 995; H araway, 1 99 1 ; Lupton, 1999). 1 8. The inHuential lerm used by J ames J . Gibson to refer to the possibilities which the environment otTers an animal or human being (see discussion in Dant, 2004; Edensor, 2004; Michael, 2000). 1 9. There are countless web pages about ear chases - not just from videotape and DVD retail outlets, but mainstream magazines and newspapers and individuals who make up their own pages about their favourite crash and car movies. 20. Young men and teenagers are also attracted to computer games which feature speed and thrills - such as the immenselv successful Grand Theji A ulo. which has

Featherstone - I n t rodu c t i on

21

gont' t h rough a number of t'dit ions. which havt' topped tht' L- K and l S galllt's charts. selling more than 20 mill ion copies in the past fivt' yt'ars. The player acts tht' role of a street thug with a set of weapons to complete missions I\"hich inc l ude steal ing cars, crash i ng tht'lll, shooti n g pedestrians and other motorist� t'tc . . and i nvolvt'� car chast's and pursu i t . It was reported that t he makers wt'rt' bt'ing sut'd for mort' t han £60m after two teenagers said tht'y i m i tated i ts violt'nt sCt'nt's I\ llt'n tllt'y k i l l t'd a man. This rt'opent'd t he debates about the l i n k betl\ t'en games and aggression (lndepenrlenl, 18 September 2003). The graphics of the latest I't'rsions are incrt'as­ i ngly 'filmic' in quality and the sensation of driving, crash ing t'tc .. is more rt'alis­ t ic . I t is i n teres t i ng to note that some action movies today i nvolve the marketing of tilt' gamt' al ong w i t h the fil m (e.g, The Matrix) and givt'n that ganw vt'r" ions can gross more t han t he movie, they are seen as providing good returns for h igh produc­ tion value i nvestment. 2 1 . The curren t use of roadside cameras to monitor t raffic and reduce spt'ed related accidents is becomi ng a global safety trend. This has attracted a protest movement aga inst the rigid i m plementation and what are seen as u njust fines in the U n i tt'd K i ngdom, which has in some cases i nvolved sabotage of cameras, Tht' govt'rnnwnt 's concession has been to make some camera boxes visible by pai n t i ng them yt'l low. In the terminology of Norbert E l ias t h i s would be seen as a movement back from internal controls (the driving code) to external con t rols (moni tori ng bt'haviour via signak technology and implemen t i ng fines or bans). 22. The connection between car dri v i ng and gambli n g - t a k i ng risks. riding Ollt" � l uck - a l so i nterested the film star Richard B u rton. who \I as k nown to play a �ort of Russian rou lette when driving by refusing to halt and speeding across opt'n cross­ roads in t he countryside, By offering one's l ife to the fates and thei r refusal to acct'pt t he sacrifice, is seen as i nject i ng some meani n g and l alue (albeit temporary) into a world which i s taken as essentially meani ngless. Richard B u rton was an admi rer of t he French novelist Albert Camus, who died in a car crash, 2:3. The f i l m was referred to by the London Even ing Slanrlard as 'movie beyond t he bounds of deprav ity', Ballard's ( 1 9 7 5: 9) remarhd t hat t ilE' novel was 'the fir�t pornographic novel based upon technology'. Cronenberg described the him as 'anti­ pornographic' w i t h t he characters act i ng out 'the death of affect', givt'n t hat pornog­ raphy fun c t ions w i t h i n a culture of representation, In t il E' fi l m sex is associated w i t h death , i n a sort of 'urban pri m i tive c u l ti sm' ful l o f talismans a n d body marking ( B rottman and Sharrett, 2002: 20 1 ), Tht' techno-sex of Crash i s seen as mov ing away from bourgeois notions of 'appropriate' sexual t'ncounters. One of the char­ acters in Ballard's novel claims t hat t he car crash is 't he marriage between sex, the hu man organism and technology', and it should be set'n as "a fert i l izing t'vt'nt' not a dt'st ructive one ( B rottman and Sharrett 2002: 20 1 ).

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Mike Featherstone is editor of Th eory, Culture & Society.

The 'System' of Automobility

fohn Urry

Today, we experience an ease of motion unknown to any prior u rban civil iz­ ation . . . we take u n restricted motion of the i ndividual t o be an absolute righ t . The private motorcar is the logical i nstrument for exercising t hat right, and the effect on public space, especially the space of the urban street, is that the space becomes meaningless or even maddening u n less i t can be subordi­ nated to free movement. (Sennett, 1 977: 1 4)

Automobility and its Self-expansion

O

NE B I LLION cars were manufactured during the last century. Then> are currently over 700 million cars roaming the world. World car travel is predicted to triple between ] 990 and 2050 ( Hawken et aI., 1 999). Country after country is developing an 'automobil ity culture' with the most significant currently being that of China. By 2030 there may be 1 billion cars worldwide (Motavalli, 2000: 20-1). Yet strangely the car is rarely discussed in the 'globalization l i tera­ ture', although i ts specific character of domination is more systemic and awesome i n its consequences than what are normally viewed as constitutivp technologies of the global, such as the cinema, television and especially the computer (see Castells, 200 1 ). In this article I examine what kind of system is automobility, how its character of domination has been exerted, and whether there are any ways in which we might envisage an ending to this syskmic domination. Such an automobility system comprises six components that in their combinatioll generate and reproduce the 'spec ifi c character of domination' that it exercises (see original argument in Sheller and Urry, 2000). A uto­ Illohili ty is: 1 . the qu intessential malluf actured object produced by the leading indus­ trial sectors and the iconic firms within 20th-century capitalislll (Ford, G M , Rolls-Royce, Mercedes, Toyota, VW and so on), and the industry •

The(ln� ell/l u re &- :)(Wiet l 2004 ( S A G �:. London. Tholhand Oak,. and I\ e w l )p l h i ). Vo l . 2 1 (4/5): 25-:39 D O l : 1 O. 1 1 " '/o2():�2 "6404( )4()()5<)

26

2.

3.

Theory, Culture & Socie(t 2 1 ( 415) from wh ich the defi n i t i ve social science concepts of Fordism and post­ Ford ism have em erge d ; the major i tem of individual consumption after housing which prov ides status to its owner/user through its sign -values ( such as speed, security, safety, sexual desire, career success, freedom, family, mascul i nity); t h rough being easily anthropomorphized by bei ng given names, h a v i ng rebe l l ious features, seen to age and so on; and which disproporti onately p reo c c u p ies crim inal j u stice systems ( M iller, 200 1 ); an extraordi nari l y powerful complex constituted t h rou gh tech nical and soc ial i nterlin kages with other in d u st r i e s car parts and accessories; petrol refi n i ng and distribution; ro ad-b u ild i ng and maintenance; hotels, roadside service areas and motels; car sal es and rep air workshops; subu rban house buildi ng; retail ing and leisure complexes ; advert ising and marketi ng; urban design and planning; and various oil-rich nations (Freund, 1 99;)); the predominan t glob al form of q u as i - p ri vate mobility that subordi nates other mobil i t ies of walking, cy c l in g, travel l ing by rai l and so on, and reorganizes how peo pl e nego t i a t e the opportunit ies for, and constraints u pon, work , family l i fe, c h i ldhood, l e isure and pleasure (Whi telegg, 1 997); the dominant culture that sustains m ajor discourses of what constitu tes the good l i fe, what i s necessary for an appropriate c i t i zens h i p of mobi l i t y and which provides potent l i terary a n d arti stic i mages a n d symbols ( from E . M . Forster to Scott Fitzgerald to John Steinbeck to Daphne du Maurier to ] . C . Ballard: see Bac h mair, 1 99 1 ; Eyerman and Lo fgre n, 1 995; C raves-Brown, 1 997). the s in gle most i m portant caust' of enL'ironmenlal resource-use. Th is resu lts from the scale of material , space and power used i n the manu­ fac t u re of cars, roads and car-only env i ronments, and in c o pi ng with the material , air q u al i t y, medical, soc i a l , ozonp, visual, aural, spatial and temporal pol l u tion of global a ut o m ob il ity . Tra ns po rt accounts for one­ t h i rd of CO2 emissions and i s i nd i rectly responsiblp for many 20t h ­ century wars ( A dams, 1 999; Whi lplegg, ] 997 ) ,

4.

5.

6.

'

'

The term a ut omobil i t y' capture,; a doublp ,.,ense, both of the humani,.;t self a,.; in the notion of autobiography, and of obje ct s or mach ines that posspss a ('apac i ty for movement, a,; in automatic and automaton. Th is double resonance of 'auto' demonstrate;; hOI\ the 'car-driver' i,; a hy b ri d as;; em bl a ge of spec i fi c human acl i l i t ies. machi ne,;. roads, build ings, signs and cult ures of mo b i l it y (Thrift. 1 996: 282-4). A ut o mohi l i t y thus i nvolves aulonomous humans comhi ned lI i t h m achi n e s w i t h c apac i t y for autonomou,; movenlf'n t along Ihe paths, 1anp,;, s l reel,.; and rouleways of O l l f' soc iely after anot her. What is k e y is not Ihe 'car' a,; ,;uch hut the system of these flu id i nterconnections. Slater argues thai: 'a car is not a car because of i ts p hy si c ality but because syslem,.; of prm i siol1 and categories of t h ings are "material ized" in a stable form', and t h i ;; gp ll p rat es the d isti nct afforda nces I hat the car provi d es for thp hy brid of t he car dri ver (200l : 6) . '

'

'

Urry - The 'System' of Autom ob i l i t y

27

In pa rticul ar i t i s necessary to consider w h a t stable form or 'sy stem' automob i l i t y cons t i tutes as it made and remade i tself across the globe. We cou l d s e e t h i s as 'vi ral', emerging first i n North A merica and then v i ru l e n t l y spreadi ng i n to, and tak i ng over, most parts o f the body soc ial wi t h i n pretty wel l al l corners of t he globe. I ndeed, t o some degree, t he poorer the country the greater i s t h e powe r of t h i s v i rus (see various studies i n M i ll er, 200 1 ). B ut [ prefer h e re t h e formulations of non-l i n ear systems or complex­ i ty ( see Capra, 1 996, 200 1 ; N icolis, 1 995; Prigogine, 1 997; U ITY, 2003). Au tomob i l i ty can be conceptualized as a self-organ izing autopoietic, non­ l i near system that spreads world-wide, and i ncludes cars, car-dri vers, roads, petroleum suppl ies and many novel objects, tech nologies and s igns . Thf' system generates t he precond i t i ons for i ts own self-expansion. Luhmann deli nes au topoiesis as: . . . every l h i ng I h a l is used a s a u n i l b y I h e system i � produced as a u n i l I)\' the system i tself. Th i s applies 10 elements, processes. boundaries. and olher struct ures and, l as t but nol leas!' 10 t h e unity of t h e system i t s e l f. ( 1 995: :�: see M i nger:;.

1 995)

f n t h e next sect i on it is s hown how automobi l it y produces th rough its capac i t y for self-production, what i s 'used by a unit as a unit'. It is t h rough automob i l ity's restructur i ngs of t i me and space that it generates the Ilt'f'd for ever more cars to deal with what they both presuppose and call into existence. Th i s system of automobi l i ty stemmed from the path-depf'ncknt pattern l a i d down from the end of the 1 9t h cf'ntury. O n c e econ o m i es a n d s oc ieti e s were 'locked in' to what I conceptual ize as the s t e el-a n d-pf' t ro l eum car, then huge i n c reas i n g ret urns resultf'd for t hose prod u c i ng a n d sel l i ng the car and its associated i n frastructure. products a nd services ( see A rth ur, 1 994, on i nneas i ng returns). Soc ial l i fe more gen e ral l y I\" a s i rre l e rs i b l y l ockf'd in to t h e mode o f mob i l i t y that automob i l i t y generates and presu pposes. Th i s mode o f mobi l i ty i s neither s o c i a l l y n f'Cf'ssal"), nor i ne v i t abl e but has seemed i m po ssib l e to break from ( but see bel o w ) . From rf' l a t i l' e ly smal l cau ses an i rrt"versible pattern was laid down and t h i s ensu red the pre con d i t i o n s fo r a u t ol l1 o b i l it y 's s e l f- e x pan s i o n over the past a st o n i s h i ng century. sure l y. i f w e w a n t to give it a name, t h e 'ce ntury of the car'. I nOl\" ex a m i n e aut o m o b i l ity 's except i o n a l pOl\"er to remake t ime-spal"t', t' sp e ( ' i a l l y becausf' of its pec u l iar comb i nation of f-lf' \ i h i l i t l and coer c i o n . I t i " t h i s rem ak i n g t hat has ensured t h e p rec o n d i t i on ,; ror i h m\ n sel f­

(>x pa l l S lO n .

But f con s i d e r i n the fol l o ll i n g sel" l i on sonw smal l l"ha nge::; that Ill ight tip the cal' system i n to a c1 i JTere n t d i rect i on . c h a n ge ,; that th rough their dynam i( ' i n t erdependence c o u l d provoke a shirt bey o n d a ut o m o h i l i ty, b e yo nd th e ste e l - a n d - pet ro l e u m car, tOll a rd" a n e ll s , s t e m or mobi l i ty. I term t h i s po te n t i a l l y emergen t system the · post - c ar· . I e m pl o ), th e l a n g uage or pa t h-d epe n d e nce . i n c re as i n g ret urns. e nw rge l l c e a n d t i pp i ng po ints t o t' xamine these co m pl e \ systelll changes. I

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Theory, Culture & Society

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Automohility and Time-space

Automobility has irreversibly set in train new socialities, of commuting, family life, community, leisure, the pleasures of movement and so on. 2 The growth in automobili ty has principally invol ved new movement and not the replacement of publi c transport by the car (Adams, 1999; Vigar, 2002: 1 2) . David Begg o f the U K Centre for Integrated Transport defmitively notes that: 'Most car journeys were never made by public transport. The car's flexibility has encouraged additional journeys to be made' (quoted in Stradling, 2002). These new mobilities result from how the car is immensely flexible and wholly coercive. Automobility is a source of freedom, the 'freedom of the road'. I ts flexi­ bili ty enables the car-driver to travel at any time in any direction along the complex road systems of western societies that link together most houses, workplaces and leisure sites (and are publicly paid for). Cars extend where people can go to and hence what they are l iterally able to do. Much 'social l i fe' could not be undertaken without the flexibilities of the ear and its 24hour availabil ity. It is possible to leave late by car, to miss connections, to travel in a relatively time-less fashion. But this flexibility is necessitated by automobility. The 'structure of auto space' (Freund, 1993; Kunstler, 1994) forces people to orchestrate in complex and heterogeneous ways their mobilities and sociali ties across very significant distances. The urban environment has 'unbundled' territoriali­ ties of home, work, business and leisure that historically were closely inte­ grated, and fragmented social practices in shared public spaces (SceneSusTech, 1 998). Automobility di vides workplaces from homes, producing lengthy commutes into and across the city. It splits homes and busi ness d istricts, undermi ning local retail outlets to which one might have walked or cycled, eroding town-centres, non-car pathways and public spaces. It separates homes and leisure sites often only available by motor­ ized transport. Members of families are spl i t up since they live in d i stant places involving complex travel to meet up even intermittently. People inhabit congestion, jams, temporal uncertai nties and health-threatening c i ty environments, as a consequence of being encapsulated in a domestic, cocooned, moving capsule. Automobil ity is thus a system that coerces people into an intense flexi­ hilil). It forces people to juggle fragments of time so as to deal with the temporal and spatia! constraints that it itself generates. Automobil i ty is a Frankenstei n-created monster, extending the individual into realms of freedom and flexibil ity whereby inhabiting the car can be positively viewed and energetical ly campaigned and fought for, but also constraining car 'users' to live their lives in spat ially stretched and time-compressed ways. The car i s the literal 'iron cage' of modernity, motorized, mov ing and domestic. Automobility develops 'instantaneous' time to be managed in complex, heterogeneous and uncertain ways. Automobility involves an individualistic

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t i metabli ng of many instants or fragments of time. The car-driver thus operates i n instantaneous t i me rather than the offi cial tin1f'tabl i ng of mobility that accompanied the railways in the mid- 1 9t h century. This was modernist clock-time based u pon the public t i metable. As a car-driver wrote in 1 902: 'Traveling means utmost free activity, the train however condemns you to passivity . . . the rai lway squeezes you into a timetable' (cited in Morse, 1 998: 1 1 7) . The objective clock-time of the modernist railway t i metable is replaced by personalized, subjective temporalities, as people l i ve their lives in and through their car(s) (if they have one). This produces a reflexive monitoring of the self. People try to sustain 'coherent, yet con­ t i nuously revised, biographical narratives . . . in the context of multiple choices filtered through abstract systems' such as automobility (Giddens, 199 1 : 6). A utomobility coerces people to j uggle fragments of time to assemblt' complex, fragile and contingmt patterns of social lift', pattt'rns that constitute self-created narratives of the reflexive sdf. Automobility thus produces desires for flexibility that so far only the car is able to satisfy. l The seamlt'ssness of tht' car journey makes other modes of t ravt'l i nflexible and fragmented. So-called public t ransport rardy provides that kind of seamlessness (except for first-class air travellers with a limousint' st'rvice to and from the airport) . There are many gaps between the various mechanized means of public transport. These 'structural holes' in st'mi­ publ ic space are sources of i nconvenience, danger and uncertainty. And this is especially true for women, children older people, those who may Iw subjt'ct to racist attacks, the less abled and so on ( SceneSusTech, 1 998) . As personal times are de-synchronized from each other, s o spat ial movements are synchronized to the rhythm of the road. The loose intt'r­ actions and mobilities of pedestrians give way to tl1f' t ightly controlled mobil i t y of mach i nes, t h a t ( hopefully! ) ket'p 011 one s idt" of tht" road, within lant's, within certain spet"c1s, follow ing h i ghly complex sign-systems and so on. Driving rt'quires 'publics' based on trust, in which mutual strangers are able to follow such shared rules, communicate through common sets of visual and aural signals, and interact even without t"ye-contact in a k ind of default space or non-place available to all 'citizens of the road' (see Lynch, 1993). Car-drivers are excust'd from normal etiqut'tte and fact'-to-face inter­ actions with all t host' others inhabiting the road. Adorno IITote as t'arly as 1 942: 'And which driver is not tempted, merely by the powt'r of tht' engine, to wipt' out the vt'rmin of the strt't't, pedt'st rians, childrt'n and cyclists"?' ( 1 974: 40). Car-travt'l i nterrupts tl1f' taskscapt's of otl1f'rs (Jwdest rians. children going to school, postmt'n, garbage collectors, farmers, animal;; and so on), whost' daily routines are obstacles to the high-spet'd traffic cutt ing mercilt'ssly through slower-moving pathways and (hl"ellings. Junctions, roundabouts, and ramps present momt'nts of carefull y scripted inter-car­ action during which non-car ust'rs of t Ilt' road constit utt' obstacles to the hybrid car-drivers intent on returning to their normal cruising speed. dt't'mt'd Iwct'ssary ill order to complt'te the day's complex tasks in t imt'. To illhabit t Ilt' roads of the west i s to t'ntt'r of world of anollvmizt'd mach i nes,

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ghostly presences moving too fast to know directly or especi ally to see through the eye. Simmel is relevant here. He considers that the eye is a unique 'socio­ logical achievement' (cited in Frisby and Featherstone, 1 997: I l l ). Looking at one another i s what effects the connections and interactions of indi­ viduals. Simmel terms this the most direct and 'purest' interaction. It is the look between people (what we now call 'eye-contact') which produces extra­ ordinary moments of intimacy since: '[o]ne cannot take through the eye without at the same time giv ing'; this produces the 'most complete reci­ proci ty' of person to person, face to face (Frisby and Featherstone, 1 997: 1 12). What we see in the person is the lasting part of them, 'the history of their life and . . . the timeless dowry of nature' (Frisby and Featherstone, 1 997: 1 1 5). Simmel further argues, following notions of the possessive gaze, that the visual sense enables people to take possession, not only of other people, but also of diverse objects and environments, often from a distance ( Frisby and Featherstone, 1 997: 1 16). The visual sense enables the world of both people and objects to be controlled from afar, combining detach­ ment and mastery. It is by seeking distance that a proper 'view' is gained, abstracted from the hustle and bustle of everyday experience. Automobility precludes both of these achievements of the eye. Especially for the non-ear-user roads are simply full of moving, dangerous iron cages. There i s no reciprocity of the eye and no look is returned from the 'ghost in the machine'. Communities of people become anonymized flows of faceless ghostly machines. The iron cages conceal the expressiveness of the faee and a road ful l of vehicles can never be possessed. There is no distance and mastery over the iron cage; rather, those living on the street are bombarded by hustle and bustle and especially by the noise, fumes and relentless movemt'nt of tIl{' car that cannot bt' mastered or possessed ( set' Urry, 2000: eh. 4, on the st'nses). More generally, '[Mloc\t' rnist urban landscapes were built to facilitate automobility and to discourage otll{'r forms of human movement. . . . [Movement between] private worlds is through dead public spaces by car' ( Frt'und, 1 99:3: 1 19). Large areas of the globe consist of car-only environ­ ments - the non-places of sLl l wr-modernity ( A ug!:" 1 995; Merriman, 2004). About one-quarter of tilt' land in London and nearly one-half of that in LA is devoted to car-only environments. A nd they then exert spatial and temporal dominance ovt'r surround i ng t'nvironments. transforming what can be seen, heard, snl{'lt and tasted (tilt' spatial and temporal rangt' of which varies for each of the senses). Thev are sitt's of mobility within which car­ drivers art' i nsulated as til{'\' ·dwdl-within-the-car'. They represent the victory of liquidity over til(> 'urhan ' (see Morris, 1 988, 011 the motel). Further, the drivf'r is strapped into a comfortable if constraining armchair and surrounded I n mi(To-electronic informational SOU1Tt'S, controls and sources of pleasurt>. \"hat ,\Yilliams calls tilt' 'mobilf' privatis­ ation' ( see Pinknq, 1 99 1 : 55). 1'11{' Ford brochure of 1949 declared that 'The 49 Ford is a l iving room on \\ Ilt't'ls' ( iVIar",h and Collett. 1 986: 1 1 ; the

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The 'Svstem' of Automobility

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VW camper i s described as a 'Room with a View'). The car i s a room in which the senses are impoverished. Once i n the car, there i s almost no k inaesthetic movement from the driver. So although automobility i s a system of mobility, it necessitates minimal movement once one is strapped into the driving sea\. Eyes have to be constantly on the look-out for danger, hands and feet are ready for the next manoeuvre, the body is gripped into a fixed posi tion, lights and noises may indicate that the car-driver needs to make i nstantaneous adjustments, and so Oil. The other traffic constrains how each car is to be driven, its speed, direction, its lane and so on. The driver's body is itself fragmented and disciplined to the machine, with eyes, ears, hands and feet, all trained to respond instantaneously and consi s tently, while desires even to stretch, to change position, to doze or to look around are being suppressed. The car becomes an extension of the driver's body, creat i ng new subjecti vi ties organized around the extraordi narily disciplined 'driving body' (see Freund, 1993: 99; Hawkins, 1986; Morse, 1998). A Cali­ fornian city planner declared as early as 1930 that 'it might be said that Southern Californians have added wheels to their anatomy' (cited in Fl ink, 1988: 143). The car can be thought of as an extension of the senses so that the car-driver can feel i ts very contours, shape and relationshi p to that beyond i ts metall i c skin. As Ihde describes: 'The expert driver when parallel parking needs very l ittle by way of visual dues to back himself into tlw small place - he "feels" the very extension of himself through the car as the car becomes a symbiotic extension of his own embodiedness' ( 1 974: 272). An advert for the BMW 733i promised the 'integration of man and machi ne . . . an almost total oneness with the car' (quoted in Hawkins, 1986: 67). The body of the ear provides an extension of the human body, surround­ ing the fragile, soft and vulnerable human skin with a new steel skin, albeit one that can scratch, crumple and rupture ollce it encounters other cars in a crash (see Brottman, 200 1 , on 'car crash culture) Within the private cocoon of glass and metal intense emotions are rt"leased in forms otherwi,w unacceptable ( see M ichael, 1 988, on road rage). System Change

Thus far I have characterized the current car system and its general charac­ teristics. It is important to note that there are multiple variations in how the car has been desired and 'inhabited' by different social groups, I that there are historical shifts in the ways of inhabiting the car, and that there are significant 'technical' changes in the nature of cars." But what I have suggested is that these multiple desires and forms of inhabiting have produced as unintended effect the expansion of the ,;y,;tem of the privately owned and mobilized 'steel-and-petroleum' car. Such a car system began in the last decade of the 1 9th century and then came to dominatt' conteJllporary alternatives that Jllay havt' been preferable ( Motavalli, 2000; see Scharff, 1 99 1 , on the gendering of tlwse alternative pOIVt'r sources). The 'path-dqwnde/1ce' of tlw petrolf'um-based car \\ a" e"tablislwd and irreversibly 'loche)' in.

32

Theory, Culture & Society 21 (415)

I n the 1890s there were three main methods of propelling vehicles: petrol, steam and electric batteries, with the latter two apparently being more 'efficient' ( Motavall i , 2000: ch. 1 ) . Petroleum-fuelled cars were estab­ lished for small -scale, more or l ess accidental reasons, partl y because a petrol-fuel led vehicl e was one of only two to complete a 'horseless carriage competition' in Chicago in 1896. The petrol system got establ i shed and 'locked' in, and the rest is history so to speak. Thus small causes occu rring in a certain order at the end of the 19th century turned out to have irre­ versible consequences for the 20th century, what we might call the century of the car. Path-dependence analyses show that causation can flow from contin­ gent events to general processes, from small causes to large system effects, from historically or geographically remote locations to the general (see Mahoney, 2000: 536). Linear models are now savaged both by theorists of non-linear dynamics ( Capra, 1996, 200 1 ; Nicolis, 1995; Prigogine, 1997) and by empirical l y oriented sociologists (see Abbott's tirade against 'genera lised l inear reality'; 2001). 'Path-dependence' shows that the ordering of events or processes through time very significantly influences the non-linear ways in which they eventual l y turn out decades or even centuries l ater. Hence, according to Abbott 'time matters' (2001). Path­ dependence is thus a process model in which systems develop irreversibly through a 'lock-in', but with only certain small causes being necessary to prompt their initiation, as with the contingent design of the QWERTY keyboard or the unpredictable origins of the petrol-based car (Arthur, 1994; Mahoney, 2000: 535-6). The importance of the lock-in means that i nstitutions matter a great deal to how systems develop over longer time periods. Social institutions such as suburban housing, oil companies, out-of-town shopping centres, can have tlw effect of producing a long-term irreversibility that is 'both more predictable and more difficult to reverse' according to North ( 1990: 104). The effects of the petroleum car over a century after its relatively chance establishment show how difficult it is to reverse locked-in institutional processes as bill ions of agents co-evolve and adapt to that remaking of the system of automobi lity across the globe ( see Sheller and Uny, 2000). Thus in order to break with the c urrent car system, what Adams terms 'business as usual' (1999), we need to examine the possibilities of 'turning points'. Abbott argues that change i s the normal order of things and indeed many assessments of contemporary social life emphasize tlw increasingly accelerating nature of such profouncl changes. But there are certain networks of socia l relations that get stabil ized for long periods of time, what are often called social structures. One such structure is the car system that is remarkably stable and unchanging, even though a massive economic, social and technological maelstrom of change surrounds it. The car-system seems to sail on regardless, now ow'r a century old and increasingly able to 'drive' out competitors, such as feet, bikes, buses and trains. Tlw car system, we might say, is a Braudelian longue du ree ( A bbott, 200 1 : 256).

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Bu t as Abbott notes, and i ndeed i t is a key feature of complexity approaches t o systems, noth ing is fixed forever. Abbott m a inta i ns that t here is: 'the possi b i l ity for a patLern of actions to occur to put the key in the lock and make a major turning poi n t occu r' (200 1 : 257). Suc h non-l i near outcomes are generated by a system m oving across turning or t ipping poi n ts (Gladwe l l , 2000). Ti pping poi nts i nvol ve t h ree notions: that events and phenomena are contagious, that l i ttle causes can have big effects, and that changes can happen not i n a gradual l inear way but d ramatical l y a t a moment when the system swi tches. Gladwell describes the consumption of fax machines or mob i l e phones, when at a particular moment every of/lce appears to need a fax mac h in e or every m ob i l e 'cool' person req ui res a mobile. Weal t h i n such a s ituation deri ves not from the scarcity of goods as in conventional economics but from abundance (Gladwel l, 2000: 2 72-3). Curren t t h i n k i ng about automob i lity i s characterized by l inear t h i n k i ng: can existing ca rs can be given a technical fix to decrease fuel consumption or can existing public t ransport be i mproved a bit (see U ITY, 2003, on non - l i nearity)? But the real chal l enge is how to move to a d i fferent pattern i nvol v i ng a more or l ess complete break with the curren t car system. The curren t car-system cou l d not be disrupted by l i near changes but only by a set of i nterdependent cha nges occurring i n a certain order that might move, or t i p, the system i nto a new path ( see Gladwell, 2000; Sheller and U rry, 2000). I now exa m i ne whether a d i fferent pattern is i ndeed emerging, by l ooking at what may be the seeds of a new system of mobil i ty for tlw r("st of this century. These 'seeds' i n volve not just the technica l-economic t rans­ formations of d i fferen t fuel systems and car body materials as argued by Hawken et al. ( 1 999; Motavall i , 2000; US Department of Transportation, ] 999). These seeds also i n volve an array of pol itical, pol icy and soci al t rans­ formations, a veritable new u rban i ty. If they wer(" to deve lop in opt i mal ord("r w i t h i n the next decade or so, then the break w i th current au tomob i l ity migh t j us t be effected th rough their syste m ic i n terdependencies. There are six tech nical-economic, pol i cy and soc ial t ransformations t hat in their dynamic i ntf'rdepend("nce m ight tip mobil i t y i nto a IWW systf'm , l ll f' post -car ( se(" Graham and M arvi n . 20(H , [or a d i ff("rent v iew). F irst, tlwrt' art' tlf'wjile/ systems for cars, vans and buses i nc l u d i ng hatteries, especial ly l ead ac id and nickel mf'lal hydride, hybrid cars pOII'e r("d by di ("s("l and hatlt'rif's, and hydrogen or methanol fUf'1 c(" l l s . Therf' Illay he a t i p ping po i n t when sudd("nly l arge num hers of cOllsumers mov(" over to olle of t hese al t(" rtlat ive v("hicl ("s that. l i k (" the mob ile phone, suddenly ov(" rn i gh t seellls tile cool way to Iw mobile. A contagion suddenly takPs pIac(" ( see M otavall i , 2000: 1 0 7 , o n devel opments h y Toyota, BMW� Honda, Ford. Da i ml("r­ C h rysler, Vol vo, PS A , Shell , BP). A t the samf' t i me there is i ncr("asing unct'r­ tainty of oil suppl i es fol lowing 11 September 200 1 , \\ h i l"h ex posed tile US's dependenc(" u pon M icl d l(" Eastern o i l . Some pred ict large incrf'ases i l l petrol pri ces and a heigh tened uncertainty of suppli es that also cou l d also help to t i p the system ( Motavall i , 2(00).

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Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

Second, there are various new materials for constructing 'car' bodies. Especi ally significant is the Lovins ultra-light 'hypercar' made of advanced polymer composite materials. Other technologies include aluminium and nanotechnology which may make pos sib l e carbon-based fibres 1 00 times stronger than steel at one-si xth the weight (Hawken et aI., 1 999; US Depart­ ment of Transportation, 1 999: 4-5). Each of those can very sign ificantly reduce the weight of vehicles and hence the need for powet{ul e ngines to move them . Also, there may be i ncreasing production of much smaller micro-cars (rather than four-person fam i ly-sized cars) for crowded urban spaces. Examples of such micro-cars or 'station cars' include the Mercedes Smart Car, the Cabriolet, the N issan Hyperm i n i , BMW's motor cycle/car hybrid the C 1 , the U LTra automated taxis in Cardiff activated by a smart card, the Tax i2000 urban transit sol ution, and PSA's TULI P car.6 Third, there is the devel opm e n t of 'smart-card' technoLogy that could transfer information from car to home, to bus, to train, to workplace, to web site, to shop-till, to bank. Vehicles are increasi ngly hybridized with the tech­ nologies of the mobile, personal entertai nment system and laptop computer (as car compani es join up with ISPs). Car-dri vers and passengers may be personal ized with their own communication I inks (email addresses, phone numbers, web addresses: Cow, 2000) and entertainment applic atio n s ( digitally stored music, programmed radio stations). Thus any veh i cle is becomi ng more of a 'smart home' away from home (as with t h e new Range Rover). This connectivi ty could facilitate a s i ngle means of paying for 't ra v e l ' whatever t h e form of transport and s i m u l t aneo u sl y h elp to de­ p ri vati z e so-called c ars that hf'COIll f' Ill o re l i kt' portals. Fourth, cars more gene ral l y a rE' b ei n g de-privatized t h ro u gh e a r­ sh a ri n g , car clubs and car- h i rf' schE'nlf's. S i x h u nd red plus ci ties across Europe have developed ca r-sh a r i ng schemE'S involving 50,000 people ( Cervero, 200 1 ) . Protot y p e E' xa m p l e s are fou n d such as Lisel E'c i n La Rochelle, and in northern C a l i fo rn i a , B e rl i n and Japan ( Motavall i , 2000: 2:i3). Tn Deptford there is an on-si tE' e a r pooling service o rgan i z e d by Avis a Lt a l " h e d to a new hou si ng d e v e l o p nlf' l lt . w h i l E' i n J e r s e y e l ec t r i c h i rE' cars have been introduced by To y ota . 011 oc c a s io n s t h i s de-privatization will i nv o lv e smart-card tech n o l o g y to b o ok and pay and also to pay fares on b u ,;es, t ra in s or more d ema n d - re s p o nsi v e collect i ve buse,; or mini-van,; ( a s w i t h t h e Newcastle N e x us) . A fu rther p rototype of t h i s i s the E-Ta x i system i ll D u b l i n . T hese d e vE' l o pm E' n t s rE' H ect the g e n e ra l shift in contemporary economies from ownership to access, as sho\\n more ge n e ra l ly b y many ,;en' ices on the I nternet ( see R i fk i n . 2000). So we could h y po th E' s i z e the in('l'easing payment for 'access' to tra v e l / mob i l i t y services rather than the o wn i n g of vehicles o u t r i g h t. One i m p o rt a n t ('ollseqUE'nce is t ha t if car users w e re not to own cars t h e n car m a n u fa c t u rE'rs would be respo n s i b l e for short­ te rm c a r pa rk in g and for l o n g- t e rm disposal of 'dead' vehicles ( see H a w k e n et a I . , 1 999, on how t hi s c o u l d rad i c a l l y i mpro v e rf' c y cl in g ra t e s ) . F i ft h , transport policy i s s h i ft i n g away from predict-and-providE' models based on seei ng i nerE' as E'ci m o b il i t y as a desi rable good and i n wh ic h

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'System' of Automohi l i ty

35

predictions of fut u re car use were p lanned [or through new road scl l t'mE's devE'loped by enginE'ers. These schemes prov ided what had beE'n prE'dictpd in thE' model ( Vigar, 2002; Whitelegg, 1 997). Increasingly, 'IWW rea l ist' policies see the expansion of the road network as not neutral but as increas­ ing car-based travel. The focus of pol icy moves to changi ng drivpr behav­ iour through demand-reduction strategies, al though this is difhcult without heavy coercion or marketizE'd inducements (Kaufmann, 2000). TIlt' IIt'W re a l ism involves many organizations developing alternative mobi l ities through computer-mediatE'd intermodal ity, integrated public transport, better fac i l it i es for cycl ists and pedest rians, advanced trafhc management, better use of l and-use planning, real -time information systems and a wider analysis of how t ransport impaC'l s U POll the environment (Vigar, 2002). Finall y, co m m unications and the Internet galaxy are increasingl y intercon npcted with t ransportation (see Caste l l s, 200 1 ) . There i s t il t' emlwd­ d i n g of information and communication technologies ( lCT) i nto moving objec ts: mob i l e phones, palmheld computers, cars, buses, trains, ai rcraft and so on. A s information is digi tized and released from loc a t i o n , so c ar s , roads and buildings are re-wired to send and receive digital informat ion (as with 'Intelligent Transport Systems'). Thus enlt'rging technol ogies a re grafting together existing machi nes to create new hybrid mobi l i t iE's. A t t he sallie time face-to-face connections may be increasingly simulatE'd, at l E'ast with broadband connec t i vity, and hence may rE'duce t ilt' need for t rave l . ComputE'r-nwdiated communications at home o r in thE' office, o r pspp("ia l l y o n tilt' llIove, llIay reducE' t l w frequency of travE'll i ng. B u t furtlwr, tIlt' vpry dist inction bE'lwE'en on- l inE' and off-l ine may dissolve as conllt'l"lion,,; IwtIYE'ell people bE'come compiE'x combinations of face-to-facp co-pres(·' nt encounters, unschE'du l ed get-togethers, dyadic telephone calls, emaiL.; tn o n E' persoll or severa l , and online di scussions among tho,,;e Il ith shared i n t e r­ esh ( Be(" k m a n n , 2004; Lau ri er, 2004; U rry, 2002 ; Wel l ma n , 200 ] ) . So tllt're art' six sets of changes that T h a v e b r ie f l y o u tl i n e d . N one o f t helll i s s urfi c i e n t i n t lwmsE' lve,.; to t i p tIlE' c a r systc>1ll i nt o I W II c h a n ne l :.; . B u t m y p ropo,;al i s t h a t t l w i r interd e p e n d e n (" i es occurri ng i l l an o p t i ma l order m i gh t t h u s p ro v o kE' the enlE'rgen c e of a post-car S l'stPIl l . A s e ri e ,; of ,.; m a l l c h a nge,; n o w m i gh t prod u ct' a ,.;ensp of c on ta gi o n as man\' c h a n ges ,;weep t h rough the syst e m . Th i ,.; sy::itE' 1l1

of t h e 'pos t -c a r',

("olll l1H> n c i n g i n s o m e ,;oc i e t i ('s i n t h e ri("h

recentTv an nounced itsel f a" t ill' f i rst h y d rogl'n e(·onom y) \Vou l ei con" i,,;t of Ill ulti pI t', den,;e fo rms of n lO v e m e n t inc ·l uding s m a l L l i g h t , ,.;marL p ro b a b l y h y d roge n-ba,;ed, d e - p r i v a ti zed ve hic l e,; e> l e c t ron i c al l y a n d p h y ,,; i c - a l l y i ntegrated ( ,; ea m l e,; ,; " ' ) Il i t h 1lI(l 1 l l o t l w r forms of m o h i l i t y. I n t h i ,; po,;t - c a r s y ,; t E' m t h e re> I I i l l l IP a m i wd (lOll of s l oll -mov i n g ,.:;('m i - p u b l i c m i c ro-cars, b i k E''', ma n \' h y h ri d It, h i l · l e,;, pede,;­ t ri a n ,.; and m a,;s t ra n sport i n te g r a ted into a mohi l i l l of p h y s i ( · a l ([ 1Ir! v i rt u a l 'lI T C S " . E l e c t ron i c t o l l s w i l l regu late a(Tt'SS, p ri c e and s peecL N e i gh ho u r­ hood,., w i l l fos t e r ·CIlTe"s hy prox i m i t � ' t h rough denser l ili ng p a t t e rn s a n d i n tegra t e d J a n d U S t ' . Sy s t e ms w i l l promote e l ec t ron i c coord i n at i on hetween 'nort h ' ( Ic e l a n d p e rh a ps, Il h i( " h h a "

'

'

36

Theory; CuLture & Society 2 1 (4/5)

motorized and non-motorized transport, and between those 'on the move' i n many different ways (Hawken e t a l . , 1 999: 4 7 ; Sheller and U rry, 2000). The cool way of travell i ng will not be to own but to access small, l ight mobile pods when required. Conclusion

Complexity is thus the starting point for examining how this global system that seems so unchangeable, may through small changes, if they occur in a certain order, tip it into a post-car mobility system. Complex ity approaches emphasize three points about such a shift away from the current car system. First, the pattern of 1 9th-century 'publ ic mobility', of the dominance of buses, trains, coaches and ships, will not be re-established. That has been irreversibly lost because of the self-expanding character of the car system that has produced and necessitated individual ized mobil ity based upon instantaneous time, fragmentation and coerced flexibility. Any post­ car-system will substantially involve the i ndividualized movement that auto­ mobility presupposes and has simultaneously brought into being as an irreversible consequence of the century of the car. Second, the days of steel and petroleum automobil i ty are numbered. By 2 10 0 it is inconceivable that individualized mobility will be based upon the 1 9th-century technologies of steel-bodied cars and petroleum engines. A tipping or turning point w i l l occur during the 2 1 st century, when the steel and petroleum car system will finally be seen as a dinosaur (a bit l ike the Soviet empire, early freestanding PCs or immobile phones). When it is so seen then it will be d ispatched for good and no onf' will comprehend how such a l arge, wasteful and planet-destroying creature could have ruled the earth. Suddenly, the system of automobil ity will d isappear and become l ike a dinosaur, housed in museums, and we w i ll wonder what all the fuss was about. Th ird, this tipping point is unprf'd ictabl e. It cannot be read off from li near changes in existing firms, i ndustries, practices and economies. Just as the Internet and the mobik phone came from 'nowhere', so the tipping point towards the 'post-car' will emerge unpredictably. It will probably arrive from a set of technologies or firms or governments that are currently not a centre of the car industry and culture, as with the Finnish toilet paper maker N ok i a and the unexpf'df'd origins of the now ubiquitous mobile phonf'.7 And this will have happellf'd by the f'nd of th is century. Pred icting whf'11 f'xactly this will happen is i mpossi blf', although this articl e has argued that the categories of complf'xity arf' thf' lVay to examine how such possi­ b i l i ties may develop and interseL"l, and how a system that sef'ms utterly intractable now may one day j u st turn OVf'r and d if' . Noles 1 . For more detail on t h i s mode of anah s i s w i t h i n t h e social scie nce;.;. see U rry

(20m). A l so see Capra (20tH ) .

2. For more detail on t h e fo l l o w i ng sec t i on. s e e Shel ler a n d U rry (2000).

Uny

-

The 'Svstem' of A utomobilitv

:37

:3. Baudrillard particularly captures some of the charactE'ristic::; of driv i ng i n H E' describes t he em p ty landscapes of the de"E'rt t ha t arE' E'xperi­ encE'd t hrough driving huge distances across them: t ravel im'oh es a 'l i ne of Hight'. OE'serts constitute a metaphor of endless futurity, a pri m i t i lE' sociE'ty of tilE' fut urE', combined w i t h t hE' obliteration of t he past and tilE' triumph of t i me as i nstantanE'OUS rathE'r than t i me as dE'pth ( 1988: 6). Driving across t he dE'selt invoh E's leaving one's past behind, d riving on and on, seeing t hE' eVE'r-disappearing empt i ness framed t h rough t he wi ndscreen.

Am erica ( 1 988).

II·. I t should of course be noted that women appE'ar to i n habit cars somewhat distinc tly. The a utomob i l izat ion of family life not only brought t hE' llE'lI est and most expE'nsivE' car models first to malE' 'hE'ads of fam ilies', I\ hile lI omen had to settle for sE'cond-hand models or smallE'r cars, but also led to t hE' unE'ven gE'ndering of t i me-space. While working men bE'came E'nmesllE'd in the st ressE'S of dailY commuter t raffic into and out of urban CE'ntres, suburban 'housel\ivE's' had to j uggle family t ime around m u l ti ple, often conflicti ng, schedules of mobi l i t y epitomized by 'the school run'. Once family l i fe is centred wi thin t hE' moyi n g car. social responsi­ hilities tE'nd to push womE'n, who nOlI' drive i n wry significant n umbE'rs, tOll artls desiring 'safer' cars and 'family' models, while men often i nd ulge in individuali,,­ t ic fan t asies of thE' fas t sporls car, the 4W O or t he i mpract ical 'classic car'. Cars Il ere originallv designed to s u i t tilE' average male body and have only rE'cently beE'n designed to be adj us table to drivers of various llE'ights and readlE's. The dist ributioll of companv cars has abo benefitE'd men more than women, due to continuing hori­ zontal and vertical segregation in the job market. I,'hich keeps mo"t II OJ11E'n out of private sector posi tions w i t h access to such 'perks'. HO\I'ever. actuarial ::;tatistic� sho\r t hat male drivers are morE' l ikE'ly to E'xternalize risk;; onto others through a much greater tendency to speeding, and hence to maim i ng and killing other;; (seE' M eadows and Stradling, 2000). Won1E'n drivers are stat isticalh not bad driver,.;. 5.

The various papers in this TCS collection bring out manl' of thesE' social. historical and cult ural variations.

o. A l t hough other commentator;; might well poi n t to t he counter-tendE'l1cy of the recent except ional growth of S U V".

7. Hence my only �lightly tongue-i n-cheek comment about I celand, which i� currently seeking to run all of i t s bu,.;es on hnlrogen fuel celk References

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Brott man, M . (ed.) (200 1 ) Car Crash Culture. New York: Palgrave. Capra. F.

( 1996) The Web of Life. London: HarperCollins.

Capra, F. (200 1 ) The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living. London: HarperCollins. Castells, M. (2001 ) The Internet Galrn). Oxford : Oxford U niversity Press. Cervero, R. (200 1 ) 'Meeting Mobility Changes in an Increasingly Mobile World: A n American Perspective', Paris: Urban Mobilities Seminar, l'lns t i t u t pour l a ville e n mouvement, J une. Eyerman, R . and O . LMgren ( 1 995 ) 'Romanc ing the Road: Road Movies and Images

& Society 1 2 ( 1 ) : 53-79. 1 . ( 1988) The Automobile Age. Cambridge, M A :

of Mobil i ty', Theory; Culture Flink,

Freund, P.

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Culture. London: Sagt'o

Giddens, A . ( 1 99 1 ) Modernity and Self�identit). Cambridge: Polity. Gladwdl, M. (2000) Tipping Points: HolV Lillle Th ings can make a Big

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Graham, S. and S. Marvin (200 1 ) Splintering Urbanism . London: Routledgt'. Graves-Brown, P. ( 1 99 7 ) 'From H ighway to Su pt'rhighway: The Sustainabi l i ty, Symbolism and Situated Pract ices of Car Cuhurt" . Social Analysis

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Hawkt'n, P, A. Lovins and L. H . Lovins ( 1 999 ) Natural Capitalism. London: Earth­ scan. H a w k i ns ,

R. ( 1 986) 'A Road Not Tak t'n: Soc i ology and t ilt' Negl ect of t Ilt' Auto­ 6 1-79.

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lhde, D. ( 1 974) 'The Experience of Technologv: H u man-Machine Relations',

Cultuml Hermeneutics 2: 267-79. Kaufmann.

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'Modal Practices: From the Ra t i onal e s behind Car and Public

Transport U s e to C o h e rent Transport Pol i c i es'. World Trllnsport Polic) and Practice

6: 8- 1 7 . Klinstler, 1 . ( 1 994) The Geogntph \ oj" !Vo/l·herr: The Rise and Decline of A.merica :, Mlln-made Landscape. N ew Yo rk : TOllc h , tone Booh. Laurier. E. ( 2 004 ) ' Doing Ofhce\l ork on the M o t or\I a\ · . Theon� CII /ture & 2 1 (4/5): 261-77.

SoC iel \

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S ta nford . C\ : Stanford L n ivers i t y Prf'��.

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(///(l Orr/ili o n Aclioll . Camlmdge: Cam hridge

h l i ve rs i t v P r(' ss.

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Mahoney, J. (2000)

29:

'Path Derw ndel\("t' in H i s t o rical Soc i ology ' . Thl'On

::' 07-'18.

([1Ir/ S()cii'l \

Marsh. 1'. and P. Co ll e t t ( 1 986 ) Dririn{Z Pussiol / . London: Jo n a t h all Ca p e .

M eadows, M . and

S. Strad l i n g (2000 ) ' ,-\re \\ o l l l e n Better Dri vers t han M e n ? Tool s

for M(>asuring Driver Belw\' i o ur· . in

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H a r t l e l and A . B ran!lmuite (eds ) Thl' A/J/J/ier/

Ps\ch% gist. M i l to n Ke\llf's: Upf'll L ' lli I t'r..; i t \ Pres:'.

M e rriman. P. (2004) ' Dri ving P l aces: Marl" .-\ ugt'. '\I on - P l ace,; and the G eogra ph i (' s o f E ngland\ M 1 Motof\, ay · . Th('()n� Cultwp &. Soci el \ 2 1 (4/S ): 1-IS-6"7.

Urry

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The 'System' of Automobility

39

Michael, M. (1998) 'Co(a)gency and the Car: Attributing Agency i n the Case of "Road Rage" ' , in B. Brenna, 1. Law and 1 . Moser (eds) Machines, Agency and Desire. Oslo: TMV Skriftserie. M iller, D. (ed.) (2001) Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg. M ingers, 1. (1995) Self-producing Systems. New York: Plenum. Morris, M. (1988) 'At Henry Parkes Motel', Cultural Studies 2: 1-47. Morse, M. (1998) Virtualities: Television, Media Art and Cyberculture. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Motavalli, 1. (2000) Forward Drive. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club. N icolis, G. (1995) Introduction to Non-linear Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. North, D. (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pinkney, T. (1991) Raymond Williams. Bridgend: Seren Books. Prigogine, 1. ( 1997) The End of Certainty. New York: The Free Press. Rifkin, 1. (2000) The Age of Access . London: Penguin. SceneSusTech (1 998) Car-systems in the City: Report 1. Dublin: Dept of Sociology, Trinity College. Scharff, V. ( 1991) Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age. New York: Free Press. Sennett, R. (1977) The Fall of Public Man. London and Boston, MA: Faber and Faber. Sheller, M . and 1. Urry (2000) 'The City and the Car', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24: 737-57. Slater, D. (2001) 'Markets, Materiality and the "New Economy" " paper given to 'Geographies of New Economies' Seminar, Birmingham, UK, October. Stradling, S. (2002) 'Behavioural Research in Road Safety: Tenth Seminar', available on DTLR/DfT website: http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dfC rdsafety/documents/page/dft_rdsafety_504575-02 .hcsp#TopOfPage (accessed 29 May 2004). Thrift, N. (1996) Spatial Formations. London: Sage. Urry, 1. (2000) Sociology Beyond Societies. London: Routledge. Urry, 1. (2002) 'Mobility and Proximity', Sociology 36: 255-74. Uuy, 1. (2003) Global Complexity. Cambridge: Polity. US Department of Transportation (1999) Effective Global Transportation in the Twenty-first Century: A Vision Document. Washington, DC: US Department of Trans­ portation: 'One Dot' Working Group on Enabling Research. Vigar, G. (2002) The Politics of Mobility. London: Spon. Wellman, B. (200 1) 'Physical Place and Cyber Place: The Rise of Networked Indi­ vidualism', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25: 227-52. Whitelegg, J. (1997) Critical Mass. London: Pluto.

John Urry is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. He is the author of Sociology Beyond Societies (Routledge, 2000), The Tourist Gaze (2nd edn, Sage, 2002) and Global Complexity (Polity, 2003).

N EW FROM SAGE PUBLI CATIONS

The Body in Cu ltu re, Tech nology & Society Chris Shilling

Portsmouth

University of I he B()dy in Culture, 'Iechnology & Society

'This is an impressive book by one of the lead i n g social theorists working i n the field of body stu d ies.

It provides a critical sum mation

of theoretical and su bstantive work in the field to date, wh ile also presenting a powerfu l argu ment for a corporeal rea l ism in which the body is both generative of the emergent properties of social structure and a location of the i r effects.

Its scope and original ity make it a key

point of reference for students and academics i n body stud ies and i n

Ian Burkitt, Reader in Social Science, University of Bradford

the social a n d cu ltural sciences more generally'

-

Th i s is a m i lestone i n the sociology of the body. The book offers the most comprehensive overview of the field to date and an i n n ovative fra mework for the analysis of embod i ment. It is fou nded on a revised view of th� relation of classical works to the body. It a rgues that the body Sh0Uld be read as a m u lti -di mensional med i u m for the constitution of society. U po n this fou ndation, the author constructs a series of a na lyses of the body and the economy, c u lture, social ity, work, sport, music, food and techno logy. The book acts as a focal point for researchers, pull ing together existing perspectives o n the body and advancing a d isti nctive and compel ling critical perspective based on what S h i l l i ng terms corporeal rea l ism . It also serves as a clear and well -structu red i ntrod uction for students. Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society

September 2004 • 256 pages Cloth (0-7619-7123-8) Paper (0-7619-7124-6)

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Driving in the City

Nigel Thrift

P

ERHAPS THE

most famous and most reproduced piece of writ ing from M ichel de Certeau's many works - anthologized or extracted almost to distraction - is the seventh chapter from The Practice of Everyday Life called 'Walking in the City'. In thi s article, I lVant to use that chapter as a jumping-off point, as a means of indexing and interrogating tIl(:' nature of some (and only some) of the practices of the modern city. In particular, I want to lay the practice of walking that de Certeau uses as a sign of the human alongside the practice of driving. I want to argue that a hundred years or so after the birth of automobility, the experience of driving is sinking in to our 'technological unconscious' and producing a phenom­ enology that we i ncreasingly take for granted but which in fact is histori­ call y novel. This new and very public sense of possession (de Certeau, 2000) which is also a possession of sense, constitutes a radically different set of spatial practisings of the city which do not easily conform to de Certeau's strictures on space and place and should at least give us pause. The art icle is therefore in three main parts. In the first part, I will do no more than outline some of de Certeau's thoughts on spatial practices i n the c ity. In the second part, I will then argue that d e Certeau's work on everyday life needs to be reworked to take into account the rise of automo­ bility and the consequent changes in how space is ordered, changes that cannot easily be subsumed into his account of the city. The third part of the articll' will argue that these changes have bel'n l'vl'n morl' far-reaching than might at first be i maginl'd, as developments like software and ergonomics rework how automobility is practised, and that these devl'lopments presage an important change in the nature of this particular form of habitability. The article then concl udes by returning to de Certeau's vision of everyday life i n the city in ordl'r to lake up again some of the challenges he bequeathed to us.

•

7111'or); CII/Illre &- Sociel r 2004 ( S :\GE. London. Thollsand O a k s a n d [\ ,_.\\ [),-, I h i ). Vol. 2 1 (4/5 ) : 4 1 -50

D O L : l O. 1 l 77/026:12 7640404()(J60

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Theor}; Culture & Societr 21 (4/5)

Walking in the City

As Ian Buchanan (2000) has rightly indicated, de Certeau's project in The Practice of Everyday Life was a tentative and searching one which cannot and should not be read as a set of fixed theoretical conclusions about the nature of the world but rather should be seen as a means whereby it becomes possible to open up more spaces within which the operational logic of c ulture can be addressed. And we can see the ways in which this project both foreshadowed and produced a set of distinctively modern concerns with practices rather than subjects or discourses, with moving beyond a model of culture based purely on reading, with creativity as well as disci­ pline, with new ways of articulating otherness, with the presence of capa­ bility on the margins as well as subservience (Terdi man, 2001), and so on. These concerns are now so well established, not least in large parts of cultural studies, that they are becoming a taken-for-granted background: not so much common endpoints as common starting points. 'Walking in the City' l starts atop of one of the towers of the World Trade Center, which for de Certeau constituted 'the tallest letters in the world' (2000: 1 01 ), a gigantic set of capital letters, a kind of sky writing if you l i ke. For de Certeau, to be lifted to the summit of one of the towers and to look out was to feel a violent delight. Distanced from the roar of the 'frantic New York trafflc' (2000: 101-2) and the location of the body in a criss-cross of streets, it is possible to think of the city as one vast and static panoramic text, able to be read because it is 'removed [rom the obscure interlacings of everyday behaviour' (2000: 1 02). But down below, millions of walk ing bodies are engaged in a different kind of activity. Here I make no apology [or quoting de Certeau at length, for the following passages [rom early on in the chapter seem to me to get to the nub o[ what he has to say: . . . it is below - 'down' - on the threshold w here v isibility ends that the c ity's common pract i t ioners d well. The raw material of this experiment are the walkers, Wandersmiinner. whose bodies follow the cursives and strokes of an urban 'text' they write w i t hout reading. These prac t i t i oners employ spaces that are not self-aware: their knowledge of them is as blind as t hat of one body for another. beloved, body. The paths that i nterconnect i n this network, strange poems of which each body is an element down by and among many others, elude be ing read. Everything happens as though some blindness were t he hallmark of the processes bv which the inhabited city is organized. The networks of these forward-moving, intercrossed writings form a multiple h istory, are without ereator or spectator. made up of fragments of trajectories and a l teration of spaces: with regard to representations. it remains daily. indefinitely, :;omething other. Eliding the imaginary totalization:; of the eye, there is a strangeness in the commonplace t hat creates no surface. or whose surface is only an advanced limit, an edge cut out of the v isible. In this totality, I shoulLi like to indicate t he processes that are foreign to tilt' 'geometric' o r "geographic: space of

Thrift - Driling in the C i t y

43

visuaL panoptic or theoretical construc,tions, Such spatial pract ices refer to a specific form of operations (ways of doing); they reHect 'another spatial i t y" (an anthropological. poielik and mystical spatial experiment): they send us to an opaque. blind domain of the i n habited c i t y. or to a trallS/IlUHall rity. one t hat i ns inuates i tself i nto the clear text of t he planned. readable c'ity. (2000:

1 02-:3

In such passages, de Certeau shows some quite remarkable powers of theoretical foresight as he works towards other forms of habitability. I n particular, h e foreshadows the current strong t u rn t o so-called 'non­ representational' aspects of the city (e.g. Amin and Thrift, 2002) in his emphasi s on the diachronic succession of now-moments of practice which emphasize perambulatory qualities such as 'tactile apprehension and kinesic appropriation' (de Certeau, 1 984: 1 05), moments which are to some extent their own affirmation since they are an 'innumerable collection of s ingularities' (de Certeau, 1 987: 97). He values a sense of i nvention:2 as a means of opening out sites to other agendas, so producing some degree of free play i n apparently rigid social systems, and thereby foreshadowing the current demonstrative emphasi s on peIformance. He also begins to think through the quite different spatial dynamics that such a theoretical-practical stance entails, a stance in which other kinds of spatial knowings arE' possible. But, at the same time, I think we also have to see that dE' CE'rtE'au cleaves to some old themes, all based on the fami liar model of (and desiw for) what Meaghan Morris ( 1998) nicely calls 'evasive E'verdayness', and I want to concentrate on three of these. One such theme, highlightE'd by numerous commentators, is that he never really leaves behind the opE'ra­ tions of reading and speech and the sometimes explicit, sometimE's implicit claim that these operations can be extended to other pract ices. In turn, thi,.; claim that 'there is a correspondence or homology between certain enun­ ciative procedures that regulate action in both the field of language and thE' wider network of social pract ices' (Gardiner, 2000: 1 76) sets up another obvious tension, between a practice-based model of often illicit 'behaviour' founded on enunciative speech-acts and a text-based model of 'represE'n­ tation' which fuels functional social systE'ms. I am uneasy with this dE'pic­ tion bE'cause of its tendency to assume that language is the main resource of soc ial life (cf. Thrift, 1996, 2000, 2003) and the obvious conSE'quencE'; close readings can quite easily become closed readi ngs. Another is that de Certeau i nsists that much of the practice of everyday life i s i n some sense 'hidden' away, obscured, silenced and able to be recovered only by tapping the narrative harmonics of part icular sites which 'are fragmentary and convoluted histories, pasts stolen by others from readability, folded up ages that can be unfolded but are there more as narratives i n suspense ( 1984: l lS). Each s ilt' has a kind of unconscious, then, an 'infancy' which is bound up with the movements of its i nhabi tants and which can be pulled back into memory - but only partially. I am similarly uneasy wi th this kind .

.

.­

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of depiction precisely because of its psychoanalytic echoes, for they seem to me to rely on a familiar representational metaphysics of presence and absence of the kind extensively cri t icized by Michel Henry (1993) and others in relation to certain kinds of Freudianism. A final questionable theme is de Certeau's implicit romanticism, which comes, I think, from a residual humanism. 3 Now I should say straight away that I am not convinced that a residual humanism is necessarily a bad thing (cf. Thrift, 2000) but in this case it leads de Certeau in the direction of a subterranean world of evasive urban tactics produced by the weak as typified by practices like walking 'as a model of popular practice - and critical process' (Morris, 1998: 1 10) which I believe to be profoundly misleading for several reasons. For one, as Meaghan Morris (1998) has so persuasively argued, de Certeau's pursuit of the apotheosis of the ordinary in the ordinary arising from his equation of enunciation with evasion, creates all manner of problems. Not only does i t produce a sense of a beleaguered, localized (though not necess­ arily local) 'anthropological' everyday of poetry, legend and memory4 being squeezed by larger forces, thus embedding a disti nction between small and large, practice and system, and mobility and grid which is surely suspect (Latour, 2002), but it also chooses an activity as an archetype of the everyday which is far more ambiguous than it is often made out to be: for example, i t is possible to argue not only that much walking, both histori­ cally and contemporarily, is derived from car travel (and is not therefore a separate and, by i mplication, more authentic sphere)5 but also that the very notion of walking as a deliberately selected mode of travel and its accompanying peripatetic aesthetic of being somehow closer to nature - or the city - has itself been carefully culturally constructed in representation itself in concert with the evolution of automobility (Solnit, 2000; Wallace, 1993). 6 Thus, when Solnit (2000: 2 13) declares that de Certeau 'suggests a frightening possibility: that if the city is a language spoken by walkers, then a postpedestrian city not only has fallen silent but risks becoming a dead language, one whose colloquial phrases, jokes, and curses will vanish, even if its formal grammar surv ives', she may be missing other languages which also have something to say. In the next section, I want to argue that if these three themes were thought to contain suspect assumptions in the 1970s then they are now even more problematic. I want to illustrate these contentions via a consideration of contemporary automobility7 because I believe that the knot of practices that constitute that automobility provide a real challenge to elements of de Certeau's thought, especially as these practices are now evolving. Neither in The Practice of Everyday Life nor elsewhere in de Certeau's writings on the city have I been able to find any sustained discussion of the millions of automobile 'bodies' that clog up the roads: 8 de Certeau's cities echo with the roar of traffic but this is the noise of an alien invader. 9 However, in the short i nterlude following 'Walk ing in the City' - Chapter 8, 'Railway Navi­ gation and Incarceration' - there are some clues to this absence, at least. For de Certeau, the train (and the bus), it turns out, is a 'travelling

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incarceration' in wh ich human bodies are able to be ordered because, although the carriage is mobile, the passengers are immobile. Only a rat ionalized c!" 1 1 trav!"ls. A bubbl!" of panoptic and da�s i h ing powt'r. a modulI" of imprisonm!"nt that mak!"s possiblt' th!" product i on of an ord!"r. a c l os!"d and autonomous i nsularity - that is what can t rayerse space and make ihelf independent of local root s . ( 1 987: l l I )

Continuing in this Foucaldian vein, de Certeau t e l l s us that inside the carnage: Ther!" i s the i mmobility of an order. Here rest and drt'ams reign su prellle. There is nothing t o do. one is in the state of reason. Everyth i ng is in its p lace. as in Hege l 's Philosophy 0./ Righ i . Every being is placed there l i ke a piece of printer's t y pe on a page arranged i n m i l itary order. This order. an organ iz­ a tional system, the q u ietude of a certain reason. i s the cond i t ion of both a rai l way car's and a text's movement from one place to anotht'r. ( 1 987: 1 1 1 )

De Certeau then switches from a panoptic to a panoramic (Schivelsbuch, 1 986) mode: O utside. t here i s another immobi l ity. t ha t of t h ings. towering mountains. stretches of green field and forest. arrested v i l lages. colonnades of b u i l d i ngs. black urban silhouettes against the pink evening sky. t he t w i n k l i ng of noctur­ nal l i ghts on a sea that precedes or s ucceeds our histories. The t rain gener­ alizes DUrer's Melancholia. a speculative experience of the world: being outside of t hese thi ngs that stay there, detached and absolute. that leaves us wi thout having any t h ing to do with this departure themsel ves: being deprived of them, surprised by their ephemeral and quiet strangeness . . . . H owever. these t h i ngs do not move. They have only the movement t hat i s brought ahou t from moment to moment by changes i n perspect i ve among their bulky figures. They have on l y lrompe-l'oeil movements. They do not change their place any more than I do: v ision alone con t i nually undoes and remakes t hese relation­ shi ps. ( 1987: 1 1 1 - 1 2)

Leaving aside the evidence that de Certeau had clearly never travel led on the Dickensian Bri tish rail system, what we see h ere is the classic account of machine travel as distantiated and, well , machine-like. We can assume that de Certeau might have t hought of cars, though of a less spectatorial nature (at l east for their drivers), as hav ing some of the same abstracted characteristics. But, if that is the case, it would be a signal error. For research on automobil i ty shows the world of driving to be as rich and convo­ l uted as that of walking. It is to tell ing t h i s world that I now turn. Drivillg in the City

The automobile has been with Euro-American socIetIes for well over a century and since about the 1 960s (not coincidentally, the time of de Certeau's observations on the city) the car has become a common feature of

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everyday life i tself (Brandon, 2002; Thrift, 1 990), almost a background to the background. Take as an example only the utter familiarity of automobile­ related urban l ight i ng from the orange glow of streetli ghts and their counter­ poin t of gaudy l i t signs through the constant flash of car headlights to the intermittent fl icker of the i ndicator. As JakIe (200 1 : 255) observes 'by 1 970, the influence of the automobile on night-time ligh t i ng was felt in its enti rety. . . . Cities were lit primarily to facilitate the movement of motor veh icles.' Around a relatively simple mechanical pntity, then, a whole new c ivil ization has been built; for example, the layout of the largest part of the Euro-A merican city space assumes the presence of the complicated logistics of the car, the van and the truck (Beckmann, 2001 ; Sheller and U rry, 2000; U rry, 2004). We can go farther than this; whole pmts of the built environment are now a mute but still eloquent testimony to automobility. As U ny (2000: 59) puts it, 'the car's significance is that i t reconflgures civil society i nvol v­ ing distinct ways of dwelling, t ravelling and social ising in and through an automobilised time-space'. For example, most recently, l arge parts of the landscape near roads are being actively moulded by formal techniques l ike viewshed analysi s so that they make visual sense to the occupants of cars as they speed by 10 or by more generalized developments like so-called t i me­ space geodemographics which conceptual ize the commuting system as a whole and are uyi ng to produce continuously changing advertising on the multitude of signs scattered along the sides of roads, signs which will adj ust their content and/or message to appeal to the relevant consumer populations that inhabit the highways at each time of day. I I A nd then there is a whole infrastructure of special ized buildings that service cars and car passengers, from the grandest service stations to the humblest of garages (e.g. JakIe and Sculle, 2002). We can go farther again. Automobiles have themselves trans­ muted i n to homes: for example, by one reckoning 1 in 14 US Americans now l ive in 'mobile homes' of one form or another ( H art et aI., 2002). 1 2 Until recently, however, t h i s remarkable complex has been largely anal ysed i n purely representational terms by cul tural commentators as, for example, the symbolic mani festation of various desi res (see, for example, most recently, Sachs, 2002). But, as de Certeau would have surely under­ l ined, this system of automobility has also produced its own embodied prac­ tices of dri v i ng and 'passengering', each with their own distinctive h istories often still waiting to be written. Though we should not of course forget t hat how the car is put together, how it works and how and where it can travel are outwith the control of the driver, yet it is still possible to write of a rich phenomenology of automobility, one often filled to bursti ng wi th embodied cues and gestures which work over many communicative registers and which cannot be reduced simply to cultural codes. B That is particularly the case if we are willing to travel off the path of language as the only form of communication (or at least models of language as the only means of frami ng that communication) and unders tand driving (and passengering) as both profoundly embodied and sensuous experiences, though of a particular kind, which 'requires and occasions a metaphysical merger, an i n tertwining of the

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identities of the driver and car that generates a distinct i ve ontology in the form of a person-thing, a h umanized car or, alternatively. an automobil ized person' (Katz, 2000: 33) in which the identity of person and car k i naes­ theticall y i ntertwi ne. J -l Thus drivi ng, for example, i nvoh'es the capacity to: . . . embody and be embodied by the car. The sensual ,ehide of the driver's action is fundamental l y different from that of the passenger·s. because t he driver. as part of the prax is of driving, dwel ls in the car. fee l i ng the bumps on t he road as contact>; w i t h his or her body not as assaults on the t i res. sway i ng around c u rves as if the sh ifting of his or her ,,-eight \\-i l l illake a d i ffer­ ence in t he car's trajectory, loosening and t i gh tening the grip on t he steering wheel as a way of interacting \I ith other cars. ( Katz. 2000: 32)

Perhaps the best way to show this sensuality is through the work of Jack Katz (2000) and his students. Through detailed study of driving behav­ iour in Los Angeles, Katz shows that dri vi ng is a rich, indeed driven, stew of emotions which is constantly on the boi l , even though cars prevent many routine forms of i n tersubjective expression from tak i ng shape - i ndef'd the rel ative dumbness of dri ving and especiall y its lack of opportunity for symmetrical interaction may be the key aggravating factor. Katz i s able to demonstrate four main findings. First, that dri vers experience cars as exten­ sions of their bodies. Hence thf'ir outrage on becom ing the subject of adverse driving manoeuvres by other dri vers: their tacit automobil ized embod iment is cut away from them and they are left '1, i thout any persona with wh ich one can relate respectably to others' ( Katz, 2000: 46). Second, that, as a result of this and the fact that drivers allach all manner of meanings to their manoeuvres that other drivers cannot access ( what Katz cal l s 'life metaphors'), driving can often be a high l y emotional experience in wh ich the petty rea l i t i es of e v e ry d a y situal ioll'; are i lll l_nes,;ed 011 all unw i l l i ng recipient causing anger and distress precisely because they are so pelly, or in which a carefu l l y n urtured identity is forcefu l l y undermi ned causing real fury. Third, that the repertoire of reciprocal commu nication that a car allows is highly attenuated - the sounding of horns, the flashi ng of headlights, the aggressive use of brake l i ghts and hand gestures - within a situation that is already one in which there are l imited cues avai lable. occasioned by the l argel y tail-to-tail nature of i nteraction. Drivers cannot therefore commun icate their concerns as ful l y as they \\"Ould want and there is therefore a consistently h igh level of ambiguity i n driver-to-driver inter­ action. As a result, a considerable level of frustration and anger (and frus­ tration and anger about being frustrated and angered) can be generated. I. ) But, at the same time, driving, and this i s the fourth nndi ng, is: . . . a prime field for the sludy of " hal M ichel de Cerleau called the 'lacl ic< of contemporary everyday l ife. Many people develop \d1al t hey regard as part icul arl y shrewd ways of mo\'ing around society_ These i nc lude carefu l l\' choosing s l reets that one kno"-,, carr) l i t t l e tranic. �nea k i h- c u t t i ng across corner gas stations to beal l raffic l ighh. di screeth using another car as a

48

Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5) 'screen' i n order to merge onto a highway, passing through an intersection, and brazenly doubling back to avoid the queue in a left-turn lane, and such triumphs of motoring chutzpah as following in the smooth-flowing wake of an ambulance as it cuts through bottled traffic. (Katz, 2000: 36)

At the same time, such tactics are very often read as violations of moral codes by other drivers, leading to all manner of sensual/driving expressions which are attempts to take the moral high ground and so bring to an end episodes of anger and frustration. What Katz's work reveals, then, is an extraordinarily complex everyday ecology of driving. It makes very little sense to think of such express moments of automobility as just cogs in a vaulting mechanical system (though I am certainly not arguing that they are not that too), or simply an assertion of driver independence. Rather, they are a complex of complex re­ attributions which very often consist of i nteresting denials of precisely the interconnections that they are intent on pursuing (Dant and Martin, 2001). But, there is one more point to make, and that is that the nature of automobility is itself changing. The car cum driving of the 2 1st century is no longer the same knot of steely practices that it was i n the 20th. It has been joined by new and very active intermediaries and it is this change that is the subject of the next section. The Changing Nature of Driving

Katz (2000: 44) points to the way i n which cars are beginning to change and, in the process, are producing a new k ind of phenomenology when he writes that: The marketing of cars has long offered the potential of publicly displaying oneself to others in an enviable form but also the promise of a private daily metamorphosis affording hands-on, real world, sensual verification that one fits naturally into a peaceful, immortal, or transcendent form. Cars are increasingly designed in elaboration of this message. The button that will automatically lower the window happens to be just where the driver's hand naturally falls. His key is a bit different than hers, and when he begins to work it into the ignition, the driver's chair 'knows' to adjust itself to a position that is tailored to his dimensions and sense of comfort. Cars have replaced watches . . . as the microengineered personal possession that, like a minia­ ture world's fair exhibit, displays the latest technological achievements to the masses. Also, like watches, cars can be readily consulted as a reassuring touchstone for the assessment of messier segments of one's life. (Katz, 2000:

44) I want to approach the way that what was thought to be a mature tech­ nology is currently changing and transmuting into something quite different by an oblique route whose relevance will, I hope, become clear. For I want to argue that cars are one of the key moments in the re-design of modern urban environments in that they bring together a series of reflexive

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know ledges of 50 or so years vintage now, which are both technical and also - through their attention to 'human factors' - close to embodied practice and can be considered as some of the first outposts of what might be called, following the work of the late Francisco Varela and his colleagues, the 'natu­ ralization of phenomenology'. Of course, scientific knowledges have been routinely applied to the urban environment for a long time, but I believe that the sheer scale and sophistication of what is happening now amount to something quite different: a studied extension of the spatial practices of the human which consists of the production of quite new material suIiaces which are akin to life, not objects, and thereby new means of bodying forth: new forms of material intelligence producing a new, more fluid transub­ stantiation. 16 This transubstantiation is taking place in four ways. First, as Stivers ( 1999) has noted, it is foreshadowed in language itself: what were specific­ ally human qualities have been externalized onto machines so that computers, for example, now have 'memories' and 'languages' and 'intelli­ gence'. Concomitantly, human relationships have taken on machine-like qualities: we create 'networks' and 'inteIiace' with others. But it goes deeper than that. So, second, it is arising from a continuous process of critique, as know ledges about technological and human embodied practices circle around and interact with each other, producing new knowledges which are then applied and become the subject of even newer know ledges in a never­ ending reflexive loop. Then, third, as a result of the previous cumulative process of critique, automobiles become more and more like hybrid entities in which intelligence and intentionality are distributed between human and non-human in ways that are increasingly inseparable: the governance of the car is no longer in the hands of the driver but is assisted by more and more technological add-ons to the point where it becomes something akin to a Latourian delegate; 'first, it has been made by humans; second, it substi­ tutes for the actions of people and is a delegate that permanently occupies the position of a human; and, third, it shapes human action by prescribing back' (Latour, 1 992: 235). Thus, increasingly, 'cars' are not just machines whose meanings are stamped out by 'culture' (Miller, 200 1 ) but have their own qualities which i ncreasingly approximate the anthropological spaces that de Certeau is so concerned to foster and protect. And, fourth, as already foreshadowed, this transubstantiation is the result of explicitly operating on the phenomenological space of habitability that is focused on the car, consisting of both the space of the flesh and the space surrounding the body, in order to produce new bodily horizons and orientations (Changeux and R icoeur, 2002). In this transubstantiation, objects are increasingly allowed their own place in the solicitations of a meaningful world. 1 � They become parts of new kinds of authority. If we take a tour around the modern car we can see two main ways in which this extension of extension through the systematic application of knowledge about embodied human practice - and the interaction between technology and embodied human practice - is taking place. One is through

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computer software (Thrift and French, 2002). Software is a comparatively recent historical developmen t - the term itself has only existed since 1 958 - and though recognizable computer software has existed in cars since the 1 970s, i t is only i n the last 1 0 years or so that software, in its many mani­ festat ions, has become an integral element of the mechanics of cars, moving down from being in the province of luxury cars only to becoming a norm i n the mass market . Now software controls engine management, brakes, suspension, wipers and lights, c ruising and other speeds, 18 parking manoeuvres, speech recogni tion systems, I t) communication and entertain­ ment, sound systems, security, heating and cooling, i n-car navigation and, last but not l east, a l arge number of crash protection systems. Almost every element of the modern automobile is becoming either shadowed by software or software has become (or has been right from the start, as in the case of in-car navigation systems) the pivotal component. The situation is now of such an order of magnitude greater than in the past that manufacturers and industry experts are quite seriously discussing the poin t at which the software platform of a car will have become so extensive that i t will become one of the chief competitive edges; customers will be loath to change to different makes because of the investment of time needed to become familiar with a new software environment and style. 2o Such an allegiance might be strengthened by the increasing tendency for automobiles to become locations of activity other than driving; places for carrying out work, communicating, being entertained and so on, via a legion of remote services. I ncreasingly, automobile software also reaches beyond the vehicle itself. So, for example, 'intelligent vehicles' drive on 'intelligent streets' loaded up with software that s urveys and manages t raffic, from t he humblest traffic light phasing to the grand visions of integrated transport management systems that will i ncreasi ngly control traffic Bow while giving an illusion of driver freedom. Each hybrid will become simultaneously a moment in a continuously u pdated databank of movement. The other extension is through the application of ergonomics. Ergonomics (or 'human factors'), :2l like software, originated in the Second World War and has existed as a formal discipline since the late 1 940s ( Meister, 1 999). However, its widespread application has only come about since the 1 980s, most especially with the advent of automated systems (Sheridan, 2002). It is an amalgam of anatomy, physiology and psychology with engineering dedicated to the careful study of human-technology inter­ actions and mostly concerned with creating new and more 'friendly' i nter­ faces in which arrays of differen t objects act as one smooth process by reworking system complexity. 2:Z Although it argues that it is attempt ing to increase the cognitive fit between people and things, i t might j ust as well be t hought of as an exercise in hybridization, producing new forms of 'humanization', rather than simplv discrete sets of interactions, by produc­ i ng new k i nds of authority. The application of these two knowledges can be seen as simply a way of compensating for human error, or it can be seen as a symptom of

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something much more far-reaching; a practical working-through of a more abstract project, namely the grounding of phenomenology in scientific, natu­ ralistic principles. Now this, of course, might seem an odd project, given H usserl's consistent opposition of naturalistic methods to the sciences of 'man' but, grouped around an alliance of workers in arti ficial intelligence ( AI), cognitive science and the like who have valorized embodied action, what we can see is a concerted project to represent the non-representational through scientific princi ples, mainly by working on the very small spaces and times of movement that can now be apprehended and worked with in order to produce a 'structural description of becoming aware'. Through such a project of the scientific renewal of phenomenology, in which intentional­ ity is natural ized, objects like cars can then become very exactly computed environments in which, to use a famous phrase, 'the world is its own best model' (Brooks, 1 99 1 : 1 42), both in the sense of cleaving to a particular scientific approach and in the engaged sense that what works works. In other words, cars become examples of 'geometrical descriptive eidetics' based 011 differential geometry and topology and designed for 'inexact morphological essences', essences that do not conform to a fundamental classical physical account but that are still amenable to a naturalized description, especially since the advent of complex system models (Petitot et aI., 1 999). Such forms can only come i nto the world because of the advent of large-scale comput­ ing and software, thereby demonstrating a pleasingly circular generativity. What we can see as a result of these developments is something very i nteresting. First, driving the car becomes much more closely wrapped u p w i t h the body (or, a t least, a naturalized view o f embodi ment) via the active intermediaries of software and ergonomics. Senses of weight and road resist­ ance are reconfigured. What the driver 'listens' to and works on is altered. ReJateclly. much more of the judgement involvecl in driving is now being either imposed or managed by software (for example, through i nnovations like traction control and A BS). In the process, almost certainly - even given hysteresis effects - this new kind of coded governmentality i s producing safer road conditions. As a result, i t i s now commonly argued that software­ based i nnovations like those ment ioned, when combined with the beller ergonomic design of controls, seating and steering. combine to produce 'better' driving experiences by giving more exact ( in fact. more heavily inter­ mediated) embodied contact with the road. :tl Second. the car becomes a world i n itself. Sound and even v ideo systems, cli mate control, better sound insulation, ergonomically designed i nteriors, easy recall of certain memories and the like, all conspire to make the car into a kind of monad which increasingly refers to the world outside itself via heavily intermediated representations. Third, the car i ncreasingly becomes locatable to itself and to others in a burgeoning artificial ethology. 2-1 The advent of a mixture of geographical information systems, global positioning and wireless communications means that gelling lost will no longer be an option and, equally, that increasingly it will be possible to track all cars, wherever they may be. The result is that both surveying and being surveyed will

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increasingly become a norm: it is even possible that, through the new infor­ mational and communicational conduits that are now being opened up, some of the social cues that have been missing from the experience of driving will be re-inserted (for example, who is driving a particular car), maki ng the whole process more akin to walking again, but with a new information ally boosted hybrid body, a new i ncarnation. We therefore arrive in a world in which knowledge about embodied knowledge is being used to produce new forms of embodiment-cum-spatial practice which are sufficiently subtle and extensive to have every chance of becoming a new background to everyday life. No doubt, a fellow traver­ siste of de Certeau like Virilio would be inclined to make such develop­ ments i nto a part of a humanist meltdown, a window on to a brave new i nformational world which is frighteningly sterile, a further chapter in the 'data coup d'etat' which comes about through relying on i nformational models that model people as machines. The horsepowered car was motorized with the aid of the synthetic energy of the combustion engine in the course of the transport revolution and is now gearing up to motorize the reality of space, thanks to the digital imagery of the computer motor, perceptual faith letting itself be abused, it would seem, by the virtuality generator. Dynamized by the artifice of continuous speed, the real-space perspective of the painters of the Quattrocento then gives way to the real-time perspective of the computer cognoscenti of the Novocento, thereby illustrating surrealist writings of the 1930s: 'One day science will travel by bringing the country we want to visit to us. It will be the country that visits us, the way a crowd visits some animal in a cage; then the country will leave again, miffed at having stirred itself for so little.'25 (Virilio, 1995: 1 5 1 , author's emphasis)

In part, as we have seen from his musings on rail travel, I think that de Certeau might have subscribed to this kind of line. B ut I think his positive sense of the mundane, combined with a realization that more and more software and ergonomics is derived from models of embodied know­ ledge which arise precisely out of the critique of i nformational models put forward by authors like Merleau-Ponty upon which he drew (which is now, ironically, being written into the software that surrounds us), would have made him pull back and head for a more nuanced interpretation. At least, I like to think so. Conclusions

Such auto-mobile developments as I have laid out in the previous section lay down a set of challenges to de Certeau's work which I want to use to fashion a conclusion to this article. Given that de Certeau's project was a tentative and developing one, and embedded i n a particular historical conjuncture, none of these criticisms need to be seen as necessarily disabling, but they are at least interestingly problematic. In order to bring

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some structure to these challenges, I will backtrack to the three criticisms of de Certeau made in the second section of this article and use these criti­ cisms to sketch a rather different sense of the everyday in the city. I want to begin by returning to de Certeau's continued reduction of practices to a generally cursive model. I have described this practice as problematic. But I think that it can be read more sympathetically in another way - as prefiguring a real h istorical change in which large parts of what were considered as non-representational embodied practice begin to be represented as they are brought into a kind of writing, the writing of software. It has, of course, been a constant in history to produce systems for describing human embodied movement of which conventional writing was only ever one: other systems of notation have abounded (cf. Finnegan, 2002; Guest, 1 989). But what we can see in the current prevalence of software i s embodied spatial and temporal practices being minutely described and written down using this new form of mechanical writing; to use another theoretical vocabulary, bare life i s being laid bare - and then cursively extended (Thrift, 2003). Interestingly, de Certeau himself begins to provide the beginnings of a vocabulary for describing this change later i n The Practice of Everyday Life (though admittedly in a different context) when he writes in his brief history of writing in Chapter 10 about a new form of scrip­ tural practice which is not married to a reality of meaning but is a writing given over to its own mechanisms. Thi s is 'a model of language furnished by the machine, which is made of differentiated and combined parts (like every enunciation) and develops, through the interplay of its mechanisms, the logic of a celibate narcissism' (de Certeau, 1 984: 1 52). And we can interpret automobile hybrids as made up of flesh, various mechanical components - and such a form of writing (de Certeau's body, tool and text), gradually taking in the other two. As I have already pointed out, such a development can be seen in wholly negative terms as existing alongsi de what de Certeau ( 1 984: 1 53) calls a 'galloping technocratization', but I prefer to think of it as also offering new possibilities for the extension of physical extension and thought. The second challenge arises from the use of adjectives like 'hidden'. I think that such a description of large parts of everyday life has become an increasingly mistaken one. The sheer amount of locationally referenced i nformation about everyday life that is available or is coming on stream, and which, by using wireless, GIS, GPS and other technologies will be constantly updated, suggests that most of the spaces of everyday life will no longer be hidden at all. Indeed, they are likely to be continually catalogued on a real­ time basi s using categorizations and geometries that are themselves consti­ tutive of subjectivity. 26 But I would argue that much of what actually characterizes everyday life - the creative moments arising out of artful improvisation on the spur of the moment - will still continue to be opaque to systematic surveillance: there will still be 'strangeness in the common­ place'. It is these petformative moments of narrative dissonance that we should be concentrating on. It may therefore be that, in contemporary social

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Theory, Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5)

systems, it is not so much hiding as trying to fashion different modes of visi­ bil ity that is crucial. The third challenge arises from de Certeau's weak humanism. The problem, of course, as Deleuze, Latour and many others have conti nually emphasized, i s 'What is hu man"t. The answer is rather less clear now than i t was 20 or so years ago but, equall y, the possibil ities of what cou nts as 'humanity' have expanded. What seems clear to me is that it is not neces­ sary to equate the human with the near and local , the slow and the small, as Gabriel Tarde pointed out well over a hundred years ago (see Latour, 2002): though de Certeau's humanism comes with a heavy dose of the scrip­ tural, i t is d i fficult to escape the conclusion that when it comes to the kind of l i beratory spatial practices he i s will i ng to envisage, that writing is stil l handwriting. I n an age when electronic signatures are becoming the norm, this is, in a quite l i teral sense, anachronistic - and whatever the spatial equivalent of that term might be. 2 7 But, equall y, de Certeau's appeal to a 'trans-human' city surely still retains its force. Which brings me to a final point. As the exampl e of driving shows, new modes of embodiment are being invented by the grand experimental forces of capital ism, science and war. One very popular reaction to such developments is to fall back on a narrative of beleaguered-ness, in which everyday l i fe is gradually being crushed by forces outside its control. But another reaction i s to argue that such models are at root too simple to be adequate to a situation i n which new capacities are continually being formed as well as new modes of control. This might be seen as a Panglossian re s p onse : I prefer to s ee it as a re - a ffl r mat i on of a de Cer t ea u i an politics of 'opening the possible' (Giard, ] 997), which realizes that new spaces for action are continually bei ng opened up as old ones are closed down. New and friendly habitabilities are therefore constantly on the horizon, some of which may still be able to be real ized. Escape, no. Work with and on, yes. A cknowierigemenf.l

This paper was written for the ' D t' Certt'au Now' Conference held a t the Watershed M t'dia Centre in Bristol in September 2002. I would l ike to thank t he organizer. Ben H ighmore, and the other spt'akers. especi all y Jeremy Ahearne. Tom Conley. A l an Read and M ichael SIlt 'ringham. for their commt'nts. l owe a particular debt of gratitude to Tom Con ley for t h t' k nol\ ledge of de Certeau he subsequently so k i nd l y shared w i t h me. In auu i t ion. t\\O anonymous referees ht'l ped me to focus the art i cl e further in very productivt' Irays. as did Geof Bowker, M ichat'l C u rry and Stuart E l den. As usuaL John L' rry providt'd a series of i nsightfu l comments. NOles 1 . In what fol lows, I havt' gt'nt'rally used the translat ion in t h t' volumt' euitt'd by Blonsky, retitlt'd 'Practices of Spact" (de Ct'rteau, 1987) which generally s t ri kes me as c learer t han the Rendall t ranslation in de Certeau (2000).

2. H ence, t he ori ginal rrt'nch t i t l e of The Practice of Everyday Lile. namely L'lnvention rill quofidie n .

Thrift - Driting in the City

55

3 . De Certeau's humanism is not one that proceeds from a fully formed human subject but is based in practict's, and tht' tension betwt'en humans to bt' found in tht' encounters that take plact' within them. According to Conley (200 1 : 485), it combint's a residue of Hegelianism or existentialism with Christian ethics. 4. This distinction between anthropological spact' and tht' geometrical spact' of grids and networks is taken from Merleau-Ponty (Conlev. 200 1 ) . 5. I n any case, to take the U K a s a n example, journeys o n foot now account for only between a quarter and a third of all journeys, and are still decl ining as a proportion of all journeys. However. this proportion is higher in innt'r urban art'as (Hillman, 200 1 ) . 6 . From t h e vast scriptural apparatus o f the travd industrv to t h e t'volution of videos on power walking (Morris, 1998). 7. I make no value j udgements about automobility here bt'cause tht'st' j udgenwnts seem to me to have too often stood in the way of an understanding of the attrac­ tions of the phenomenon. This is certainly not to say, however, that I am some kind of fan of automobility, and for all the usual reasons (see Rajan. 1 996). 8. There may, of course, be a simple, if rather glib, explanation for this t'lision: in 1 967, driving with his parents from his brother's house to a rt'staurant. de Cerlt'au was involved in a serious automobile collision in which his mother was killed and he lost the sight of one eye. Miraculously his father, the driver, was hardly injured at all. A pparently, according to Dosse (2002), the accident caused de Certeau considerablt' guilt because he felt he had been responsible for the delay which caused his father to drive so fast. I am indebted to Tom Conley for this information. As Stuart Elden has noted in a personal communication, this lack of the prt'st'nct' of tht' automobile is in marked contrast to a writer like Henri Lefebvrt'. who mentions cars at various points in his works. Lefebvre was, of course. a cab driver for two years of his life. 9. Some other IWlJersiste authors like Paul Virilio and. latterly. Marc Augp do tacklt' the automobile, but in a high-handed and. more often than not. hypt'rbolic tont' that I want to get away from. 10. These techniques of wholesale landscape design have t'xisted since at least tht' 1930s. The work of Merriman (2001 , 2004) shows how important they \I ere in. for example, the construction of the British motot'way systt'lIl. I am indebtt'd to Ct'of Bowker for pointing me to viewshed analysis. 1 1 . 1 am indebted to Michael Curry for this information. 1 2. This statistic includes a good numbt'r of homes in trailt'r parks and custom­ dt'signed 't'states' that are only nominally mobile. it should be addt'd. Sotut' of tlwst' homes now have to comply with local building codt's but. t'vt'n so. evt'n tht' most immobile mobilt' homt's art' still sold, financed. rt'gulatt'd and taxt'd as vt'hiclt's. 13 . Thus. tht're is a wholt' 'manipulatory area', as C.H. Mt'ad put it, of st'nsing objects which cannot be understood as just the incarnation of symbolic systt'ms but rt'lit's on various kinaesthetic dispositions Iwld in the bodily mt'mory. In turn. lIt' can speak of objeets pushing back. 14. As Kalz (2000: 46) rightly points out. this hybrid cannol bt' prt'cist'lv locatt'd: 'The driver operates from a moving point in a terrain for intf'ractioll. and that tt'ITain is dt'fined in part by tilt' drivt'r's CUITf'nt slylf' of dri,·ing." 1 5. Drivt'rs oftt'n st'f'm to assume that otht'r forms of road lIst'r t'mbodi nlt'nl (t'.g.

56

Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

cyclists) should conform to the same rules of the road as they do and become irate when such users follow what seem to be, in some sense, unfair tactics. 16. Thus, by one account, automobile electronics now account for more than 80 percent of all innovation in automobile ((>chnology. On average, modern cars now have some 4 km of wiring in total. In some higher-end vehicles, electronics components account for 20 to 23 percent of total manufacturing cost. B y 2005, by one estimate, higher-end vehicles will require an average power supply of 2 . 5 K W and consequently there are moves towards 36-volt batteries and 42-volt systems (Leen and H effernan, 2002). 17. Such a viewpoint is, of course, congruent with many intellectual developments of late, such as actor-network theory and other developments originating from the sociology of science (cf. Schatzki, 2002), and is taken to its farthest extreme by Rouse ( 1996: 1 49) who denotes 'practice' in such a way that it can embrace the actions of both humans and non-humans as 'the field within which both the deter­ minations of objects and the doings and respondings of agents are intelligible'. Clearly, such a development can itself be taken to be historically specific.

18. A number of cars now have speed limiters. M ore impressively, one car manu­ facturer has now introduced so-called active cruise control, which senses the traffic ahead and throttles back or even brakes if the driver gets too close to the car ahead. 19. I have always puzzled about how de Certeau would interpret speech recognition systems: as yet another blow for the binary logic of an informationalized capitalism. as a new form of machinic enunciation. and so on. 20. To some extent, this process is already happening in a muted form. As one referee pointed out. software is already a means by which manufacturers tie their purchasers to a service relationship. For example. if a boot lock fails on some models, the onboard systems fail, and t he solut ion - which i n t ilt' past was mechan­ ical - now requires the application of specialist software and technical know-how. 2 1 . The two terms are nearly interchangeable but 'ergonomics' is often reserved for a narrower aspect of human fa('(ors dealing with anthropometry. biomechanics and body kinematics whereas 'human factors' is reserved for wider applications. Terms like 'cognitive engineering' have also come into vogue. 22. The sheer number of switches and instruments on modern cars has become an ergonomic problem in its own right. �ince ' dashboard cluller' is thought to have significant safety risks. All manner of solutions are being tried. such as rotating dials. 23. One referee pointed out that such df'velopments may change thf' nature of 'driving' as a skill, rather in the \\'ay that a new dril'ing skill has become spotting speed cameras and taking appropriate al'lion. Certainly. developments like in-car satellite navigation are already transferring ,ray-finding skills to sofll\ are. Pre;,;ull1ably, other skills will follow a" cars and cities inCTea::;ingly drive drivers. 21. Indeed, one of the key technological frontier" i� currently artif'jcial ethology and there i� every reason to beliel'e that innol alions from thi:; field will make their way into aulolllobility ( Holland and M c Farland. 200 1 ) . 2 5 . The quotation is frolll a 1 930s text bl Saint-Paul Roux called Iii/esse.

26, The recent science fiction novel bl Clarke and Baxter (2002) can. 1 think. he "een as a meditation on this state of affair� .

2 7 . ·Anachoristic·. presumably. How!"l er. it i� important to note. a;,; Conlel' (200 1 )

Thrift - Driring i n t h e City

57

has pointed out, that de Certeau had some hopes for the Ii beratory potential of new computer technology. Rl'ferences

Amin, A. and N .J . Thrift (2002) Cities: Re-imagining Urban Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beckmann. J . (200 1 ) 'Automobilization - A Social Problem and a Theoretical Concept', Environment a nd Planning D: Society and Space 1 9: 593-607. Brandon, R . (2002) A uto. Mobil: How the Car Changed Life. London: M acmillan. Brooks, R. ( 1 99 1 ) 'Intelligence without Representation', Artificial Intelligence Journal 47: 1 39-60. (Reprinted in R. Brooks, Cambrian Intelligence. Cambridge, M A : M IT Press, 1 999, 79-101 . ) Buchanan, l . (2000) Michel d e Certeau: Cultural Theorist. London: Sage. Buchanan, I. (ed . ) (200 1 ) ' M ichel de Certeau - in the Plural', South AtLantic QuarterL) 1 00(2): 323-9. Changeux, J . P. and P. Ricoeur (2002) What Makes Us Th ink? Princeton, N J : Prince­ ton University Press. Clarke, A . C . and S. Baxter (2002) The Light of Other Days. London: HarperCol lins. Conley, V. A . (200 1 ) 'Processual 483-500.

Practices', South At/antic Quarterly

100:

Danl. T. and P. M artin (200 1 ) 'By Car: Carrying Modern Society', in A . Warde and J . Grunow (eds) Ordinar) Consumption. London: Routledge. de Certeau, M . ( 1 984) The Practice of Ever)day Life, trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: U niversity of California Press. de Certeau, M . ( 1 987) -Practices of Space', in M . Blonsky (I'd.) On Signs. Oxford: Blackwell. de Certeau, M . (2000) The Possession at Loudon. Chicago. IL: L niversity of Chicago Press. de Certeau, M . (2000) 'Walking in t he City', in G . \Vard (ed.) The Certeau Reader. London: Blackwell. Depraz, N .. F. Varela and P. Vermersch (2000) 'The Gesture of Awareness: An Account of i ts Structural Dynamics'. pp. 1 2 1 -37 in M. Velmans ( I'd . ) Investigating Phenomenal Consciousness. Amsterdam: J ohn Benjamins. Dosse. J . F'. (2002) Michel de Certeau : Ie marchellr blesse. Paris: La Decouverte.

Finrwgan, R. (2002) Comm unicating: The Multiple Modes of Human Interactioll . London: Routledge.

Gardiner, M . E . (2000) Critiques of Everyday Life. London: Routledge. Giard. L. ( 1997) -Introduction: Opening t he Possible'. pp. ix-xv in M . de Certeau, Cu/turf in the Plural. M inneapolis: University of M innesota Press. Guest, A. Haden ( 1 989) Choreographies: A Comparison of Dance Notatioll Systl'ms from Fifieenth Century /0 the Present . London and New York : Routledge. Hart. J . F. , M . J . Rhodes and J.T. Morgan (2002) The UllkllOll 1l World of thl' Mohile Home . Balti more, M D: J ohns H opkins University Press. Henry. M . ( 1993) The Genealogy of Psyhoana/ysis. Stanford, C A : Stanford U niversity Press.

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H i ll man, M . (200 1 ) 'Priorit i s i ng Pol icy and Practi ce to Favour Walk i ng', World Transport Policy and Praclice 7: 39-4:3 . Holland, O. and D. Mc Farland (200 1 ) A rtificial Ethology. Oxford: Oxford U n i vers ity Press. J akIe, l A . (200 1 ) CilY Light: illum inating the American Night . Bal t i more. M D : Johns Hopki n s U niversity Press. JakIe, l A . and K . A . Sculle (2002) Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the A uto­ mobile Age. Balti more, M D : Johns H opkins U n iversity Press. Katz, l (2000) Hou; Emotions Work. C h icago, JL: U nivers ity of Chicago Press.

Latour, B. ( 1 992) 'W here A re the M i ssing M asses"? The Sociology of a few M undane Artifacts', pp. 225-58 in W. B ijker. T H u ghes and T Pinch (eds) The Social Construction of Technical SJStems. Cambridge, M A: M IT Press. Latour, B. (2002) 'Gabriel Tarde and the End of the Social', pp. 1 1 7-50 in P. Joyce (ed.) The Question of the Social: New Bearings in History and the Social Sciences . London: Rout ledge. Leen. G. and D. H effernan (2002) ' Expandi ng A utomotive Electronic Systems', Institute of Elec trical and Electronic Engineers. Inc. January: 8. Meister, D. ( 1 999) The History of Human Factors and Ergonomics. M ahwah, N]: Lawrence Erlbaum Associ ates . M erriman, P. (200 1 ) 'M l : A C u l t ural Geography of an Engl ish Motorway, 1 946- 1 965', unpubl ished Ph D t hesis, U n i vers i t y of Nottingham .

Merri man, P. (2004) 'Driving Places: M arc A uge. Non-Places and t he Geographies of E ng l and's M l M otorway', Theor); Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5): 1 45-67. M i l l er. D. (ed.) (200 1 ) Car Cultures . Oxford: Berg. Morris, M. ( 1 998) Too Soon Too Late: I-listor) in POflu1ar Culture. B l oomington: I ndi ana University Press. Pet i tot, l, FJ . Varela, B. Pachoud and J. Roy (eds) ( l 999) Naturali::ing Ph cnom­ I'nology: Issues in Contempomrr Pltl'nomenolog.\ and Cogni/ivl' Science. Stanford, C A : Stanford U n iversity Press. Rajan, C.S. ( 1 996) Tlte Enigmll ojA u/omohility. Pittsburgh. PA: University of P i t ts­ burgh Press. Rouse. J . ( 1 996) Engaging Sciencl': Holt /0 Understand its Pmctices Philosophi­ clIlly. I thaca, N Y : Corne l l University Pres�. Sachs, W. (2002) For Loue of /171' A u/omobill': Looking Back in/o the His/on 0/ Our Desires. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schatzki, T. R . (2002) The Si/I' 0/ the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Cons/i­ /Il/ion 0/ Social Life and Ch ungI'. l niversity Park: Pt'nnsylvania State l n i vnsi ty Press. Schi velsbuch, W. ( 1 986) The Raillern jourI/I'Y: The Indus/rialization of Time and Space in the 1 9/h Century. Berkeley: u n i versity of California Press. Sheller, M . and ] . U rry (2000) 'The City and the Car· . lntenw/iona / jourl/al o/ Urhan lind Regional Research 24: 737-57. Sheridan, T. B . (2002) Humans and A u /oma/ion: Sys/I'ms Design and Research Issues . New York: 1 0hn Wi ley. Sol n i t , R . (2000) Wanderlust: A His/ory 0/ Walking. London: Viking.

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St i vers, R. ( 1 999) Tech nology as Magic: The Triumph of the Irratiolla/. New York: Con t i nu u m . Terd i man, R . (200 1 ) 'The M arginality of M i c hel de Certt>au', i n South At/alltic QUllr­ terley 1 00(2): 399-42 1 . Thrift. N.J. ( 1 990) 'Transport and Commun i cation 1 770- 1 9 1 4' , pp. 45:3-86 i n R,J. Dodgshon and R. B u d i n (eds) A Neu; Historica! Geography of EngLand and Hirtles, 2nd edn. London: Academic Press. Thrift. N .J . ( 1996) Spatial Formations. London: Sage. Thrift, N .J. (2000) 'Afterwords', Enl'ironment and Planning 0: Society lind Space 18: 2 1 3-55 . Thrift, N.J. (2003) 'Bare Life', i n H . Thomas and J. Ahmed (eds) Dancing Bodie.,. London: Routledge.

Thrift, N .J. and S, French (2002) The A utomatic Production of Space', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 27(:-� ): :�09-25. U rry, J. (2000) Sociology beyond Societies . London: Rout ledge.

Urry, J. (2004) 'The " System" of A u tolllob i lity', Theory, Cu/ture &- Society 2 1 (4/5): 25-:39. Virilio, P. (1 995) The Art of the Motor. M i nneapolis: U n i versity of M i n nesota Pre��. Wal lace, H. ( 1 993) Walking, Literature and English Culture: The Origins and Uses of Peripatetic ill the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford l n i versity Press. Warnier, J .P. (200 ] ) ' A Paradoxical Approach to Subject ivation in a Material World',

JOIlrl/a/ of Material Culture 1 6( 1 ): 5-24.

Nigel Thrift is a Proft'ssor i n the School of Geographical Sciences at til(' University of BristoL His i nterests incl u de i nternational finance, manage­ mt'nt knowledgt's, the h istory of time and non-reprt'sentational theory. He is cur rently work i ng on the i nterface between the digital and the biological . H i s must recent books i n cl ude Cities ( w i t h A s h A m i n , Pol ity, 2002), The Hand/JOoh of Cultural Geography (co-ed i ted with Kay A n derson, Mona Domosh and Steve Pile, Sage, 2003), and Pal/emed Ground (co-edited with Stephen Harrison and Steve Pile, Reaktion, 2003).

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The Driver-car

Tim Dant

T

H E MOTOR car has become ubiquitous i n late modern societies, including the United Kingdom where 70 percent of the population hold driving l icences and there are nearly 23 million licensed cars. Whereas i n 1960 the majority of households ( 7 1 percent ) d i d not have the regular use of a car, by 1999 the majority (72 percent) d i d ( DETR, 2000). As long ago as 1963, Roland Barthes ( 1 993: 1 136) poi n ted out that the car had become a 'need' not a luxury and in 1968 Henri Lefebvre ( 1 97 1 : 100) called i t the 'Leading-Object' in terms of its centrality within t he culture of modern societies. The car shapes the built environment, cuts through the landscape, dominates the soundscape, i s a key commodity i n production and consumption. Despite this prominence the car, unlike for example infor­ mation technology and its impact, has largely been ignored by sociology a" a component of social lwing and social action in lak modernity ( Hawkins, 1986; Dant and Martin, 200 1 ; Miller, 200 1 a) . The car has been considered from two key perspect i ves in the social scieIH'es: flrst, as a commodity t hat exemplifies the development of produc­ t i on in industrial capitalism I and, second, as a commod ity lhat f'Xt'mpJiJit'" the desirpd objPct that motivates consumers in l ate capitalism.:! RpCPlltl�l, t ilt-' issup of mobility has bpgun to d i rpct attent ion to the car (Urry. 20(0) and a number of featu l'f's of car culture have begun to bf' explored (e.g. M il ler, 2001b). W hat is surprising, ho\\ever, is t hat the car has not attracted much more I hall cursory commentary as an object that actua l l y shapp" the form and content of social action (although spe Elia,;, 1 995). More often than not. the car and motor traffic are used as a taken-for-granted analogy to explain other social actions such as those of �wdestrian t raf1ic (e.g. Coffman, 1 97 1 ). But the way that thp ('ar ha,; introduced Ilt'\\- forms of social <[('tion ill lalP modprnity, tlwreby contribut ing to its c1 i"tincti\ e nature, ha� lIot vet I WPII the focus of seriolls s()c iologieal attention. Thi" article explore� tlte ·assemblage':; of the driver-car as a form of social being that product's a rangf' of soc ial adions that art' associated with tilt' car; ("·i , i ng. trall"porting,

•

7'hl'()n� CII/lllrl' &- S()('il'l r 20( )-1· I ::' .\ C L _ Londoll. Thou';illid O " k .; "lid � ( ' \I D . . l h i ) . \ o i . 2 \ ( ·1/5 1 : (d-7')

DO I: 1 0_ 1 1 7 71()2():�27() W i n IW() 1

62

Theory, CuLture & Society" 21 (4/5)

parking, consuming, pol l uting, killing, communicating and so on. The form of social being that results from the collaboration of human and machine has attracted the term 'cyborg' (Haraway, 1 99 1 ; Bukatman, 1993; Feather­ stone and Burrows, 1995) but as I have argued before (Dant, 1 999: 1 91-4) the term 'cyborg' properly refers to the feedback systems incorporated i nto the body that can be used to replace or enhance human body parts. Tim Luke ( 1996: 1 7-19) develops Haraway's 'ironic politica l myth' of the cyborg to comment on the cultural and economic 'dehumanization' of the car driver's subjectivity as she or he becomes merged with a car to create a new cyborg life form, the 'car-and-driver', but the idea of the cyborg tends to fix and reify the assemblage. While the car can be seen as a mobility aid for the able-bodied, human subjectivity is i n no sense constituted by getting into a car; i t i s a temporary assemblage within which the human remains complete in his or her self. For the same reason it is unhelpful to think of the driver-car assemblage as a 'hybrid', a term used by actor-network theory ( C alIon, 1 99 1 : 139) and by others ( Rosen, 1995, 2002; Dant, 1 998; Urry, 1999) to refer to the collaboration of human and object forms . The word 'hybrid' refers to the offspring of two species that are usually unable to reproduce whereas the driver-car is an assemblage that comes apart when the driver leaves the vehicle and which can be endlessl y re-formed, or re­ assembled given the availability of the component cars and drivers. The term 'hybrid' is used more strictly (e.g. by Latour, 1 996: 1 50) to refer to entities that result from permanently combining similar types of object car commentators of course use the term i n this way to refer to models that combine two types such as the sports/utility vehicle. The driver-car is not a species resulting from chance mati ng but a product of human design, manufacture and choice. The particular driver­ car may be assembled from different components with consequent varia­ tions in ways of acting, and its modal form may vary over time and place. However, despite variations, the assemblage of the driver-car enables a form of social action that has become routine and habitual, affecting many aspects of late modern society. The aim of this article is to begin to develop a theoretical understanding of the way in which the assemblage is formed. Neither the human driver nor the car acting apart could bring about the types of action that the assemblage can; it is the particular ways in which their capacities are brought together that bring about the impact of the auto­ mobile on modern societies. In this article I w i l l explore a number of ways in which the assem­ blage of the driver-car can be understood to begin to build an account of the relationship between its components. Here the argument is theoretical and tentative but it is intended that it w i l l provide the basis for empirical sociological investigation of the driver-car and begin to develop ways of understanding other human/object assemblages. What is at stake is whether social life is simply the result of relationships between human beings forming into social groups or whether collaborations between human beings

Dont

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The Dri ver- c ar

63

and material obj ects contribute to the formation of societies and give them particular characteristics and features. The Driver-ear's Affordances

In an article originally published in 1 938, the ecological psychologist James J. Gibson attempted to understand the process of driving a car. He devel­ oped a concept of the 'field of safe travel': I t consists. a t any given moment, of the field of possible paths l/;hich the car may take unimpeded. Phenomenally it is a sort of tongue protruding forward along the road. Its boundaries are chiefly determined by objects or features of the terrain with a negative 'valence' in perception - in other words obsta­ des. (Gibson, 1 932a: 120. emphasis in original)

Gibson was concerned with how the driver's perception of the road enabled her or him to undertake the action of driving. The 'field of safe travel' is a psychologist's construct of what is presumed to be present i n perception to the successful driver. There is i n this approach to the relationship between the driver and the car a clear distinction between the object, which Gibson treats as a 'locomotion tool', and the driver, who is treated as being the agent of any ensuing action. The 'tongue' metaphor, which suggests some bio­ mechanical beast, is rather difficult to grasp from the perspective of a driver but makes sense as a description of how the field is shown in the figures i n Gibson's article. These are plan drawings o f road situations that show the orientation of cars to each other - a view that no driver ever has but one that is remi niscent of the view from a police helicopter or that of a child playing with model cars. For some of the cars in the figures a 'tongue' shape has been drawn proj ecting in fron t of the vehicle to indicate the 'field' i n which the driver might expect t o drive a n d have some sight of. The edges of the field are c urved around obstacles and its furthest edge is also c urved. Within the field is the 'minimum stopping zone' indicati ng the poin t at which the driver knows she or he could stop the vehicle. If the field is character­ ized by a positive valence - the driver feels able to drive into it - obstacles have a negative valence that Gibson calls a 'halo of avoidance' that can be represented in the figures by 'lines of clearance' ( Gibson, 1 982a: 1 27). These i ndicate how a driver would attempt to maintain a safe d istance; the closer their vehicle gets to the obstacle, the stronger the negative valence. The plan view provides a d isembodied, unengaged, godlike perspec­ tive on the array of objects - it is an obj ect-ive perspective that separates the car as object from the subj ectivity of the driver. H owever, G ibson's discussion of the perceptual engagement of the driver does make some sense. For example, the novice car driver has to learn to 'anticipate the road' by extending her visual attention by hundreds of feet to cover a 'field' i n which potential obstructions - the parked car, t h e child running towards the kerb - are noticed. Within this visual field the driver is more continually

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attentive t han to events happening behi nd or to the side of the car. Events to t he sides of the vehicle where it could not possibly be directed are not usually registered at all. The l imited field of action of the motor car - which cannot move s ideways - i s overlooked by Gibson because his focus is on the perceiving subject, the driver. This early account of the process of driving treats the driver as somehow i ndependent of the car and its context. 'Driving' i s treated as some­ t hing that the h uman being i nside the car does to the car, on the road. The process is treated as predominantly psychological so that the car i s considered simply a s a tool that is known and predictable. The 'skil led driver' is also taken for granted, as are the sorts of activities and situations that driving involves; in fact cars, drivers, driving actions and driving situ­ ations are all variable and c hange over time and from place to place. There are two points in Gibson's account at which the centrality of the psychological process of driving is accepted as not the complete story. First, he recognizes t hat the complexity of the process he is describing is way beyond conscious cognitive capacity. As he points out, the driver of a vehicle overtaking another on a road with two-way traffic has to est i mate the relationships between the speeds of three vehicles (iwr own, the overtaken car, the oncoming car) and their continually changing fields of safe travel in relation to the stationary road. What is involved is a processing of infor­ mation that Gibson remarks is 'astounding' ( l982a: 130 fn lO). Second, while through most of the discussion the car is simply taken for granted as a 'tool of locomotion', he does in one section recognize that the car itself i s : . . . also a sort of fidd \\ h i c h \ ie ld� a variety or perceptual ('ues and which i n v i tes and supports "pecif-i(' act ioll". The impre""ions cons t i t u ti llg i t are k inesth e t i c , tactual. and auditory. a" \l eU as v isual. and t hey interact w i t h t h e i mpressions from t h e terra i n t o produ('e t h e totality o r cues on Il" h i c h the dri v ing-process i s hased. The 'reel' or t h e ('ar or the 'lwhayior' or t l w car are terms which i nd icate \I hat i� I!lcant 1 )\ t h i � parti(, ular field of experien(,e. ( G i bson, 1 982a: B4)

This begins to s u ggest a n e m bo di e d re l a t i o ns h i p between the driver and t h e car, but Gibson's interest in the driver w a s fo( ' u sed; h e wanted to b e able t o contri b u t e a s a s c i e n ti s t 1 0 t h e de b at e about what s k i lls drivers Iwedell and to h e l p reduce tlw numlJf'r of d e a t hs on t h e ro a d . James G i bson is rat h e r more fa mous for h i " later work i n ecologic a l p s yc h o lo g y t h a t produced t h e ( 'ollcept of 'affordance' a"

a wav of grasping how animals, includ ing h u m a n he i ng", rel a t e to their material environment. The not i on of 'aff ord a n c e ' i " a de v e l o p me n t o f 'v a l e nc e ' t h a t poi n t s to the lVay that the m ate r i al i t y of a n a n i m a l 'Ji t ;; in' " i t h ;;ome material aspeC't of i t s env i ronment: C i hson w r i t e s of t he 'co m p lemE'n t a r i t y of t h e a n i m a l and env i ronnw n t ' ( 1 979: 127). A ll obje(·t doE'S not h a v e affonlance a" a general property ( such as its w e i g h t or c h e m i ( ' a l ( 'ompos i t ion) hut affo rds particu­ l ar t hi ngs to the rnakrialitv of part i c u l a r " p f' (' ie ,; . A n anndw i r affords a I wd

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to my cat but affords a seat to me; the cat's siz(" and arrangement of limbs means that it can curl up and sleep soundly on the soft su rface. The chair is too small for me to curl up in - indeed humans do not curl up quite as cats do - but does provide support for my bottom, back and arms, which is one of the ways that humans take the weight off their l egs and 'sit'. AfCor­ dance is then a relational (Mannheim, 1936: 254) concept rather than an absolute one, and can be seen as a different expression of Mead's conc("p­ tion of the physical objects in a field inviting human bei ngs to take up an altitude to them. Mead writes of objects such as the armchair 'call i ng out' to the human being to sit in them (Mead, 1 962: 2 78-80; see also McCarthy, 1984; Dant, 1 999: 1 20-3). Indeed, Gibson suggests that the origin of the concept of affordance lies i n Kurt Lewi n's term Aufforderul1scharakter which was translated by J.F. Brown as the 'invitation character' of an object ( Marrow, 1969: 56; Gibson, 1979: 1 38). The motor car affords the human being locomotion and mobi l ity, and it affords the driver motility (the capacity to move spontaneously and inde­ pendentl y). The combination of mobility and motility that the car offers the driver is akin to that offered by her or his legs, except that it requires liltl(" effort, i s much faster and can cover much greater distances. The affordance of the motor car can be seen as a progression from that of the horse as a means of transport for its rider, although the horse affords mobil ity over rough terrain, whereas the car only affords it over fairl y smooth surfaces. The motor car affords mobility in a forward or backward direction; unlike horses and helicopters it cannot afford sideways movement. As well as extending the motility of the driverlrider, the car, like the horse, also has negative affordances. The horse consumes oats, the car petrol, the horse produces manure, the car fumes, both take up more space than the human body, require periodic attention and somewhere to rest when not in use. The horse, especially in a team or with a carriage, is, like the car, heavy and dangerous to other animals and objects in its path. The strength of the concept of affordance is that it establish("s the prop("lties of material things in relation to a particular species. It tr("ats the world of objects and makrial forms as connected in ways that are enabkd or constrained by their physical properties - in this sens(", it s("ems to ground th(" relation in a 'real' world, prior to any human interpr("tation or construc­ tion of it. For Jan Hutchby (200 1 ), the concept of affordance is pr("ferabl(" to tilE' textual metaphor so oft("n ("mploy("d in social construction of tech­ nology writing, iwcause it allows for a realist, physical r("lation. As Gibson hillls("lf put it: Tht' alfordanc!" of ,;ortlt'lhing does not chang!" as t h t Ilt'!"d o f tilt" obs!" l'v("1' changes . . . . The ohjeci do!"s Il"hal i l does Iwcau,:;!" i l is Il hal i l is. ( 1 979: 1. 39) '

Hors("s and cars do not afford flying becaus(", unlik(" birds and aeroplanes, they do not have the physical capacity to mov{' w ithout a fix("c\ surface Iwneath them. Hutchby wants to incorporate the way particular objects

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constrain or enable particular courses of human action into soci ological accounts, rather than reducing such interaction with objects to the accounts of what can be done with them ( Hutchby, 200 1 : 450). The concept of affor­ dance entails the real, physical res istance of material objects to infinite vari­ ations in use by h umans, whereas textual metaphors open up a potentially limi tless range of possibilities. But the realism that the concept of affordance implies is of course itself an interpretation. Affordance is a post hoc identification of possible uses by a given animal; we know what an object affords because we know what it can be used for. One of the major distinctions between human beings and other species is their capacity for di scovering the affordances of objects. This i ncludes, of course, adapting, modify i ng and designing the material world to create affordances - this is one of the reasons why we come to have motor cars and other animals do not. Other species do do some of this discovering of affordance - as i n chimps' use of grasses to extract termites from a hole - but human beings interfere with the material ity of the world to shape it to their imaginations and their bodies. Gibson refers to this emergent qual ity of affordances as being spec ified in perception, in 'stimulus information' ( 1 979: 140). But the problem that Hutchby sees as solved by affordance is of course circular; how we know that a particular object is offering a particular affordance depends on what we know of that object. And what we know is as likely to be based on textual experience as direct experience. So, I can know that my MGB is likely to break away or skid at the back at a certain speed, not because I have felt it or seen i t happen but because I have read it or been told i t - i t i s 'common know­ ledge' among MGB drivers, even those who have learnt to drive on cars with more modern and forgiving suspension systems, shared through conversa­ tions with other MGB owner5.+ My visual perception is not a complete story; it merely suggests possibil i ties about which I already know. My knowledge does not derive simply from the stimu lus in perception, as Gibson would have us believe, because humans pass on knowledgf' in different ways from othf'r animals. Gibson's concept of affordance draws us into the complex collabor­ ation of a human and object assemblage such as the driver-car and it goes some way towards rebulling a mi nd/body dual ism by situating the coordi­ nates of physical action in the material world and resisting a separate, cogni­ tive, phase in which action is planned or programmed. Even so, it leans too heavily in favour of the perceiving human as the source of agency, in particular by treating designed artefacts as essentially the same as natural objects. The presence of a chair in a room i s not coincidental in the same way that a rock conven ient for sitting on might be. Chairs are designed, made and placed by human bei ngs followi ng cultura l patterns that are learnt and reinforced discursively. That a particular chair is intended for a parti nl­ lar person or type of person may be designed into the chair ( Dant, 1999: 79-8 1 ) or it may only become apparent by what one is told by someone else. So human beings not only design objects to afford but also design human

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beings to afford; school children are taught to respect the teacher's chair and not to sit i n i t . The object can also be designed to embody social relati ons of power - to make the user act in certai n ways,") The teacher's chair can be designed to be distinct from an ord inary chair so that the pupil s are i n n o doubt about i t s possibly being just any chair that might aHiml them silting ( i n my primary school, the seat of the teacher's chair was higher than ordinary, with a foot l edge, so the teacher could survey the class wh ilf' sitting). Alan Costall has tried to repair the concept of affordance by 'soc ial ­ izing' i t ( 1 995). He begi ns by pointing to the extent of human i n tervent ion in the material world that has not only designed in affordance hut has a l so specified it, giving objects functions and meani ngs. He makes the point that human beings learn affordances from each other, and that they police each other's uses of objects such that there is a 'morality of things' ( Costal] , 1 995: 473). In a later article Costall attempts to protect the concept of affordance from becoming too bound up in particular act ions or uses with the term 'canonical affordallce': A c h a i r. for example. is for s i t t i ng on. even t hough it lila'" he used in lIlalll

other ways, e.g. as fire,l"Ood or for stand i ng u pon. The mean i n g of a chair i ,-; defined by i t s name. sustai ned and revealed w i t h i n certain prac t i ces and rea l ized i n i t s very construct ion. It is

meant

to he a cha ir. ( Cost a l l . ] 997: 79.

emphasis in original)

The emphas i s i n his assertion i s not, however, sufficient to establish a canon, certai nly not one that my cat is going to respect when she curls up in my chair. The pol i c i ng of teachers' chai rs and academ ics' armchairs is ach ipved no t s i mply by any affordance but by til(:> use of thf' sharp word and the firm hand. Costal1 is t rying to make the concept of a !lorda n c e do more work t h a n it can. Of course, unl ike material objects, the mean ings of words can afford just about anything given sufficient translati on, but the notion of affordance itself does not tel l us anything about tIlt' rather more i n teresting social relat ions with object s that Costa]] bri ngs out; design ing, maki n g, adapt ing. learning to use, maintaini ng, policing and so on. Cars may afford locomo­ tion and mobility but the my ri a d range of ways they do it is not explicateo hy the conce p t of affordance. What is more, tllP mobility and locomotion of the car are dependent on the affordance of a driver; it woul d be more precisf' to say that it is the assemblage of driver and car that affo rds mobil ity. A n o the complexity of the relationshi p between dri v er and car has many social dimensions; it is desi gned, made, adapted, learnt, maintained, policed. changes over t i me and varies with cultural context The Dl"ivel"- Car NelwOl"k

A more complex account of the relationshi p between human bei ngs a n d objects that redi stributes agency between human beings and objects, is that of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) associated with the writ ing of Latour,

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Callon, Akrich , Law and others. ANT can be understood as a reaction to the sociologism of social studies of technology (SST) that had begun to focus on the social construction of the material world of bakelite, bikes, bridges and fridges (see e.g. MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1985; Bijker et ai., 1 987). Rather than the technical world being reveal ed, discovered or invented by i ndi viduals and subsequently shaping the social world, the social construc­ tion of technology (SCOT) perspective demonstrated that technological i nnovation was frequently shaped by particular social conditions. The SCOT approach emphasized the significance of a range of social actors - entre­ preneurs, businesses, advertisers, investors, government departments, consu mers - as all contributing to the shaping of technological develop­ ment. A NT supplemented this approach in three principal ways. First, i t identified t h e social relations i nvolved i n technological development as networks - the various actors establish reciprocal rel ationships of i nterest and power which affect how technological development proceeds. Some local networks might be presented and represented as if they constituted a s ingle actor in other, more global networks (Law and Callon, 1992) . Second, A NT emphas ized the l inguistic or semiotic work of networks in achieving technological development by pointing to the activities of i nscription, description ( Akrich, 1 992), translation (CalIon, 1986a) and so on. Third, and for my purposes most important, ANT treated material objects as actors in actor networks. These 'actants' (Akrich) or 'nonhumans' (Latour) included l iv i ng organisms: microbes (Latour, 1988), scallops (CalIon, 1 986b) as well as physical objects such as electric cars (Calion, 1 986a), transit systems (Latour, 1 996), l ighting systems (Akrich, 1 992), aircraft (Law and Call on, 1992). In the tradi tion of SST and SCOT, A NT not only enjoys an acronym, it also focuses on technological projects - usuall y failed attempts to create new systems! A l l three approaches treat material things as historically emergent and the sociological account of the technology details social actions - often discursive - that take place in an historical sequence which is presented not as causal but as a changing context in which previous events and interventions affect future ones. The approach is, then, develop­ mental or evol utionary, reverse-engineering the sequence of social circum­ stances to reveal the contingencif's that led to a final state in the network. This micro h istory (of a project or a technology rather than a society) reveals the social character of changes in the material world and A NT adds to this the material character of thf' physical components in the network. For example in Michel CalIon's account of the allempt to develop an electric car in 1 970s France, in addition to consumers, companies and ministries there are also 'accumulators, fuel cells, electrodes, electrons, catalysts and electrolytes' ( 1 986a: 22). These material components both contribute to the work of the network and can resist development just as much as social components such as organizations and cash flow. The actor network is a Sf'1 of links between heterogeneous elements that are durable, either because of human interests or physical properties,

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but that can be modified or break down. To lift this way of thinking of actor networks from the development of a new technology to a rout i ne experience such dri v i ng a petrol-engined car works remarkably well. The mobility of the driver-car is dependent on the network of the car's components and the human driver's capac i ties; there must be sufficient cash flow to provide the petrol, there must be petrol available i n petrol pumps nearby, the driver must be able to get the petrol i nto the ear and the engine must be in sufficiently good condition for the petrol to be ignited and for combustion to be translated i nto movement of the driver-car. There is a network of driver, petrol company, petrol and car to which t he humans and non-humans must be contributing if the driver-ear is to achieve mobility. But without much i nvestigation i t i s obvious that there are all sorts of other networks entai led i n this basic driverlpetrol/companylcar network. So, w i th i n the ear there is a network of spark plugs, ignition system, crankshafts, gears, transmission and so on; these need to be able to trans­ late each other's actions for drive to be achieved in the wheels. A nd at the social level there must be no fuel tax protesters blocking deliveries to petrol stations, there must be a sufficient supply of crude oil being sold by the OPEC countries and t here must be a system for t axing the fuel to contribute to the social costs of the driver-ear. ANT has a way of dealing with the poten­ t ially i nfinite proliferation of actors and networks; it 'black-boxf's' networks that appear or are prf'sf'nted as a single f'ntity within a particular Ilf'twork ( C allon et aI., 1 986: xvi; Latour, 1 999: 304). So the worki ngs of thf' ear and the process of the petrol industry are black-boxed in the routinf' of the filling u p with petrol and driving off. These Ilf'tworks are onl\' attended to by tilt' drivf'r-car when something gOf'S wrong; when therf' is no petrol to be bought, when prices c hange, when the car won't start, when tllf' perfonmmcf' of the car IS poor. TIlt' concept of affordance does not oiff'r any account of the dynamics of rel ations between humans and objects; i t overlooks the fact that they change OVf'r time and accord i ng to social context. This temporal and variable d imension is provided bv actor-network theon; in which t he relat ionship betwf'en human and object is Sf'f'n to evolve and to brillg about changes in the possibility of social action. But actor-lIet lHlrk theory treats the relationship bf'tween humalls alld objects as akays Illf'ciiatf'd through some form of language. 111 some cases this is the text of a report by an engineer or a publicit\' statement. at other t imes it is the speech of a key human actor w ho descrillf's the actions of various actors in t h e network inc l uding the non-human ones. But \,f'ry often the textual glo�s is created by the actor-network theorist and i t i� articulated Il ith an irony and p ia\'­ fulness that distances the reader from the activities and operat iolls of tilt' material objects. Even more striking i� the general ab�ence of any attempt to explore how the h uman and the nOll-human actors i nteract . There is no reference to video or observational data.(' no cHTou nt of ItO\\ thing::; work or how people use them, hut there are plE'lltl" of concepts, d iagrams and allusive summarizing comments. The onlv ,;ocial adion reported for all t he

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actors in the network, human and non-human, is communicative. For ANT this is always treated as a process of 'translation'; human actors 'delegate' tasks to technical objects and the objects operate as 'scripts' that regulate human action or act as 'intermediaries' l inking nodes in the network. ANT expands on the social and h istorical character of affordances but tells us little about the lived nature of human beings and objects. One of Latour's examples of the merging of humans and non-humans derives from the debate over whether guns kill people or whether it is the people with the guns who kill: 'Which of them, then, the gun or the citizen, is the actor in this s ituation? Someone else (a citizen-gun, a gun-citizen)' ( 1 999: 1 79, emphasis in original). As Latour points out, the human agent is transformed by the possession of the gun, but the gun is also transformed by being in the hand of someone willing to use it. The programme of action of both subject and object is transformed once they come together combined they may act towards a quite different goal than either could have ach ieved independently. It is in this sense that the assemblage of the driver­ car brings about a form of social being and a set of social actions that is different from other forms of being and action. But a problem with actor­ network theory and Latour's various theorizations, is that the difference between humans and non-humans is left unclarified. For example, with the c itizen-gun Latour asserts: Purposeful action and intentionality may not be properties of objects, but they are not properties of humans either. They are properties of institutions, of apparatuses, of what Foucault called dispositifs . Only corporate bodies are able to absorb the proliferation of mediators, to regulate their expression, to redistribute skills, to force boxes to blacken and close . . . . Boeing 747s do not fly, airlines fly. (Latour, 1 999: 1 92-3)

Thi s is a strange formulation for a number of reasons. First, i t is unclear what birds are doing when they fly, or the individual owner/pilot - it is not a requirement of flying (or car-driving) that there be an institution or corpor­ ate body. Having a gun licence, a pilot's licence or a driving licence indi­ cates a dispositiJ that sanctions certain actions but does not, for example, initiate or direct them. Second, the human is, like the bird, itself an object - it is embodied. This means that it acts as an entity in itself - it is corpor­ ate in itself, has 'non-human' properties as well as 'human' ones. Third, the disposition to act does not need to be reduced to a single mental act, a moti­ vation for example, for it to be attributed to a person; a body that exercises intentions. Fourth, Latour is threatening the possibility of free will, of inten­ tionality and the operation of choice, which is normally taken to reside in human beings but not in objects. The car itself may 'act' (by going slowly or pulling to the left) but we do not attribute this to the intention or choice of the car (or the engine, or the steering). Of course, some non-humans do have a measure of intention­ ality and the riders of horses will attribute the slowness of the horse to its

Dan!

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intentionality (reluctance to ride away from food and home. keeness to ride towards food and home . . . ) . ' But objects that are l ifeless, especially arti­ ficial objects l ike cars, do not have any i ntentionality of their own. H owever, one of the features of artificial objects i s that they are made by people who do have intenti ons. These intentions are designed and made into the object. In this sense, all non-humans become i mbued with human intentional ity; guns are intended for k illing, cars for driving. Horses, once trained, fed and saddled, become non-humans that have taken on some human intentional­ ity for riding. One of Latour's favourite examples is the 'sleeping pol iceman' or speed bump, an object which pol ices the use of cars ( l 992: 244; ] 999: ] 88)1\ by clearl y interrupting the normally smooth surface of the road causing the car to bounce if it is driven over the bump too fast. For Latour the '
Maurice Merleau-Ponty argues against a cogn itive understanding of percep­ tion to show that the senses cannot be understood as mach i nic receptors that interface between an in ner bei ng and the outer "orld. What his phenomenology upsets is the 'common-sense' notion of the outer world having a fixed geometry and stable order of relations that are given to human bei ngs through thei r senses. Instead he shows that perception is situated and oriented to the k i naesthetic awareness of bod" so that. as he puts it, the body is 'geared' to the world. which is how it becomes available to the senses. This way of understanding the embodi ed experience of the material

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world emphasizes that the continuity of the world is because our bodies have a history of sensuous experience that we carry into the next moment. Merleau-Ponty sums up the embodiment of human being like this: There is, therefore, another subject beneath me, for whom a world exists before I am here, and who marks out my place i n it. This capti ve or natural spirit is my body, not that monwntary body which is the i nstrument of my personal choices and which fastens upon this or that world, but the system of anonymous 'fu nctions' which draw every particular focus into a general project. ( M erleau-Ponty, 1 962: 254)

He goes on to point out that this embodied orientation to the world that human beings carry into each moment, is not simply given at birth but is perpetually modified. Put this way we can see that the human component in an assemblage such as that of the driver-car brings to the relationship qualities that cannot be read off from either the mechanical or sense func­ tions of the body. Merleau-Ponty's understand i ng of perception is not dependent on i ndi­ vidual senses generating disembodi ed information but on the mutual effect of all the body's senses bringi ng about a state of perception that depends on bodily memory. 9 What Gibson saw as 'astounding' in the way that a driver can process information while overtaking is of course routine for people who drive regularly on two-lane major roads. The perception of road, other moving objects and embodied movement depends not on processing data as a machine would, but through experiencing the process in relation to bodily memory. For Merleau-Ponty the relationship between us and the phenom­ enal world of experience is best understood as like 'communicating' with it: . . . every perception i s a communication or a communion, the taking u p or completion by us of some extraneous inten tion or, on the other hand, the complete expression outside oursel ves of our perceptual powers and a coition, so to speak, of our body with t h i ngs. ( M erleau- Ponty. 1 962: 320)

Nonetheless, a key communication between dri ver, car and road depends on visual ability; l ack of sight is a bodily deficit that cannot, yet, be compen­ sated for. The driver looks out from their seat in the car through a quadrant lO at the world rushing towards her at a variety of speeds. Whereas for Gibson ( 1 982b) it is a maller of the way that the image of the world is deformed on the retina of the eye as it moves through space, for Merleau-Ponty visual perception is an orientation of the whole body to the world through which it moves. 1 1 What is perceived i n the visual field is complemented by the kinaesthesia of the body and its trajectory as a whole, by the sounds of the engine, the road and the wind on the car, by the resistance of steering wheel , accelerator and brakes - even the feel of the road through the wheels of the car. So, our visual perception of the 'sleeping policeman', or even the sign i ndicating the presence of speed bumps, is tied to previous experience of the feel of the car goi ng over bumps.

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To think of driving as requiring the processing of enormously complex information selected and filtered through the visual field, sufficient for safe control of the vehicle, makes i t seem astounding. Yet i t is a readily achieved skill by most human beings - very few people cannot learn to drive provided they have sight. The process of driving is largely habitual, 1 2 an embodied skill that becomes a taken-for-granted way of moving through space - it i s a t between, roughly, 3 0 and 7 0 miles a n hour that the driver-car in modern societies conquers space. Many competent drivers find slow speed driving difficult and disorienting and exceeding their usual top speed d isconcert­ ing. The gearing and steering mechanisms of most cars are also designed to work best within this speed range. The driver's sense of how fast they are going and what speed the road conditions will permit, becomes a skill embodied through the vehicle, not only its dials and controls but also its sounds and vibrations. Merleau-Ponty describes how the feather in a woman's hat, a blind man's stick and the driver's car, are objects incorpor­ ated for the action in hand: To get used to a hat, a car, a stick is to be transplanted into them, or conversely, to incorporate them into the bulk of our own body. Habit expresses our power of dilating our being-in-the-world, or changing our existence by appropriating fresh instruments. (Merleau-Ponty, 1 962: 1 43)

So the human driver is habitually embodied within the car as an assem­ blage that can achieve automobility. 13 The driver-car can take on board friends, family, pets, shopping, a change of tyre, a change of clothing, as i t moves into the world o f roads, signs, other cars, buildings and s o on. The embodied orientation to a world of rapidly moving objects from a sitting but rapidly moving position is something that must be learnL 1 4 Just as the child learns to walk, to run, to ride a bike and in so doing expands her or his engagement with the physical world, so the young person learning to drive will delight in that shift in their embodied relationship with the world that goes with driving the car, moving at a speed i mpossible without assistance to the body. For Merleau-Ponty, perception in movement, such as that necessary for driving, is dependent on orientation to varied fixed points - such as the road, lamp-posts, the dashboard, other vehicles. He says 'motion is a phenomenon of levels, every movement presupposing a certain anchorage which is variable' (Merleau-Ponty, 1 962: 279). Percep­ tion in movement is not about the objective j udgement of distance and speed but about noting the changes from one moment to the next. Some people seek such transformations of bodily experience s imply for its own pleasure; the modern horse rider, the windsurfer, para-glider and so on. But driving a car is an experience that becomes entwined, for most drivers, in everyday practice such that it becomes ordinary and the re-orien­ tation of the body to the rest of the material world ceases to be remarkable or pleasurable in i tself. I S Of course there are people for whom this type of transformation of bodily experience in the world is unbearable - they are

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unable to overcome their fear and disorientation and so avoid the experi­ ence of dri ving. The embodied orientation to being in a fast-moving object in a restricted space with other fast-moving objects i s a cultural phenomenon that has become characteristic of late modern societies. The driver assem­ bles their learnt skill with the functionality of a car so as to be able to 'enter a narrow opening and see that I can "get through" without comparing the width of the opening with that of the wings, j ust as I go through a doorway without checking the width of the doorway against my body' (Merleau-Ponty, 1 962: 1 43). For most people in late modernity the experience of the driver­ car becomes an aspect of bodily experience that they carry into all their other perceptions and engagements with the material world in a way that they take for granted and treat as unremarkable. The car does not simply afford the driver mobility or have i ndependent agency as an actant; i t enables a range o f humanly embodied actions available only t o the driver­ car. Conclusions

The driver-car is neither a thing nor a person; it is an assembled social being that takes on properties of both and cannot exist without both. I have argued that to understand driving as dependent on the mechanics of perception puts the emphasis on the presumed cognitive capacities of human beings whereas the concept of 'affordance' suggests that there is a prior physical relationship. But to treat the car as offering affordance to its driver obscures the complex social process in which human intentionality creates affor­ dances in objects such as cars - and in human beings such as drivers. Actor­ network theory begins to open up the social history of connections between human beings and objects that bring about technical systems such as the driver-car. But ANT transforms such i nteractive and embodied relationships into ones that are textual and symmetrical, and threatens to attribute equivalent agency to humans and non-humans. Affordance hints at a dualism between mind and body that ANT counters forcefully but ANT overlooks the materiality of bodies, and the intentionality of subjectivity under the cover of dragging all materiality equally into society. I have argued that Merleau-Ponty recognizes the embodied and intentional nature of human relationships with objects without putting the apparatus of percep­ tion between minds and the material world. The assemblage of the driver­ car produces the possibility of action that, once it becomes routine, habitual and ubiquitous, becomes an ordinary form of embodied social action. People who have become familiar with the driver-car through participating in the assemblage become oriented to their social world, partly at least, through the forms of action of which it is capable. Social institutions - legal systems, the conventions of driving, traffic management - develop to embed the coor­ dinated habits of driver-cars within the social fabric. The use of cars is not then simply functional, a matter of convenience, nor is it reducible to individual, conscious decision. Like the wearing of clothes or following

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conventions of politeness, the actions of the driver-car have become a feature of the flow of daily social life that cannot simply be removed or phased out (like dangerous drivers or leaded petrol). As political concern responds to the threats to life and environment of the car powered by fossil fuels, it is important to recognize that the car is not simply a mode of transport and that any call for a 'shift' to more eco­ logically sound mobility requires much more than rational choice about the consequences of different forms of transport. The automobility that i s realized in the driver-car serves a s both an extension o f the human body and an extension of technology and society into the human. The driver-car is socially embedded as a system of affordances, actor networks and embodi­ ment that is not going to be foregone or forgotten easily. The object of the car is likely to undergo a dramatic transformation within the next few decades, 1 6 yet even if the weight, body shape, controls, engine and fuel are transformed, it seems likely that the driver-car will continue to include an object on wheels in which a human being can sit and, with simple adjust­ ments of peripheral limbs, steer and direct to go faster or slower. Both the technology of the motor car and the skills and techniques of the driver may be superseded or i mproved - as have the horse/rider and walker/shoe - but some form of driver-car is l ikely to remain. The symbiotic relationship between driver and car is one that has transformed the material environment and the nature of sociality in late modern societies (see Dant and Martin, 2001) and it is unlikely that it will be put aside easily. The empirical nature of the driver-car - including its status as a form of mobility capitaF 7 deserves urgent study so that policy discussions take into account what is entailed in bringing about a 'modal shift' to more sustainable forms of transport and mobility. The study of the driver-car will also contribute to an understanding of the various assem­ blages that intermediate between the persons and societies of the late modern world. -

Notes 1 . See, for example, Chinoy ( 1955), Goldthorpe et al. (1968), Beynon (1973), Flink (1975, 1988), Altshuler et al. (1984), Gartman (1994).

2. See, for example, Barthes (1993 [1963]), Lefebvre (1971 [ 1968]), Sachs (1992), Liniado (1996), O'Connell ( 1 998), Thoms et al. (1998). 3. Any connection with Deleuze and Guattari's (1988: 73) notion of the 'machinic assemblage' is, of course, coincidental. 4. Sharrock and Coulter (1998: 1 55) made the same point i n relation to bananas, e-coli bacteria and mothers. 5. This is a recurring theme in Latour's writing about seat-belts, hotel key-fobs, sleeping policemen and the Berliner key (Latour, 1 99 1 , 1992). 6. Latour does have some photographs of the Aramis transit system ( 1 996) and photographs that are integrated into the description of the scientific fieldwork that show humans interacting with objects (1999). 7. There are clearly degrees of intentionality that can be ascribed or discerned in

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animals - horses demonstrate some, scallops do not. Nonetheless, Michel Callon writes that the scallops in St Brieuc bay 'must first be willing to anchor themselves' (1986b: 2 1 1); yet in what follows there is no account of how the scallops exercise intention or will. Because the scallops' resistance to anchoring is not consistent some do, some don't - Callon is able to impute intention to their individual behav­ iour, as if the scallops were exercising intention. Since scientists count the number of anchoring larvae Callon treats the process as symmetrical with the election of representatives. He might as well treat the counting of road deaths as equivalent to the election of representatives. Electors demonstrate intention in their action, scallops that anchor and people who die on the roads are succumbing to circum­ stances independently of their intentions. 8. Latour claims that the bump in the road known as a sleeping policeman 'does not resemble one in the least' (1999: 188). I've always fondly imagined a police­ man asleep under the tarmac, causing an elongated and solid lump much as if he was under a duvet. Another way of thinking of it is that the effect on the car i s much the same a s if one had driven over a policeman. 9. 'The body is borne towards tactile experience by all its surfaces and all its organs simultaneously, and carries with it a certain typical structure of the tactile "world'" (Merleau-Ponty, 1 962: 3 1 7). 1 0. Car windscreens are nowadays usually curved and slanted, indicating the driver's visual zone of attention as much as significantly improving airflow. 1 1 . Sight may lead this orientation to other objects so the driver's eye may take a 'hold' on an object and has a 'certain power of making contact with things' but their visual presentation 'is not a screen on which they are projected' (Merleau-Ponty, 1 962: 279) as a train passenger's view might be construed. 12. ' . . . habit . . . is k nowledge in the hands, which is forthcoming only when bodily effort is made, and cannot be formulated in detachment from that effort' (Merleau­ Ponty, 1962: 144). 13. Don Ihde suggests that the car becomes a symbiotic extension of the body of the driver (1974: 272). 14. 'Motion is a modulation of an already familiar setting' (Merleau-Ponty, 1962: 277). 15. Although there are of course many people who take pleasure in dealing with cars and driving, as is shown by the range of car magazines and television programmes devoted to cars (but not washing machines and other less pleasurable objects). Many people gain pleasure from driving - but there is no reason to suggest that the non-human components in the assemblage gain any such pleasure. 1 6. See for example the fascinating discussion of the Hypercar in Hawken et al. (1999). 1 7 . The driver-car represents an accumulation of physical, financial and social resources that is controlled by an individual but operates in the public context of roads, traffic systems and taxes. A study of the variations in the mobility capital entailed in the driver-car would bring out its inflected forms (gendered, aged, culturally specific, powerful, protected and so on) as well as providing a basis for comparison with other mobile beings such as the passenger, the pedestrian and the cyclist. It would also highlight the social exclusion that results from relative lack of access to mobility capital.

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Worker: (J ) Industrial Attitudes and Behaviour and (2) Political Attitudes and Behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. H araway, D. ( 1 99 1 ) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books. H awken, P. , A . B. Lovins and L H . Lovins ( 1 999) Natural Capita/ism: The Ne.yt Industrial Revolution. London: Earthscan Publ ications. H awkin�, R. ( 1 986) ' A Road Not Taken: Soc iology and the Neglect of the A utomo­ bi le', California Sociologist 9( 1-2): 6 1 -79. H utchby, 1 . (200 1 ) 'Technologies. Texts and A fTordances'. Sociology .'3.')(2): 441 -56. Ihde, D. ( 1 974) 'The Experience of Technology: Human-Mach ine Relations', Cultural Hermeneutics 2: 267-79. Latour, B. ( 1 938) The Pasteurization of Francl'. Cambridge. M A: H arvard Uni versity Press. Latour, B. ( 1 99 1 ) 'Technology is Society M ade Durable'. in l Law (ed . ) A Sociology o/ Monsters: Essays on POUler, Technology a nd Domination . London: Rout ledge, Latour, B. ( 1 992) 'Where are the M issing Masses"? The Sociology of a Few M u ndane Artifacts', in W. Bijker and J. Lm\ (eds) Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnica/ Change. Cambridge, M A : M IT Prt>ss. Latour, B. ( 1 996) Ammis, or The Lope of Technology. Cambridge, M A : Harvard University Press. Latour, B. ( 1 999) Pandora 's Hope: Essays 011 the Realit) of Science Studies. Cambridge, M A : H arvard U n iversity Press. Law, J. and M. Calion ( 1 992) 'The Life and Deat h of an A i rcraf"t: A Network A nalysis of Technical C hange', i n W. Bij ker and J. Law (eds) Shaping Tech.nolog)!Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, M A: M IT Press. Lefebvre, H . ( 1 97 1 ) Everyda r Life in the Modem World. London: A llen Lane. Pengu in Press. (First published 1968. ) Liniado, M . ( 1 996) Car Culture a n d Countryside Change. C i rencester, Glos.: The National Trust. Luke, T ( 1 996) 'Liberal Society and Cyborg Subjectivity: The Polit ics of Environ­ ments, Bodies and Nature', A ltenwtiles 2 1 : 1 -;-30.

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McCarthy, E. Doyle ( 1 984) 'Toward a Sociology of the Physical Worlo: George Herbert Mead on Physical Objects', Studies in Symbolic Interaction 5: 1 05-2 l . M ac Kenzie. D . and J . Wajcman (eds) ( 1 985) The Social Shaping of Technology: A Reader. M i l ton Keynes: Open Un iversity Press. M annheim, K. ( 1 936) Ideology and Utopia: All introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul . M arrow, A . J . ( 1 969) The Practical Theorist: The Life and Work of Kurt 1.Rlcin . N !'w York: Basic Books. M!'ad, George H erbert ( 1 962) Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, edited by Charles W. M orris. Chicago. I L: L'niversity of Chicago Press. (First published 1 934.) Merleau-Ponty. M. ( 1 962) Phellomenology of Perception . Lonoon: Rout leoge. (First published 1 945.) M iller, D. (200 1 a) 'Driven Societies', in D . M i l l er (ed,) Car Cultures. Oxford: B!'rg. M i l l !'r. D. (ed.) (200l b) Car Cultures . Oxford: Berg. O·Connel l . S, ( 1 998) The Car and British Soriety: Class, Gender and Motoring, 1 R96-1 939. M anchester: M anchest!'r U niversi t y Press. Rosen. P. ( 1 995) 'Modern ity, Post modernity and Sociotechnieal Change in the British Cycle Ind ustry ano Cycl i ng Culture'. PhD oisserlat ion. Lancaster Uni versity, U K . Rosen. P. (2002) Framing Production: Tl'ch nolog); Culture a n d Change i n the British Bicycle Industry, Cambridge, M A : M JT Press, Sachs. W. ( 1 992) For Loue of the A utomobile: Looking Bark into the History of Our Oe.lirc.\ . Berkeley: University of California Press. Sharrock. W. and J. Coulter ( 1 998) 'On W hat \Ve Can See'. Theory &: Psychology 8(2): 1 4 7-64. Thoms. D .. L. H olden and T C laydon (eds) ( 1 998) The Motor Car and Popular Cll/tllre in the 20th Centllry. A ldershot: A sh gate. Urry. J. ( 1 999) 'Automobil itv, Car Culture and Weigh t l ess Travel', discussion paper. Departnwnt of Sociology, Lancaster L ni v!'rsity. L'K, <\I'ai lable online http: //www. lancaster.ac.uk/sociologysoc008j u . h t m l . Li ITY.

J. (2000) Sociologl be)ond Society. London: Sage.

Tim Dant is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the U n i versity of East A ngl ia, He is the author of Material Culture in the Social World ( Open University Press, 1 999) and Critical Social Theor,Y (Sage, 2003), as well as recent art icl es on the biography of objects, consumption and the cash nexus, the car in modern society (with Pete Mart i n) and the links between photogra­ [.lhy and history in the work of Benjamin and Barthes (with G raeme Gilloch), He is currently wri t i ng about material i nteraction using data from a project on t he professional care and mai ntenance of cars and completi ng a book, Materiality and Society ( Open Un iversity Press, forthcoming).

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Mobility and Safety

Jorg Beckmann

T

HIS ARTICLE may be seen as something of an exercise in traff-ic safety. It seeks to generate new insight into road traffic accidents by disentangling both the internal elements and the social context of what has been called the 'car-driver hybrid' (Sheller and Urry, 2000). By exploring the ways of this hybrid, from the road into the spread-sheets of safety scientists, the article offers a critical take on the art of designing road safety. More importantly still, it seeks to contribute to social studies of trans­ port and mobility through development of analytical concepts within the discipl i ne, as well as to stress the importance of its role in contemporary sociology. The exercise is made up of three steps each comprising a different sociological concept. The first step deals with the concept of mobility, the last with that of safety. In between lie two concepts - motility and hybrid­ ity - which are woven together by the notion of the 'motile hybrid'. Mobility, it seems, has become a cardinal concept in contemporary social science. Not only is mobility seen as the central category that, under a new global order, distinguishes the powerful from the powerless ( Bauman, 1 998), but also the 'social as society' has now overwhelmingly become the 'social as mobility' (Urry, 2000: 2). The increasing, theoretical twinning of mobility and modernity has motivated sociologists and anthropologists alike to engage in studying, managing, improving and changing the social organiz­ ation of a particular form of everyday mobility, that is to say automobility. It is this strand of research - into the social and cultural role of the motor car - to which the first part of this article adheres. Against this background, the second part then i ntroduces a lesser known, and similar concept - motility. As I understand it, the notion of motility points to a phenomenon which is omnipresent within the social spaces of mobility, traffic and transport, but which has yet recei ved little or no explicit attention: the coexistence and mutual dependency of mobility and immobility. According to authors such as Albertsen and Diken (2001), mobility is seen as relational, ambivalent and paradoxical, and thus always

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pregnant with its opposite number: immobility. To put i t another way, there is no speeding up without slowing down; no 'liquefying' without 'solidify­ ing', as Zygmunt Bauman (2000) put it. I would say therefore that mobility and immobility always go hand in hand - in an odd double-pack called 'mot i lity' . In a subsequent step, then, another concept is added to this package, that of hybridity. Although, as the notion of the car-driver hybrid suggests, hybridity seems to have a lot to offer to traffic studies, it has until now remained just a catchphrase, used simply to hint at some of the most signifi­ cant aspects in the social reality of everyday mobility. I suggest that in order to better integrate hybridity into the toolbox of transport sociology, it should be linked with motility. As a consequence of the intertwining of hybridity and motility a new entity would emerge: the motile hybrid. Motile hybrids are neither objects, nor subjects; neither at rest, nor on the move - they are embodied ambiguity. This idea will be made explicit below when we take a closer look at traffic safety. So it is that safety is the key concept that frames the third and last part of the article. Traffic safety is the domain wherein the motile hybrid resides, h idden beneath a l ayer of expert-talk. As I will show, much of what is invented, applied and evaluated by auto-safety experts (whether it comes across as a behavioural, legal or technical measurement) calls for the consideration of hybridity and motility as powerful metaphors. Conse­ quently, the last part of this article surveys the very motile hybrids constructed within contemporary traffic safety science. In the process, it draws on Latour's notion of 'immutable mobiles' (Latour, 1 988); it shows how car-driver hybrids are subject to various immutabilizations/mutabi­ lizations and mobilizationslimmobilizations. The decision to present mobility, motility, hybridity and safety in precisely this order is not an arbitrary one. I will highlight in the conclusion that, as mobility and safety bracket the interwoven notions of motility and hybridity, they come to represent the two ends of a spectrum. It will become clear that the terms in between mobility and safety are indeed 'in-between terms'; they capture a phenomenon that is not quite mobile and not quite safe. Mohility - An Amhiguous Category

Mobility has long been a key category within contemporary social sciences, and at the centre of social studies of mobility is found an array of publi­ cations on the social and geographical movement of both modern collectives and individuals. Mobil ity has become key in characterizing modern societies; its significance is demonstrated in essential reading by authors such as John Urry (2000), Zygmunt Bauman (2000) and Manuel Castells ( 1996). Today, the sociology of mobility emphasizes the interdependence of social-, residential-, virtual- and auto-mobility (Urry, 2000, 2004); it speaks of traditional and reflexive mobilities (Beckmann, 2001a); it identifies

Beckmann

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certai n paradigmatic mobilities ( Bonss and Kesselring, 1999); or it couples mobility with immobility (Albertsen and Diken, 200 1 ). Moreover, sociologists and anthropologists are no\\ joining forces with scientists engaged in studyi ng, managing, improving and changing tIlt' social organization of a particular k ind of mobility - that is to say everyday traffic. As social scientists are getting their hands dirty through their involvement in transport politics, the quest for a better social-theoretical foundation to notions such as (auto)mobility, traffic and transport is growing tremendously. Hence, numerous attempts to solidify a theoretical basis for the social study of mobility and traffic are under way, h inging on a range of grand and middle-range theories. One finds, for example, accounts by critical theorists on the socio-economic effects of automobility ( Kramer­ Badoni et aI ., 1971), system theoretical trials that accentuate the autopoiesis of the auto-system ( Kuhm, 1997), and orthodox and reflexive modernization theories that twin modernization with mobilization ( Rammler, 2001). Moreover, hyphenated sociologies like the sociology of risk (Hagman, 1 999), of consumption ( Gartman, 1994), of technology (Canzler, 1996) and of youth (Tully, 1 998), to name but a few, have given rise to insightful inquiries i nto multiple forms of everyday mobility. These i nsights have shown that mobility can be a h ighly ambivalent concept. This supposed inherent ambivalence is well illustrated in the case of automobility. A number of authors have signalled that the car simul­ taneously enables and disables, individualizes and rei ntegrates, liberates its users from one auto-centred spatio-temporality and coerces them i nto another. The car is seen as a mixed blessing - a beneficial risk-technology - that has turned against i tself. Other authors speak of the sorcerer's appren­ tice syndrome (Canzler, 1996) and refer in a Beckian vein to the hazardous forces unleashed by the car ( Beck, 1992). Modern risks such as environ­ mental pollution, urban and rural degradation and traffic casualties have come to alter the mobility paradigm of automobility ( Beckmann, 200 1 b). But as automobility threatens its own foundations, it opens itself up to iter­ ative processes of reflexivity, that is to say self-reference, self-awareness, self-monitoring, self-interpretation and self-criticism. From this reflexive cycle, the car arises anew, once more able to sustain its o\\n (re)production - automobility as a never-ending spiral, fuelled by its own contradictions. This unique feature of automobility has motivated social theorists to employ the car as a metaphor for mobility, as the 'avatar of mobility' (Thrift, 1996: 272). For these theorists, the ways of the car mirror those of mobil ity i tself, and, even more importantly, they serve to demonstrate how moderniz­ ation is tantamount to mobil ization. Against this background, mobility is wedded to modernity, and we may now speak of a mobility-modernity nexus. However, these two categories are bound together not so much by the assumption that modernization both i nduces and relies on all kinds of mobilization processes, but by the fact that both modernity and mobility are ever pregnant with their opposites. As modernity is bound up with pre­ modern, non-modern, or anti-modern ethics and world-views (Berman,

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1 982), mobility is tightly bound to immobility. In other words, mobility relies on immobility; it is precisely because certain subjects and objects are im­ mobilized that others can travel. Rather than seei ng modernity as a contin­ ual process of 'setting free' and 'letting go', as traditional modernization theory suggests, one should see it as equally immobilizing. There are a number of traces among social philosophers that express this paradox quite convincingly. An often-cited illustration of this ambigu­ ity can be found in the works of Paul Virilio and his popular metaphor of the 'rushing standstill'. Virilio frequently speaks of 'speed' only in conj unc­ tion with 'inertia', the alter ego of any high-velocity mobility. He claims that speed does not come without inertia, thus establishing a close relation between mobility and immobility. For him though, at the end of any mobiliz­ ation process, the standstill awaits the traveller; any journey in Virilio's 'last vehicle' will terminate with the 'integral accident', wherein any movement dies away and the dromocratic society ceases to exist. Inspired by Virilio and others, Albertsen and Diken (200 1 ), although in less apocalyptic terms, speak of this very relativity of mobility. They too point out that mobil ity is a relational concept and that 'one's mobility may well be another's immo­ bility. More importantly, the immobile "stand-ins" can contribute consider­ ably to the stabilization of the mobile, reticular world today' (Albertsen and Diken, 200 1 : 22). So again, mobilization requires immobilization. Against this background, I argue that the inherent ambiguity of mobility has far-reaching consequences for transportation research. It is an invi tation to revise some of the discipline's unambiguous interpretations of contemporary mobil ity-politics and traffic-planning, and furthermore it is a request to look out for new, and more ambivalent metaphors. As mobiliz­ ation can no longer be thought of independently from immobilization, any binary strategy to either slow down or speed up traffic, close or widen road infrastructure, allow or abate emissions, or improve or reduce safety can now be seen to have unintended and ambiguous consequences. One of these consequences is the need to ask the following: how should one today practise transport science, politics and planning? Researchers, politicians and planners alike are now being asked 'to work with ambiva­ lence', and thus to recognize the ambiguity of many of their own concepts, strategies and plans. Especially for transportation science this feature of contemporary traffic reality is a serious one, since many of its tools and instruments are less than reflexive; they do not consider their i nherent ambivalence. I nstead, they are presented and used as 'transport solutions', free from side-effects or feedback. Future transport studies need to invent concepts and categories that can stand up to such notions as reflexivity, conti ngency and ambiguity. To make way for such invention I shall render the concept of mobility itself more reflexive, contingent and ambiguous, and I shall explain how this is done and why it might be useful. What follows is intended to offer an example for a more mobile traffic science, in the process generating a new - and hopefully powerful - metaphor called motility.

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Motility and Hybridity: The Wake of the Motile Hybrid

The state that is 'being in the (modern) world' is without doubt framed by numerous coex isting mobili ties and immobilities. The modern human i s both a mobile and immobile subject and object a t t h e same time. S/he is constantly osc illating between various movements and non-movements (but never just 'at rest' or 'on the move') as s/he is simul taneously transgressing the status of subject and object, of movi ng and being moved. Examples are the car-driver, the net-suder or even the escalator-rider. Any traveller who has 'hit the road' and continues his or her journey by mechanical or digital means of movement is both at rest and on the move. The body is arrested in the driver's seat while the person commutes to work, and the net-surfer stays at home while the virtual self roams cyberspace. Who can say how mobile these travellers are? Who can say if they are movers or the moved"? To capture this state, I suggest a new categorization of entity, called motile hybrids. In opposition to mobility, which always refers to realized movements such as the ones in traffic, migrati on or tourism, motilitl' means the abil ity to be mobile without necessaril y performing movement ( Beckmann, 2001 b). As such, it embraces the various hybrid forms that lie in between mobility and immobility. Motil ity means neither immobility nor mobility, it describes the motile stages where people are physically, virtu­ ally or residentially not quite at rest and not quite on the move. The most prominent of such stages is nowadays the virtual traveller at rest in front of his or her interface. Sitting at the home PC and travelling through cyber­ space is a mode of being in the world that combines mobil ity and immo­ bility - here, the cyber-traveller l i ves a motile existence. Apart from its diverse uses within medical sc ience, the term motility has recently made irregular appearances within the social sciences, especially in the works of those interested in speed and movement. Vi ri l io, for example, employs the term in a simil ar manner as I do in this artic-le. For Virilio, too, it illustrates the coexistence of movement and inertia. H owever, h i s use is more apocalyptic and primarily serves to h ighl ight a paralysing trait of interactive technologies. H e states: Doomed to inert ia, the inactive being transfers his natural capaci ties for movement and displacement to probes and scanners which i nstantaneously i nform him about a remote reality, to the detriment of h i s own faculties of apprehension of the real, after the example of the para-quadriplegic who can guide by remote control - teleguide - his environment. his abode, which is a model of that home automation, of those 'Smart H ouses· that respond to our every whim. Having been first mobile, t he n motorized, man w i l l thus become motile, deliberately limiting his body's area of influence to a few gestures, a few impulses like channel surfing. (Virilio, 1 997: 1 6- 1 7)

In contrast to Vi ri l io, I suggest concentrating on the ambival ent nature of motilities, that is, on its capacity to both paralyse and mobilize. Thi s apparently contradictory capacity cannot be fully understood

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without taking account of the genuine spatiality of motility. Immobility is the inability to overcome space - and mobility is the ability to do j ust that. Motility, then, can mean the coexistence of immobility in one k ind of spatio­ temporality, and mobility in another. Such understanding of motility and motile agents presumes that 'being in the world' is always about being in different spaces simultaneously. The absent-minded car driver, for example, exists, resides and travels in a number of parallel spaces: inside the space of imagination, his or her mind roams freely; inside the i nner car space the driver's body is immobilized; on the road, the hybrid moves along stream­ lined road-space. Motility, thus, is a spatial phenomenon in that it captures different (im)mobilities in different spaces. Now, having described what motility means, I shall turn to hybridity in order to weave those two concepts together. The common feature of both terms is that they signify a blurring of binary codes. As motility hints at a stage between all kinds of mobilities and immobilities, hybridity challenges a tradi tional j uxtaposition of subjects and objects. Hybridity is a prominent analytical concept within diverse fields of social inquiry. It appears regularly in studies of identity, ethnicity and migration (see, for instance, Papastergiadis, 2000), to illustrate the blurred characteristics of global nomads. Moreover, it has become a core tool for those dissecting the social construction of science and technology. 1 Among the latter, hybridity is generally understood to be the merging of human and non-human agencies, of people and machines. More recently and specific­ ally, it has been employed by transport and mobility sociologists to explore the changing nature of the car-driver relationship. The car-driver hybrid is seen as a 'monster in a metal cocoon' (Lupton, 1 999), as a 'cyborg' that possesses both human and non-human features. Here, hybridity becomes a 'container' for a variety of alterations in the car-driver relationship. It is linked to popular traffic-talk, evolving around 'intelligence' - as in, for example, 'Intelligent Transportation Systems' (ITS). At the heart of these as yet unexplored alterations lie the high-technological implants into the traffic system: the car and the driver him/herself. In this case, hybridity not only refers to the degree to which the human driver (as the subject of movement) merges with the non-human vehicle (as the object of movement), but also to the extent that technology has replaced human action and, thus, has blurred the distinctions between entities with and without agency. Hybridization is widely understood as a merging process. Two entities merge and weave their features into one another. Prominent hybrids are, for instance, found in fauna ('wolf-hybrids') and flora ('lady's slipper hybrids'), or in car engineering and design (such as hybrid buses which feature both traction batteries and a diesel engine). 2 What all hybrids share is a combi­ nation of the essential features of their parent entities; a wolf-hybrid embodies traits of a wild wolf and domesticated dog. They are something in between two poles, whose distinctions they themselves blur. Often, these poles are i ndeed opposites (like the 'wild' and 'domesticated' of the wolf-dog). What the hybrid combines then are two, seemingly contradictory

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factors; in the case of the car-driver hybrid, these would be the human features of the dri ver, and the inhuman features of the motor-car. However, apart from displaying merely a 'pot-pourri' of the character­ istics of the agents from which they originate, hybrids simultaneously develop distinct features of their own. The characteristics of the car-driver hybrid are both similar to those of the car and those of the driver, and distinctly different. So it is that a car-driver hybrid seems both historic and without history; it is a new actor within traffic that nevertheless demonstrates some of the traits of the car and the driver. 1 This hybrid, as the offspring of the car and driver, has already made a few appearances within tradi tional transport disciplines. For instance, a similar yet i ncomplete interpretation of what happens between the car and the driver is offered by traffic psychologists: to them it is the 'interplay between car and driver' that leads to similar ties to those that make up the hybrid. Within traffic psychology such interplay is regarded as pivotal in human interaction with cars. Their psychological abstraction, on the other hand, assigns agency only to the human subject, and sees the driver as the one who steers the actual i nterplay itself. A sceptic of 'hybrid research' would then argue that 'interplay between driver and car' already well covers the various phenomena occurring when the two entities - car and driver meet on the road. Against their scepticism, I would put forward this simple argument: that the employment of a new category, such as the hybrid, is very l ikely to lead to a new perspective on accidents, and to generate new research results. More particularly, however, I would suggest that the inter­ play between the two entities is something very different from the rise of a new entity/actor altogether - the car-driver hybrid - where the governance of interplay is no longer merely in the hands of the driver. Thus, viewing the car and the driver as one, and studying the politics of hybrids, has grave implications for contemporary traffic-Realpolitik. The question to ask is not how do car and driver interact, but what are the history and politics of the automotive organism - the 'automorg' - that we enCOLlnter in the motile car-driver hybrid? In trying to answer these questions, I will now address some of the most prominent themes, around which discourses of 'street-hybridity' evolve. On the road, hybridity translates first and foremost into two terms: 'intelligence' and 'assistance'. Automotive organisms are 'intelligent' beings - they exist in 'intelligent vehicles', drive on 'intelligent streets' and unite in 'intelligent transportation systems'. The inscribed intelligence of cars, roads and systems enables 'assistance'. The human operator is assisted by a Personal Travel Assistant (PTA), Adaptive Cruise Controllers (ACC) or Driver Assistance Systems (DAS). Thi s proliferation of 'intelligent assist­ ance' within the discourses of contemporary traffic-debates reflects the expansion of new visions of auto-planning - visions that blur the border between car-engineering and human-engineering. 'Intelligence', traditionally construed as a trait of organic creatures, is now attributed to things. 'Assistance', traditionally provided by a human

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helper, is now a feature of technical systems. 'The intelligent-assistant­ called-car' is no longer merely a vehicle for transportation but 'a delegate' (Latour, 1 996), whom we have entrusted with the management of our everyday mobility. For that we have to thank the engineers, who have imported human properties (intelligence and assistance) to the car. Follow­ i ng Latour, the car has turned into such an anthropomorphic entity in three senses: 'first, it has been made by humans; second, it substitutes for the actions of people and is a delegate that permanently occupies the position of a h uman; and third, it shapes human action by prescribing back' (Latour, 1992: 235) where to go, how fast to get there, which road to choose or how safe to be. If the analogue automobile was the avatar of mobility, the digital car is the avatar of hybridity. Moreover, the dominant discursive construction of auto-intelligence relies heavily on the very process of hybridization. Without the genesi s of the hybrid, neither transport technologies nor transport users could acquire 'intelligence'. Only as the car-driver hybrid can both subject and object get 'smarter'. It is seldom the case that intelligence is exclusively associ­ ated with the driver alone; he or she becomes intelligent only i n the course of 'marrying' the car. Driver i ntelligence is then widely presented as a question of technological progress and technical implants. Without his or her delegate, a driver alone does not appear to qualify for higher intelli­ gence. Clearly, 'intelligence' and 'assistance' very convinci ngly hint at the significance of all-pervasive hybridization processes i n traffic. Nevertheless, they are merely singular representations of a powerful structural change that reshapes the traffic system. Essential to this structural change is the fact that hybrids make mobility-promises which they are not able to keep. The common denominator of any ITS is a pledge to increase the independence of the single driver. Most frequent are those 'navigation-promises', which provide information for getting around the traffic jam, bypassing a construc­ tion s ite or outflanking an expensive toll road. The reasoning here is that a 'Vorsprung durch Technik' will lead to personal benefits, realized as inde­ pendence. Mobility, for the car-driver hybrid, would then be about a detachment, or an escape from the messy reali ty of complex traffic. The on-board computer enables the retreat to better roads and vision-enhancement allows for remote sensing from inside the cockpit. Road-hybrids change the meaning of mobility in that they allow for absenteeism during an activity that i s traditionally about creating proximity. It i s in particular Zygmunt Bauman who has touched upon this specific feature of postmodern mobili­ ties. He views mobility in terms of what migh t be called 'exitability'. For Bauman, mobility enables absenteeism just as much as it permits proxim­ ity. He regards the individual's escape velocity as an indicator of power. Bauman states, 'the prime technique of power is now escape, slippage, elision and avoidance, the effective rejection of any territorial confinement' (Bauman, 2000: I I). This capacity to disengage, withdraw and move away is the privilege of the motile hybrid.

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Against this background, the categories of Bauman - detachment, slippage and escape - would seem most suitable to describe traffic's struc­ tural transformation. And, indeed, what is signified by these terms seems to fit not only to CPS-based navigation systems, which guide the driver around the gridlock, but all kinds of new car-technologies. Every new implant seems to dislocate the driver from a problematic 'traffic community' and enhances autonomy- (as suggested, for instance, by the A ICC - A u tonomous Intelligent Cruise Control) . What 'IT-solutions' inside the car advertise is 'a setting-free' from structure. They seem to make communication and inter­ action with other units (drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, etc.) superfluous. The 'remote-sensor' i nside the car takes over the tasks that were formerly peJiormed by humans - that is, recording and responding to changes in environment - and l eaves the driver with a heightened sense of indepen­ dence. However, this autonomy and independence is fictitious. It is a promise not kept, because hybridity acts as a kind of social glue: the more human and non-human agents enter the roads, and the tighter the actor-network is woven, the more dubious it is to claim that mobile technologies are setting the individual free from certain spatio-temporal constraints. While for the early 20th-century driver, the car - practically and symbolically - may have allowed for independence and personal freedom, the late 20th-century driver had to acknowledge the mixed blessings of automobility. The motile hybrid of the 2 1 st century, however, has eliminated any sort of indepen­ dence that may have been assigned to earlier stages of automobil ity - not even the ambigui ties have survived the total merging of car and driver. Hybridization chains the driver to the car, i t partially deprives the subject of its agency and hands it over to a so-called intelligent transport system. When the hybrid is around, independence is absent4 - it has been substi­ tuted by isolation . The difference between those two stems from the different forms of sociality that they proffer. Independence I regard as a positive and voluntarily chosen process of liberating oneself from structural constraints. Isolation, on the contrary, i s anything but a setting free from the social struc­ ture of traffic. Instead, it depicts a state in which the subject is singled out and simultaneously coerced into existing social structures - in this case, that of automobility. Rather than being independent, car-driver hybrids are isolated, but nevertheless highly dependent upon each other. Isolation (and insulation) of the single driving traffic unit is further fuelled by the various new activities that the hybrid is capable of perform­ ing while moving through traffic. In 'intelligent traffic', driving and i nter­ action with an immediate surrounding become secondary to the array of other activities that take place i nside and are mediated through the car. If, for instance, speed control systems take over the task of piloting the vehicle through traffic, the human 'auto-pilot' will be able to direct more of his or her attention to listening to the radio and surfing the web, as well as phoning, writing, shaving, eating, etc. Hybridity, in this case, implies a transform­ ation of the car's genuine function. From a vehicle for the overcoming of space, it turns i nto a vehicle for getting work done, communicating,

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reproducing or ensuring body-hygiene.5 As other activities inside the hybrid are made possible through these devices, driving itself becomes a subordi­ nate, a 'shadow activity'. In fact, if the future car-driver is indeed replaced by an auto-pilot one would even want to reconsider the notion of the car-driver hybrid, since this very traffic unit is now just as much a screen­ worker hybrid in an auto-office, a web-surfer hybrid encapsulated by a rolling play-station, or a phone-speaker hybrid in a moveable phone booth. It seems that in traffic motile hybrids are now wrapped in a data-sui t . While t h e human body is plugged into various interfaces, t h e car begins t o mutate i nto a mainframe for all k inds of mobilities. A s these interfaces allow for additional activities, they reinforce the driver's detachment and isolation from his or her i mmediate environment. The i ntelligent car is but a vehicle that enables proximity. More likely, it is a fast 'get-away car', that enables repetitive escape and absenteeism. To summarize, as 'intelligence' and 'assistance' tighten the link between object and subject, the process of car-driver hybridization progresses. Moreover, as the progression of hybridity continues, automobil­ ity is transferred i nto automotility. The hybridization process gives way to a more apparent coexistence of mobility and immobility. It leads to simul­ taneous absence and proximity; it embeds and disembeds at the same time. Around the car-driver, we can clearly detect the ambiguity of mobility; we can witness the wake of the motile hybrid. What awakens the motile hybrid? The driving force behi nd an ongoing motilization and hybridization on our roads is an omnipresent call for safety in the (auto-)risk society. In order to bring about road safety, experts turn to techniques of hybridization and motilization. They reinforce the coupling of car and driver, while they simultaneously mobilize and i mmobilize this hybrid. However, the delivery of safety obviously has its limits, and these are met the very second motile hybrids collide. In the accident, the car-driver encounters an end of the coupling of motility and hybridity. But this end i s only a temporary one. As I will show below, the motile hybrid is re-awakened and given a vivid, 'post-mortal life' by the experts and scien­ tists who reconstruct road accidents. Safety - Deconstructing Accident Reconstruction The multi-tasking that takes place inside the intelligent car bears impli­ cations for the conceptualization, interpretation and reconstruction of acci­ dents. Frequently, car collisions occur while drivers are engaged i n activities other than driving, b e it lighting a cigarette, toying with the radio or television, dialling a telephone number, l istening to music, sleeping, talking to passengers, having sex, surfing the web, etc. The notion of hybrid­ i ty, therefore, invites us to rethink road accidents (which have become j ust as much office, home or sports accidents). With this in mind, in the third part of this article, I shall apply the concepts 'hybridity' and 'motility' to a different kind of 'accident recon­ struction'. I will illustrate how motile hybrids feature in road accidents and

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contemporary road-safety science. Furthermore, i n doing so, I hope to provide an example of how new concepts and metaphors can mobilize estab­ l i shed traffic science and so encourage the accident-analyst to raise different issues, and to ask other questions. Ideally, inside the clever car-driver hybrid ( where brainpower now replaces horsepower) most of the human errors are compensated for and forgiven by the technical assistants and delegates. Subconscious reactions are replaced by electronic adj ustments of speed and direction. The inten­ tion is to increase traffic safety and reduce accident risk by way of intell i­ gent assistance. Central for thi s assistance to work is its acceptance by those it is designed to assist. If, on the one hand, the driver does not accept what the safety engi neer has designed, system failure is foreseeable and, i nstead of solving safety problems, the intervention creates a series of neU! problems. If, on the other hand, the driver does accept the intervention, he willingly engages in a hybridization process. Thi s engagement, though, can only work because of 'holistic trust'. The hybrid ized car-driver trusts the experts, who prom ise that s/he will be less at risk once s/he accepts the car as an assistant.6 What is at work here is the reconflguration of trust - from trust in the capabilities of other fellow drivers, to trust in the capacit ies of ITS. It is the investment and redirection of trust that render the operator part of a car-driver hybrid.' In an 'ideal' hybridized traffic-world, accidents would only occur once entities began to mistrust each other. Once I decide not to trust the safety belt and refuse to use it, I put myself at risk. Once I mistrust and switch off the Intelligent Speed Control , I bring others and myself into danger. If I reject the speed limit, I express mistrust in the experti se of traffic planners. However, the problem here is not so much the fact that I have chosen not to trust my delegates, as that there is a mismatch of coexisting trust and mist rust; while I have stopped trusting, others may very well continue doing just that. Thi s erodes hybridity's social fundament; it leads to incompre­ hensible actions and reinforces conflicts. The coexistence of trusting and mistrusting entities gives way to misunderstandings that man ifest them­ selves as accidents (or, alternatively, as road-rage and traffic jams). Hence, the more stable the trust, the higher the degree of hybridity, and the lower the risk of being involved in an accident. The more hybriJ­ ity there is, the safer traffic gets; perfecl hybrids dOI/ "' crash. This impl ies that when an accident, (against all odds), occurs, hybridity was i mperfect, and the merging process had stopped, or was insufficient and flawed at the time of the accident. So, what is it that characterizes such imperfect hybrids '? What is wrong with the automotive organism that is about to break down or crash '? According to Latour ( 1 988) we can conceive of car-driver hybrids as imm u table mobiles. The imperfect hybrid, then, is about to lose both its mobil ity and immutability. As immutable mobiles, car-drivers are elements of traffic, which move without changing their position, or, in Latour's own

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words: 'Each e lement of the scene is moveable but since their internal relations are maintained through this movement they remain in effect immutable' (1988: 21). As an immutable mobile, the car-driver hybrid may still be moving along the road network, but remains fixed and at rest in another k ind of network - a network that ensures stable relations with (and safe distances to) other drivers. This simultaneity of motion and inertia is illustrated by Law and Mol (2001 ) as follows. Mutabil ity and mobil i ty are analogous to two types of spatiality. The car-driver hybrid exists in both network and Euclidean space. To occupy a fixed position in the actor-network of traffic means immutability; and the hybrid is safe. Notwithstanding its movement through Euclidean (road) space, its position in network space is stable. Only as long as this relational positioning can be maintained is the car-driver able to cruise along the strip. Or, to put it in other words, automobility relies on the immobil ity of the driving unit in network space, that is to say, it depends on the immutability of all car-driver hybrids. In the case of immutable mobiles we again encounter a form of motility. The mutual dependency and interweaving of two types of possible movement were quali fied above as motility. It describes a stage of being at rest and on the move at the same time and - even more important in this case - in different spaces. If Law and Mol had not constructed the 'parallel universes' of Eucl idean and network space, this sort of motility could not be observed here. By applying their interpretation of Latour's metaphor to traffic, new life is breathed into the notion of the motile hybrid. It is resur­ rected as an automotive organism that i s , on the one hand, on the move, and, on the other hand, at rest. Now, when car-drivers crash, something changes in the configuration of Euclidean and network space. Caught in traffic accidents, hybrids trans­ form into what may now be called immobiles. The crashed car-drivers are fully immobilized - their movement within Euclidean traffic space has ceased - but what about their positions in the actor-network? Are they still fixed, or have they altered'? Rather than maintaining their immutabil ity in an accident, automo­ tive organisms suddenl y become very mutable. This is most apparent with respect to the (fatally) injured passengers as well as the damaged and deformed vehicle. Both the car and its passengers are immobilized, and simultaneously deprived of their immutability. With the accident, they come to change their network position abruptly, and, more important still, drivers are separated from their cars - the h ybrid is now ripped apart. Passengers are questioned by the police, rescued by firemen, transported to the hospital, counselled, imprisoned or autopsied. Vehicles are scrutinized by technical experts, become subject to estimates by insurance companies, are fixed by mechanics or dumped on scrap heaps. The common journey of car and driver has ended with the accident - or has it just been interrupted? There is one region in the actor-network of traffic, where the crashed h ybrid is resurrected and its journey prolonged - and that is the region of

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accident-analysis and reconstruction. After the accident the hybrid is jointly reassembled by a number of experts. H ybrids involved in accidents 'live and move on' i n the statements, texts and documents of victims, reporting police officers and other actors. Often the accident becomes 'clear' only as a result of the textual i nterpretations of the professionals involved in report­ ing and administrating such incidents. Once colliding hybrids are trans­ ported and transformed into official police reports, they mutate i nto scientific constructions and, with that, change their positions in the actor­ network of traffic. Hence, on their journey from the road into the databank, car-driver hybrids are once more subject to change. While they were turned into mutable immobiles as they crashed into each other, they become immutable mobiles again as they appear in the police-report form and thereafter in the Excel-files of traffic safety scientists. By way of documentation qua universal categories the collision is rendered less open to social interpre­ tation. Accidents become well-framed images of an i ncident that otherwise invite the various i nterpretations of various readers. R This study of the changing natures of hybrids in accidents facilitates the naming of and distinction among traffic causes. As John Law (2000) phrased it, it creates 'pigeonholes'; through a superimposed classification system the single accident receives its name, and it is 'marked' by the reporting police officer.9 This way of handling hybrids is enabled by and mirrored in the styl­ istic conventions of most accident-report forms. The 'classification-sheet' allows reporti ng and representation of different accidents in exactly the same way. Once certain accidents have been c:lassified, comparison becomes possible. If two or more accidents are of the same situation - of the same kind - then one is able to compare them and, hence, able to isolate better the causes that have led to the incident. Immediately, an accident recon­ structor in Berlin is able to grasp what his colleague in Munich has been reporting in the past. Experts in different cities can align their reports and, thus, 'construct a version of documentary reality common to all' (Atkinson and Coffey, 1997: 51). With the completion of the report form, the police officer automatically completes a homogeneous reality i n which experts have agreed to take certain accident characteristics for 'real' and 'true' detached from personal interpretation. The processes of selection, c:lassification and homogenization of accident data allow the effective collection, linking and reassembling of some of the bits and pieces that are scattered all over the scene after the collision of human/non-human traffic units. Once this is achieved, the hybrid on paper begins to reproduce itself in the form of various other texts. Parts of its features are copied into subsequent documents and travel i nto other scientific fields. They do this, however, without c hanging their position in network space. On their journeys, the paper- hybrids are now treated again as immutable mobiles. Together, these hybrids in the form of texts, tables and reports, refer to each other as if they were still in traffic. As their own representations, they assist in translating the accident from the road on -

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to paper, from one space into another. As they do so, car-drivers turn mobile and i mmutable again, and further align themselves with Latour's interpre­ tation: . . . [as] mobiles that are becoming immutable - painted scenes, plants, account books, anatomical plates, printed books, etched plates - [they] are tracing a new space that has the strange characteristic of establishing new continuous links with each of these discrete and heterogeneous novelties. (Latour, 1988: 2 1 )

From immutable mobiles to mutable immobiles (crashed hybrids) and finally to immutable mobiles again - this is the motility cycle of the car-driver. The displacement of hybrids that occurs within the actor­ network of traffic happens both by accident and on purpose. While during their first relocation motile hybrids are turned inside out, the second relo­ cation renders them i mmutable and mobile again. This second transform­ ation is anything but accidental. Rather, it is the deed and duty of a profession whose task it is to manage, reconstruct, analyse and, finally, prevent accidents. The safety experts that enter the scene of an accident, from the police officer and medical practitioner to the lawyer, insurance agent and traffic researcher, are all somehow trying to re-mobilize the hybrid. In doing so, they are facilitating the car-driver's second displace­ ment in network space. How do they do this? An initial answer to this question is offered by Paul Viril io, to whom it is simply denial that serves as the common strategy for tackl ing an accident. Viril io explains: Every time a technology is invented, take shipping for instance, an accident is invented together with it, i n this case, the shipwreck , which is exactly contemporaneous with the invention of the ship. The invention of the railway meant, perforce, the invention of the railway disaster. The invention of the aeroplane brought the air crash in its wake. N ow, the three I have j ust mentioned are specific and localized accidents. The Titanic sank at a given location. A train de-rails at another location and a plane crashes, again, some­ where else. This is a fundamental point, because people tend to focus on the vehicle, the invention itself, but not on the accident, which is its conse­ quence. As an art critic of technology, I always try to emphasize both the invention and the accident. But the occurrence of the accident is being denied. (cited i!1 Armitage, 2000: 40)

If we add cars to Viril io's colliding ships, trains and planes, and continue his reasoning, we would have to anticipate that automobility 'works', because its accidents are denied. Collective denial enables indi­ vidual mobility, hence the equation. A closer look at the social organization of road accidents reveals that this rather twisted interpretation, however, describes the situation on the road quite well. The traffic accident - no matter whether it is in the air, in the water or on the land - can indeed be

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seen as denied, because if i t wasn't the subject of denial, the wreck would simply be left in the ditch, as a testament to the dangerous aspects of driving along that particular stretch of road. But this is not what the 'civil society of automobility' (Sheller and Urry, 2000; Urry, 2004) has invented in response to its accidents. Instead the risks of driving are denied and the illusion of safety is reconstructed by an accident investigation that aims at preventing the recurrence of the crash. Accident-workers cleanse the road, repair the car, heal the victims and lock up irresponsible drivers - suggest­ ing that afterwards driving has become safe. With such treatment, the accident is not j ust subject to a particular kind of denial, but also removed to another region in the auto network. Removing the accident from the road into the courthouse, the hospital, the laboratory or the newspaper suggests that there are many 'accident scenes'. In Euclidean space, on the other hand, there can be only one accident scene; the accident has indeed a given location. The legal, clinical, statistical representations of accidents, though, all occupy their own specific location within network space. They have come into being because safety experts have, first, removed the body of the car-driver hybrid from the road and, second, put its parts on scientific display. Transformed into a text, the crashed and police-reported hybrid is now moved away from its 'natural habitat' - the road space - and placed in the legal, medical or academic regions of the network. Their fate is that of all scientific facts and findings. As hybrids are removed from the road and mobilized as data they achieve an existence independent of their original site of production. For most scientific data this site is the research group or the laboratory (Latour and Woolgar, 1 986). In the case of the crashed car-driver hybrid it is the primal scene of an accident, that is, the road. The textual representations produced by professionals within the 'accident reconstruction industry' can be seen as pivotal elements in the 'textually mediated social organisation' (Smith, 1984) of accidents. The discourses that evolve from such textual mediation of accidents intersect with dominant forms of mobility governance, which aim to smooth out and accelerate traffic as well as foster automobility. Hence, the representations of accidents play a vital role in ruling accident discourses. They enable the governance of very specific social conflicts, labelled accidents. The classifi­ cation and documentation of crashes is one central policy tool to reproduce a traffic system that has been, and still is, subject to a variety of contro­ versial mobility views. Against this background, safety experts have a pivotal role in the mobilization of the 'hybrid as scientific representation'. They have fixed and stable coordinates in the actor-network of traffic, so one may assume. Their knowledge is said to be universal, their perspective objective, their findings remain widely uncontested and the measurements proposed are promptly implemented. In a (car-) 'culture of scientism' (Lash and Wynne, 1992) expert knowledge is the motor for changing the network positions and relations of other actors, while the experts themselves somehow remain

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outside the network, untouched by the mobility and mutability of other agents. However, this elevated position outside the network and beyond its inherent fluidity, has become flimsy. Previously uncontested expert know­ ledge is put i nto question and the expert is drawn into liquid network-space. No longer can the traffic safety expert remai n aloof. Along with the rise of a 'citizen science' (Irwin, 1995) within automobility, numerous 'information conduits' (Jamison, 1 996) take part in the social construction of traffic safety risks. The increasing openness of safety solutions undermines the static posi tion of expert knowledge and exposes the expert to the movi ng forces of the actor network of traffic. While in traditional automobilization the safety expert was indeed something of an 'unmoved mover', under reflexive automobilization (Beckmann, 2001 a, 200l b) s/he still moves the hybrid's representation, but is also tossed about by the network's inherent tensions. Although, i n the actor-network of traffic, the position of the expert is no longer fixed, and he or she is refused the status of objective observer, esti­ mator, measurer, or scrutinizer, the expert is still a mover - only now a moved mover. Conclusion - How Safety Becomes Mobility

In this article, I have sought to shed more light upon some of the trans­ formations that occur within the mobility paradigm of automobility. My points of departure were the inherent ambigui ties of mobility, which culmi­ nated in the claim that mobility relies on immobility. Moreover, I suggested that 'being i n traffic' is always determined by coexisting forms of mobility and immobility. Thi s ambivalent stage I called motility. From here, I moved towards the notion of hybridity and began to speak of car-drivers as motile hybrids, as they are mobile and immobile, as well as subjects and objects at the same time. The intention here was to mobilize established transport science by introducing two new concepts, namely motility and hybridity. In order to apply these concepts and generate more knowledge about the 'anatomy' and 'politics' of motile hybrids, the third and last part of the mticle touched upon road-traffic accidents and addressed the question of what happens to hybrids i n crashes. By employing Latour's 'immutable mobiles', I was able to show how the car-driver exists both in a road-space and network space. Mobility, then, is a function of movement within road space, while i mmutability, translated as 'safety', is a question of occupying a stable position within traffic network space. With the accident, though, this motile existence of the car driver - both on the move and at rest at the same time - is temporarily lost. As hybrids collide, they are rendered mutable and i mmobile - but not for long. After the crash, an array of accident-recon­ structors and -analysts re-mobilize and make the hybrids immutable once more. Apart from rehabilitating the car-driver and i ntegrating it again into road space, safety experts produce a series of representations of the crashed car-driver hybrid. As its own scientific representation, the hybrid then becomes motile again, that is, a mobile and immutable scientific 'fact'.

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Why is the motile hybrid interesting - not only as a theoretical concept but also in transport science and society? Mobil ity and safety are often seen as contradictory. The more mobile we are, the higher is our transport accident risk. The task of contemporary traffic experts, then, is to plan for more mobility without reducing transport safety. Obviously, these experts are constantly struggling to break what they regard as an unfortunate link between mobility and safety. The i nvention of the motile hybrid allows us to better understand this struggle. It sheds some light upon how transport practitioners are able to bridge the gap between ostensibly contradictory concepts such as mobil ity and safety. In order to ensure that transport users are mobile and safe at the same ti me, transport (safety) experts allow for controlled motilization and hybridization processes. They create the spatio-temporal order within which the motile hybrid exists. They decide when to take agency away from the subject and give it to the object, and they determine where to slow down and where to speed up the car-driver hybrid. This conduct is crucial in the 'hypermobile society'. In a society that seeks to give 'access to global mobility' ( Bauman, 1 998), the task of trans­ port safety experts is that of providing 'universal safety'. The provision of safety, however, has then merely one social function - to all ow for ever more mobility. Hence, 'providing safety' and 'increasing mobil i ty' are seemingly becoming synonymous, rather than being contradictory. But no matter how safe transport is going to be, mobility will always be impetfect - because it always comes in a double pack, together with immobility. I mproving safety and, thus, hoping for more mobility, will lead to just as much immobility; it will lead, in other words, to motility. Notes I . For a comprehensive discussion of hybridity within the social studies of tech­ nology and science see Elam ( 1 999). 2. The hybrid engine combines at least two power sources (for i nstance, electro­ engine and petrol engine), as well as two means of stori ng energy (for i nstance, l iquid fuel and battery). 3. In its a-h istoric version the car-driver hybrid resembles H araway's myth of the cyborg ( Haraway, 1 985). It is her i nterpretation (and man ifestation) of Klein's and Clynes' semantic i nvention 'cyborg' - from cybernetic organism - which is, most l i kely, t he most popular amongst scholars of hybridity. For the feminist socialist Haraway, the cyborg has no h istory - and, no gender. The pec u l iarity of Haraway's cyborg is that it serves as an ideal vision for the postmodern poli tics of socialist feminism. The notion of the cyborg is, as she claims i n her manifesto, an iron ic pol itical myth, a blasphemy.

4. 'Car-dependency', a widely accepted technical term that captures the degree to which an individual depends on his or her car, has created awkward side eflects: for i nstance, the c h i ldren whose physical abi lity t o walk is i mpaired, because the home-to-school trip i s always done by car, or the fami l ies who can no longer organize dail y life without a car. Hybridization thus becomes the t heoretical

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explanation for empirical find ings which stress an i ncreasing car-dependency among certain 'Iife-' or 'mobility-style groups'. 5. This very transformation is best understood as a consequence of the car's own contribution to an 'acceleration' of the speed of late modern l i fe. In the course of speeding up their l ives through ever faster means of transportation, people are coerced i nto intense time planning and ever more efficient time use. Against this background, travel-time is often seen to be 'wasted t ime' and, hence, is u t i lized [or other act i v i t ies than merely sitting on the train or driving in the car. I n case of the automobile, the need to enable alternati ve uses of travel-ti me is reinforced by frequent traffic jams i nvolving 'waiti ng-times' that cou ld be used more 'efficiently'. Therefore, with the help of advanced information and communication technologies, the car turns successi vely i nto a shelter for all k inds of other activities.

6. Giddens has i l lustrated the i ncreasing inAuence of expert systems and the t rust invested i nto them, using the car as an example. He states: . . . when 1 go out of the house and get i nto a car, I enter settings which are thoroughly permeated by expert knowledge - involving the design and construction of automobiles, h ighways. i ntersections, t raffic lights, and many other items. Everyone knows that driving a car is a dangerous act i v ity, entail­ ing the risk of accident. In choosing to go out in the car. I accept t hat risk, but rely on t he aforesaid to guarantee that it i s minimised as far as possible. I have very l ittle k nowledge of how the car works and could only carry out m inor repairs upon it myself should it go wrong. I have minimal knowledge about the technicalities of modes of road building, the maintaining of the road surfaces, or the computers which help control the movement of the t raffic. (Giddens, 1 990: 28) 7. This reconfiguration works so smoothly because auto-engineers presume and advertise that technical interventions are trustworthy - they are more rel iable than the fellow driver, cyclist or pedestrian. No longer do we need to mistrust anybody, because everybody's integration into a presumabl y flawless system is close to perfection. The car-driver hybrid is urged not to mistrust. 8. Crashes in police report forms share this trait with most other official documents,

whose hndi ngs are presented as objective accounts, as facts that speak for t hem­ selves. Furthermore, they lack a personal author the moment they meet the public. as Atki nson and Coffey point out. The\" clai m that ·the absence of an i mplied personal author i s one rhetorical device t hat i s available for the construction of " aut horitative", "official" or ''factuar' accounts. It i mplies a reali ty that exists inde­ pendently of any individual observer. interpreter or writer' (Atkinson and Coffey. 1 997: 39). 9. This very mode of i nterpreting accidents is indebted 10 a particular reconstruc­ lion ralionality, which is rooled in Ihe idea t hat an accident can be looked into. can be cut i nto pieces, separated i nto steps. sliced inlo phases or edited into causal relationships, etc., and hence be fu l l y understood. Just as a malfunctioning ear i s l ooked into, and each o f i t s pieces thorough l y scrutin ized, the accident is subject to an 'endoscopic operation', for \\-hich t he classification qua pol ice report form provides the clinical grounds.

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Re/erences A lbertsen, N. and B. D i ken (200 1 ) 'lVIob i l ity, J u s t ificat ion. and the C i t y'. 1 4( 1 ): B-24.

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Globalisation . Cambridge: Polity Press. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Pol i t y Pres". Risk Sociely. London: Sage.

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Beckmann, J . (200 1 a) ' Au tomob i l i zat ion - A Soc ial Problem and Theoret i cal Concept', Environmenl and Planning D: Society and Space 1 9(5): .:i 93-607. Bec k mann, J . (200 1 b) Risky Mobility: The Filtering o/ Alltomohilil l Copenhagen: Copenhagen University Press.

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J am ison. A . ( 1 996) 'The Shaping of t he G lobal EllIi ronlllental Agenda: The H.ole of Non-governmental Agendas', i n S. Lash . B . Szerszynski and B . \X'ynne (ed�) Risk. Enrironment and Modernity: To/{;ards II Nell: Ecology. London: Sage. Kramer-Badon i . D . . T Grymer and H . Rodenstein ( 1 91 1 ) ZlIr so:::i o-okonomischen Bedelltung des A utomobiLs. Frankfurt am lVIain: Suhrkamp. K u h m . K. ( 1 997) Moderne lind Asphalt. Die A lltomobifisierung als Pro::ess lechnol­ ogischer Integratioll und so:::ialer Vemet:::l ung. PfafTenwei ler: Cent aurus-\'erlag"­ gesel lschaft .

Las h . S . and B . Wynne ( 1 992) ·Introduct ion·. i n l. Beck . London: Sage.

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Latour, B. ( 1 988) 'Opening One Eyp. \rh i l e Closing tilt' Other . . . A Note on Some R e li gious Painti ngs', in G. Fyfe and J. Law (eds) Picturing Paller: Visual Depic­ lions and Social ReLalions. London: R o u t ledge. Latour. B. ( 1 992) 'W here A re the M i ssing lVI assps"? TIlt' Sociology of a Few lVI undane

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Artefacts', in W. Bijker, T.P. H ughes and T.J . Pinch (eds) The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge, MA: M IT Press. Latour, B. (1996) 'On Actor Network Theory: A Few Clarifications', Soziale Welt 47(4): 369-8l . Latour, B. and S. Woolgar (1 986) Laboratory Life: The Produdion of Scientific Facts . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Law, J. (2000) 'Ladbroke Grove, or How to Think about Failing Systems', Centre for Science Studies and the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University avail­ able online: http://www.comp.lancaster.ae .uk/sociology/soc055jl.html (version: paddington5.doc, 1 5 August 2000) . Law, J . and A. Mol (2001) 'Situating Technoscience: An Inquiry into Spatialities', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 1 9(5): 609-22 . Lupton, D. (1999) 'Monsters in Metal Cocoons: Road Rage and Cyborgs', Body & Society 5 1 (5): 57-72. Papastergiadis, N. (2000) The Turbulence of Migration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Rammler, S. (200 1 ) Die Wahlverwandschafi von Moderne und Mobililii.1. Berlin: Edition Sigma. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2000) 'The City and the Car', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24(4): 37-57. Smith, D. ( 1 984) 'Textually Mediated Social Organisation', International Social Science Journal 36(1): 59-76. Thrift, N. ( 1996) Spatial Formations. London: Sage. Tully, C. ( 1 998) Rot, cool und was unter der Haube. MUnchen: Olzog. Urry, J . (2000) Sociology beyond Societies. London: Routledge. U rry, J . (2004) 'The "System" of Automobility', Theor)" Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5): 25-39. Virilio, P. (1997) Open Sky. London: Verso.

Jorg Beckmann PhD holds academi c degrees i n urban planning and transport sociology. He has worked as a researcher w i th the Institute for Urban and Regional Development of the Federal State of North-Rhine West­ phalia and the Danish Transport Research Institute. He has lectured at the Department of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen and worked as a Policy Officer for the European Federation for Transport and Environment. 10rg Beckmann is now Executive D i rector of the European Transport Safety Council i n Brussels.

Automobility and National Identity Representation, Geography and Driving Practice

Tim Edensor

l

A M interested in exploring the ways in which national identities art' constituted through popular culture and experienced in everyday life (Edensor, 2002). In contradistinction to conventional accounts of national identity (for instance, Anderson, 1983; Gellner, 1983; Smith, 199 1 , 1 998; Hutchinson, 200 1 ) which focus on how cultural elites authoritatively inculcate a top-down sense of nationhood, following B illig ( 1 995) I believe it is more appropriate to consider the contemporary formation of national identity as largely generated in mundane settings. Rather than through high cultures, reified folk cultures and spectacular, formal, invented ceremonies, national identity is primarily constituted out of the proliferati ng signifiers of the nation and the everyday habits and routines which instil a sense of being in national place. Much hyperbole insists that the world is becoming a single place, a 'borderless world' (Ohmae, 1 992), and that this is diminish­ i ng a sense of national identity, although others point out that recursive national formations are mobilized to resist such forces. There is evidence for both processes, but my aim here is to suggest that national identity persists despite them, and it persists in unreflexive, everyday practices and throughout popular cultural forms. Accordingly, it is vital to identify the multiple sites through which a sense of national belonging endures, both to counter generalizations about i ts disappearance and its persistence, and to account for i ts peculiar tenacity as a source of identity, a factor which has frequently had d isastrous consequences. While it may appear as if national identity is d iminishing in an era of •

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detraditionalization, informalization and globally extending media, I argue that, on the contrary, it is becoming redistributed at a larger spatial scale. In line with recent work on networks and global complexity (Appadurai, 1 996; Castells, 1996; Urry, 2003), I reconceptualize national identity as enmeshed within a complex matrix where signifying practices and cultural scraps are - often contingently and temporarily - drawn together to consol­ idate belonging. Like recent sociological conceptions of social complexity, networks and flows, I indicate how the multiple connections between people, things, spaces and representations might be identified, while also acknow­ ledging the fluidity and ambiguity of the meanings and uses of such elements. Urry argues that the expansion of networks through the increase in nodes, density of connections and intersection with other networks exponentially increases their power (2003: 52-3). In this sense, then, the epistemological and ontological force of the nation has not diminished because the multiple associations that surround it have expanded enor­ mously across national media and within global flows of ideas, images, prac­ tices and people. However, while hegemonic attempts to fix networks of national meaning persist, as an active process, identity-making continually fashions connections through an ongoing networking. The nation thus continues to act as a force field to collective and subjective experience. Constituted spatially and temporally and grounded in 'common sense', the national draws in the spectacular and the common­ place, pulling into its orbit objects, representations, spaces and practices. Collective and individual understandings, and the practices which they inform, merge in the national to reproduce its obviousness, inscribing subjective experience onto the communality of the nation. To exemplify this conception, I explore the significance of automobil­ ity to the production and consolidation of national identities, drawing upon spatial, symbolic, phenomenological and pedormative ideas about identity. Automobility is construed as a 'hybrid assemblage' or 'machinic complex' (Sheller and Urry, 2000; Urry, 2004) comprising humans, machines, roads and other spaces, representations, regulatory institutions and a host of related businesses and infrastructural features. Automobility is thus also comprised out of a fluid matrix, yet one that is always situated in contex­ tual conditions. Here, I will explore how the matrix of automobility inter­ sects with the contextualizing matrix of the nation. We grow up relating to things in changing but familiar object worlds, and the presence of these objects and their ordering in space provide material proof of shared ways of living over time that are replete with cultural values and meanings rarely subject to reflexive assessment. They are thus part of the way things are, yet this masks the social and cultural relations out of which they emerge. For things are manufactured, used, understood, shared, owned, recycled, given as gifts, altered, discarded, talked about, symbolized and curated in culturally specific ways, specifici­ ties which, for instance, are entangled in (national) identities. Such object­ people relationships are enmeshed within enduring or institutionalized

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frameworks. Things thus sustain national identity by constituting part of the matrix of relational cultural elements, including the practices, represen­ tations and spaces that gather around them. This is not to say that object worlds are static but that the increasingly dynamic global processes which circulate commodities through national markets lead to the domestication of foreign things as well as the embrace of commodified difference. To investigate these relations between material culture and national identity, I explore the national associations of the automobile, that most iconic 20th-century artefact, 'the quintessential manufactured object' (Sheller and Urry, 2000: 738). Diverse qualities associated with (different k inds of) cars and a range of car-related identities and practices infest popular culture. And notions of desire and sexuality, mobility, status, family­ related activity, independence, adventure, freedom and rebellion play across films, advertisements and fiction. The car has become part of our 'second nature'. While such notions certainly circulate globally as car cultures become increasingly internationalized, they are not the focus of this article - although the globalization of automobility deserves a separate account - for here I am concerned with the persistence of the national reson­ ances of car cultures. As an exemplary field, automobility usefully highlights the multi­ dimensionality of national identity formation. The linkages between auto­ mobility and national identity are multiple, including state regulation; the geographies of 'roadscapes'; driving practices, styles and cultural activities carried out in cars; the auto service industries; types of journey; the range of representations which centre upon cars; everyday discourse; the economic i mportance of the symbolic motor industry; and the affordances of vehicles and roads. In order to convey the density of these intersections, I will restrict my focus to the representation of particularly iconic vehicles, distinctive national motorscapes and identifiable driving practices, focusing upon the car cultures of Britian and India. Representing Iconic Cars

Cars signify national identity as familiar, iconic manufactured objects emerging out of historic systems of production and expertise. Although commodities increasingly circulate globally, certain forms of object-centred expertise persist as practices sedimented in particular cultures over time. Connoting mythic qualities and forms of native skill, certain craftworks, dishes, garments and manufactures are i mportant signifiers of identity for national communities (and foreign tourists and consumers). The car industry has also been an enduring signifier of national economic virility and modernity: 'the automobile industry, more than any other, becomes exemp­ lary and indicative; its presence or absence in a national economy tells us the level and power of that economy' (Ross, 1 995: 19). Historically, an extensive complex of supporting industries, car servicing facilities, road­ building, and housing and retail developments constituted a national car­ oriented infrastructure, although this is being denuded by the organization

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of production on an international scale. Despite this disembedding process, certain cars continue to be loaded with national significance throughout popular culture, as representations of cars in popular music, newsprint, film and television reiterate familiar symbolic and common-sense understand­ ings of the relationship between automobil es and national identi ty. Through the media, as Thompson has observed, 'a major new arena has been created for the process of self-fashioni ng' ( 1 995: 43) and, more specifically, Morley points to television's potential for examining the 'constitutive dynamics of abstractions such as "the community" or "the nation'" (1 991 : 12). 1 will show how certain representations of distinct ively 'British' cars intersect with ideas of Britishness, conti nually enlarging and consolidating habitual notions of cars and their national cultural values but also supplementing and contesting historically located ideas. The familiar story relates how early British motoring was the preserve of a wealthy elite, whose cars - Armstrong-Siddeleys, Bentleys, Lanches­ ters and Rolls-Royces - were widely regarded as symbols of quality, i n contrad istinction t o the cheaper, mass-produced models produced in Europe and the USA. This boundary-making senti ment was supplemented by accounts of a heroic British masculinity, 'a world of impressive i nventions, engineers, manufacturers and rac i ng drivers' (O'Connell, 1998: 3). A grander, largely British-owned motor industry developed in the 1950s, consolidating the Britishness of the car industry, and this national identity was i ngrained in the cars produced. Two of the most symbolically British models, the Rolls-Royce and the Mini, embody specific values which continue to art icul ate wi t h distinctive notions about Britishness, often inAected with class. The hugely expensive Rolls-Royce, a by-word for ( British) quality and luxury, is owned by notable figures in Bri tish institutional life and frequently features in national tabloids as a signifier that celebrities, pop stars and self­ made businessmen have 'made it'. Despite the elitist conception of quality and high status, a wider national pride continues to be evoked which identifies 'British' workmanship as the 'best in the world'. However, the fortunes of the Rolls-Royce company have steadily declined since the 1 970s and it is now under German ownership, a fact commonly cited as symptom­ atic of British manufacturing decline. Doyen of laddish commentary on motor matters, Jeremy C larkson disputes the continued glamour of the contemporary model, adding 'I don't want to be all Alf Garnett about this, but the whole point of the Rolls was the bl)'lcreemed men in Crewe. German-built Rolls-Royces make as much sense as sushi at a Buckingham Palace garden party' (2002: 1 9). Here, the symbolic weight of this exclusive car is captured by allusions to other familiar mythic elements of Britishness - to the period of the 1 950s when the engineering skills of workers were extolled in newsreels, to the monarchy (the Royal Family own several customized Rolls-Royces), and to a situation comedy in which pompous and bigoted expressions of Britishness tend to be simultaneously celebrated and mocked. Yet the patriotic reaffirmation of Rolls-Royce also evi nces changes

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within representations of Brit ish masculinity, namely the e mergence of a 'new lad' culture, which still revolves around the archetypal, 'tradi tional' male i nterests of cars, sex, style and power but makes use of a get-out clause: that such foc i and prejudices should be considered i ronically. The constructions of self and 'other' i ntegral to constructions of national identity are evident in evocations of pride about the Rolls-Royce in contradi stinc­ tion to the popular representation of non-British motor i mports. For instance, Russian Ladas and East German Trabants used to be routinely mocked by comedians. If the Rolls epitomizes a sense of British superior quality, the Mini signifies symbolic traits which operate across the c lass d iv ide. In contrast to the 'traditional' Rolls, the M ini emerged as a British icon in the 1960s, the decade in which a reinvented Britain showed off its pop music and fashion, seem ingly discarding the post-war, class-bound rigidities. Thus the Mini continues to be used to symbolize this newly confident Britain of the 'Swinging Sixties', along with the Beatles, the mini-skirt and symbolic places such as Carnaby Street in London, partly because it appeared to blur class-bound divisions. Heralded as a cheap car available to a wealthier worki ng class, it was s imultaneously coveted by the fashionable rich. These fluid symbolic values are famously epitomized in the film The Italian Job, in which a gang of British criminals stage a bank robbery in Rome using three M ini Coopers as ideal getaway cars. The red, white and blue Minis prove their ability to outmanoeuvre their Alfa-Romeo-driving police pursuers and negotiate a spectacular obstacle course in a foreign realm. Not only are the mechanical attributes of the car celebrated but also its 'person­ ality', which is aligned with British underdog cheekiness (an epithet often applied to the M ini). The archetypes of British cinema are particularly apparent in the casting of actors from opposite ends of the class spectrum, M ichael Caine and Noel Coward - the confident and mobile working-class male emergent in the 1960s, and the sophisticated and suave gentleman from an earlier era. Like the decline of the steel , cotton, shipbuilding and coal industries, central constituents of the 'workshop of the world', the car i ndustry and key products were part of a symbolic national geography and history in which the l inks between products, people and places were part of popular know­ ledge. However, with decli ne, the British motor i ndustry became associated with a less idealized aspect of nati onal identity, the 'British disease', that is, militant trade union radicalism. The activities of mythical trade union activists in the car industry such as 'Red Robbo' and 'Red Steph' provoked alarmist tabloid commentary that British industrial potency and values were degenerating in contradistinction to another i magined Britain of hard work, entrepreneurialism and thrift. The car factory, formerly the home of indus­ trial harmony and skilled work, thus became haunted by what was later termed an 'enemy w ithin', so that industrial conflict was i maginatively staged as national drama through the national media. While there is nationalist championing of particular models and

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agonizing over their demise, the extension of globalizing production affords opportunities for foreign-produced or -derived models to become enmeshed within webs of national significance. For instance, the Cortina, manu­ factured for the British and European market by the Ford corporation in Britain, was a distinctive feature of British roads, and became symbolically freighted with understandings that only make sense within a British cultural context. For instance, the Cortina became a popular status symbol connot­ ing raciness and adventurousness as portrayed in Ian Dury's song, 'Biller­ icay Dickie': 'ad a love affa ir with N ina in the back of my Cortina a seasoned-up hyena could not 'ave been more obscener

This domestication partly testifies to the ability of transnational companies to tailor manufactures to local markets. But it also highlights how objects are customized so that they symbolically and aesthetically fit into contem­ porary understandings about place and the placing of things, and this can also apply to products which are not manufactured in a country at all ( Miller, 1 998). A more contemporary instance is afforded by the stretch limousine, a powerful signifier of American urban excess, which is now a popular sight on B ritain's roads, where it serves as the venue and vehicle of choice for certain k inds of carnivalesque event regardless of class, ranging from hen parties, to birthdays, to the release of prisoners. The complex relationships between cars - like other (global) objects - and the dense local and national cultural matrix into which they are accommodated testifies to the ways in which they can never simply be unproblematically encoded with the symbolic values intended by manufacturers and advertisers. While they may well be freighted with exotic charisma, their adaptation in accordance with si tuated processes based around aesthetic customization, status acquisition, popular cultural practices and modes of representation evinces how cars may come to carry cultural values and characteristics that only make sense within a national context ( see S0rensen [ 1 993], Hagman [ 1 993] and contri­ butions in Miller, 2001 for other examples of adaptation). Nevertheless, in addition to this incorporation of objects from else­ where, sources of automobile-related expressions of national pride are legion across popular media. The endeavours of racing drivers such as Nigel M ansell and Colin McRae are patriotically reported. And James Bond's Aston Martin, Inspector Morse's Jaguar or the Ford Cortinas and Cranadas featured in The Sweeney, among many other examples, are each freighted with a set of symbolic values that intersect with wider notions of British­ ness. More recent ideas which autocentrically identify presumed signifiers of specific national traits and change are the mythical 'White Van Man' and ( Ford) ' Mondeo Man' t hat circulate across media forms. The political construct Mondeo Man does not like paying taxes, is not community­ minded, is hedonistic, admires businessmen and disdains trade unions and

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is suspicious of the state ( Mc Kibbin, 1 999). The chauvinist White Van Man, rude and aggressive towards other drivers and reckless on the road, has become synonymous with fears about a perceived growth of road rage on Britain's formerly civil roads. To foreground the intersection of popular knowledge about cars with other dimensions of popular culture cast in a national context, I want to look at a particular British television series which focuses upon the nostalgic recollection of the last few decades of the 20th century. In the face of globalization, a s hared national h istory of using and consuming material culture anchors people to place, allowing them 'to express themselves and fIX points of security and order' and to deal with increasing complexity (Spooner, 1 986: 226). The recent BBC television series, I Love the 1 9 70s, focuses on a melange of TV programmes, films, pop music, sports news and artefacts. For example, the programme I Love 1 9 73 features the Austin Allegro car, the Raleigh C hopper bike, the board game M astermind, and the popular fashions of the 'snorkel' parka, platform boots, flowing dresses and 'big hair'. These images of objects were accompanied by contemporary pop music, sitcoms and movie stars to provide a dense set of related i tems which conj ure up a particular time. The artefacts featured are thus contextualized by an ensemble of mnemonic props to mediate a nostalgic response that, it is assumed, will be shared by large numbers of viewers. By featuring t hese quotidian artefacts and other media products as objects that 'we' domesticated and consumed, the era can be dramatized and narrated as part of national biography, also leaving room for the personal memories that accompany recollections of, for instance, driving particular cars. The widely disseminated regimes of signification discussed above are part of the discursive flagging of national identity, the routine 'deixis' ( B illig, 1 995) that pervades the taken-for-granted terms of reference adopted by national forms of media when they address 'us' as all undifferentiated national audience. While Billig identifies this 'evident topos beyond argument' ( 1 995: 96) in the sphere of everyday political talk, it is equally present in the less overt organization of mediated recollections which assume the shared experiences and preoccupations of the national 'imagined community' (Anderson, 1 983). Like other forms of signification, these representations of cars 'become naturalised codes whose operation reveals not the transparency of linguistic or visual codes, but the depth of cultural habituat ion of the codes in operation' (Barker, 1 999: 12). As symbols they possess a mythic quality in their ability to absorb various meanings and uses, to remain open to a range of interpretations and thus remain 'ideologically chameleon' (Samuel and Thompson, 1 990: ;j ) . Thus while they always carry the ideological weight of a preferred reading, they also act as 'condensation symbols', agreed upon forms of i mportance which are decoded in multiple ways, a facet that adds to their power as shared, common-sense foci. By foc using on a small selection of represen­ tations of emblematically British cars, I have indicated how they are situated

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within a complex representational matrix compnsmg multiple cultural constituents of national identity, intersecting, among other things, with myths of origin and imagined histories, symbolic geographies, boundary-making, class distinctions, notions about external threats and popular comedy. National Motorscapes

Despite the disembedding effects of globalization and the worldwide seri­ alization of corporate outlets, most of us live in recognizable worlds, distin­ guished by distinct material structures in which objects are distributed and institutional arrangements are embedded in familiar ways. Surrounded by familiar things, routes and fixtures, we make our home by a habitual engage­ ment with the space in which we live. While shared understandings and collective enactions about place are often powerfully local or regional, a strong sense of national spatialization also persists. The relationship between space and national identity produces a variegated and multi-scaled geography constituted by borders, symbolic areas and sites, constellations, pathways, dwelling places and everyday realms (see Edensor, 2002). The national resounds through both spectacu­ lar and quotidian topographies. Emblematic, widely represented spaces such as cathedrals, battle-sites, spectacular landscapes and historic build­ ings are accompanied by mundane spaces which are unreflexively appre­ hended, serialized and recurrent. Geographies of motoring have their symbolic sites, notably in those emblematic sites of production cited above, but national motorscapes are primarily constituted out of those everyday, institutional spatial s ignifiers dist ri but ed across road networks. Familiar features constitute a sense of being in place in most motor­ ized landscapes, since institutions, vernacular features and everyday f-ixtures embedded in local contexts also recur throughout the nation. Road signs are part of the institutional matrix of everyday life, bureaucratically imposed to ensure motorists are familiar with them, along with road markings, emergency telephones , crash barriers and other road furniture. In addition to signage, familiar, distinctive roadside fixtures consolidate a national sense of being in place, including grids, fire hydrants, street lighting, guttering, telegraph poles, pylons, telephone booths, postboxes and garages, barely noticed features except when they disappear or are notably absent in an unfamiliar, foreign motorscape. Moreover, roadside architec­ tural forms - pubs and housing, styles of fencing and garden ornamentation - generally fall within a recognizable vernacular range. Such elements do not confound expectations of what we will see, and when they do, they stand out in relief against this normative spatial context. These mundane national signifiers are accompanied by recognizable and widespread flora and fauna, unspectacular animals and plants which are rarely commented upon except when they are no longer so common. The comfort of spatial identity is fostered by the thick intertextuality of these vernacular, generic motorscapes for they stitch the local and the national together through their serial repro­ duction across space. For instance, the American urban roads cape is

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surrounded by a plethora of corporate l ogos, of MacDonalds, the Ramada f n n and Mobil Gas. Similarly, the steeples and towers of ch urches inscribe a faithscape across England, and various regional architectural styles and historical forms provide points of contrast which are assembled under the master category of English church . Not only do such features surround us as we drive, they are also part of those familiar mediascapes identified above, but rather than iconic symbols, these are u nheralded props in telt'­ vision dramas and documentaries. With i n these normative geographies, objects and people can be considered to be 'out of place' on the road or roadside, for the ways i n which things are used and u nderstood depend on geographical knowledge about where they belong. For i nstance, large A merican veh icles, much-mocked French Citroen s and Renaults, and h uge European juggernauts are still widely considered to be out of place on British roads. Yet collective space is continually maintained and reproduced by 'containment' (Attfield, 2000) whereby t h ings are ordered and framed within existing materially and spati­ all y regulated contexts, which is why new features can be accommodated through identifiable, regular regimes of spatialization, as, for example, with the proliferating mobile phone masts alongside British roads and the roadside corporate outlets cited above. Otherwise, roadside maintenance through grass-cutting, hedge-tri mming and road-sweeping regimes ensures t hat things stay in their assigned pos itions, and bylaws about what (colours, size of billboards, architectural styles) is permissible ensure conformity to aesthetic norms. For instance, when driving i n Spain, I find it striking that large advertising billboards can dominate the roadside i n rural areas for this contrasts with the more stringent aestheti c regulation of commercial signs on British h ighways. This plethora of everyday, mundane signifiers is not only read as signs but is also u nreflexively sensed, rendering national motorscapes famil iar and homely. The road a nd roadside form a largely unquestioned backdrop to driving routines, tasks, pleasures and movements in which we unreflex­ ively carry out quotidian manoeuvres and modes of dwelling as habituated body subjects. Motoring rel ies on a 'lay geographical knowledge' (Crouch, 1 999) i n which the influences of representations and semiotics are melded with sensual, pract ical and u nreflexive k nowledge. Spatial constraints and opportunities i nhere i n the organ ization and affordances of motorscapes, and these mesh with the bodily dispositions engendered by dri v i ng. Routinized time-space paths become marked upon familiar space. And collectively, routes and places in which shared, synchronized movement, work and recreation are carried out l i nk these individual time­ space paths, identifyi ng poi nts of spatial and temporal i ntersection. Roadside shops, bars, cafes and garages are points of i n tersection where individual paths converge; they become sedimented in the landscape and in the habit-body, prov iding a geography of communality and continuity. The roads along which people drive and the places they go to by car are spaces of c i rc ulation in which people coordi nate and synchronize activities,

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stabilizing social relations in time-space (Gren, 200 1 : 2 1 7). Through the daily commute to work (see Edensor, 2003), the drive to the shop and in quotidian points of congregation, embodied rhythms evolve to produce a collective sense of place grounded i n the sharing of spatial and temporal co-presence. Another way of putting this is to consi der car travel as part of a 'taskscape' (Ingold and Kurttila, 2000). Here, action is carried out unre­ f1exively as a mode of 'being-in-the-world', of mundanely organizing and sensing the environment of familiar space. The skill needed to drive i n particular road conditions - shaped by the infrastructural limitations i mposed by the state, climate, driving practices and so on - requires a multi­ sensory engagement with the environment. The habituated car-driver experiences a barely conscious awareness, a disposition that responds to contingencies of the road, generating practices which make space, are part of how people inhabit space and come to belong in it. Again, attempts to drive abroad can be self-revelatory in drawing out the situatedness of this embedded, improvisational spatial knowi ng. Inhabitants have an everyday practical orientation to the 'taskscape' which i nteracts with its materiality, i ts surfaces and contours, and towards the affordances of vehicle, which foster a range of actions, delimiting some and enabling others. This practical use of inhabited space inheres in how people 'dwell' in cars, how they coordinate their movements and organize routes and nodes, adapting everyday practices and assumptions from the past. To illustrate these nationally constituted spatial arrangements I detail some of the distinctive features of the Indian motorscape. Most Indian roads are adjacent to a kind of heterotopic space which practically provides an unofficial escape route in an emergency and parking space. As such, the boundary between road and surrounding land is somewhat blurred. But this space also accommodates a host of dwellings, industries and activities. Many services exist to aid the road-user, i ncluding bicycle-tyre repair work­ shops, and official and unofficial garages. Telephone kiosk wallahs, street barbers and dentists, shoe repairers and sellers of all kinds offer thei r services. Foodstalls and roadside dhabas (small cafes and tea shops) provide sustenance to the motorist and the land is also utilized as a grazing area for cattle, goats and chickens. This relatively unsupervised space also provides an opportunity for the poor or d isplaced to erect temporary dwellings and use the roadside for washing, cooking, praying, socializing and playing. In dense urban areas, these wide verges are replete with debris including car parts and other recyclable items. Accordingly, roadside spaces are not diminished by regulation but are sites for social i nteraction and enterprise, are vastly different from the socially sterile, 'purified', 'single-purpose' (Sibley, 1988) verges in Western countries and are subject to lower levels of surveillance and regulation, forming i nterstitial realms which defy over­ prescription. Such spaces form part of the habitual motorscape, and consti­ tute a source of potential hazard, service and entertainment. The roads themselves are varied in quality, often bordered by plane trees girdled with

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paint, which provide a clear boundary at night. Besides these aspects of the roadside environment, motorscapes are also continually remade by the practical conventions that focus upon them, as I will discuss in the next section. There is another sense in which the rise of autocentric soci eties develops a sense of national geography. Modern nation-building entails the incorporation of i nternal differences, so that whatever regional and ethnic differences may pre-date the nation's formation they all become subservient to, and part of, the greater national entity. Region, city, village all remain tied to the nation as a larger ontological and practical framework. Local differences are absorbed into a 'code of larger significance' (Sopher, 1979: 1 58). Such differences are not erased but are identified for nationals to gaze upon, as both signifiers of regional speciality and as part of the compendium of national diversity. Accordingly, distinct customs, dialects, costumes and diets, natural history, styles of architecture and historical sites are all cata­ logued and disseminated as part of an imagined, internally complex national geography. For example, the regional diversity of English countryside has been intensively mapped, demarcated and widely propagated by popular books, such as H .Y. Morton's In Search of England (1984). Subsequently, I-Spy books encouraged children to identify pre-assigned symbols of generic roadside Englishness, and Readers ' Digest and Shell guides and atlases detail ornithological, archaeological, historical and architectural curiosities. These popular volumes about 'England' reproduce institutionalized modes of understanding and the 'democracy' of car travel enables valorized national scenes and sites to be visited, opening up the possibilities for 'knowing' the nation. The development of motoring generated the 'slow meandering motor tour' (Urry, 2000: 60) 'a voyage through the life and history of the land' (2000: 61). They accompany and fuel the imperative, since the early years of motoring, to tour the nation. Similarly, Swedish enthusiasts of motor touring asserted that: 'to really know Sweden meant to get out there amongst it' (Crang, 2000: 91). Such nation-building projects continue to echo through contemporary motoring guides and guidebooks. Performing Everyday Driving

Like all spatial forms, motorscapes facilitate practice but are also repro­ duced by the actions and understandings of people. Given that a sense of national identity is shaped by a host of interrelated ideas, representations, spaces and things, I now want to explore how palticular practices - namely, the styles and conventions of driving - sustain both conscious and unre­ flexive impressions of national belonging. I will use the metaphor of perform­ ance to account for these practices (Edensor, 2001). National identity is partly constituted out of the habitual performances of everyday life. As Billig (1995) has noted, national identity inheres in the 'banal', in everyday shared practices, notions and materialities. Such performances are largely shaped by unreflexive assumptions and disposi­ tions rather than calculated intentionality, revealing kinds of habitus,

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distinct, 'common-sense' ways of being ( Bourdieu, 1 984) or 'second nature'. Bill ig refers to these customary petformances as 'enhabitation' where 'thoughts, reactions and symbols become turned into routine habits' ( 1 995: 42) but does not develop an analysis of these national proclivities. More broadly, H arrison asserts that habits organize life for individuals within collectivities so that 'cultural community is often established by people together tackling the world around them with familiar manoeuvres' (2000: 507-17). Identities are thus fostered by mass routinizations which may be inflected by class, ethnicity and gender as well as by nation. I consider these routine habits to be as grounded in habitual conven­ tions as the conscious, instrumental actions which more evidently suggest metaphors of theatricality and dramaturgy. Accordingly, rather than distin­ guishing between a self-aware performance and an iterative performativity as does Butler ( 1 993), or between instrumental, 'front-stage' social petform­ ances in contradistinction to 'back-stage' petformances (Goffman, 1959), it i s preferable to conceive the two modes as imbricated in each other. For instance, while new car drivers are possessed of an acute awareness about their actions and the dangers of the road, for experienced drivers, the same procedures are 'second nature'. However, even experienced drivers become aware of the situatedness of their skills when they confront different driving codes, perhaps on foreign roads. Everyday, habitual performances are constituted by an array of tech­ niques and technologies, practical, embodied codes which guide actions in particular settings. Where these are communally shared, they achieve a working consensus about what are appropriate and inappropriate enactions. In this regard, driving is a culturally bound procedure organized around which manoeuvres, forms of etiquette and gestures of annoyance, for instance, are 'proper' in particular contexts. Once learned, not only are such practical norms unreflexively embodied but fellow-drivers monitor the driving performances of others through a disciplinary gaze which expresses rebuke if these communal conventions about driving petformance are contravened. These collective petformances engender mundane choreogra­ phies of the road and evel)'day motoring knowledge. Habits are not necess­ arily rigid since they must respond to changing conditions; indeed, Bourdieu's related concept of the habitus ( 1 984) is comprised of grounded yet flexible dispositions. Habits can operate in an improvisatory fashion within a known motorscape. However, old habits also die hard since famil iar social worlds consist of enduring contexts which require unreflexive responses, thus consolidating their epistemological security. While shared norms consolidate mundane driving performance, so does the regulatory framework of the state. Through the state's upholding of l aws, highway codes, pol icing of speed, parking restrictions, regulation of the conditions of vehicles, vehicle taxation and insurance, fuel price strategy and a host of other pol icies, it provides a regulatory apparatus which informs quotidian driving, requiring that people learn how to drive through being tested on their acquisition of a range of specific skills. The state i s

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also apt to champion 'good habits' and identify 'bad habits' (see Frykman and Lofgren, 1 996: 7-9), such as drink-driving, that endanger the shared conventions of road use. In India, roadside humorous notices and rhyming slogans urging careful driving are legion. In Poland before the demise of communist rule, the state promoted hitch-hiking as an approved form of travel and distributed prizes to drivers who frequently gave lifts to hitch­ h ikers through the administration of a voucher system. Like all forms of social peIiormance, for such communal and state­ inspired conventions to be sustained, drivers need to acquire competence in reproducing approved actions. These popular competencies enable drivers to carry out tasks with a minimum of fuss, and embrace a geographical knowledge of the 'taskscapes' discussed above; recognizable settings in which to perform familiar actions: obtain fuel, get a car wash, new tyres and other parts, receive an annual service and park. Rarely the subject of reflec­ tion or planning, such regular practices are echoed in the actions of neigh­ bours and friends. These competencies are pract ical and embodied, so that styles of steering, conventions about speed, the appropriate distance that should be kept from vehicles in front, and gestures towards other motorists are second nature. This second nature is especially pertinent to driving since, as Sheller and Urry (2000) observe, the car-driver is a hybrid which fuses car and person. The extent to which these driving habits are grounded nationally is evident when we move to another country and are dumb­ founded by the range of everyday competencies which we do not possess, where people do not drive as we do, and where regimes of road manage­ ment can be initially obscure. Roadside commands and warning signs, methods of signposting, road systems and tolling measures may all be disturbingly unfamiliar and ways of driving may seem too slow or aggresslve. Increasing mobilities generated by car cultures have desynchronized familiar, communal time-geographies. However, they have simultaneously resynchronized patterns of car use so that certain roads are heavily used during rush-hours and holidays, and likewise, there are certain times when the roads are quiet. Thus cultures of automobility structure shared experi­ ences of time, work, leisure and consumption, for motoring networks force people 'to orchestrate in complex and heterogeneous ways their mobilities and socialities across very significant distances' (Sheller and Urry, 2000: 744). For instance, for Britons, the meandering Sunday trip into the country, driving on busy motorways, getting stuck in traffic jams on holiday trips to Cornwall or en route to Blackpool, getting booked by traffic wardens ( symbols of British petty authoritarianism), and driving to the shopping centre provide an ensemble of widely recognizable experiences, shared involvements that are also articulated as common themes in popular culture. For instance, as a resource in the pursuit of sexual adventure, an imagin­ ary world of vehicles described as 'passion wagons' and 'love traps' popu­ lates the 'low culture' of British comedy (Hunt, 1 998) as in the Ian Dury song quoted above. -

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In order to further i llustrate how the embodied competencies and conventions of driving are constituted nationally, I provide an account of Indian driving performances. While there is a low level of regulation on Indian roads, a paucity of formal rules laid down and transmitted by the state, there are nevertheless, widely observed conventions and norms of driving practice. For instance, many vehicles lack rear-view mirrors and so the monitoring of traffic behind is not usually carried out. This means that it is necessary to sound the horn to warn any vehicle of a desire to overtake, and this has become accepted custom, irrespective of the presence or not of mirrors. Indeed, most commer­ cial vehicles bear the entreaty 'Horn OK please' or similarly worded requests to encourage the practice. Also, road users obey the maxim that precedence is given to the largest vehicle. Accordingly, cars move aside for buses and lorries, auto-rickshaws defer to cars, bicycles permit auto­ rickshaws and motorbikes to pass them, even if this means driving onto the verge. This rule of the biggest is also evident at T-junctions, where large vehicles are not obliged to wait for a break in the flow of traffic for their drivers expect other, smaller road users to stop and allow them to progress unhindered. This hierarchy does not, however, apply to animals, which frequently share the road, especially the numerous cows that graze along­ side and on the road and are fully accommodated. Despite this minimal regulation, drivers are expected to be respons­ ible. Given that car ownership remains a luxury for most Indians, the penal­ ties for accident can be severe, notably if casualties include pedestrians. Stories of angry mobs descending upon the perpetrators of accidents are legion and so offending drivers tend to drive away from accident scenes. Latterly, certain forms of regulating fuel have emerged because of the high levels of car-generated pollution in Indian cities, and the need to conserve energy. Many vehicles turn off their engines at traffic lights to save fuel and this also cuts down on the emission of fumes, and measures to i ntroduce gas-powered motors are gathering pace. In certai n cities cars have been adapted to utilize two forms of fuel, so that they will switch from using petrol during the day to gas in the evening to minimize smog. I have written elsewhere of the distinct qualities of Indian streets (Edensor, 2000). Because of the varied speeds and multi-directional routes adopted by road-users, pedestrians and animals, car drivers in India have to be constantly aware of the flow of bodies and vehicles which criss-cross the street, veering into and emerging out of courtyards, alleys and culs­ de-sac. These roads contrast with the highly regulated, single-purpose, 'purified' spaces (Sibley, 1988) of Western highways, where conformity to rules and modes of centralized regulation endure. In discussing Western urban space, Richard Sen nell ( 1994: 1 5) argues that the experience of driving through the city is symptomatic of how urban space has become 'a mere function of motion', engendering a 'tactile steril ity' in which the body is 'pacified' by rapid movement without arousal. This desensitized physical experience i s produced through the 'micro-movements' used to drive

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through the city. Moreover, autoscapes are frequently devised to minimize aesthetic interruptions that might mar driving pelformance. H owever, in India, busy streets are sites for numerous activities. Disrupting l inearity, t hey are part of a more labyrinthine organization of space containing a multi­ tude of micro spaces: corners and niches, awnings and offshoots. Through t he play of children and adults, demonstrations and rel igious processions, roads may become temporary stages. Accordingly, the second nature of Indian drivers is attuned to look ing out for potenti a l hazards and they are apt to be distracted by arresting sights, not to mention the window washers, sellers of goods and mobile beggars who meander through the traffic. The scopic concentration and linear progress afforded to the Western motorist are unreal istic. D istracted and impeded, the Indian motorist must avoid other vehicles, animals and people. The miscellaneous collection of vehicles that use the street - hand­ carts laden with enormous loads, bullock-carts, cars, bicycles, motorbikes, auto- and cycle-rickshaws, buses and other diverse forms of transport - all move at different speeds as they manoeuvre for space, providing a fluid choreography. Slower road-users gravitate to the side of the road while faster vehicles move towards the middle, yet where congestion slows down traffiC, users of smaller forms of transport - bicycles, rickshaws and motorbikes weave their way among the larger forms. The range of cars has multiplied i n recent years as Western-inspired models, often produced in collaboration with Indian companies, provide signs of status and modernity for India's burgeoning middle classes. The old status symbol of the H i ndustani Motors' Ambassador, which preceded the opening up of the Indian motor market in the days of stringent state control, i s less evident in cities such as Banga­ lore and M umbai, although still widespread in Calcutta and Del h i . The Ambassador, a replica of the 1 952 British Morris Oxford, retains pre­ eminence as a politician's or civil servant's car, or as a taxi, but has been dramatically superseded by a new generation of cars. Compact saloon cars now grace many Indian streets, the most popular from the range offered hy Maruti, who now dominate the domestic market in economy-range vehicles. Yet besides these blatant symbols of modernity, part of the performance of vehicle ownership in India is expressed through customizing. Cars and rick­ shaws are adorned with deities, coloured lamps, slogans ('India is Great', 'Keep safe distance'), models, painted rear ends and trinkets. Mechanical customizing by skilled mechanics and engineers constructs unlikely looking vehicles, often used for commercial transport and wrought out of an assem­ blage of motor parts, producing a 'mobile domesticitv' achieved i rrespec­ t i ve of the origins of cars. Rather t han driving for pleasure, cars remain a costly luxury for mosl and are generally used for functional everyday purposes such as shopping and going to work, and many middle-class Indians never drive but employ drivers to transport t hem around. In an Indian culture of mobilily, long­ distance journeys tend to be carried out on trains and buses, and shorter journeys by bicycle and rickshaw. As I have said, the ownersh ip of a car is

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unthinkable for the great majority of people and this adds to the allure of cars as status symbols and objects of fantasy. The competencies referred to above are facilitated by the ability to manipulate and operate objects as tools, generating interactions between people and things which develop common forms of sensual apprehension. Things are smelled, felt, weighed, heard and looked at, although such sensory mediation is always culturally specific, located in traditions of valuing and interpreting sensual experience (Claessen, 1993) but also constituted by enduring interaction with familiar things that the body remembers. The everyday c irculation of things between people, the ways in which they are handled, and the experience of their forms and textures thus extend action and sensualize the world. Thus the grounded and habitual understanding of cars, their properties and potentialities, and the ways in which their weight, shape and mechanical aptitudes foster notions and prac­ tices about travelling and driving, produces an everyday relationship which is at once cognitive, sensual, affective and instinctive. This sensual belonging could be expressed as being comfortable, not as a 'natural' experience but as the accommodation of the body to modes of dwell ing-on-the-road, for cars provide a 'home from home', are extensions of bodies, providing what Graves-Brown (2000) calls the 'exoskeleton' of the hybrid car-driver. Thus distinct sensations are produced by bodily inter­ action with particular cars, which possess particular affordances - the feel of the wheel, the seats, the rate of acceleration and the ease of changing gears - and they impinge on how the car can be manoeuvred. Particular forms of skill and driving dispositions are thus formed. For instance, the affordances of the Rolls-Royce promote a smooth drive which minimizes the impact of road surfaces whereas the more basic design of French Renaults and Citroens provides a more confined, bumpier ride. For most Indians the physical experience of driving and car travel was formerly synonymous with the affordances offered by the venerable Ambassador, with its low-slung, leather seats, powerful suspension and purr. The prevalence of automatic gears in American cars means that drivers need to be less attuned to the noise of the engine and the speed of travel, whereas experienced European drivers are used to manually operating gears, inculcating an unreftexive bodily awareness of which gears are needed. Besides being appreciated as forms of practical skill, these manoeuvres also promote specific experiences of the tactility of motoring. As well as the peculiar tactile affordances of cars, which engender habitual sensations and forms of practical engagement, the noises and smells of vehicles consolidate a sense of dwelling on the road. The sounds of music, engines, emergency sirens, airflow, horns and other functions all provide a soundscape of car travel which melds an 'intimacy of sound, movement and space' (Fortuna, 2002: 73), grounding drivers and passen­ gers at home on the road. For instance, the Indian road's sounds cape is a symphony of different effects. The variety of sounds from a range of vehicles, the usual stop-start passage, the uneven road surfaces and ineffective

Edensor - Automobility and National Identity

I I?

silencers, squeaking brakes and the omnipresent use of horns creates a dense urban din unhampered by any strict noise regulation. This cacoph­ ony is augmented by the cries of traders and animals, and by amplified and often distorted - fragments of BoUywood music to produce an ever­ changing soundscape comprising varying pitches, volumes and tones. Bull (200 1 , 2004) also identifies the importance of listening to music as a constituent of the motoring experience, an intimate pleasure that rein­ forces the homely status of the car. The automatic turning on of the radio, or the routine playing of cassettes, provides an internal soundscape which usually covers up the noise of the outside. Despite the proliferation of global forms of music, certain musical forms continue to predominate in the car­ bound experience of sound. Car journeys in North Africa are likely to be accompanied by Egyptian pop or rai, and Bollywood music (and film) is a familiar ingredient of bus and car travel i n India. The subtle but distinct qualities that such music lends to the journey contributes to the nationally bounded experiences of motoring and may be complemented by the nuances of radio programmes. Consider the prevalence of country and western radio stations in the American Midwest among drivers and as represented in film and television. These listening patterns are sewn into the routines of drivers so that particular national radio programmes or l ocal stations playing favoured musical forms are devised to entertain and inform listeners at certain times. For instance, in some contexts 'drivetime' programmes are devised to accompany the commuting motorist, and may reinforce a sense of national community by imparting national travel advice. Conclusiou

I have demonstrated that cars, like other objects, are part of the mediated imaginaries, mundane geographies and everyday practices that inhere in the formation of national identity. While examples have been largely drawn from Britain and India, J anticipate that readers will make connections with other national car cultures. It has not been my intention to foreground national identity as always prominent, for local and globally constituted identities can be similarly conceptualized as enmeshed within a matrix of connections, and these too overlap with other matrices of identity. The national dimensions identified here are uneven and do not pertain every­ where - where, for i nstance, regional motoring practices may be the more relevant context, or geographical motorscapes may blur into each other. Despite this, given the dense interconnections that pertain between and within the cultural spheres I have identified, the national can be entrenched in numerous symbolic, material, spatial and habitual ways. It is this constel­ lation of factors that constitutes the national, the sheer profusion of points of connection across popular culture and everyday life that sustains the sense of national belonging, anchoring the national in a grounded, everyday culture. This idea of the nation as increasingly located in the multiple connec­ tions that exist in growing networks of associations - what I have referred

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to as a matrix - seems to refute notions that post-national identities are emerging out of globalizing processes. Through this global speed-up of production and consumption, travelling cul tures, extended commodity flows and diasporic experiences, things are distributed in a more protean fashion than ever before (Appadurai, 1 990). It is commonly assumed that these globalizing processes are diminishing a sense of national identity, since representations are increasingly free-floating, detached from any geograph­ ical context, and practice becomes redistributed across space. It is true that components from far-flung origins are assembled at car plants all over the world, and that the national identity of the resulting products is difficult to ascertain. Despite this, as I have argued, certain models continue to be imbued with national significance. A nd objects from elsewhere are apt to acquire symbolic significance in local and national contexts. These overt identi ty-making practices are accompanied by habitual practice grounded in quotidian experience. Together, these ongoing, complex, diverse relation­ ships between people and cars emerge out of conventional forms of know­ ledge and practice, reproducing national identities. But instead of understanding globalization as ecli psing the national, we might instead consider it the means by which national identity is redistributed. Through the example of car cultures, I h ave demonstrated how the matrix of national identity expands, incorporating mundane and spectacular objects, prac­ t ices, spaces and representations, producing new means of forging both enduri ng and fluid connections, constellations and intersections to sustain a national sense of belonging. References Anderson, B. ( 1 98:3) Imagined Comm unities. London: Verso. A ppadurai, A . ( 1990) 'D isj uncture and Difference i n the Global C u l t ural Economy', i n M. Featherstone (ed. ) Global Culture. London: Sage. Appadura i , A. ( 1 996) Modernity at Large. M inneapolis: M i nnesota Universi t y Press. A t t field, J. (2000) Wild Things: The Material Cultures of Everyday Life . Oxford: Berg. Barker, C. ( 1 999) Television, Globalisation and Cultural Identities. Buck i ngham: Open U niversity Press. Bi llig, M . ( 1 995) Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. Bourdieu, P. ( 1 934) Distinction . London: Routledge. Bul l , M. (200 1 ) 'Soundscapes of the Car: A Cri tical Ethnography of A ut omobile H ab itation', i n D. M i l ler (ed.) Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg. B u l L M. (2004) 'Automob i l i t y and the Power of Sound'. Theory, Culture &: Society 2 1 (4/5): 245-60. B u tler. J. ( 1 99:3) Bodies that Maller: Th e Discursire Limits of Sex. London: Rout­ l edge. Castells, M. ( 1 996) The Rise of the Netll ork Society: The information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Oxford: Blackwel l . C laessen, C . ( 199:3) Worlds of SemI': Exploring the Sen.les in History anri Acro.ls Cultures. London: Routledge.

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Clarkson, J . (2002) 'Good Car. Bad Car: Thirty More No-nonsense Verdicts', Sunday Times suppL: 1 0 Feb. Crang, M . (2000) 'Between Academy and Popular Geographies: Cartographic Imag­ inations and the Cultural Landscpe of Sweden', in I. Cook, D. Crouch, S. Naylor and J. Ryan (eds) Cultural Turns/Geographical Turns. London: Prentice Hall. Crouch, D. ( 1999) 'Introduction: Encounters in Leisureffourism', in D. Crouch (ed.) Leisure/Tourism Geographies: Practices and Geographical Knowledge. London: Routledge. Edensor, T. (2000) 'Moving through the City', in D. Bell and A. Haddour (eds) Cily Visions. Harlow: Prentice Hall. Edensor, T. (2001 ) 'Performing Tourism, Staging Tourism: (RelProducing Tourist Space and Practice', Tourist Studies 1(1): 59-82. Edensor, T. (2002) National Identity, Popular Culture and &eryday Life . Oxford: Berg. Edensor, T. (2003) 'M6 : Junction 19-16: Defamiliarising the M undane Roadscape·. Space and Culture 6(2): 151-68. Fortuna, C. (2000) 'Soundscapes: The Sounding City and lrban Social Life', Space and Culture 1 1112: 70-86. Frykman, .T. and O. Lofgren (eds) (1996) 'Introduction', in Forces of Habit: Explor­ ing Everyd(LJ CuLture. Lund: Lund U niversity Press. Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism . Oxford: Black lieU. Goflman, E. ( 1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Double­ day. Graves-Brown, P. (2000) 'Always Crashing in the Same Car". in P. Graves-Brown (ed.) Maller, Materiality and Modern Culture. London: Routledge. Gren, M. (2001 ) 'Time-geography Matters', in .T. May and N . Thrift (eds) Timespace: Geograph ies of Temporality. London: Routledge. Hagman, O. ( 1993) 'The Swedishness of Cars in Sweden', in K. S0rensen (ed.) The Car and its Environments: The Past, Presellt and Future o/ the Motorcar ill Europe. Luxembourg: European Commission. Harrison, P. (2000) 'Making Sense: Embodiment and the Sensibilities of the Everyday', Environmellt and Planning D: Society and Space 18: 497-5 1 7 . Hunt, L. (1998) British Loll; Culture: From Safari Suits t o Se.rpioitation. London: Routledge. Hutchinson, J. (200 1 ) 'Nations and Culture', in M. Guibernau and J. H utchinson (eds) Understanding Nationalism. Cambridge: Polity. Ingold, T. and T. Kurttila (2000) 'Perceiving the Environnwnt in Finnish Laplanu·. Body & Society 6(3/4): 183-96. McKibbin, R. ( 1 999) 'Mondeo Man in the Driving Seat". Lolldoll Rel'im 0/ Books 2 1 (19), 30 Sept. Miller, D. ( 1 998) 'Coca-Cola: A Black Sweet Drink from Trinidau·. in D. M iller (eu.) Material Cultures: Wh)'" Some Things Mauer. London: lCL Press. Miller, D. (eu.) (200 1 ) Car Cultures . Oxford: Berg. M orley, D. (1991) 'Where the Global Meets the Local: Notes from the Sitting Room' . Screen 32( 1): 1-15. Morton, H . (1984) III Search of Englalld. London: Methuen.

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O'Connell, S. (1998) The Car and British Society: Class Gender and Motoring 1896-1 939. Manchester: Manchester U niversity Press. Ohmae, K. (1992) The Borderless World. London: Fontana. Ross, K. ( 1 995) Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonisation and the Reordering of French Culture. London: MIT Press. Samuel, R. and P. Thompson (eds) (1990) The Myths We Live By. London: Rout­ ledge. Sennett, R. (1994) Flesh and Stone. London: Faber. Sheller, M. and 1. Urry (2000) 'The City and the Car', Urban Studies 24. Sibley, D . ( 1 988) 'Survey 13: Purification of Space', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 6: 409-2 l . Smith, A. ( 1991 ) National Identity. London: Penguin. Smith, A. (1998) Nationalism and Modernism. London: Routledge. Sopher, D. ( 1979) 'The Landscape of Home: Myth, Experience, Social Meaning', in D. Meinig (ed.) The interpretation of Ordinary Landscape. New York: Oxford U niversity Press. S0rensen, K. (ed.) (1993) The Car and its Environments: The Past, Present and Future of the Motorcar in Europe. Luxembourg: European Commission. Spooner, B . (1986) 'Weavers and Dealers: The Authenticity of an Oriental Carpet', in A. Appadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspec­ tive. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, 1. (1995) The Media and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity. U rry, 1. (2000) Sociology beyond Societies. London: Routledge. Urry, 1 . (2003) Global Complexity. London: Sage. U rry, 1 . (2004) 'The "System'· of Automobility', Theory, Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5): 25-39.

Tim Edensor teaches Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University. H e is the author of Tourists at the Taj and National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. He has written widely on tourism, walking in the city and the countryside, the film Braveheart, and performing rurality. A further book, Industrial Ruins: Aesthetics, Materiality and Memory, to be published by Berg, will come out in 2005.

C ars and Nations Anglo-German Perspective s on Automobility between the World Wars

Rudy Koshar

FEdensor 'THINGS(2002:are 103)partlywriunderst oodwhatas belmayongibeng saito dnataboutions',thase car?Tim t e s, t h en ImodelNatsi,onaljustpopulas atthioeyns have idclentaimifieded wiunithqspeci fic caritiecompani esdiandgenouscar have ue qual s for i n 'motbriorscapes' defiofntedhe byvastnatpopul ural ascenery, roadways andomobidrilvei,ngfrompractimaga­ces. e f perusal r cul t u re of t h e aut ziwintesh oneto websi teres, oversuggestthes pastthat centcarsury.andButnatiEdensor ons haveargues createdthatclosocise bonds anot h oplloinegy hashas done l i t l e t o expl i c at e such connect i o ns, and i n deed t h at t h e di s ci generalthliys relcrietgatiqueedcoulobjectd bes 'toextaeposindedtiotno oftheinfisieglnid fiofcance' (2002:only 103)with. Whereas hi s t o ry qual ificaticulon,tuitralis nonet hcelesessin trthuee tpasthat thremai e stundys underdevel of how objectopeds medi(Roche, a ted everyday pract i 2000) . Altauthoughomottivheerehisitsory,a schol largearlbodyy outofputresearch on Ameri cansinandgly European i n t h i s area i s surpri limitde'ds roadways if we consiinderthefor20ta hmoment th(Vatolsome 1 bi663) l ion. carsOne tofraversed thie­ worl cent u ry t i , 1996: t h e l i v el estUnitareas oftesaut(Boerger, motive1979;scholFostarshier,p, 2003; the sociGartal mhian,story1994;of thKiersch,car i2000; n the e d St a and Gol, makes dsteinup, 1983; McShane, 1994;nklePrest on,compared 1979; Scharto thfe, l1991; WihiLewiskto,ris1972) a rat h er mi n or wri when argerthe c al fabri c woven by popul a r experi e nces wi t h t h e mot o rcar over aroundmuch the worlrecentd. Moreover , asp onanththropol oogimobist Danile onel Mibotpastlhehundred rsid(2es001)of tyears hashe Atargued, schol a rshi e aut es thoegicarcal asentaityculortuaralcommodi process,ty treating it instead aslaantdesiic rarel gn artyifianctte,rrogat a technol A

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with specific, usually negative, 'externalities'. But 'we cannot presume as to what a car might be', states M iller, who argues that the automobile is 'as much a product of its particular cultural context as a force' (2001: 1 7). This statement is highly relevant to the following discussion; for if cars are seen as issuing from specific cultural interactions, then how cars 'belong' to nations, still one of the central cultural environments in which objects and commodi ties gain significance, becomes a key problem. Interwar European car cultures present especially interesting material for case studies in this context. The cars of the 1920s and 1 930s were closely i nvolved with the history of the nations that produced them, as Michael Sedgwick ( 1 970: 16) argued, not least because European countries took dramatically different routes to automobility in this period. One of the starkest contrasts to be made is between the two major European industrial powers, Britain and Germany. Between the wars, Britain made enormous strides toward motorization, overcoming France's initial lead in car produc­ tion and making the car a constitutive element of middle-class life (Church, 1 979, 1994; Foreman-Peck et aI., 1995; O'Connell, 1998; Richardson, 1 977). By contrast, Germany lagged well behind Great Britain and France, although the First World War increased popular interest in cars, trucks and motorcycles so greatly that one could argue German culture was motorized well before many inhabitants of that nation actually got around in cars (Boch, 200 1 ; Flik, 200 1 ; Koshar, 2002; Merki, 2002; Moser, 1998; Sachs, 1 992). Not only did the British and Germans experience the car differently up to the Second World War, British and German industrial and political competition also added an element of global conflict to the indigenous car cultures. Car magazi nes in Britain observed German car design closely, especially after the First World War, and British travellers reported in some detail on the conditions of German cars, roads and society as the Second World War approached. The building of the Autobahn and National Social­ ist plans for a 'people's car' earned both admiration and suspicion from observers across the Channel. Meanwhile, German car manufacturers, trade unionists, politicians and car enthusiasts were enthusiastic about the prospects of mass automobility, but they were uncertain as to whether American 'Fordist' models of production were desirable or practical in the German context (Nolan, 1994). H i tler argued that the modern nation was by definition a motorized nation, and he appeared to want not only to overcome Germany's belated turn to the automobile but also to bring Germany i nto line with the American model of mass motorization. For H itler, indeed, the car was a political resource, an emanation of the German nation's modernizing intentions, and subsequently of its military and racist goals. In these contrasting situations, the automobile took on highly specific and variable meanings, for manufacturers, consumers and opinion makers, i ndeed for entire nations. Edensor's observation contains a strong qualifier, namely that things are only 'partly' understood as belonging to nations. In the following it will be demonstrated that the national belongingness of cars cannot be analysed

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ful l y without attention to the international scene and more specificall y to the way in which indigenous car cultures interact with one another across national borders at specific moments in the past. If we hypothesize that cars belong to nations, and if within nations various groups disagree or reach consensus about the shape and meaning of cars, t hen such belongingness also depends on transnational processes, which may also be shaped by contention or consensus. Indeed, it will be shown that a car's notiona l l y unique national qualities depend i n part o n how motoring audiences from other nations regard it as both arti fact and i mage once it travels, l i terally and figuratively, across national borders, as was the case with the Mercedes in interwar Europe. In this context, Mercedes belonged to both Germany and Britain, if not to Europe and t he United States as \\'ell, although from a technical and design standpoint it had rather continuous, distinct 'Germanic' quali ties j ust as Daimler-Benz had a distinct position within German corporate culture in the Weimar and Nazi periods ( Bel lon, 1 990; Gregor, 1 998). Besides travel and international exhibitions, automotive journalism is one of the key modes through which such interact ions have taken place, especially before television and the Internet. Surprisingly, however, there has been little sustained scholarly analysis of car magazines and other forms of automotive writing. Scholars have generall y focused on the more l iterate examples of automot ive wri ti ng, such as 'road trip' literature ( Lackey, ] 997; Primeau, 1 996) while they have ignored what are perceived to be l ess inter­ esting or less 'complex' forms such as technical discussion, auto fans' maga­ zines, and driving reports. Moorhouse's 1 99 1 study of the American Hal Ro d magazine is a welcome exception. In the fol lowing, we look at car maga­ zines to identify the German element in British conceptions of the car, and at the same time we consider the evolution of the German car in its domestic context to assess relationshi ps between British and German automotive cultures. The goal is not to consider national cultures of automobil ity as distinct, bounded entities that come into contact with one another, but rather - as this author has written elsewhere ( Koshar, 200 1 ) - to discuss an exchange and synthesis across national borders, the creation of mi xed images, constructs, trad itions and rel ationships out of \vhich both relatively stable and transient definitions and representations of the car's national belongingness emerge. By analysing Anglo-German discussions of the auto­ mobile, or rather select aspects of such discussions as they appear in several important car magazines of the interwar era, we are able to fol low the migra­ tion of significant meanings from car to car, indeed, from parts of the car to other parts, in the two nations. We thereby apply a degree of pressure to Edensor's argument that thi ngs belong to nations while a i so accepting its validity as a useful point of departure in understanding national and trans­ national car-talk in interwar Europe. The first section of this article offers a brief overview of a British auto­ motive writer's account of the 1 928 Berl in Auto Show, the first tru l y inter­ national show put on by the German car industry since before 1 9 1 4, and

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therefore an i ndicator for considering interactions between European car cultures a decade after the First World War. In the second section the inter­ mixing of national and cross-national significations becomes more evident, as it is demonstrated how the writer's comments on the cultural-nati onal meaning of the Mercedes and other German cars revealed deep-seated anxi­ eties on a whole range of issues, from the British auto industry's competi­ tiveness to the influence of US auto design and engineering in Europe. The Mercedes' persistence as a German automotive symbol is seen to spur multiple anxieties and tensions across national motoring cultures. A third section continues such themes, though with emphasis on how the British automotive writer responded primarily not to more expensive vehicles but to German small cars, and how this response suggested larger visions of popular automobi lity. The final section compares German and British atti­ tudes toward the small car as they were reflected i n other examples of auto­ motive journalism during and after the 1928 show, leading up to the Volkswagen as both a German national hope and a transnational symbol of the possibilities and limits of motorization in Europe on the eve of the Second World War. Having traversed the road from Mercedes to VW, the article concludes by stressing the need for historical specificity in discus­ sions of the automobile's national belongingness. Mercedes and German Automotive Tradition

When an anonymous writer for The A utocar, Britain's leading car magazine and, by its own account, 'the premier motoring journal of the world', trav­ elled to Berlin in November 1 928 to see the German International Auto Show, he stated i t was well worth the 24 hours it took to get there. It was not only that the show possessed a balanced and even-handed quality, so much so that one could state emphatically 'there [was] nothing revol ution­ ary (mechanically or in body-work) or cheap-and-nasty or freakish' about the 62 exhibits for passenger cars set up at the event. Rather, the Berl in show also derived much of its character from the nature of the metropolis in which it was held. Berlin was unlike the other great capitals of the Western world such as Paris and New York, which were 'cities of extremes, wealth and magnificence, cheek by jowl with poverty and squalor'. Nor did Berlin exhibit London's annoy ing habit of deteriorating 'a mile or so from the center'. Instead, Berl in was 'for many miles' radius from its center uniformly splendid', and its people were 'all ordinary honest-to-goodness men and women neither notably handsome nor outstandingly plain'. The city resonated with an aura of 'stable efficiency', the appreciation of which could be attributed, the author maintained, neither to his lack of patriotism nor to any pro-German sympathies (E.J . A . , 1928: 1144-5). The A utocar writer was convinced that the relationsh ip between the exhibit and the city was palpable and transparent. Even more importantly, at least one of the car models on display, the Mercedes, was just as clearly a product of its cultural milieu as the show was. 'The Mercedes is practi­ cally the only German car which bears the hall-mark of all that stood for

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the old Germany,' he wrote, 'All the others have no similar national char­ acter'. The contrast between capital cities again provided the author with a leitmotif. '] ust as some of the chic vehicles of France seem imbued with the spirit of Paris,' he wrote, 'so do most of the German cars suggest they are designed by Berlin itself' (E.J.A., 1928: 1 145). The German metropolis did have a serious automotive industry (Engel, 2000; Kubisch, 1985). But the British observer was unconcerned with the fact that the Mercedes was produced not in Berlin but in Stuttgart-Unterttirkheim. H is goal was to show that the car embodied something more general as it was mediated by the milieu of the national capital, namely that all the stability and efficiency that Berliners displayed so unself-consciously in their daily lives were instantiated in the Mercedes. More than an exercise in national stereotyping, The Au/ocar writer's perspective revealed a broader observation about European car cultures and their relationship to their respective national societies. Before the late 1920s, German cars 'possessed an appearance of a very decided character. Radiators, which were somewhat ugly to English eyes, and a pronounced tumble-home to the bodies definitely labeled the German car'. But 'today radiators follow the American and British ideas and bodies no longer have their pre-war contours'. A Rattening out of national distinctions character­ ized the late 1920s, in this author's eyes, so that 'in no respect [did] the 1929 German vehicle differ widely from the present-day ideals of British, American, Italian, and French motorists'. Mercedes engineering was highly modern, but its design, the overall feel of the car and the quiet efficiency with which it went about its work all spoke a language of the past, when notionally distinct national traits were more explicitly evidenced in auto­ mobiles, according to the writer. Like the solid, reliable people of Berlin, the Mercedes reRected all that was admirable in German cars: 'good, whole­ some types without ostentation or undue scamping of detail - cars uniformly good and serviceable' (EJ.A., 1928: 1144-5). The A ulocar writer was neither nonplussed nor disturbed by the fact that the Mercedes seemed to be the only auto that retained a connection with the pre-war past. If international car design now seemed to have approached a 'common standard', then this process was as much an indi­ cation that manufacturers had abandoned the disorganized design initiatives of the early post-war period, when the auto makers tried to incorporate ideas from aircraft design, as it was a sign that they had found a degree of stability in 'well-tried automobile lines'. In this, the design culture paralleled political developments, as a period of reform and revolutionary experimen­ tation after the First World War gave way to a period of stability and return to 'normalcy'. The technological achievements on view at the Berlin auto show were regarded with considerable delight, as the writer noted how well German engineers had done in introducing overdrive for the Maybach and more expensive models of Hansa-Lloyd, Mannesmann, Opel and Wanderer. No less impressive were the exhibits of small cars, especially those under 1000

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cc displacement. The Dixi (the German iteration of the Austin Seven contracted to BMW), the Hanomag, the Czech Praga and the DKW, an inno­ vative car that dispensed with a frame and had a 90-degree, four-cylinder engine that was reputed to have the same impulse effect of a smooth eight­ cylinder car, were among the stars in this category. The reporter called the D KW 'a most fascinating l ittle car' (E.J.A., 1 928: 1 148). Such praise was significant from a comparative perspective since, as we will see, there was much dissatisfaction among German automotive journalists about the state of the small German car, a dissatisfaction that fed the desire for a true 'people's car' of the k ind Hitler promised in the 1930s. German enthusiasm for the car show was high, the reporter wrote, as the crowds pressed in on the Kaiserdamm exhibition space. Three times larger than London's Olympia car show, held in October, the venue was so packed with interested visitors on the last Saturday of the event that police had difficulty controlling them. Germany was becoming first and foremost a country of motorcycles, as per capita ownership of motorbikes would exceed that of Britain in the 1 930s (Flik, 200 1 : 80-5). It was no surprise that the Berlin show's motorcycle exhibits generated even more attendance than the car section did, and the reporter noted that the crowds were so big and unruly that the police had to use rubber truncheons to keep them in order. Even though the German auto industry produced only about one-third the units its English counterpart did, the Berlin show revealed a deep and abiding public interest in cars in Germany. 'Germany', the writer concluded, '[had] recovered from the troubles that beset her for so long after the war, and as a motor manufacturing country [was] well up to the standard she maintained up to 1914' (E.l.A., 1 928: 1 149). AutOlnotive Transnationality and its Discontents

The vision of the automobile developed in this brief account of the 1 928 show revealed much about the state of the German automotive industry j ust before the world economic crisis exerted its effects. German commentators praised the Berlin event as the world's first truly international auto show because it encompassed exhibitors from all over the world (38 of the 62 exhibitors of passenger cars were non-German) and featured motorcycles, trucks, and buses in addition to cars (Allgemeine A utomobil Zeitung [AAZ], 1928b). The same could not be claimed for the famous London and Paris auto shows, nor for those held in New York C ity or Detroit. Since 1918 the German auto show had concentrated only on domestic makes and models and, in the two years prior to 1928, the show was not held in Berlin at all, but once in Leipzig and once in Cologne. The return of the show to Berlin was therefore a welcome event both for the metropolis and for the German car industry's return to the international stage (Runge-Schlittoff, 1 928). Even so, a strong nationalist undertone could not be overlooked. 'Ten years after the peace settlement', observed a leading German auto magazine, the A llgemeine A utomobil Zeitung, in an introductory article on the show, 'one still sees black Frenchmen in the Rhineland and in Wiesbaden one

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still needs English authorization t o sing "Deutschland, Deutschland liber alles" '. This implicitly racist reference to the continued occupation of the Rhineland, in part by French soldiers drawn from black African countries, was meant to offer a measure of how far German industry had come since the humiliating defeat of 19 18. Yet the German car industry had much ground to make up given that there was only one car for every 130 Germans while in the rest of the world, including among 'the Chinese and blacks', the ratio was one car for evelY 60 people. (No mention was made about the source for this questionable statistical comparison.) The appearance of many foreign car makers along with a full complement of German exhibitors at the show reRected a new level of international competition, or rather, 'a global race without handicap' between the rising German auto industry and the rest of the world (MZ, 1928a). What was an impressive testament to the revival of the German car for The A utocar reporter became a signal for intensified, aggressive nationalist automotive competition from the German point of view. If the British observer's remarks were more even-handed than those of his German counterpart, they also showed some anxiety with regard to the history and future of the British car. Just as British attitudes toward German politics evolved over the i nterwar period, taking on greater urgency with the rise of the Nazi movement and especially with the establishment of Hitler's regime, so too did British attitudes change toward German tech­ nology and economic life. In this instance, attitudes toward German cars reRected a continuing, often troubled, conversation about the status and future of British autos that was going on back home. Specific national conversations about the car, its production, design and quotidian use, bled into one another as English, German, American and other i nRuences created a dynamic, hybridized, and cross-cultural mix. This process of hybridiza­ tion has been recognized in the matter of the transformation and adaptation of European car makers to American 'Fordist' production paradigms (Zeitlin, 2000) just as it has been acknowledged in scholarship on the history of automotive design (Petsch, 1 982). Rarely, however, has it been the topic of analyses of the relationships between national car cultures in the broadest sense. We are most concerned here with the ways in which German and British auto-conversations spliced into and around one another. On the one hand, we have seen that at least one German car, the Mercedes, appeared to retain a link with what the author regarded as a char­ acteristically German tradition of commitment to high quality and business­ like efficiency. Of course, the Mercedes remained a car of the aristocracy and professional upper middle class, having only about a 10 percent share of a German car market that was heavily skewed toward ownership by the better-off classes (Reichsverband, 1938: 49). Nonetheless, the national culture could still be read off the design and engineering of the vehicle from Untertilrkheim, at least from The Autocar reporter's perspective. It was not too long before that this fact had represented a threat to British cars and the British motor i ndustry rather than something positive. Immediately after the

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war, the 'designing Hun' was a threatening figure who alerted the British to the need for continued i nternational diligence in dealing with the German foe in i nternational car markets. 'Jerry built' cars were 'heavy and ugly', according to an Autocar writer one year after the Great War ended, but Mercedes such as the impressive six-cylinder, 7.25 litre touring wagon, as well as other German luxury automobiles, nonetheless bore watchi ng as future competitors to British models (The A utocar, 1 91 9, 1 920). The Mercedes of the immediate post-war years was as much a sign of continued international conflict as it was an object of admiration or respect. Thus the favourable response to the 1929 Mercedes reflected a cooling of i nternational tension as well as a point of contact between Bri t ish and German car cultures; what had once separated the two car cultures now brought them together. More than this, the British reporter's favourable assessment of t he Mercedes functioned at a deeper cul tural level. Mercedes had been a standard of automotive quality i nternationally since before the war, as the reporter noted accurately. I t is something of an exaggeration to argue that the German car industry was far behind the British i n terms of quality before the late 1 930s, as Steven Tolliday does ( 1 995: 278); this is not how British observers saw matters, at least with regard to Mercedes. The company itself, the product of a cooperative partnership in 1 924, but then of a full merger between the Daimler Motor Corporation and the Benz Corporation two years later, promoted the image of superiority with its motto, 'Qual i ty over all' (Bellon, 1 990; Gregor, 1 998: 16-28; Mercedes-Benz Nachrichtenblatt, 1 925: 1; Thi eme, 2001). Despite the massive bloodletti ng of 1 914-18, the severe economic and poli tical disrupt ions of the Weimar Re p u bl i c in the half­ decade after the war, and the merger of the two corporations, without which neither enterprise could have weathered the post-war economic crises successfully, Mercedes operated as a symbol of continuity for both automo­ tive cultures. Again and again, Germans reminded each other that Daimler and Benz were the oldest car manufacturers in the world, a fact that was often used to justify the argument that German motorization had a special historical mission (Bade, 1 938; Schuder, 1 940). Bernhard Rieger (n.d.) has demonstrated that the rapid advances of technology between 1890 and the early 1 930s necessitated cultural responses on t he part of both British and German publics, who, especially with the memory of the mechanized slaughter of the First World War still vivid, were simultaneously troubled and fascinated by ships, airplanes, the cinema, cars and other 'modern wonders'. The continuity of Mercedes quality may be seen as an antidote to such ambivalence, and not only for the car-owning public of the two societies. Even those who did not own cars, or who did not own Mercedes, were drawn to the car shows, to the numerous articles in newspapers and illustrated magazines, and to Daimler-Benz's 'propaganda tours', in which the company's latest car models were driven from city to city for public perusal, often with considerable newspaper coverage (Mercedes-Benz Archiv, 1 927-28; Miinchener Neueste Nachrichten, 1 929; Milnchener Zeitung, 1 929a, 1 929b).

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It may be tempting in this context to regard the Mercedes as an 'invented tradi tion', to refer to what is by now a rather tired, but still much­ used, concept in cultural history writing (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983). But it is doubtful whether the concept is entirely appl icable in this instance. After all, the corporation and its well-heeled clientele on both sides of the Channel could point to the mechanical artifact itself as material evidence of something that was much more than a construct of the imagination. It may have been increasingly difficult to say exactl y what the Mercedes was in the late 1920s given that not only had two lines of automobiles been brought under the same corporate and symbol ic roof, but also that the company had expanded its model line-up by the late 1 920s, and would continue to do so in the 1 930s. Such model prol i feration was attributable in part to the pers istence of craft techniques whereby cars were produced with many variations to appeal to the specific tastes of demanding buyers. It might be expected that the numerous model variations would have neces­ sitated even greater diligence by the corporation in managing the 'brand', to use present-day terminology. This i mpression is reinforced if we take into consideration that the company faced public cri ticism for lower than expected quality on some of its cars after the merger, and that, after considerable internal conflict, the corporation offered a smaller Mercedes in the late 1920s that could be produced with more standardized materials and production techniques, and that could appeal to a more 'middle-class', albeit still comfortable, clientele (Gregor, 1998: 23-8; Oswald, 1 996: 2 1 7). Yet there seems to have been nothing 'invented' about all this. Mercedes quality did indeed persist throughout the model line-up. The public continued to regard the Mercedes brand with respect, even in the face of stiff competition from Adler, Horch and other high-end car makers. Internationally, Mercedes - a star at the Olympia Motor Show - earned praise for its 'position right through motoring history' ( The Autocar, 1 928b: 773). Symbolic capital played a role in ensuring such perdurablity. The trademark of the new corporation combined Gottlieb Daimler's three­ pointed star, symbolizing the founder's aspiration to spread his technological influence over land, air and sea, with Benz's classical laurel wreath, which was abstracted to become a simple circle several years after the merger (Walz and Niemann, 1 997: 1 1 3). This trademark quickly became the key symbolic reference point of the Mercedes automobile, known throughout the Western world. Under the 'sign of the Mercedes-Benz star', as one German newspaper article averred at the end of the 1920s, high-quality 'German work' produced both automotive excellence and strong national pride (Munchener Zeitung, 1 929b). The concept 'invented tradition' connotes persistent and often manipulative construction of ideological motifs and arguments. But the continuity with which the Mercedes, across national car cultures and through a series of traumatic or unpredictable historical events, symbolized a certain kind of high-quality automotive engineering suggests that this tradition had an unforced perdurability about it - which is not to

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say it was accomplished without effort - that the notion of invention or fabri­ cation fails to capture. Notwithstanding the distinction of the Mercedes, The A utoear reporter maintained that a trend toward sameness characterized most of the auto­ mobiles at the show, shaped, it appeared, by adherence to an i ncreasingly formalized transnational standard. The i nfluence of American ideas and designs was lurking in the background of this perception, although The A utoear writer was quick to note that radiator styles (which from a design standpoint were still the most obvious way to differentiate otherwise similar models) were evidence of both British and American influences. Yet the issue of Americanization vexed automoti ve writers between the world wars, not least in England, where the 'cartography of taste' in a whole array of cultural practices was strongly shaped by both an embrace of US influences, as in regionalist landscape planning and 'parkway' building, and simul­ taneous fears about 'levelling', taste, commercialization, democracy, loss of national uniqueness and the effects of working-class consumption. British debates about levelling spoke to anxieties not only about national distinc­ tiveness but also about class relations and the evisceration of differentiat­ i ng social markers between classes. In the 1930s industrial design community, the impact of American streamlining would produce much anxiety among both English and Continental opinion makers, who feared an unjustified 'intertextual' migration of tasteless, that is, more overtly commer­ c ial and popular, design motifs across a range of products, from cars to toasters and to refrigerators (Hebdige, 1988: 45-76; Matless, 1 998: 58-9, 204-5; Trentmann, 1 994). In the automotive industry, the successes of the Ford Model T before and immediately after the First World War had raised the possibility of assembly-line production oriented to a one-model paradigm for a mass market. H ere too, the question of levelling was imminent, but now the issue was whether British car makers would invest in a project that would neces­ sitate large-scale changes in production, labour relations, marketing and indeed in the philosophy that regulated the auto industry as such. Specific­ ally, would British manufacturers abandon more 'artisanal' arrangements whereby relatively low-volume production of a variety of makes and models designed to appeal to a multiplicity of middle-class tastes and preferences obtained, or would a more uniform, 'Fordist' paradigm based on high-volume runs of fewer models, greater standardization in parts and production tech­ niques, deskilled labour performi ng rigidly subdivided tasks and less differ­ entiated 'mass' consumer markets be adopted? Of course, rarely was the question of production techniques a matter of 'either/or', since, as Jonathan Zeitlin (2000) and others argue, the British motor industry adapted and modified Fordist influences to national tradi tions and structures. The migra­ tion and adaptation of production paradigms were as much a matter of inter­ cultural borrowing and cross-ferti lization as the car-talk that supported, criticized and represented such intersocietal transmissions was. For well-known automotive journalists such as Owen John, the

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problem of A merican i nfiuences had y e t a nother valence. John ( 1 929a) doubted A merican c l a i m s that au tomob i l i t y promoted i nd i v idual i t y in l i gh t o f what h e saw as t h e grow i n g u n i formi ty n o t o n l y of U S c a r design and product i on tec h n i ques b u t of d ri v i ng c u ltures as wel l . A mericans d rove t h e s a m e k i nds of c a rs, frequented the s a m e places, a n d though t n o t h i ng of spendi ng much t i m e in t raffic j ams l i k e sheep h erded i n to a pen. England, John feared, was goin g t h e same way, a n d it was u p to h i m and t h e l i k e ­ m i nded to e mphasize that i t w a s o n l y t h e ' m u l t i tude of d i fferent patterns o f cars t hat h e l ps p re ve n t them [the Engl ish] a s yet from bei ng a s s i m i l a r as the c rowds ac ross the water' (John, 1 929a). I n t h i s argument, the m a i n t e n ­ a n c e of a h igh degree of variabi l i t y i n B r i t i sh c a r m a kers' offe ri ngs to t h e publ i c was n o t m e re l y b u s i ness s t ra t egy b u t a form of c u l t u ral affi rmat ion a n d defence aga i nst t h e global reach of the A merican para d i g m . U s i ng what h ad become a rather c l i ched argu ment by t he i ntenvar years, John c redi t ed the t re n d toward A merican-style u n i form i ty to t h e i ncreased rol e of women d ri vers who, as ded icated fol l owers of fas h i on, al l eged l y fac i l i t ated such a n t i - i n d i v i d u a l beha v i o u r. I n taki ng this pos i ti o n , John set h i mself up aga i nst what had become a strong t rend a mong

Au/oear

writers, w h o earl ier

i n the decade had champ ioned t h e i dea of mass prod u c t i on of standard ized mode l s and p ra ised t h e Model T as an appropriate path for B ri t i sh i nd u s t ry to go down ( C h u rch,

1 979: 73).

For J o h n , the prevalent car concept

rem a i ned m u l t i valent, nationall y d i s t i nct and flex i b l e rather than u n i form and 'massifled', as i t al l egedl y was in A merican car c u l t ur e . Scholars have noted that German auto m a k e rs also debated t h e advan­ tages and d isadvantages of A merican production tec h n iques and every t h i n g t h e y i mpl i ed . W h e t h e r Ford ist paradi gms represented an ' A merican danger" or an opport u n i t y to excel for firms such as t h e Opel corpora t i o n , wh ich e m p l oyed a l i m i ted form of assembl y - l i n e p rod u c t ion to produ c e a success­ ful smal l car in the 1 920s, was v e ry m uc h a n open quest i o n ( Fl i k , 200 1 : 1 57-60). Yet German representations of A me ri c a n i z a t i o n w i t h reference to t h e 1 928 show d i ffered from those offered by

The Autoear ohserve r,

and not

only in t h e aforement ioned tendency to p i n po i n t the e x h i b i t ion as a n a t i onal ­ i s t even l . Rather, German commentators argued t hat 1 928 reHeeled tlw

exha ustion

of Ford i s t tec h niques and the reaffirmation not j u st of German

b u t also of E uropean tec h n i ca l s u periori ty. U S i ndust ry accounted for 86 perc e n t of a l l cars i n t h e world in the l ate 1 920s, b u t A merican mass p roduc­ t i on a l l eged l y had ru n i ts course w i th respect to technological i n nova t i o n . T h e B e rl i n show, i n addi t ioll to the a n l l u a l car shO\\s of P a r i s a n d London that preceded it each a u t u m n , suggested that the U nited States, 'wh i c h for many years after the w a r had t h e t ec hni c a l l eaders h i p i n h a n d , must now ret u rn it to E urope, to the old c u l t u re' ( F ri edmann, 1 928). If ol1e wanted to k now what the car of the fu t u re wou l d be from a technolog i c a l point of v i ew, then it was the t hree mai n E u ropean auto e x h i b i t s to II h i c h one t urned. A ll the great i n nova t i ons of t he A merican car of t h e recent past, from lovel y styl i ng to the e ight-cy l i nder engi n e , had been ack now ledged and i ncorpor­ ated by E uropean m a n u fact u re rs; o n l y Craham-Paige's righ t l y famous

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four-speed transmission, on display at the Berlin show, recalled this earlier technical prowess. But now French and German engineers offered elegant overdrive transmissions, and in developing independent suspension systems, front-wheel drive and other innovative technologies, European manufacturers set the tone for the future (Friedmann, 1928). The issue here is not whether this characterization captured actual developments but how it reflected a general belief or perception that the European car industry, despite its clearly subordinate position to US car manufacturing, was ready to assert itself technologically in global conver­ sations over the future of the automobile. The upshot of this assertion was a sense of immense, i mpending change, or, as one commentator remarked of the 1 928 show, 'we see everything almost in a state of revolution: How will the normal passenger car look . . . at the next Berlin world show?' Situated in a transatlantic web of technological cross-fertilization and competition, the car was experienced as being in a state of enormous flux and transformation (AAZ, 1 928b: 30). A year later, Owen John (1929b) agreed, though from his viewpoint the coming 'revolution in bodywork' and the rapid transformation of styling were even more significant than mechan­ ical innovations were. His assertion was l inked to his defence of London's Olympia auto show, which was i n danger of being discontinued by the British car i ndustry, but the sense of i mpending, radical change could not be overlooked. In a more formalistic vein, the critical responses to Americanization and homogenization of car styles reflected a tendency to think of the auto­ mobile in both metonymical and metaphorical terms. In the 1 928 account of the German car show, the radiator, a distinctive marker of different brands since before the First World War (The A utocar, 1 9 1 3), worked metonymi­ cally when it associated a part of the car with its whole. But it worked meta­ phorically when it stood in as a substitute for the car, carrying the burden of the discussion about international styling standards and their effects on national design cultures. This way of thinking about the motor vehicle, in which parts and wholes were made to interact in the construction of auto­ meaning, may be observed again and again in national contexts, including the German case. In the AAZ, the automobile was more or less deconstructed and laid out for readers in its various parts and components in a series entitled 'The Auto from Front to Rear', in which individual parts of the car, from radiators and fenders to engine components and tyres, were discussed, evaluated and offered up for the edification of car owners (AAZ, 1936a). Perhaps the most notable (or i nfamous) such historical example was the transnational cultural preoccupation with the tail-fin, which became the sine qua non not just of the American automobile in the 1950s but also a symbol of American economic progress, or material excess, depending on one's poli tical perspective, or of a particular design trajectory related to the wider influence of American science fiction and popular culture figures such as Flash Gordon (Bellu, 1 990/91 ; Dudas, 1991). Such part-whole relations reflected how transient auto-meaning could be, shifting abruptly from

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certain parts of cars to the whole, then to national or even international levels. Hardly only a physical artifact, the car, as a relationship of various body parts, systems and mechanisms, was a changing, partitive but also contingently integrated transportation and communications system open at all times to processes of construction and deconstruction of meaning by its varied audiences. Small Cars and National Motoring Cultures

Similar remarks may be offered for another aspect of the commentator's observations, namely his praise of small German and other Continental cars, which reflected both a continuing British interest and an emerging concern for German car cultures. The coming of mass automobility in Britain between the wars was attributable to the success of small cars in a predomi­ nantly middle-class market, in which initially Ford, but then Morris, Rover and Austin were particularly successful as the era evolved. The middle class as well as a small segment of the working class graduated from motorcycles and cycle cars to baby cars and small cars (Davies, 1 928), not infrequently through the used-vehicle market, and increasingly thanks to instalment purchases. The Austin Seven, regarded by contemporaries as a 'democratic' car ( The A utocar, 1 928a), was a notable achievement in this context; it sold for £225 in its initial offering, but by 1 930 had dropped in price to £ 125. It could reach 50 mph and get 50 mpg. The Austin Seven epitomized what had become the dominant type of 1920s British small auto, 'standardized with a front-mounted in line four-cylinder side-valve water-cooled engine of up to 1 500cc, a plate clutch, integral three-speed and reverse gearbox and a final shaft drive to the rear axle' (Foreman-Peck et aI., 1995: 48). During the initial surge of small-car ownership in the 1920s, Austin and Morris together captured 60 percent of the British market (Church, 1994: 34). Austin's small car would become more powerful when a supercharged version was offered, and in general engine output rose by 20 percent in the 1 930s in the British auto industry, making it possible to get more power out of smaller, lighter and more economical motors. Notably, the Austin Seven also distinguished itself by attracting female drivers (Rose, 1926). But the reporter's focus in 1 928 must also be seen in the light of what would be a developing, broader worry that the British motor industry was still deficient in producing a good small car that would facilitate the spread of car ownership to the lower middle classes and the broader mass of the working classes. In the autumn of 1928, an A utocar writer could still claim with confidence that 'Britain leads in the small car industry of the world' ( 1 928c). Just five years later, after H itler had seized power, The A utocar followed the German car industry's development, noting the successes and failures of the Nazi regime's efforts to build a superhighway system, to achieve energy independence through manufacture of synthetic rubber and fuel, and to produce a cheap but technologically advanced car for the masses. By 1936, A utocar contributors noted that Hitler's project to build a people's car had developed more slowly than anticipated. Even so, there

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was reason to expect success, because, as the writer stated, 'if any country can produce synthetic rubber and petrol in sufficient quantities to meet a nation's needs, and also make a motor car which working men can afford to turn, Germany is that country' (The A utocar, 1936). Soon this attitude would be turned on Britain itself, as Germany's resoluteness in the matter of building a people's car served as a platform for more critical perspectives on the domestic car culture. In 1938, an A utocar editorial once again noted that i t was 'easy to emphasize the dis­ appointments and delays which have retarded the realization of a dream', namely the i ntroduction of the Volkswagen, the arrival of which for German consumers was now postponed until 1940. Nonetheless: . . . one must recognize not only the energy but the vision shown in the very conception of a car that, it is claimed by its sponsor, 'can be bought for 5s. a week, insured for a shilling more', and will be in the most l iteral sense a car for the millions. What a different outlook from that prevailing i n this country.

The editorial went on to castigate the British state for thinking nothing better of the country's third largest industry than to see it as a cash cow from which to extract £80,000,000 annually. In addition, Britain, the editorialist complained, was a country in which 'ownership of a car is hedged about with as many restrictions as the mind of bureaucracy can conceive!' (The A utocar, 1938). The negative comparison was extended in 1 939, this time in the direc­ tion of other European countries. The people's car proj ect reflected 'an enthusiastic attitude towards motoring promotion on the part of . . . Govern­ ment' in Germany, in the eyes of the A utocar commentator, an attitude lacking in France, where the idea of a people's car was taken up by private i ndustry but not the state, and even presumably in Italy, Mussoli ni 's desire to have a mass car notwithstanding. In England, meanwhile, the problem was not that a small serviceable car for the ordinary driver was unavailable. Nor was the issue one of direct government subsidy, but rather of lowering taxation. England had several people's cars already, it was maintained, but 'because the people in question cannot possibly afford the taxation involved in owning them', the spread of such a car was frustrated (The A utocar, 1 939). It is necessary to discount a part of such rhetoric as the product of sectoral i nterest. After all, the failure of a true car for the masses was not attributable only to the government's placing obstacles in the way of popular desires, as the case of the Morris M inor SV indicated. This austere little car, offered in 193 1 for j ust £100, equipped with only a three-speed trans­ mission and a single windshield wiper, failed in the marketplace. It appears that British consumers shied away from the new offering, deciding i nstead to purchase more expensive, better-equipped models so as to demonstrate they could afford something beyond the most stripped-down car on the market - a case of conspicuous consumption from a rather more modest

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socioeconomic position (Church, 1994: 36--7; O'Connell, 1998: 22). More broadly, automotive journalism's criticism of the 1930s reflected a general malaise in the B ritish auto industry, induced by that industry's inability to respond successfully to international competition from US and, to a lesser degree, German manufacturers. Challenges to the British share in world automotive trade led to a round of self-critique and finger-pointing at home (Church, 1979: 125). Such caveats aside, the A utocar's remarks also reflected important trends in the country's driving culture. First, as the foregoing implies, fasci­ nation with the Volkswagen project was by no means unique to B ritish culture. Engineering and popular interest in a small car that was more than a downsized version of the larger cars touring Continental roads could be seen throughout Europe, and at least one engineer, Bela Barenyi, in the 1920s in Vienna had sketched out plans for a motor vehicle that anticipated many of the design and technical features that the later people's car would incorporate. These plans appeared in the French car magazine Omnia in 1934, though without their author's permission (Niemann, n.d.: 89-93). Even in America, where the Model T had made the notion of a populist car old news, the Volkswagen earned the attention and admiration of automo­ tive observers. A utomotive Industries pointed out to its readers that Hitler was 'a socialist' who saw motorized transport not merely as a commercial necessity but as an important platform for recreation and the 'national health' that came with it. The news of the laying of the cornerstone of the new VW plant in Fallersleben near Brunswick in 1938 brought home to the world that 'there is a determination behind the oft-mentioned scheme for the production of the Vol kswagen' (Automotive Industries, 1938). Britain participated in what had become an international conversation, and a basi­ cally positive one at that, on the prospects and possibilities of the new National Socialist people's car. Second, the British editorialist's lament about the effects taxation policies had on auto ownership had some merit, especially since the horse­ power tax weighed heavily on the decisions of consumers just as it shaped manufacturers' production goals. An 'obsession' among many British car buyers, the horsepower tax was one of several factors that led manufacturers to diversify model and engine offerings so as to appeal to as many middle­ class income niches as possible. Retail prices of cars fell significantly in real terms over the interwar period, and in 1936 average prices were close to one-half their level of 1924. In combination with higher levels of real income for the middle classes and the spread of instalment buying, lowered new car prices brought the car to larger and larger groups of consumers, of which about 2.5 million owned cars on the eve of the Second World War. But even more might have been able to own cars were it not for running costs. By the end of the 1930s, annual operation costs, including both taxation and fuel prices, for a small, 8 hp car could amount to well over one-third of the purchase price when new (Foreman-Peck et aI. , 1 995: 7 1 , 73-6; O'Connell, 1998: 22-3). The state reduced the horsepower tax

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Theory, CuLture & Society 21 (4/5)

substantially i n 1934, but i t was not enough for The A utocar, which viewed government taxation policy as evidence of official auto-hostility. Even so, the complaint about the lack of motoring enthusiasm on the part of the British state was related ultimately not to industry policy or government intent but rather to national-cultural orientation, in the critics' eyes. The A utocar reporter of 1928 stressed that attendance at that year's auto show suggested Germany was more car-friendly than the British were, an observation made all the more compelling by the images of unruly crowds, eager to view the newest car and motorcycle offerings, surging forward against police l ines. This comparison was extended into the 1930s with reference to the Volkswagen, as we have seen, but also to the building of the Autobahn. British travellers marvelled again and again at the high­ speed highways, which offered all the exhilaration and freedom of driving that the congested, speed-patrolled English roads did not (Dugdale, 1 939; Nockolds, 1936). The entire 'feel' of German culture - and of the cars it produced, or planned to produce - suggested both a healthy relation to the past and a forward-looking embrace of the modern. The tradition-rich Mercedes and the futuristic Volkswagen signalled this dualistic historical relation, j ust as H itler's auto-friendly policies seemed to mediate between heritage and moderni ty. Towards the Volkswagen?

As Angela Schwarz ( 1 993) has demonstrated, many British commentators on Germany identified with certain elements of that country's culture without necessarily attending to details. Just as they embraced German desires for national political community without directing critical attention to the Nazi regime's racist and authoritarian policies, so many car enthusi­ asts i dealized and exaggerated H itler's motorization polici es. But how did German conversations about small-car motorization compare with those of the British? It should be noted that German-speaking Europe's great desire for automobiles was of relatively recent origins ( Merki, 1998, 1999, 2002). I t was only in the late 1920s that car enthusiasts could argue that Germany's small towns and rural areas had abandoned decisively their deeply felt, often bitter 'auto hatred', a hatred borne of numerous class and cultural antipathies toward urban dwellers and social elites (AAZ, 1928d). About the same time, the noted journal ist and novelist Heinrich Hauser ( 1928) published a primer on technology in which he argued that the educated middle class (Bildungsbiirgertum) in particular needed to be more at 'peace with machines', i ncluding cars. Learning how to drive, and thereby how to understand the car as a mechanical entity, was one imp0l1ant way whereby a more positive relationship between 'culture' and the car could be estab­ lished. H itler was convinced that his dictatorship would once and for all wi pe out the last vestiges of animosi t y toward the car in Germany. But only struggle and a broadly mobilized 'will to motorization' would bring about the task. Underlying what appeared to be an almost unequivocally strong

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popular embrace of the car was a very recent history of conflict over the car's proper itinerary through society. In addition, as in Europe as a whole, a long and often animated discussion within Germany about the people's car preceded Hitler's programme (Edelmann, 1997; Flik, 200 1 : 57-60; Tolliday, 1 995: 277-9). There were many naive assumptions in this conversation, not the least being that all it would take for a true mass car to be produced was the energy and genius of a master-engineer. Henry Ford was the major inspiration, but the specific conditions of the rise of mass automobility in America were often overlooked in the public imagination's embrace of the wizard from Dearborn. In this context, the car emerged not as a product of a dense interplay of social forces, but rather as the offspring of a creative engineering master­ mind. This personalizing move was reinforced not only by popular journal­ ism but by the auto makers themselves, partly through massive propaganda organized, in Henry Ford's case, on a global basis, but partly also through more traditional means such as autobiographical and memoir literature (Horch, 193 7). It was precisely this popular vision of the genius-engineer's will to act that would animate Adolf Hitler's programme for a people's car. H itler's own resort to a mythology of the 'self-made man' in politics, a leader who commanded power through a 'triumph of the will', was an analogue to the Fuhrer's vision for German motorization. Through no fault of his own, Ferdinand Porsche, deeply committed to engineering innovation but not necessarily to political advocacy or cultural fame, seemed to instantiate such i magery (Nelson, 1 965: 36-75). From the car industry's point of v iew, opinions were divided as to whether or how the people's car could be realized. BMW director Franz Joseph Popp, having surveyed the US auto industry, in 1924 gave the wildly optimistic and much publicized estimate that there were 1 million poten­ tial automobile buyers in Germany (Flik, 200 1 : 56). The people's car would tap this market and create innumerable economic advantages for Germany domestically and internationally. At the 1 928 show, the director of Mercedes-Benz, Carl Schippert, maintained that the German auto industry was willing to 'sozialize the car' by offering models that less well-paid groups could afford, but that many obstacles stood in the way of this goal (AAZ, 1928d). The German trade unions supported the auto makers' efforts at rationalizing their factories in large part because they were also inspired by the idea of a people's car. Even before Henry Ford's autobiography was published in German, the German metalworkers' newspaper serialized a shortened version of the 'auto k ing's' book i n 1 922 (Flik, 2001 : 58). Trade union spokesmen used rhetoric similar to that of the manufacturers, repre­ senting the people's car as a 'social reformer' that would solve Germany's economic and political crises (Edelmann, 1 997: 282). Hitler exploited both manufacturers' indecision and workers' aspiration, though even he could not finally bring the programme to its conclusion (Mommsen, 1996). It would take a liberal capitalist market, the energy of VW director Heinz Nordhoff and the unique historical conditions of post-Second World War West

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Germany to transform the 'car in people's heads' into the 'car at the door' (Stieniczka, 200 1 : 1 8 n The more nationalist AAZ was convinced that t h e small car for the masses was there already at the t i me of the 1 928 auto show, Noting that the 'inexpensive car' was the 'burning issue of mass i nterest', the magazi ne praised the same c ars singled out by The A utocar reporteL The one-cylinder H anomag was a 'fully developed people's vehicle', the magazi ne maintained, E ven more impressive was the Dixi, the German A ustin Seven, which 'was not large, but it ran like the devil' (AAZ, 1 928c), The Dixi had distinguished i tself i n the racing world already, but it was also much favoured i n c i vil l ife, notably by professionals such as medical doctors and lawyers, Its popularity among these groups suggested that it was not the working man or woman but primarily the better-off classes that could afford the Dixi, the lowest price model of which cost RM 2595, In 1 928, 95 percent of all wage earners in Germany still earned less than R M 2 100 annually (Petzina et aL, 1 978: 105). Of course, j us t as in B r itain, it was ult imately running costs rat her than just the sale price of a new car that determined the choice to buy. These costs, dominated above all by taxation of fuel and new car purc hases, were considerably h igher in Germany than in France, Great Britain or the United States (Flik, 200 1 : 304). Even for most of the m iddle class, the D ixi, as well as its competi tors from Opel or Auto Union throughout the 1 920s and 1 930s, would remain unattainable. Such evidence convinced others that the small car was still very much a d istant dream. A retrospecti ve look at the 1 928 show from 1 0 years' distance by the journal Motor-Kritik i n dicated that many thought the Berlin event had been bereft of serious i nterest in a small car for the masses. 'The most i nteresting thing that one did not see [at Berlin] was t he rationally constructed small car (or light car) at an acceptable price' - so went the popular critique at the Berl i n exhibit ( Motor-Kritik, 1 939). Motor-Kritik had earned a reputation not only for strong advocacy of the small car but also sharp criticism of the German car industry ( Kubisch, 1 998: 43). But its unenthusiastic assessment of the 1 928 show was not the product of sectarianism or an unusually pessi mistic view of the industry's handli ng of the people's car genre. E ven the stylish Motor, with its richly coloured covers and stunning photography oriented to the educated m iddle class, argued in 1 930 that 'thousands and thousands more' await the 'German people's car' (OUe, 1 930). D uring the Nazi period, meanwh ile, the AAZ's contributors abandoned the celebratory tone of the late 1 920s and shifted to a rhetoric of critical anticipation of the people's car. Letters to the editor contrib uted to the 'wait and see' atti tude (AAZ, 1 936c; 'Kapitan Nemo', 1 936). In the magazi ne's coverage of the 1 936 Berlin Auto Show, at which over 200 cars were exhibited, a price list revealed there were only five cars selling for less than R M 2000 (AAZ, 1 936b). No commentary was needed to drive home t he point that an inexpensive, technically advanced small car had still not arrived. H i tler, though greeted with massive sceptic ism both

Koshar - Cars and Nations

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by Ferdinand Porsche and the German car industry, insisted that th!:' Volks­ wagen should sell for only RM 1000. Conclusion

Bri tish and German discussions about the car rev!:'aled a complex ordering and re-ordering of auto-meanings across national communities. 'The car' appeared here as a field of c ultural experimentation i nto which was layered a whole set of symbolic connectivities, a web of significations and active appropriations that, it has been argued, could facilitate rapidly c hanging perspectives on the meaning and definition of the automobile. A uto­ meanings shifted from car parts to wholes and back again, and from indi­ vidual cars to national and transnational levels, as English and German commentators observed the car industries of the countries in question. But the attribution of significance to automobiles could also produce conti­ nuities, stable expectations and points of cultural contact between speakers from different social or national perspectives. Despite enduring war and corporate merging, the Mercedes conti nued to operate as a stable, 'inter­ cultural' symbol of automotive quality, illustrati ve of a particular German approach to the car but also criticized or embraced as something distinctly German by British motoring commentators. In addition, what appeared to be stable, namely B ritish leadership i n the production of a good small car for an emergent mass auto public, turned out to be quite shaky, as the rise of a National Socialist car culture called i nto question both British commit­ ment to national motorization and the British car industry's ability to produce a serviceable car for the masses. From the German standpoint, meanwhile, the Mercedes and Volkswagen symbolized the continuing past and the anticipated future respectively of nationalist automobility, notwith­ standing the Nazi regime's incompetence i n real izing its ambitions for a people's car. The cultural burden carried by the car stemmed in part from a general sense of the automobile's significance for the national communi ty, but this burden derived its shape and content only from the historically specific perspect ives developed by opinion makers and mediators working across national car cultures. If 'things' are indeed understood partly as 'belonging to nations', then it is important to stress how the enduring struc­ t ures and momentary conj unctures that condition such belongingness often operate in transnational contexts. References Allgemeine Automobil ZeitLlng (1928a) ·Durchs SchlUsselloch. Zur internationalen A u toschau Berlin 1928·, 3 Novernber: 1 5 . Allgemeine Automobii Zeitung (1928b) · Die Weltausstellung des KraftfalJr\\ e�en<. 11 November: 27-30. A llgemeine A utomohil Zeitullg ( 1928c) 'Der billige Wage n · 1 1 November: 32, :33 . ALLgemeine A utomobil Zeitnng ( 1928d) O as soziale A uto', 1 4 N ovember: 29-30. .

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Allgemeine A utomobil Zeitung (1936a) 'Das Auto von vorn bis hinten', 18 .Tanuary: 13. Allgemeine A utomobil Zeitung (1936b) 'Erster U berblick uber die Autoschau', 15 February: 14-19. Allgemeine A utomobil Zeitung (1936c) 'Der Wagen fUr die Autobahn-im Spiegel unserer Leser', 19 September: 8-13. The A utocar (1913) 'Bonnets and Radiators', 22 March: 507-20. The A utocar (1919) 'The Designing Hun', 12 .T uly: 68. The A utocar ( 1920) 'German Design, Mercedes Cars', 1 1 September: 45 1-2. The A utocar ( 1928a) 'At the Paris Show', 5 October: 685. The A utocar (1928b) 'A Tour of Olympia', 12 October: 766-73. The Autocar (1928c) 'Showtide', 19 October: 875. The Autocar (1936) 'Disconnected .Tottings', 9 October: 680. The A utocar (1938) 'The People's Car: Foundation Stone for German Factory Laid Down after Four Years', 30 .Tune: 998. The A utocar ( 1 939) 'The People's Car: What Stands Against a Spreading Idea', 1 7 February: 246-7. Automotive Industries (1938) 'Volkswagen - $2 per week - F.O.B. 1940 in Germany', 24 September: 382-4. Bade, Wilfrid ( 1938) Das A uto erobert die Welt: Biographie des Kraftwagens. Berlin: Zeitgeschichte-Verlag. Bellon, Bernard (1990) Mercedes in Peace and War: German Automobile Workers, 1 903-1 945. New York: Columbia U niversity Press. Bellu, Serge (1990/91 ) 'The Great 50s Dream', A uto & Design 65: 39-55. Berger, M ichael L. ( 1979) The Devil Wagon in God's Country: The Automobile and Social Change in Rural America 1 893-1 929. Hamden, CT: Archon Books. Boch, Rudolf (ed.) (200 1) Geschichte und Zukunft der deutschen Automobilindus­ trie. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Church, Roy (1979) Herbert A ustin: The British Motor Industry to 1 94 1 . London: Europa. Church, Roy (1994) The Rise and Decline of the British Motor Industry. London: Macmillan. Davies, B.H. (1928) 'Among the Small Cars'. The Autocar 19 October: 894a-b. Dudas, Frank ( 1991 ) 'Flash Cars', Design March: 5 l . Dugdale, .Tohn (1939) 'In Germany Today . . . Reflections o n a Recent Continental Tour with a Twelve-cylinder Lagonda', The A utocar 16 June: 1022-3. Edelmann, Heidrun (1997) 'Der Traum von "Volkswagen'' ', pp. 280-8 in Hans­ Liudger Dienel and Helmut Trischler (eds) Geschichte der Zukunft des Verkehrs: Verkehrskonzepte von der Fruhen Neuzeit his zum 2 1 . }ahrhundert . Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus. Edensor, Tim (2002) National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life . Oxford and New York: Berg. E..l.A. (1928) 'Berlin!', The Autocar 16 November: 1 144-9. Engel, Helmut (2000) Das Auto: Geburt eines Phiinomens. Eine Berliner Geschichte. Berlin: .Tovis.

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Flik, Reiner (200 1 ) Von Ford Lemen? A Ulomobilbau und MOlorisierung i n DelLlsch­ land bis 1 933. Vienna: Bohlau . Foreman-Peck, James, Sue Bowden and Alan McKinley ( 1 995) The Brilish Molor Industry. Manchester and New York: Manchester Uni versity Press. Foster, Mark S. (2003) A Nation on Wheels: The A Ulomobile Cll!Jure in America since 1 945. Belmont. CA: Thomson/Wadsworth. Friedmann. P. ( 1 928) 'Paris-London-Berlin'. ALLgemeine A Ulomobil Zeitung 8 November: 45-9. Gartman, David ( 1 994) Auto Opium: A Social Histor) of A merican A Ulomobile Design. London: Routledge. Gregor, Neil ( 1 998) Da.imler-Benz in the Third Reich . N ew H aven. C1' and London: Yale University Press. H auser, Heinrich ( 1 928) Friede m it Ma.schinen. Leipzig: Philipp Reclam jun. H ebdige, Dick ( 1 988) Hiding in the Light: On Images and Th ings. London and New York : Routledge. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (eds) ( 1 983) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge U niversity Press. Horch. A ugust ( 1 937) fch baute Autos: Vom Schmiedelehrling ZWIl AutoindustrieLLcn . Berlin: SchUtzen-Verlag. John, Owen ( 1 929a) 'On the Road: Does Motoring Have a Tendency to Destroy Indi­ viduality"?', The A utocar 1 Februal)': 208-9. J ohn, Owen ( 1 929b) 'On the Road: The Future of the Show - To Be or Not To Be"?'. The A utocar 2 November: 1022b-c . 'Kapitan Nemo' ( 1 936) 'Gedanken eines Auslanders', Allgemeine Automobil Zeitung 22 February: 1 2-15. K i rsch, David A . (2000) The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History. New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers U niversity Press. Koshar, Rudy (200 1 ) ' " German y has been a Melt i ng Pot": A nlt'rican and German Intercultures, 1945-1955', pp. 1 58-78 in Frank Trommler and Elliot Shore (eds) The German-American Encounter: Coriffici and Cooperalion Bel/l;een JiliO Cultures, 1800-2000. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Koshar, Rudy (2002) 'Germans al the Wheel: Cars and Leisure Travel in Interwar Germany', pp. 2 1 5-30 in Rudy Koshar (ed.) Histories of Leisure. Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers. Kubisch, Ulrich ( 1 985) A Ulomobile aus Berlin: Vom Tropfen lcagen zum Amphicar. Berlin: Museum fUr Verkehr und Technik. Kubisch, Ulrich ( 1998) Das Automobil als Lesestoff: Zur Gesch ichte der deu/schen Motorpresse 1 898-1 998. Berlin: Staatsbibl iothek Preuf3ischer Kulturbesitz. Lackey, Kris ( 1 997) RoadFrames: The American Highll'a) Narralive. Lincoln and London: U niversity of Nebraska Press. Lewis, David L. and Laurence Goldstein (eds) ( 1 983) The AUlomobile and American Culture. Ann Arbor: U niversity of Michigan Press. McShane, Clay ( 1 994) Down the Asphalt Path: The AUlomobile and the American Cily. New York: Columbia University Press. Matless. David ( 1 998) Landscape and Englishness. London: Reaktion Books.

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Mercedes-Benz Archiv ( 1 927-8) Propaganda Tour Reports, Sonderschauen, Nr 1 . , Stuttgart. Mercedes-Benz Nachrichtenblatt ( 1 925) "Mercedes und Benz bei der GroBen Russis­ chen PrUfungsfahrt 1 925', November: 1 . Merki, Christoph Maria ( 1 998) 'Den Fortschritt bremsen? Der Widerstand gegen die Motorisierung des StraBenverkehrs in der Schweiz', Technikgeschichle 65: 2:33-53. M erki, Christoph M aria ( 1 999) 'Die " A uto-Wildli nge" und das Recht: Verkehrs(un)sicherheit in der Fruhzeit des Automobilismus', pp. 51-73 in Harry Niemann and Armin H ermann (eds) Geschichte der StraJ3enverkehrssicherheit im Wechselspiel zwischen Fahrzeug- Fahrbahn [Lnd Mensch. Bielefeld: Delius und Klasing. M erki, Christoph Maria (2002) Der holprige Siegeszug des Automobils 1895- 1 930. Zur Motorisierung des Straj3enverkehrs in Frankreich, Deutschland und der Schweiz. Vienna: Bohlau. M iller, Daniel (200 1 ) 'Driven Societies" pp. 1-33 in Daniel M iller (ed.) Car Cultures. Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers. Mommsen, Hans (with Manfred Grieger) ( 1 996) Das VolksUJagenwerk und seine Arbeiter im Drilten Reich. DUsseldorf: Econ. Moorhouse, H.F. ( 199 1) Driving A mbitions: A Social Analysis of the American Hot Rod Enthusiasm. Manchester and New York: M anchester U niversity Press. Moser, Kurt (1998) 'World War I and the Creation of Desire for A utomob i les in Germany', pp. 195-222 in Susan St rasser, Charles McGovern and Matth ias Judt (eels) Getting and Spending: European and A merican Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MUlor-Krilik ( 1 939) 'Autoscliau 1 9:39 und rund ein Dutzend lahrchen Ruckblick', January: 51-3. Miinchener Neuesle Nachrichlen ( 1 929) 'Sonderausstellung bei M ercedes-Benz'. 3 December. Miinchener ZeiuLng ( 1 929a) 'Mercedf's-Benz Wnbefahrt', 7 December. Miinchener Zeil ung ( 1 929b) 'Mercedes-Benz "N urburg- Kolonne" ', 7/8 December. Miinchener Zeitung ( 1 929c) 'Ein sf'henswnter Mercedes-Benz', 14 December. Nelson, Walter Henry (1965) Small Wonder: The Amazing Story of the Volkslmgen . Boston, M A and Toronto: Little. Brown and Company. N iemann, Harry (n.d.) Bela Barenyi: The Falher of Passive SafelY. Stu ttgart: Mercedes-Benz AG. N ockolds, Harold ( 1 936) 'Cross-Channel H oliday'. The A U/ocar 28 A ugust: 390-2; 1 1 September: 462-64, 466. Nolan, M ary ( 1 994) Visions afModernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany. New York : Oxford Li niversity Press. O'Connell, Sean (1998) The Car in British Sociel;: Class. Gender and MOloring 1896-1939. Manchester and New York: M anchester University Press. Oswald, Werner ( 1996) Deutsche Autos 1 920- 1 945: Alle deulscher PersonenlVagen der damaligen Zeit, 1 0th edn. Stuttgart: Motorbuc-h Verlag. Olte, l�einhold ( 1 930) 'Del' neue O K W- Viel'zylinder: ein Schritt vol'warls auf clem Wege zum cleutschen Volksauto', MOlor March: 33-4.

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Petsch, Joachim ( 1 982) Geschichte des A uto-Design. Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag. Petzina, Dietmar, Werner Abelshauser and Anst'!m Faust (1 978) Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch III. Munich: Beck. Preston, Howard L. ( 1 979) A utomobiLe Age AtLanta: The Making of a SOllthem MetropoLis, 1 900- 1 935. Athens: Un iversity of Georgia Press. Primeau, Ronald ( 1 996) Romance of the Road: The Litemtllre of the American Highway. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Reichsverband der Automobilindustrie (ed.) ( 1 938) Tatsachen und Zahlen aus da Krrljiverkehrslcirtschaji 1 93 7. Berlin: U nion Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft. Richardson, Kenneth ( 1 977) The British Motor Industr); 1 896-1 939: A Social and Economic History. London: Macmillan. Rieger, Bernhard (n.d.) ' ''Modern Wonders": Technological Innovation and Public Ambivalence in Britain and Germany between the 18905 and 1933', unpublished artic l e manuscript. Roche, Daniel (2000) A History of El1eryday Things: The Birth of Consumption in France, 1 600-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge U niversity Press. Rose, M. ( 1 926) Letter to the Editor in 'Some Queries and Replies', The A utocar 19 November: 99.5. Runge-SchUttoff, Gerda ( 1 928) 'Eroffnung!', ALLgemeine Alitomobil Zei/ung I I N ovember: 3 1 -2. Sachs, Wolfgang ( 1 992) For Love of /he Automobile: Looking Back info t h e Histor) of our Desires . Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Scharff, Virginia ( 1 99 1 ) Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming oflhe Molar Age. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Schuder, Kurt ( 1 940) GraniJ u nd Her::: Die Straj;en Adolf Hitlers - ein Domball lUl.\erer Zeil. Braunschweig, Berlin, Hamburg: Georg Westernmann. Schwarz, Angela ( 1 993) Die Reise ins Drille Reich: Brilische A ligenzeugen im na/ion­ also::ialistischen Deulschland ( 1 933-1 939). Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Sedgwick, Michat'! ( 1 970) Cars of the 1 930s. London: B.T. Batsford. Stieniczka, Norbert (200 1) ·Vom fahrbahren U ntersatz ZLlr C hromkarosse mit "innerer Sicherheit" : Der Wandel der Nutzanforderungen an das Automobil in den ,sOer und 60er lahren', pp. 1 77-200, in Rudolf Boch (eel.) Gesch ich/e und Zllkllnji der deu/schen A u /omobilindus/rie. Stuttgart: tranz Stei ner. Thieme, Carsten (200 1 ) 'Krisenbewaltigung uurch Kooperation"? Fusionsprozel3 unu Marktverordnungsversuche bei Daimler-Benz 1 924-1 9:32', pp. 85- 1 08 in Rudol f Boch (ed.) GeschiclLle u n d Zllkunji rla dell/schen A litomobilindustrie. Stuttgart : tranz Steiner. Tolliday, Steven ( 1 99.5) 'Enterprise and State in the \\"e st German Wirtschafts­ wunder: Volkswagen and the Automobile I nuustry, 1939-1962', Business History Relliell; 69: 273-3,s0. Trenlmann, Frank ( 1994) 'Civilization and its Discontenh: English Neo­ Romanticism and the Transformation of Anti-Modernism in Twentieth-century Western Culture', journal of Contemporary His/ory 29: 583-625. Volti, Rudi ( 1 996) 'A Century of Automobility', Technology ([nd Cul!ure 37: 663-8,'). Walz, Werner and Harry Niemann ( 1 997) Daimler-Ben::. IVr) dos A ll/O unfing, 6th edn. Konstanz: Verlag Stadler.

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Wik, Reynold M . ( 1 972) Henry Ford and Grass-roots America . Ann Arbor: U niversity of Michigan Press. Zeitlin, Jonathan (2000) 'Reconciling Automation and Flexibility? Tech nology and Production in the Postwar British Motor Vehicl e Industry', Enterprise and SocietJ 1 : 9-62 .

Rudy Koshar received his PhD from the Un iversi ty of Michigan in 1979. He taught at the University of Southern California from 1980 to 199 1 , then moved to the Uni versity of Wisconsi n-Madison, where he is Professor of H istory. Recent publications i nclude German Travel Cultures (Berg, 2000); From Monuments to Traces: A rtifacts of German Memory, 1 8 70-1 990 (University of California Press, 2000); Germany's Transient Pasts: Preser­ vation and National Memory ill Twentieth-century Germany (University of North Carolina Press, 1998); (with Alon Contino) 'Regimes of Consumer Culture', theme volume for German History ( May 2001); and an edited volume, Histories of Leisure (Berg, 2002). He has held Guggenheim, ACLS, German Marshall Fund, Jean Monet, and other fellowships. He is series editor for 'Leisure, Consumption, and Culture' with Berg Publishers. H i s current research is a study o f automotive driv i ng practices i n Europe and North America from c. 1 900 to the 1960s.

Driving Places Marc Auge, Non-places, and the Geographies of England's M 1 Motorway

Peter Merriman

First, to put our human movements into context, remember that this car trundling so mundanely up the M l (while we argue with Melvyn Bragg on the radio) through the sunshine or the slush and spray is moving, so minutely it seems once the perspective is changed, on an earth that is itself spinning in a wobbly fashion upon its axis. . . . All movement, as they say, is relative. And second, of course, remember that in the midst of all of this we each stand (or, better, travel) in a different place. ( Massey, 2000: 227)

I

N DESCRIBING the spacings produced by her journey to work, Doreen Massey (2000: 225) proposes that 'space is a configuration . . . of a multi­ plicity of trajectories', where the movements of people, materials and ideas are integral to the production and performance of space and place. Massey echoes the sentiments of other social scientists who have attempted to formulate more mobile, dynamic and relational accounts of space and place (Thrift, 1996, 1999; VITY, 2000; see Cresswell, 1997, 2001). Their attention has turned to such mobile practices as writing, thinking, migrat­ ing, holiday making, Internet-surfing, dancing, tramping and fiying, while the movements, desires, emotions, technologies, times and spaces associ­ ated with driving have also been receiving attention from an increasing number of academics (see Sachs, 1992; Ross, 1995; Katz, 1999; Lupton, 1999; M ichael, 2000; Sheller and VITY, 2000, 2004; Dant, 2004; Dant and Martin, 200 1 ; M iller, 2001). Anthropologists, sociologists and historians have traced the ways in which vehicles are consumed in different places and times (Vrry, 2000; M iller, 200 1 ; Wollen and Kerr, 2002), while other academics have explored the design, engineering, landscaping and symbol­ ism of the different environments through which motorists and their vehicles •

Theory, Culture & SOCiel) 2004 (SAGE, London. Thousand Oaks and New Del h i ).

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pass, whether they be the contested route of a new road, or service areas, motels, streets, roads and motorways in different countries (see Merriman, 200 1 , 2003). Despite this growing body of work, very few academics have provided critical accounts of the geographies, sociologies or anthropologies of driving along specifIC roads or through specifIC landscapes (cf. Edensor, 2003; Williamson, 2003); tracing the ways in which subjectivities, materi­ alities, temporalities and spatialities associated with driving emerge through the folding and placing of the spaces and materialities of cars, bodies, roads and surroundings (with a variety of thoughts, atmospheres, senses and pres­ ences) into dynamic, contingent, topological assemblages (cf. Hetherington, 1 997a, 1 997b). Spaces or landscapes of travel and mobility are frequently referred to as being 'placeless' ( Relph, 1976; Casey, 1 993), 'abstract' (Lefebvre, 199 1), 'ageographical' (Sorkin, 1 992a), 'non-places' (Auge, 1 995), but in this article I examine the ways in which the design, construc­ tion and use of a specific motorway led to its 'placing' in very particular ways at different times ( Hetherington, 1997 a: 185). While humanistic geographers, philosophers and anthropologists have tended to see places as meaningful, lived, rooted, organic and symbolic sites with which i ndividuals develop fairly long-standing attachments (Relph, 1976; Casey, 1 993), I attempt to utilize a more open, relational and inclusive working of place (Massey, 1991) in which the movements of travellers are not seen to be movements across the landscape; rather these flows and associated frictions and turbulences are integral to the construction and performance of land­ scapes and places. As Kevin Hetherington states, places are 'mobile effects': 'a non-representat ion that is moh i l i zed through the pla c i ng of t h i ngs in complex relation [sic.] to one another and the agency/power effects that are pelformed by those arrangements' ( Hetherington, 1997a: 1 84, 1 87). Places and landscapes are continually ordered, practised and placed through the folding together of different materials, atmospheres, spaces and times into a complex 'scrumpled geography' ( Doel, 1996: 42 1) character­ ized by 'a multitude of differences' ( Hetheri ngton, 1997a: 197). What's more, the hybrid subjectivities, senses of place, dwelling, home and social­ ity that emerge through these pleats and folds may become associated with transient, mobile and momentary senses and experiences of dwelling, being at home and 'making do' in these places, rather than necessarily being associated with prolonged or repeated movements, fixities, relations and dwellings, as is often emphasized in humanistic and particularly Heideg­ gerian accounts of place and landscape (e.g. Relph, 1 976; Heidegger, 1 978; M acnaghten and Urry, 1 998, 2004; Ingold, 2000). In the first section of the article, I provide a critical discussion of the writings of the French anthropologist Marc Auge on the changing charac­ teristics of space, place and i ndividuality in the contemporary West. Auge sees places as occupied, familiar, partially rooted, organic and associated with a sense of history, home and dwelling, while he suggests that spaces such as airports, motorways and shopping malls are frequently experienced as non-places: spaces of travel, consumption and exchange where solitary

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users interact with their environment and other people through texts and screens (Auge, 1995). Auge develops a persuasive ethnology of the experi­ ences of a certain kind of traveller/user, but I argue that he overstates t he novelty and difference of contemporary experiences of these spaces, and fails to acknowledge the heterogeneity and materiality of the social networks bound up with the production of such environments. In the second section I suggest that, rather than focusing on the presences and absences associ­ ated with the polarities of place and non-place, social scientists should 'try to forge a dynamic sense of place' (Thrift, 1999: 296) and focus upon the multiple, partial and relational 'placings' which arise through the diverse petformances and movements associated with travel, consumption and exchange. Drawi ng upon this approach I examine the diverse ways in which England's M 1 motorway has been contingently and often momentarily assembled and placed at different points in time. While A uge details the experiences of an ethnographer/passenger, I trace the topologies of the M 1 through the many documents and texts that have actively played a part in placing and spacing the motorway i n different setti ngs over the past 45 years. I describe how engineering plans, maps, construction work, building materials and public obj ec tions were integral to the placing of the motorway in diverse ways, and how in the late 1950s and 1960s the motorway and its service areas were constructed as exciting, novel and modern spaces which the public were keen to visit, travel along and occupy. While Auge might suggest that the growth in the number of motorways and the demise of accounts celebrating t heir modernity are c haracteristic of a supermodern era in which motorway travel is seen as boring, solitary and asocial, I examine the multiple, partial ways in which the M 1 has been 'placed' through the arrangement, folding and movements of a diverse alTay of things al different points in lime, and how feelings of boredom, sol it ude, excite­ ment and familiari t y may arise from, and be bound up with the production of, particular 'placings'. Marc Auge and the Geographies of Non-place

In the early to mid- 1980s the French anthropologist Marc A uge began to complement his work on West African countries such as the Ivory Coast and Togo with ethnological studies of contemporary France (especially Paris) ( Auge, 1994, 1998; see Conley, 2002a). Drawing upon a form of 'self­ analysis' ( 1 996a: 1 75), A uge traced 'an anthropology of t he near' ( 1 995: 7) in studies such as La Traversee du Luxembourg ( 1985) - a semi-fictional, part-autobiographical account of the narrator's movements on 20 1 uly 1984, as he walks across the 1m·dins du Luxembourg; Un elhnologue dans Ie metro ( 1 986; translated as In the Metro, 2002) - an ethnographic study of the spaces of the Paris metro; and Non-lieux ( 1 992) - a largely theoretical account of the relationship between individuality, sociality, space and place in the contemporary West. l In the English translation of Non-heux - Non-places: Introduction to an AnthropologJ of Supermodern it; A uge ( 1 995) examines the c hanging -

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characteristics of space, place and individuality in an overly or excessively modern world. This is a world of 'supermodernity' - a world 'characterized by the acceleration or enhancement of the determining constituents of modernity' (1996a: 1 77) and the emergence of 'three figures of excess': first, 'an excess of simultaneous events' or time, as there is a speeding-up of communication and i nformation flows, an 'acceleration of history', and people are bombarded with i mages of other times and places; second, and rather paradoxically, 'excess space', as this speeding-up and increasing connectivity results in a 'shrinking of the planet'; and third, 'excess indi­ vidualism', where the forces of supermodernity open 'each individual up to the presence of others' yet also 'fold the individual back on himself, close her off, constituting him or her as a witness of rather than an actor i n contemporary life' (1998: 103-5; see also Auge, 1995, 1999a, 1 999b). A uge's description of supermodernity may seem somewhat familiar, a new name for latelhigh modernity, postmodernity or an age of advanced/late capitalism, while his narrative of speeding-up, shrinkage, i ncreasing mobility, connectivity, disembedding and changing conceptions of time, space and individuality echoes the observations of other writers on the econ­ omics, sociologies, politics or geographies of globalization, capitalism, modernity, postmoderni ty, nomadism, the global media and other related concerns (see e.g. Harvey, 1989; Giddens, 1 990; Jameson, 199 1 ; Benko, 1997; Castells, 2000; cf. Thrift, 1995). 2 But to date little critical attention has been paid to Auge's attempt to theorize how the excesses of super­ modernity are concretized, mediatized or experienced in what he calls 'non­ places'. Whereas place or 'anthropological place' (Auge, 1995: 52) is seen to be localized, familiar, known, organic, occupied and meaningful (to its occu­ pants and observers), 'a space where identities, relationships and a story can be made out' (Auge, 2000: 8), non-places effect a certain detachment between the individual and the spaces he or she traverses: 'They are the spaces of circulation, communication and consumption, where solitudes coexist without creating any social bond or even a social emotion . . .' (Auge, 1996a: 1 78). Users are unable to fully recognize their presence in non­ places (Auge, 1996b), and while they may encounter others and witness past and present events in these spaces, supermodernity has the effect of paralysing the individual, who becomes 'merely a gaze' (Auge, 1998: 103), 'encountering their surroundings . . . through the mediation of words, or even texts' (Auge, 1995: 94). Screens, signs and texts mediate and facili­ tate the individual's relations with him or herself, other people, other times and other places, actively creating and maintaining the i ndividual's sense of 'solitary contractuality' (1995: 94). These texts and interfaces 'fabricate the "average man'" , the user of these non-places (1995: 100). What kinds of environments may be described as non-places? A irports, motorways, theme parks, hotels (especially motels), department stores, shopping centres, tourist spaces and the more abstract and/or viltual spaces of communication and media technologies are all seen to be

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archetypal non-places (Auge, 1994, 1 995, 1 996a, 1 996b, 1 998, 1 999b, 2000; cf. Morse, 1990). How should the anthropologist approach or study non-places'? Well, as one among many solitary individuals who traverse non­ places, as 'the only native at hand', anthropologists of supermodernity should attempt to practise ethnological 'self-analysis', which in several of Auge's books assumes a semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical form (Auge, 1 996a: 1 75). The prologue to Non-places reads as a typical example of this semi­ fictional, part-autobiographical ethnology (Auge, 1995). A uge describes an international business trip by a business executive named Pierre Dupont; skilfully conveying the seemingly mundane, solitalY, textualized, measured, regulated and commodified nature of the non-places through which Pierre travels ( 1 995). He is assembled as a generic yet mundanely heroic user of non-places, a privileged executive flying business class, whose frequent experiences of traversing and dwelling in these spaces creates a familiar, expected and routinized solitariness that is mediated or facilitated by 'the typical props of magazine, lap top, or blase gaze' (Gotldiener, 2001 : 35). This is an experience which may seem familiar to A uge's readers but, as he goes on to state, non-place 'never exists in pure form': . . . places reconstitute themselves in it; relations are restored and resumed in it. . . . Place and non-place are rather like opposed polarities: the first is never completely erased, the second never totally completed; they are like palimpsests on which the scrambled game of identity and relations is cease­ lessly rewritten. (1995: 78-9; see also 1998)

Place and non-place are always relational, contingent and continually folded i nto one another, but academics tend to overlook Auge's statements on the rewriting and relationality of these spaces when they point to the proliferation of non-places in the contemporary world (see Sheller and Urry, 2000; Uny, 2000) or criticize him for not recognizing that individuals such as maintenance workers, security guards, shoppers or business travellers often do see spaces such as supermarkets, motorways and airports as places (see Tomlinson, 1999; Morley, 2000; Cresswell, 200 1).:3 This is partly due to the style of Non-places. The theoretical ideas Auge develops in the book do not read as if they have emerged from the kinds of ethnological tech­ niques he urges anthropologists to employ (Sherringham, 1 995), and whereas Auge's readers have tended to echo or criticize his statements as if they are more general observations on the spatial formations of contem­ porary modernity, it is important to read this book as a form of self-analysis: one of many 'exercises i n ethno-fiction' ( Auge, 1999a: l l 8) or 'critical auto­ biography' (Conley, 2002b: 74) which provide a description of a particular kind of generic traveller's experiences of a series of distinct spaces. Auge's ethnological techniques are not discussed in Non-places, which may have benefited from a more reflexive or fictional style of ethnological writing (as with the description of Pierre's journey in the prologue), and a form of 'self­ analysis' which recognizes the differences as well as the sameness of the

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narrator/traveller (Auge, 1 996a: 1 75). These diHerences were acknowledged in a less reflexive manner in l ater essays, interviews and books, where h e explored t h e diverse ways i n which transit spaces may b e simultaneously constructed as places and non-places ( see Auge, 1 994, 1 996a, 1 996b, 1 998, 1 999b, 2000). Having outlined Auge's principal thoughts on non-places I want to detail a number of criticisms and concerns relating to his theories about these spaces. First, while detailed ethnographic work or 'sel f-anal ysis' could have revealed complex co-constituting relations between places and non­ places, Auge's reluctance to recognize the differences of the ethnologist and his dislike of 'postmodern anthropology' ( 1 995: 37, see also 1 999b) causes him to assume an awkward position as a traveller who is simultaneously inside and outside these spaces. " Auge has stated that the contemporary era is c haracterized by 'an alterity crisis, an inability to think the other' ( 1 994: 1 1 7; see also 1 999b), and that ethnologists cannot rel y on difference, distance or exoticism as t hey are 'like every other man' ( 1 996a: 1 76), but this sameness and solitariness turns into difference and social awareness when it becomes apparent that anthropologists are able to read non-places which, by definition, 'human beings do not recognize themselves in . . . ' ( 1 996b: 82) . The ethnologist is not all he appears, and h i s difference becomes apparent yet goes unremarked. A uge also effects a rather awkward distinction between anthropology and history. He suggests t hat h istorical techniques are 'remote from direct observation of the terrain' ( 1 995: 9), but he fails to recognize that social and cultural relations are enacted through the arrangement of, and encounters w i th , documents in archives and l ibraries, as well as pract ices, materials and atmospheres on the ground. My second comment relates to A uge's chronology of supermodernity. I woul d argue that he overstates the newness and differences of experiences associated with non-places, echoing the mistakes of writers such as Jameson, Castells and Harvey (see Thrift, 1 995; Frow, 1 997). Concerns about the legibility of contemporary changes have been expressed for several hundred years in relation to such diverse (new) technologies as the stagecoach, railway, telegraph, telephone and motor car (Thrift, 1 995, 1 996). A uge's suggestion that non-places may be characterized by 'a break or discontinuity between the spectator-traveller and the space of the land­ scape he is contemplating or rushing through' ( 1 995: 84) could easily have been a 19th-century observation of rai l way travellers becoming disoriented by the rapidly moving scenery, and turning their gaze to readi ng material as a way of coping with the new speeds and the embarrassment of sitting in an enclosed compartment with strangers - resulting in silences, solitariness and connections with other times and spaces through texts and screens (newspapers, books, the window) in a similar manner to users of non-places in the contemporary era ( Daniels, 1 985; Schi velbusch, 1 986). My third cri ticism is that Auge seems to suggest that non-places are both objective and subjective, quantifiable and qualitative, and that he fails to provide a detailed account of the rel ations between, and co-production

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of, non-places and places. Non-places are said t o b e 'empirically measur­ able and analysable' spaces which 'could be quantified - with the aid of a few conversions between area, volume and distance', or else 'measured in units of time' (Auge, 1995: l l 5, 79, 104, see also 1999b). Non-places appear to assume a material form or geometry that corresponds to the archi­ tectures of communication or transport networks, but this delineation and deflOition sits rather uneasily alongside assertions that these spaces are also produced and experienced in multiple ways: places and non-places, while they correspond to physical spaces, are also a reflection of attitudes, positions, the relations individuals have with tht' spaces they live in or move through_ (Auge, 1998: 1 06, emphasis mine) .

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Auge fails to address the relations between the material and social construc­ tion of places and non-places, while his references to modern communi­ cation technologies providing 'the practical condi tions of simultaneity and ubiquity, freeing us from the constraints of time and space' (Auge, 1999b: l l9), overlook the unevenness and partiality of the geographies he is describing (cf. Massey, 1991) - a criticism that could also be directed at Paul Virilio, a key i nfluence on Auge's work (see Auge, 1 995, 1996a, 1996b, 1999b). My final criticism of Non-pLaces relates to Auge's approach to the social world and social relations. Auge suggests that as i ndividuals are confronted with more texts, screens and images, and rarely converse with one another i n non-places, there is an absence of social relations and trav­ ellers become solitary observers of everyday life. Sociality and solitariness are seen to be functions of unmediated human interaction, but this over­ looks the complexity, materiality and heterogeneity of social networks (Latour, 1993; Frow, 1997). As Bruno Latour remarked of A uge's earlier study of the Paris metro: he has limited himself to studying the most supt'rficial aspects of the metro A symmetrical Marc Auge would have studied the sociotechno­ logical network of the metro i tself: its engineers as well as its drivers, i ts directors and its clients, the employer-State, the whole shebang - simply doing at home what he had always done elsewhere. (Latour. 1993: 100-1) _

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The experiences, practices and socialities of particular travellers, and the complex work that goes into facilitating and managing the transactions and movements of users, are not necessarily apparent to the anthropologist­ passenger, who seems to overlook 'the ways in which virtual or highly mediated social relations . . . [can] construct a familiar sociality' ( Frow, 1 997: 77) and the sense in which places such as supermarkets, Internet chat rooms, airports and motol-way service areas do act as 'meeting places' where all manner of social relations are performed (Auge, 1996b: 82; cf. Miller et aI., 1998; Morley, 2000). Different people dwell in, move through

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and inhabit these spaces of travel and exchange in different ways, as thoughts, materials, spaces, atmospheres and flesh are enfolded into unique, hybrid, mobile, and both individualized and normalized, assemblages such as the business executive, car-driver or shopper (see e.g. Lupton, 1999; Michael, 2000; Sheller and Urry, 2000; Crang, 2002). While there have been few detailed critiques of Auge's theoretical writings on non-places, there are extensive literatures on spaces such as airports, shopping centres and theme parks which engage with many of the ideas underpinning his writings, and variously argue that these spaces may be seen to be places, placeless, or a mixture of both. Take for instance spaces of air travel. Architects, urban planners, social scientists and artists have all made allusions to the placelessness or anonymity of spaces of air travel. Airports have been seen to reinforce 'our ontological alienation' (Thackera, 1 997: 60), result in 'experiencing subjects [who] are atomized' (RosIer, 1998: 63), and create a 'cognitive dissonance that comes from being a rootless monad in an opaque system' (Thackera, 1997: 64). They have been described as 'liminal' spaces, 'simultaneously Everywhere and Nowhere', and the latest spaces deemed to function as 'heterotopia' (Bode and Millar, 1997: 54). Hub airports, where many travellers are forced to wait for connecting flights, are often marked out for special criticism, and the writer David Coupland has described them as 'an in-between place, a "nowhere", a technicality . . . an anti-experience' ( 1 997: 72; see also RosIer, 1998; Pascoe, 2001). Airports are spaces where travellers may experience feelings of boredom, frustration, solitariness or dislocation, but these experi­ ences are neither inevitable nor limited to such spaces of travel and exchange. Academics must not overlook the complex processes through which such feelings are enacted, and they should pay more attention to the complex histories, geographies and sociologies of such spaces. When the new terminal was opened at Ody Airport in Paris in 196 1 , i t s observation terraces, cinema, restaurants and shops became popular tourist attractions in their own right (Pascoe, 2001), and such experiences or placings cannot simply be attributed to a modern or pre-supermodern era. Frequent flyers, baggage handlers, flight crews, first-time flyers, first­ class passengers, refugees, air traffic controllers, police officers and the homeless are likely to have very different experiences of movement, dwelling, security, familiarity and belonging in these places (Cresswell, 200 1 ; Crang, 2002). A diversity of things and architectural assemblages from arm rests in airplanes and immigration halls, to themed pubs and flight socks - are also integral to the placings of the airport, airplane and air traveller. Chauffeurs meet executives, travellers meet waiting relatives, and animals are met by quarantine officials. Local residents, airport managers, environmentalists and regional development agencies (as well as travellers) may be all too aware of the location or embeddedness of the airport within the landscape: complaining about aircraft noise, pollution or expansion proposals; promoting the airport as a shopping or business destination; designing aesthetically pleasing terminals to relax and socialize in; and

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promoting the airport as a growth pole for regional expansion (Gottdiener, 2001). As terminals and concourses grow more sizeable, airport operators seek to i ncrease profits and waiting times l engthen (with the rise of the hub airport, i ncreasing congestion and greater security measures) so architects, planners and airport managers have redesigned and constructed airports to serve as spaces for shopping, dining and relaxing as well as travelling (Goudiener, 2001). The modification of older terminals, along with the construction of arcade-style concourses, has led Gottdiener to reflect that 'increasingly . . . the mall and the airport merge in design', and both are seen to be charac­ terized by a 'theming' that is also visible in restaurants, theme parks (e.g. Disneyland), museums, tourist sites and whole cities (e.g. Las Vegas) (1997: 96; see also Relph, 1976; Sorkin, 1992b). These spaces are typically depicted as sites of excessive pol icing and simulation, where consumers are enmeshed i n a hyperreal, spectacular landscape that promises fantasy, escapism and freedom, but delivers sameness, blandness and placelessness (Baudrillard, 1994; cf. M iller et aI., 1998): At Disneyland one is constantly poised in a condition of becoming, always someplace that is 'like' someplace else . . . . [n this new city, the idea of distinct places is dispersed into a sea of universal placeless ness as every­ place becomes destination and any destination can be anyplace. (Sorkin, 1 992b: 2 1 6-17; cf. Relph, 1976)

While academics often point out that individuals consume, dwell in and move through these environments i n diverse and multiple ways (see e.g. Shields, 1989), it has been suggested that more attention needs to be paid to the detailed histories and geographies of particular consumption spaces , and 'the views of "ordi nary people" who occupy such places ( M iller et a!., 1998: 53; see also Morris, 1988). Miller et a1. have used ethnography, focus groups and historical research to show how shopping centres, far from being homogeneous or placeless, are 'very different places, serving very different k inds of publics' (Miller et aI., 1 998: 28). New centres age, older centres are periodically refurbished and rebranded, and particular sites may emerge as centres of community life and 'meeting places' for different groups (Morris, 1 988: 204). Such detailed empirical studies serve to differentiate such sites and reveal the relational manner in which these places and the identities of their consumers are constructed in diverse and ongoing ways (Miller et aI. , 1998: 20; see also Morris, 1988). So, while shopping centres, airports and theme parks are frequently described as rather bland, place­ less, poorly designed, excessively familiar and themed spaces of consump­ tion, globalization and simulation, recent studies have shown how such accounts often overlook the complex histories, geographies and materiali­ ties of sites which change over time and are encountered and occupied by people in diverse ways.

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Driving Places: Topologies of the M l Motorway

When Marc Auge describes the motorways of France they are presented as archetypal non-places that are characteristic of an age of supermodernity, and his descriptions do appear somewhat fam iliar, to this reader at l east. A uge's generic motorway traveller bypasses towns and villages whose name and presence are marked on signs that invite us to turn off and visit their attractions (Auge, 1 995). These appear to be sol i tary spaces where drivers and passengers rarely commun icate with people in other vehicles and are 'supposed to interact only with texts, whose proponents are . . . "moral enti ti es" or institutions' such as the 'M inistry of Transport' or police ( 1 995: 96). D i rection signs, electron ic information screens, guides and maps facil i ­ tate the movements of travellers and enable them to measure their progress. A uge's description of these generic jou rneys provides a fairly convi ncing account of the experiences of an 'eternal passenger', but in this section I suggest that th is is a very partial account of the life of a motorway (Tomlin­ son, 1 999: I ll). These experiences of detachment and mediated relations are not as new or different as Auge appears to suggest, and he not only exag­ gerates 'the alienating, indi viduali z i ng, contractual aspect of non-places' (Tomlinson, 1999: 1 1 1) but also overlooks the complex habitations, prac­ tices of dwelling, embodied relations, material presences, placings and hybrid subj ectivities associated with movement through such spaces. What's more, the binary polarities of place and non-place lead A uge to overem­ phasize differences and focus on the absences w i thin s i tes labelled as non­ places. In th is section r suggest how one can overcome the problems associated w i th such binaries and breaks - between modernity and super­ modernity, place and non-place - by focusing on the topologies and multiple, heterogeneous 'placings' of a single (in this case, British) motorway - where such placings are emergent, dynamic, relational, multiple and produced, rather than paradigmat ic and epochal . MotO/·ways, a uloroules and expressways are not particularly new, and many of Auge's observations could have been made about the German A u t o ­ bahnen in the 1 930s or indeed England's M 1 motorway in the early 1 960s. It is in this earlier period that I want to begin to examine the geographies of the M l , tracing the topologies of Britain's first major stretch of motorway through documents arranged in archives and libraries. The first sections of what was commonly referred to as the London to Yorkshire Motonvay or London to Birmingham Motorway, stretching from Watford to Crick, were opened on 2 November 1 959 (Merriman, 200 1 ). Government plans proposed in 1 946 had been delayed due to economic conditions in the l ate 1 940s and early 1 950s, but with the start of detailed planning and surveying i n 1 955 and 1956 attention turned towards the latest project in the reconstruction of post-war Britain. N ewspapers heralded the coming of a type of road unseen i n Britain, and while it was initially assembled through the prelimi­ nary ideas and plans of engineers and a rough l i ne on a national map, it was not long before it enfolded, and unfolded i nto, farms, gardens, houses,

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football pitches and the lives of members of the public; as surveyors, jour­ nal ists and engineers worked the landscape with plans and maps, pens and surveying poles, notepads and cameras, theodolites and bulldozers. Plans, surveys and associated legal orders brought the architects and aura of a mysterious new motonvay into the pri vatized spaces of local residents and landowners, and 1 42 parties lodged formal objections about the location of the motorway between September and late December 1 955 ( see The National Archives, Kew [TNA] PRO MT 1 1 7/28). In the Bedfordshire village of Tingrith residents suggested that the material fabric of the village would be destroyed by the vibrations and noise of vehicles on the new motorway: 'the cottages will suffer from cracked ceil i ngs and crumbl ing walls, and [the] church "will shake to pieces faster than we can repair it" ( The Times, 1 955). These and other objections might sound familiar to today's readers, but the motorway became enfolded i nto the subjectivities and spaces occupied by landowners and residents in very specific ways, and their reactions reflected broader attitudes to landscape and planning in 1950s Britain. Most of the formal obj ections related to the lack of detailed information provided about access to severed farmland, while even a farmer such as Mr C. Davies, whose house was to be demolished, stated that his objections were 'not because of the road itself, for he acknowledges the need for progress . . . ' (Mercury and Herald, 1 958). H is concerns related to the dictatorial methods of planners and government, and for the most part the progress and modernity brought by Britain's newest motorway were seen to be a welcome force in the Engl ish countryside (Merriman, 2003). Very different presences began to be registered by the press and the public after construction was commenced by the engineering contractors John Laing and Son Limi ted in March 1 958. The motorway was arranged, worked and unfolded i nto a plethora of topological arrangements or placings, at the same time as bei ng assembled and emerging through the endless enfolding of different times, spaces, thoughts and materials. The motorway was incorporated i nto the spaces and times of the nation in different ways. Laing's publications compared the M 1 with the achievements of Britain's great Victorian engi neers (Roll, 1 959). Television companies and news­ papers conveyed images and accounts of construction into the lives and living rooms of the public. Laing prepared press releases, staff newsletters and pub) ic relations booklets and films to be consumed by journal ists, company staff and potential cl ients throughout the world. Noise from the construction site permeated the homes of locals. Motom ay workers lived and socialized in hostels, caravan si tes and pubs in local villages and towns. Lorries travelled out to quarries to obtain material for the motorway, distrib­ uting mud and dust onto local roads (Merriman, 200 1 ). People, material s, talk and sounds unfolded elements of the motorway into different spaces, places and subj ectivities, at the same time as planners, engineers, land­ scape architects, poli ticians, labourers and their machines, drawings and statutes worked ideas, soil, concrete, steel and vegetation into the socio­ material forms of the M l . Trinidad Lake Asphalt was transported from the ,

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Caribbean; local gravel was imported from new and existing quarries follow­ ing public inquiries and protests; while the workforce assembled by Laing and their subcontractors included Canadian, Indian, Polish, South African, Jamaican, H ungarian, Scottish and Welsh labourers, in addition to larger numbers of Irish and English workers (Rolt, 1 959). Different bodies, experi­ ences, histories, spaces and memories were worked into the landscapes of motorway construction, but while the employment of foreign and specific­ ally non-white labourers was portrayed as being positive and progressive in Laing's public relations booklet The London-Birmingham Motorway (Rolt, 1959), the experiences, biograph ies and spaces occupied by these workers were largely ignored by other commentators who exoticized them and appeared to be captivated by their presence (Merriman, in press). The d istributions of people, materials and thoughts entailed in constructing the motorway resulted in unfamiliar presences and juxtaposi­ tions that were discussed by local residents, journalists, the consulting engi­ neers, contractors and the public in different ways. The Ml was contingently assembled and ordered through the movements, experiences, work and materials associated with labourers, engineers, architectural commentators, drivers and passengers as an exciting, different and modern space and place in late 1950s and 1960s Britain (Merriman, 2003). While the engineering companies and newspapers celebrated the construction of the motOl'way, locals walked across fields and stood on bridges to watch work progress. After the motorway was opened by the Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples, on 2 November 1959, hundreds of drivers made detours to test their saloons and sports cars at high speed, while the motOlway soon became a popular route and destination for the Sunday afternoon family drive and for tourists who travelled out from the capital on London Transport's motorway bus trips ( The Times, 1959). The folding, arrangement and placing of the M1 i nto dynamic, mobile topologies gave rise to a series of distinc­ tive effects and subject-object formations which a range of experts attempted to study. Drivers were pal1ially and simultaneously assembled in relation to their vehicles and the spaces of the road as consumers, experts, deviants, criminals, statistics, navigators or participants in scientific experi­ ments, while Road Research Laboratory scientists, traffic police, Automo­ bile Association patrolmen, civil servants, engineers, service area operators and landscape architects attempted to govern the conduct and movements of hybridized vehicle drivers and passengers (cf. Rose, 1 996). Prior to the opening of the Ml civil servants, motoring organizations and journali sts expressed concerns about the ability of the average driver and vehicle to cope with the high speeds on this speed limit-less road. The government published a Motorway Code in time for the opening of the Preston Bypass Motorway in December 1958, which provided guidance on the regulations and special skills relating to moton¥ay driving (Ministry of Transport, 1 958), while, a year later, motoring associations, national newspapers and the motoring press reprinted the Code in special supplements and guides to the M l along with maps of the route, pictures of the signs, and advice on safe

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driving and car maintenance (e.g. The Motor, 1959). One journalist suggested that motorway drivers would become 'a being apart while . . . on the motorways' (Chronicle and Echo, 1958), while others referred to the new spati alities associated with motorway driving, highlighting the importance of good eyesight and the use of indicators and rear-view mirrors to enable safe passage through spaces in which the 'motorist will have to realize that what is coming behind him is of more importance than what is in front of him' (Martin, 1959). The Automobile Associ ation and Royal Automobile Club stressed the importance of maintaining vehicles, many of which were not designed for high-speed motoring, while motor manufacturers, engi­ neering firms and tyre companies suggested that their products would enhance the capabilities of driver and machine. In an advertisement in The Times in November 1 959 Automotive Products Associated Limited advised motorway drivers to purchase their high-peJformance brakes, clutches, filters and steering systems as 'you need more than skill behind the wheel' (Automotive Products, 1 959: 9), while India Tyres recommended their products 'For that motorway outlook!' and to give 'full scope to your skill as a driver' (India Tyres, 1959: 5). Drivers, passengers and vehicles are momentarily assembled i nto heterogeneous and hybrid subject-formations and placings, but the acces­ sories, texts and screens that were woven into the associ ations and move­ ments of vehicle drivers shouldn't be interpreted as signs of an excessively mediated present in which there is an absence of social relations or soli ­ tariness (cf. Auge, 1 995). While a text such a s t h e Motorway Code may have been new to drivers in 1959, and was active in placing the motorway, an examination of the work of the experts who devised the Code, and others who sought to understand, facilitate and guide the movements of drivers, reveals networks of sociality that connect drivers and their vehicles with such things as engineers, landscape archi tects, labourers, tarmac, fog, road signs, politicians and crash barriers. Civil servants, landscape architects and designers made conscious decisions to design and engineer the land­ scapes of the motol"Way so as to be free from idiosyncratic details and possible distractions. Information on road signs was standardized and their layout was tested, while detailed flowering shrubs that might distract drivers and result in accidents were avoided (see TNA PRO MT12 1/78). Drivers were assembled in relation to these spaces and technologies as particular k inds of subjects, but they have always used and appropriated such spaces in diverse, tactical ways (de Certeau, 1 984): talking to passengers; working on the move; reading maps; daydreaming; l istening to the radio; making phone calls; and playing car games with children. Other times, spaces, thoughts and subjects become enfolded into the spaces and placings of the cruising vehicle and, while it has been suggested that automotive tech­ nologies insulate motorists from the outside world, reducing the 'sights, sounds, tastes, temperatures and smells of the city and countryside . . . to the two-dimensional view through the car windscreen' (Urry, 2000: 63), I would suggest that such a view may oversimplify the embodied experiences

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of driv ing and that it is important to recognize the historicity and spatiality of these relational assemblages. The spaces of the car-driver and, more specifically, the materiali ties of the car, have changed in a variety of ways since the late 1 950s - a time when many cars on Britain's roads were old, drafty, cold, noisy and had much more difficulty coping with high speeds than the car occupied by Pierre Dupont in the early 1 990s (Auge, 1 995). Driving has also been bound up with specific spatialities and ontologies as drivers inhabit, use and relate to their bodies, machines and spaces of transit in distinct ways; looking into mirrors and through glass screens in order to observe, predict and judge the actions, positions, movements and appearance of other drivers and vehicles, while also communicating intentions and emotions by pressing on pedals and levers (indicating, accelerating, changing course, sounding the horn) or making other gestures (see e.g. Katz, 1 999). After driving along the M l in the late 1 960s A.C.H. Smith remarked i n New Society on how drivers are members of a distinct yet transitory social group that 'changes from minute to minute' and can only communicate through forms of display, driving acts and interpretations of shared rules such as the Highway Code (Smith, 1 968: 78). While this may appear to be a rather simplistic sociological analysis of the group dynamics of motorists, i t can alert us to the ways i n which drivers and vehicles perform in, and are constituted through, complex networks of sociality and materiality, in addition to providing a cursory account of the processes through which the car and the road are assembled and experienced as places (cf. Sheller and Urry, 2000; Miller, 2001). During the late 1 950s and 1 960s the M 1 was worked, regulated, consumed and studied as a space and place by a range of individuals and organizations. Scientists in the government's Road Research Laboratory assessed the performance of the motorway in scientific reports and journals, county police forces compiled accident and traffic statistics which rendered different kinds of movement visible in different ways, and motoring corre­ spondents reviewed the performance of drivers, vehicles and the road itself. In a review of the motorway in The Observer, Tony Brooks, Ferrari's 27 -year­ old grand prix racing driver, associated the motorway with spaces, practices and objects that were seen to be characteristic of contemporary society while contrasting its modernity and difference with the familiarity of the English countryside: To drive up M1 is to feel as if the England of one's childhood . . . is no more. This broad six-lane through-way, divorced from the countryside, divorced from towns and villages, kills the image of a tight little island full of hamlets and lanes and pubs. More than anything - more than Espresso bars, jeans, rock 'n' roll, the smell of French cigarettes on the underground, white lipstick - it is of the twentieth century. For all that, it is very welcome. (Brooks, 1 959:

5) The motorway was presented as another modern, youthful and somewhat

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other or foreign place that was woven into the landscapes of contemporary Britain, and such a j udgement was reiterated i n late 1960 when the first two service areas were opened. One of these, at Newport Pagnell in B ucking­ hamshire, was jointly owned by Blue Star garages and the Soho cafe and coffee house company Fortes, and it was not long before it became a 'place of pilgrimage for teenagers hoping for instant glamour': For young people, the new road was a concrete escape to a new kind of excite­ ment . . . Mr. Forte's snack-bar on the M 1 . . . this cosy man-made island called out to Britain's youth, the generation of teenagers who did not know there was anything special about being young but forsook the coffee bars of Soho Lo spend Saturday night 'doing a Lon' on this long straight road. (Greaves, 1985: 8)

During the 1960s the motorway and its service areas were experienced as places of spectacle, dwelling, socialization and excitement by the fashionable youth of Soho, but also families, lorry drivers and famous celebrities - although many lorry drivers preferred the intimacy and social­ i ty of transport cafes (Bugler, 1966). The placing of these spaces was worked through the folding of plastics, concrete, glass, fillet steaks, tea, vegetation, bodies, thoughts, vehicles, and a host of other things into different associ­ ations, forms, images and subjectivities, giving rise to such 'things' as modern buildings and landscapes, excited teenagers and postcards of service areas (see Merriman, 2001, 2003). The topologies of M 1 effected a series of partial, distinct, and different senses of space and place in the late 1 950s and 1960s, but while it may appear as if these were merely associated with the newness, modernity and momental), excitement surrounding the motonvay at this time, and that the last few decades have seen the motorway become a rather worn, familiar and ubiquitous non-place, this overlooks the continual arrangement and placing of the socio-material spaces of the motorway in diverse and multiple ways. It is true that motorways have provided travellers with a distinctive outlook on the countryside, as engineers and landscape architects aim to ensure that they are visually pleasing but free from distractions. Road signs may often provide the only means of contact drivers have with nearby towns and villages, while other texts, codes and technologies of education, surveil­ lance and discipline - such as the Highway Code, maps, driving tests, speed cameras, police patrols and the courts - are entailed in governing the relations between drivers, vehicles and the spaces of the motorway. Other archetypal non-places such as regional shopping centres, industrial estates and retail distribution centres are frequently situated close to motorways, while service areas may also be experienced as rather anonymous sites: You could be absolutely anyone, anywhere and at any Lime of the day and always fit in to the general fraught atmosphere . . . . wherever and whoever you are, you're in the middle of nowhere . . . (Clifford, 1 990: 48)

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Yet the geographies of these landscapes are more complex, heterogeneous and multiplici tous than Marc Auge or these passages suggest. Towns and villages may gain a new prominence and associations due to their naming on signs or adoption as titles for service areas, even if there may appear to be a deferral, dislocation or abstraction when these signs and sites become more familiar than the spaces and silhouettes of the village i tself. Newer service areas are emerging as places of consumption as well as work for local inhabitants, while food critics such as Egon Ronay rate and review the catering and amenities of individual British service areas. EMI were successfully sued for defamation in 1979 over Roy Harper's highly critical song about the M 1 's Watford Gap service area (Daily Telegraph, 1979), while other writers concerned about the quality and price of service areas have authored guide-books to enable drivers to visit restaurants and tourist attractions which are close to motorway junctions (Pick, 1984). In 1 968 Margaret Baker wrote a topographic guide for passengers entitled Discover­ ing M1 which detailed the landmarks and local history along the route of the motorway (Baker, 1968), while the M 1 and its service areas served as strategic sites in IRA terror campaigns in both the 1970s and 1 990s (Tendler et aI., 1997). While Auge has described service areas as non-places, British service areas have become significant and meaningful places for workers, business travellers, lorry drivers, hitch-hikers and tourists, as well as terrorists, guide-book writers, cultural critics, advertisers and architectural commen­ tators. The majority of travellers may experience them as places of transit and temporary dwelling, whose exact location and distinctiveness matter very little compared with their work in enabling drivers and passengers to 'get by', but they also serve as meeting places. Teenagers continue to meet up and hang out in service area car parks and cafes, including ravers waiting for directions to illegal parties and local youths who congregate and play on the arcade machines. The operator RoadChef have actively promoted their 19 service areas as 'the pelfect meeting place' for businessmen and women (Road Chef promotional leaflet, 1999), while the BBC Radio producers who commissioned a series of '2000 Tales' to mark the 600th anniversary of the death of Geoffrey Chaucer, decided that an M 1 service area would make the ideal meeting place for the fictional characters who recite the tales: Nothing felt right until someone suggested motorway services. Suddenly this seemed like the perfect place. Everyone is forced on to a motorway at some time . . . . Most importantly they are in between places, unconnected in many ways to their surroundings, islands of mini-Britain and the only port of call for contemporary weary travellers. (Hillier, 2000: 1 )

The problem facing the producers was how t o invent a scenario that could lead the different story-tellers to recite their tales to one another, and so i t was decided that a storm would 'force t h e closure o f the motorway and drive all the travellers to take refuge at The Four Seasons' service area on the

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M l , where staff organize a story-telling competition to help pass the time (Hillier, 2000: 2). While Marc Auge's comments on the solitary and asocial nature of non-places may appear to be confirmed by the narrative of '2000 Tales', where it requires a freak event to bring about conversation between these diverse groups of people, the comments of the producers and other individuals on motorway service areas suggest that travellers are extremely aware of the differences and diverse elements that are j uxtaposed and assembled in these places; and that there is not, as Auge suggests, 'an alterity crisis, an i nabi lity to think the other' (Auge, 1 994: 1 1 7). The landscapes of the M1 are placed through extraordinary and spec­ tacular events as well as the everyday and seemingly mundane movements of individuals and groups of travellers. Landmarks visible from the motorway or individual bridges, stretches of road and service areas may assume special meanings for individuals or families, while promi nent public, media events have enfolded and placed the spaces of the motorway into particular associations i n the minds of the public, as well as in more durable texts. In an unprecedented move, the police allowed members of the public to stand on the hard shoulder to watch Princess D iana's funeral cortege pass along the M l on its way to Althorp House on 6 September 1 997. The M 1 air crash at Kegworth (Leicestershire) on 8 January 1989 altered the significance and meanings attached to a short section of motorway for hundreds of individual onlookers as well as those involved in the crash. Five years earlier the motorway assumed a strategic importance during the miners' strike. In March 1 984 it became a site of protest for 200 miners who blocked the road with 50 vehicles, while police officers attempted to prevent the movements of flying pickets by constructing road blocks at motorway j unctions in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire through­ out 1 984 and 1 985 (Blomley, 1 994). More recently the routine work of policing the M l has been portrayed in docu-soaps such as Carlton Tele­ vision's Motorway. When English Heritage was developing its pol icy for protecting Britain's post-war buildings, it was suggested that Sir Owen Williams's M l bridges should be listed, as these 'fine structures . . . are an i mpOltant pmt of our national heritage' (Saint, cited in Glancey, 1 992: 30). The media coverage and public attention relating to all of the above events have led to the partial assembling and placing of the motorway in spatial formations associated with work, procession, mourni ng, disaster, protest, heritage and policing. While the majority of contemporary travellers and commentators may not associate the M 1 with such experiences, or indeed those of novelty, modernity and excitement, the repeated movements of trav­ ellers along this road and its complex associations with other spaces over a period of 45 years have led to the placing and topological arrangement of the motorway in myriad different ways. Conclusions

In his anthropological studies of the contemporary West, Marc Auge draws a distinction between anthropological place which is l ived, familiar,

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localized, organic, social and characterized by fix ity or repeated movements and associations, and non-places which are highly mediated, ubiquitous and marked by experiences of sol itude, detachment and alienation. In this article I have argued that Auge overstates the difference, homogeneity and blankness of these spaces, and that he is over reliant on a semi-autobio­ graphical, ethnographic approach, and a humanistic and static conception of place that overlooks the diverse th ings and relations weaving together drivers, machines and the landscapes of the road. Places are more contin­ gent, open, dynamic and heterogeneous than Marc Auge proposes, and if we focus our attention on the diverse ways in which people dwell in spaces of mobility, we can see experiences of boredom, isolation and detachment as emerging through specific placi ngs and movements (Martinotti, 1 999; Bender, 200 1). Indeed, while such feelings may be experienced in spaces such as motorways, they are just as likely to arise in one's home, village or workplace, and I would argue that there is no need to delineate a new species of place - for example, non-place - to account for or understand such associat ions, feelings and reflections on being and dwell ing-in-travel. While the M l has been associated with experiences of excitement, boredom, ubiquity and modernity at different points in time, these placings must be seen to be partial and relational achievements associated with distinctive ontologies, material ities and ways of moving and dwelling. Roads and motor­ ways such as the M l may be placed through the folding of a diverse range of spaces, times, thoughts and materials into different architectures, atmos­ pheres, subjectivities and texts. Landscape architects, Irish and West Indian labourers, A merican bulldozers, publ ic relat ions booklets comparing the engineering of the motorway with the construction of railways in the 19th century, gu ide-books, journali sts and even artists and BBC Radio produc­ ers are implicated in working and placing the motorway in different ways. The historical approach I have adopted stresses the simultaneous placing of the motorway in different spaces and times, but Auge's generic ethno­ logical approach makes il difficult for him to register or trace the arrange­ ment and folding of particular spaces, times and materials into these places of travel, consumption and exchange. Auge attempts to incorporate these spaces into the order(ing)s of supermodernity by giving them a presence that obscures their complexities and specificities; ignoring the partial and incomplete placings and spacings associated with such sites by focusing on ' the caricatured experiences of the 'eternal passenger (Tomlinson, 1 999: 1 1 1 ). Noles 1 . Auge's studies of contemporary France also include Domaines el chdteaux (Auge, 1 989) and Paris retraverse (Mounicq and Auge, 1992). 2. Auge states that supermodernity and postmodernity should be treated as two sides of the same coin, the former 'the positive'. the latter 'a negative' (Auge, 1 995: :30). ;�. While Auge draws upon a textual metaphor to allude to the continual writing or

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producti o n of place and non-place i n t h e manner of pal impsests. my a i m i n t h i s article i s to expose h o w d iverse pract ices and materi a l ities are bound u p w i t h t h e production of places. tracing a 'non-representational' account of t h e performative placi ngs of a motorway (on 'non-representat ional t heory" see Thrift . 1 996, 1 999) . 4. A uge i s parti c ularly crit ical o f t h e work o f James C l i fford ( see A u ge. 1 995. 1 999b: Sherringham. 1 995).

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The Times ( 1 955) '£8 for a Village Hampden? - Cottages Hoping to Move a Motor Road', 1 2 December. The Times ( 1 959) 'Trips to See Motorway', 6 N ovember: 6. Thrift, N . ( 1 995) 'A H yperactive World', pp. 1 8-35 in R.J. Johnston. P.] . Taylor and M.J. Walts (eds) Geographies of Global Change. Oxford: Blach·ell. Thrift. N . ( 1 996) Spatial Formations. London: Sage. Thrift. N . ( 1 999) 'Steps to an Ecology of Place'. pp. 295-322 in D. Massey. J. Allen and P. Sarre (eds) Human Geography Today. Cambridge: Polity Press. Tomlinson, J. ( 1 999) Globalization and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. U rry. J. (2000) SocioLogy beyond Societies. London: Routledge. L rry. J. (2004) 'The " System" of Autolllobility', Theor); Culture &: Society 2 1 (4/5): 25-39. Williamson, T (2003) 'The Fluid State: Malaysia's Nat ional Expressway". Space and Culture 6(2): 1 1 0-3 l. Wollen. P. and ] . Kerr (eds) (2002) A ntopia: Cars and Culture. London: Reaklion.

Peter MelTiman is a Lecturer in the Department of Geography at the U n i versity of Reading. His research focuses on mobility, space and social theory, cultures of landscape in 20th-century Britain, and the historical geographies of t ransport and travel . He has published in Ecumene: A Journal of Cultural Geograph ies and .fournal of Historical Geography. He is cu nently writi ng a book on the cul tural geograph ies of the M 1.

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Three Ages of the Automobile The Cultural Logics of the C ar

David Gartman

OHN URRY hasdea recent loymobichanged thethwaythisweconcept think about aut o mobi l e s wi t h hi s i of aut l i t y . Wi focusedtheironideamovement andas a process, hemplsuggest s ofthproduct at socioiolongiandsts J aconsumpt andon of t h e car t h i n g, a si e obj e ct ioesn, tandhat haslookreconfi at it asgureda systcievmil sociof inetteyrl. Among ocking socithe adil mandensiteochnins of­ calthis pract i c einmdiofvidautualomobi lity Urryon, inmachi cludesnicth(eeconomi car as manuf acteux,redenviobject, iment tem systaofl agent consumpti c ) compl ron­ , f o rm of mobi l i t y and domi n ant cul t u ral di s course. These diofmspace, ensionstimhavee, dwelintelracting anded toinproduce mobi(Urry,le civil societies wiUrry,th new kinds t e ract i o n honeoutoflosithnemg si-ghtthofe auttheoimobi nterdependence of oftheseindidivimdensi ons, I wil ftoiocusn inWiona tbroader l e as an i t e m ual consump­ culturetheiof consumeri stme tutihatlicharges objectto sshowwith meani ngsa andconsumer identiobject, ties beyond r i m medi a t y . hope t h at as theeautn conto embodi eosrya tculo ottuhraler ldiogimcensithatonsis relof aauttivelomobi y autloitn­y. omous from and oft r adi c t ThiReveals doesing notthe mean, however , that this culoftuthrale didimmensiensioonsn ofis iautndependent . ul t i m at e i n t e rdependence o mobi l i t y , the emergence ofgencitheeculs ofturalautoloproduct gic of aiopartn andiculuse.ar autHowever, omotive ageasargue ithiss culinthflattuuenced by t h e exi ral lroadigicctgrows andth itsineltefnsiandfieitss iconcomi ts effectstaonnt socipractetiyc,esit ofultproduc­ imately comes i n t o cont i o n wi tion andpurpose use, giofvimyng anal rise ytosisa inews to addconfiagdynami urationcofdiautmensiomobion tloityt.hThus, the major e concept ofchangiautonmobi a developing and contradictory system with gIn theffe elifcttoyls, oontwio nsocireveal e t y . g, argue that there have been three ages of the (2000: 57-64)

2000: 190-3;

2004).

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Th eor); ClI/lUre & Society 2004 (SAGE. London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi).

Vol. 2 1 (4/5): 1 69-195 001: 1 0 . 1 1 77/0263276404046066

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Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

automobile in the 20th century, each defined by a unique cultural logic of meaning and identity. To conceptualize these different logics I draw on three sociological theories of consumption. Pierre Bourdieu conceives of consumption as a game of distinction, in which different classes compete for cultural capital or status honor. For h i m, the automobile is a distinctive status symbol, marking off but ultimately misrecognizing the inequalities of c lass society. The Frankfurt School also argues that the culture of mass consumption legitimates c lass differences, not by displaying these differ­ ences in a symbolic hierarchy, as Bourdieu holds, but by h iding them alto­ gether. For Theodor Adorno in particular, consumer commodities like the automobile obscure the class relations of their production behind reified facades of mass individuality, giving consumers different quantities of the same illusions to compensate for the denials of mass production. Finally, theorists of postmodernism argue that the diversity and individuality of consumer commodities undermine old class identities by forming the basis for fragmented subcultures. For them the car and its subcultures are part of a fragmented, l iberated society of 'difference' that follows the collapse of modernity. Although each theory claims to capture the one and only cultural logic of consumerism in modern societies, I hol d that, with respect to the auto­ mobile at least, each is valid for only a specific historical period or age. This does not mean, however, that these successive logics are totally independent and completely annihilate the preceding ones. The relationship between them is best conceived as dialectical, in the original Hegelian sense (see Marcuse, 1 960). Each stage and i t s logic represents not a replacement but a development of the preceding one. The problems and contradictions of the earlier stage are transcended in the later one - that is to say, t hey are i ncor­ porated into and overcome by a h igher stage of development, without being solved in any final sense. So the old logic survives in the new, but in a higher form of development. In a sense, then, I postulate not a succession but a progression of stages, without postulating, as do Hegel and Marx, some end point or purpose to this h istorical progression. There is, however, a common theme or i mpulse underlying all three stages - the search for i ndividual identity within a capitalist society that holds out the promise of autonomy but simultaneously denies it in the heteronomy of the economy. Empirically, the periodization of these three ages is based mainly on my research on the automobile in American society, presented in my book A uto Opium (Gartman, 1 994). However, I will also cite studies that lead me to believe t hat a similar progression of ages occurs in other countries, especially Britain, although the timing may be different. This article extends my previous research h istorically as well as nationally. While Aulo Opium concentrates on the years up to 1 970, here I include an overview of the last 30 years under the rubrics of post modernism and post-Fordism. Thus, through a focus on the cultural logics of the car, I hope to show that auto­ mobility is a dynamic and contradictory system, whose effects on society are pervasive and ever-changing.

Three Ages of the Automobile Theof economi automobic crilesentis anderedclAmeri canicsocit wiethtywhiin cthhethlaetevehi19tchlecentwasuiry,nevia tatiblmey a ss confl oprimarked these putincreasi ngly pcontbeyondentiotushe reach class diassoci vof alislioabutns,ted.forthTheeithis ghihautghbourgeoi ce ($s600ie. outThese to $7500) ownershi priic cappearance es were theofresultheset ofcarsa skiwasl easd, craft l a bor process, i n whi c h t h e aest h et importaofntthase coach-bui their mechani cartal ,fuproduced nction. Theiin elr abodiborates,e stinylpartes toiculmatarc, hwerethe works l d i n g thesolupper Not onlatyiotnhewiproduct ionpributviallege.so thIne usetheofUnitheseted earlSttastateeyss,carsofwhere idiffrieedom ecld atsses. heirhadassoci t h cl a ss al w ays been conf l a t e d wi t h geographi c movement s gaveofthmobieir weal tunencumbered hy owners the freedom oflaectrapiivedregi, Aeximen­ble andtationindiofvraii,dautuallwayoform l i t y , by t h e col timetoftenablesusedand notitinerari es. Buticalthteseransport beautbutiful,forexpensi ve vehi c l e s were more for pract l e i s urt' actleisiurevitiesclandass, publwhicichostusedentattihoemn. Theyfor tbecame anraciessent ial accessory ofdowntl1f' o uri n g, n g and paradi n g boulceanvards.cultuConsequent lyr, ument the autofofmobi le quiandcklleyisure,becameand defafashisymbol inoednablin ofeAmeri re as an i n st r eedom the wealof twork h thatandremoved an enteffoirrte. class of people from the mundaneThe concerns funct i o nal lowerresent classesed react ereedom' d to thisofsymbol isymautwiothowners hostilittoy iandntruderesentinto­ ment . Farmers t h e ' f weal t h rural onlsymbol y for itzhede damage theyg-bdiusidntesso landinteandrestsli,vestwhoseock butabusesalcommuni socaused becausetradiies, ctnothaleyagrari urban bi an protl istesstons duricitynstg rteethiss,periwhereod. Urban workers alstrseeto relsentife anded bourgeoi s aut o mobi t h ey di sruptliveesd symbol i z ed t h i s cl a ss' s arrogant di s regard for workers' andrich,liasveliinhdioods.catedAtbythtehesamecrowdstime,thatworkers envitractededthtois movi possessi on eofrs thbye were at e t h eat earlworriyefidlmabout s feattuhrienclg aautss-dio races andeffectparades. Incar,1906statinWoodrow Wig lshason v i s i v e of t h e g: ' N ot h i n spread Socialistic 1906: feeling12)in.tSean his countO'Cronnel y morel ( 1th998:an the11-42, use of77-111) automobifinledss' of mobility in the earlsimiylaThese perir meani odearlofngstyheculofcarcltuaralissn meani Bripritviislhenge,gssociofleeautitsyure. omobiandlifreedom ty, condiBourditionedeu's bythteoryhe car'ofs product i o n and use, are congruent wi t h Pi e rre consumpt asegantclassanddistsubtinctiloen,stdevel opedtheory in hisonbookthe simple concept (1984)ion. Buiof consumer lding anionelgoods r uct u ral statunsgssymbol se,stheifyargues tnhdiatviculdualtu'rals clobject s carrtion.y sociBut athl ey symbol constructic econnect dasmeani t h at t t o an i a ss posi economied chabiclatssus,anda culsettuofral durabl taste ies not direct but mediatedionbybetanweenembodi Gartman

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The Age of Class Distinction: Bourdieu and Craft Production

(New York Times,

Distinction

172 (4/5) predisposic ticapionstandal ofwaystheofbourgeoi seeing thsiee worldetde.rmiThus,nes foar exampl e, the amplfrome economi li f e removed mundane matat ineclriianlesneedsmembers and thofe tfunct iaossnstofowardthings.cultThiurals lgoods ife detthermiat reveal nes a habi t us t h h i s cl this dinstgancegoodsfromthatnecessi tlyegeby aesttheihr etfoirmal izatioveron andmataesteriahletfunct icizatioion,n. tByhe choosi pri v i c f o rm bourgeoisie unconsci ously infunctdicatioenss tandhat ineeds. t has suffTheicbourgeoi ient resources to be­ unconcerned wi t h mundane s i e ' s f o rmal iarezedfoculcusedtureexcldistuinsiguivelsyheson iitmfrommeditahtee worki n g cl a ss, whose consumer goods matehave rial needs andconstgratantifliycatconcerned ion. Lack ofwiteconomi c capi t a l means t h at workers t o be erial thatnecessipritviieles,gewhimatcheriinagrail functns iionn tover hem aesta habihettiucsfotrm.hat iThus, nclhinmeet esculthemtiunralg mattoconsumpt goods marks ofsief clbriassngsidtenthe itaddiy, andtionalconsumi ng thofe 'cullegitutiralmatcapie cultaltuorre'honorabi of thieonlbourgeoi resource ity,emwhirestch sdi. Culsguitsuesralandcapijusttal itfieestsifithees economi c capi t a l on whi c h t h e cl a ss syst t o refi n ed tastes oandr tocreat es andthe ilthuussiodeservi n that intsg upper-cl ass possessors arec personal ly superi ot h ers of t h ei r superi o r economi resources. Asa miBourdi sofit,itculs realturebasisymbols. izes class, but in such a way as to cause sEarl recogniyeuauttputioonmobi lsocies cleteyarlbyy tconfestifeyrreding tculo ittsuremoval ral capitafrloonm thenecessihightybour­ geoi s i e i n Ameri c an . Theve beaut i f u l forms of t h ei r craf t bui l t bodi e s made i t cl e ar t h at t h ese expensi vehicleofs were notstifymerel y refmundane ofAnd their use in leisure works art , t e i n g t o i n ed cul t u ral t a st e s. actearniivintigesa litevstinifg.iedAnotto haerliffeactfreeof tfhriosmearlthye perimundane, matomobieriallitconcerns of o d of aut y expl a i n ed theory isattheeculdiftuuralsioncapiof townershi p. Bourdives,eumembers argues tofhatthine anbypettBourdi aty tbourgeoi empteu'tos saccumul a l for t h emsel ieieor. Butmidldlackie clnagssbotseekh thteo economi appropricatmeans e the prestand igthioeusculgoods ofhabithteusbourgeoi s tuoralry of t h e l a t e r , t h ey set t l e for cheap i m i t a t i o ns, whi c h seem sat i s fact to them ofbutclgiassve iaway thneiexpl r infaeirinsorthresources tno oftheiautr oclsassto betmidtdlers.e-clThiasss process m i t a t i o e di f usi o prof by ththeeifirrstowndecade ofngthprosperi e 20th tcenty, thuesery inpetthtey Unibourgeoi teessid Stosnalaborrowed tess.andAnximanagers othuse autto mark growi omotivmarket e symbolforofcarswealsttihm, ulleaistureed autandomakers freedom.to Thiadds lgrowi n g but l e ss prosperous ssdemand expensifovre autmodelomobis tolittheiy, ar fewproductvisiolinarynes. producers Finding fewlikleowerFordlimandits tOlo dthseewere sttrioduced mulateditsto inpiexpensi oneer vmass productT, andion.overIn 1908 Ford ofMotthoer Company i n e Model t h e course two decades piothneered a product iocne process of speci awiliztedhinmachi nesof andtnexthe riassembl y l i n es at brought t h e pri of t h e car down reach sing incomes of most of the petite bourgeoisie and even the top strata Theory, Culture & Society 21

machines

transportation but also

Three Ages of the Automobile 173 ofseemsthe tworki ngbeenclass.i mInpededBritbyaina, howevf' r, ethmemore adventrigiofd imass product ionc o have cl a ss syst n bot h economi andducticulon tuforalr fearboundari f's,d leundermi ading autneomakers tionctshunion ofstaautndardio ownershi zed pro­p i t woul t h e di s t (O'Connel l, 1998: 18-38)Ameri. can cars were clearly distinguished from the Mass-produced grand luxuryto concern makes dritheivrenbuyers. by theOwnershi rich. Butpi nofitiaalcary tofheseanydikif enrences diild notsuffiseem d was st iently rarecarstofurtconsther idown tute a tstheatuclsasymbol in itselmeref. Butownershi as masspproduc­ tabiionlictspread ss hi e rarchy, lost its y t o convey di s t i n ct i o n. Increasi n gl y t h e t y pe of car owned conveyed status, andandthsteigmatsimiplzede, relat functivioenal,to thmass-produced carsThe lwere clearly degraded e l u xur y makes. a Uer became trefheintedruetamark of tautheiormothigih-clve diassstinowners. ction, teTheistifyrinquant g to tihtaetigreat wealotrihtyandin st e s of v e superi sithzee andrefinpower i malmediso anotteliycedmarkedqualithtaemtiveoffdifromf erences mass-produced cars.cs andBut ed eye i n aest h eti mechani cns.g,Thewereluxurmechani y classiccals,lybecause ofandsuperidroover engimoreneerismootng andhly.careful hand-fi t i t i g ht e r Their engi n es ran qui e t l y , thei r t r ansmi s si o ns shi f t e d eff o rt l e ssl y and thei r brakes ftuinnctg tihoenedostatentaattoiouch,us easecreatcharact ing a referiinsed,tic relof atxedhe upper drivin-clg aexperi encetus.befTheit­ ss habi sin ofthethname ese cars,of arthowever , deniofehours d andofnegat edlabortheiwere r mechani cal fonaestunctthheiietornicwooden . Hundreds cr a ft l a vi s hed bodies, whichwerewerefinmolisheddedwiinttho upcurvitontg,wentofteyncoatrococos offoslrms.ow­ And t h ei r l u st r o us sUl { aces dryiwh icnhg raivarnisedshthpaie mundane nt. The resulfuncttiinogn carsof trwere uniatfiioend,toelaegantformalworks, aestofhetartic, ansport experithe. nce, testify i ng to the removal from necf'ssity conveyed by great weal Theformass-produced cars,efficbyiency,contwhirastc, hwerecharactmarked byworkia mundane concern f u nct i o n and e ri z e ng-clwasass consumpt i o n, accordi n g t o Bourdi e u. The mass-pr o duct i o n process desipossigbnedle, andto produce sitmeriplae,werefunctpaiionalnfulcarsy obvias oquius cikln ythande appearance as cheaplyandas t h ese cri ion of its product sn. es,Cheaplaboriengiousnteeriransming sandsions,quiandck assembl y frleadmesto landoperat oud,bodirough-runni n g engi vi b r a t i n g es. These carsphysirecquial occupat red consiiodns.erablTheie lraborfragment to drievd,e, unitestnitfeygrating etdo tappearance heir owners' more eidsh.toThea hurribodied,es unski lriegdidllayborrectprocess that fwast eodr licurved t le timpanel e onalsfiscreat to andtesteidffiinprobl were i l i n ear and l a t , f e ms f o r machi n es. And t h e dr a b, uni m agi n at i v e blaestackhetfiincisvarihes,etdiy.cEveryt tated byhi nquig about ck enameltheseing,carsspokesymbolof aizlaedckthofe concern fotf'r i m medi a ing efficietncyo wastande fonunctluixury. on thatIn charact ofconcern classesforwicostth few-cuttresources contrasteritzoedthtehelulixurvesy Gartman

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174 (4/5) classilecs,Ford'theses Model cars wereT wasseenwelincomed the 1920sin thase 1910s degradedas anandinststigrument matizinofg. Whi democracy,y ridbriicnulgiendgasautugloymobiandlipoorl ty toy tbuihe ltmasses, byemporary the 1920sjokeiasked t was commonl . One cont why The answer: because you hate to be seen on thaeInModel strthieets sTearlwiwasthy lone.periike oadmiofstrautess.omobi liytyt,hqual iequal tativeitydifoferences in carsthe symbol i z ed and l e gi t i m at e d not merel e i n cl a ss but iBrinequal i(tOy'Cofonnel genderl, 1998) as wel, autl. Inomobi bothlethproduct e UniteidonStandates use(Scharff, 1991) and tby tahien gender were i n fl u enced ideolinoe,gybotofhseparat e spheres. In dgeneral , autlityoimobi lespublwereic defispherenedandas mascul because t h ey provi ed mobi n t h e because they weretoutconfi ilitarineanthandemselmechani cthaleobject se,ofdomest produc­ic tsphere ion. Women were supposed v es t o pri v at and ltyo, tcarhe nonut ilitarip aandn concerns ofn consumpt iondered and aestculthuetralicls.y Consequent ownershi operat i o were consi appropri ate maintoly forautomen.mobiHowever , evenidwhen womensegregatin theids earlthemy periin oda gaidiffnerent ed access l i t y , gender eol o gy of autlyo, mobi le,powerful the elect, andric car.diffiGasol inoperat e-powered carsmainweretain saifordwomen. to betytopeCarso smel noi s y, c ul t t o e and dri v en by el e ct r i c mot o rs were consi d ered more appropri ­ atime foritatiwomen, and leofsstmechani cwaleen. Thebatmajteoryr lcharges o-was n of elforhelectdtrhiteyco becarswereunprobl -quitheeiteerr,matclshorteicanerforrange r avel bet women, since they were forbid­ den toWhen stray afarcombi fromnhome anyway. attihoen deatof women' sectdemands andgendergasidauteoloomakers' selnf­­ iscrintebrested fiwinalthliynbrought h of el r i c cars, gy was rei the wimarket forconcerns gas cars.for Theaesthletairger,cs andmorecomfluoxurirt, were ous, hidefigher-pri c ed cars, t h t h ei r more femifornine,utwhiilityleandthe efsmalficileency,r, cheaper, mass-produced cars,ine wi(Scharff, thnedtheiasr1991:concerns were defi n ed as mascul 49-58) . Sothethculeretuwasre ofa earldefiyniautte superi mlitposiy. Andtiontofhisclwasass andnot gender connot a t i o ns i n o mobi because womeneu (1984: with more382-3,income402-4)wererecogni more lizkeselyatoculdrituvrale thbasian tshosefor wionlthitshy confl less.uBourdi ence, argui n g t h at cl a ss di s t i n ct i o ns are nat u ral l y gendered. In general , the ofbourgeoi sssie iares consiremoved deredfrommorethfeemirealninme,ofbecause botproduct h the menion andand women t h i s cl a physi c al emphasi zede aestas more heticmascul s and finorm.e, dueBytocontits irnastvol, vtement he workiin physi ng clacssal work as a whol e i s defi n y.mass-produced Consequently, duricarsngserved this perisimould ttahneousl e distiynctasiona betclandasswunconcern eenandluaxurygenderforcarsbeaut and marker,thleegicltiamss-statiniggmatbothiziinnequal ities.eristics of mass­ By t h e mi d -1920s, g charact itationworkiprocessng clfromass began mere autto purchase o owner­ produced ship to aestcarshetihadcs asextwelendedl. Asthteheimupper Theory, Culture & Society 21

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Three Ages of the Automobile

1 75

mass-produced cars, the petite bourgeoisie lost its automotive distinction via-a-vis this class. Consequently, a clamor arose in the auto market for something different from and better than mass-produced cars, an i nexpen­ sive car with more 'class'. General Motors head Alfred Sloan sensed the emergence of w hat he called this 'mass-class market' i n the mid- 1920s, arguing that many buyers were now willing to pay a bit more for a car beyond basic transportation. H i s corporation began to compete with Ford's Modt'l T by creating mass-produced cars with the superficial style of the luxury classics. One of the most successful of these was the 1 927 La Salle, a smaller, cheaper model of the corporation's luxury car, Cadillac. Unlike tilt' craft-built Cadillac, the La Salle was mass produced to lower its price. But to borrow the prestige of the nameplate, Sloan wanted the car to have the look of handcrafted l uxury. To design this 'imitation Cadill ac', he hired a Holl ywood coachbuilder, H arley Earl, who created custom bodies for the movies and their stars. Earl was so successful in capturing the superficial look of unity and i ntegrity for the mass-produced La Salle that he was hired by Sloan to do the same thing for the entire line of GM cars. In 1 927 Earl joined General Motors as the head of the new Art and Color Sect ion, lakr to be renamed Styling. Earl 's subsequent work at GM, however, raises questions about the validity of Bourdieu's model of class distinction. He was not content merely to design imitation Cadillacs for the pretentious and upwardly striving petite bourgeoisie. At the behest of Sloan, Earl brought the look of the craft-built luxury cars to the entire hierarchy of GM cars, from the cheapest to the most expensive. This extension o[ style to even the lowest-priced cars undermines Bourdieu's theory, which holds that workers have an i ngrained taste for tilt' simple and functional. The surge in sales during this period of the inex­ pensivt' Chevrolet styled by Earl revealed that workers also wanted goods with the aestheticized forms of the h igh bourgeoisie. This impl ies that Bourdieu is mistaken to exempt workers from the game of distinction. The worki ng class also wanted to appear distinctive and superior and, given the chance, imitated the goods of the bourgeoisie to do so. Workers may have initially consumed si mple, functional cars because they could afford noth ing else, not because they had an i ngrained taste for them. The rising incomes of American workers during the 1 920s, however, allowed them to abandon these goods and demand cars with style, thus entering the game of distinc­ tion [or the first ti me. The diffusion of cars with style and beauty beyond the bourgeoisie threatened, however, to breach rigid conceptions o[ separate gender spheres. While it may have been culturally acceptable for tllf' 'effeminate' men of the upper class to be interested in aesthetics and beauty, these traits threat­ ened the more masculine self-images of middle- and especially working­ class men. I ndeed, in both the Un ited States and Britain dur i ng this period there emerged fears and admonishments that automobiles were becomi ng femi nized, as concerns for appearance and fashion began to outweigh thost' of t'ngineering function and efficiency. But, conveniently, the same gender

itdheole diosgytintcthationseemed th-reatclassenedgoodsby althsios provi attemptdedofthlemowerwi-tclhaanss almenibi ftoorgrabthis of upper ion decibysiothen. Menunproven blamedassert theiripreference for styling isexpelt h carsson, maltheiesr wiconsumpt vclaies.medBacked o ns of market womennanceexertofedtheincreasi ngofinconsumpti fluence onofami ly auto purchases duecouldtobuyththateitrhedomi sphere n. Consequent ltaiy, nment of cars that brought t h em di s ti n cti o n whi l e avoi d i n g t h e femininity that came with them (O'Connell, 1998: 63-70; Scharff, 1991: Althofoughautgender didistsitninctctioinson remai ned andlargellayrgerintanumbers ct, the extuletnsiimoatnelofy tconthe game o mot i v e t o l a rger the culonturalrealloqualgic ioftaticlveassdifdierences stinctiobetn. wBourdi eu'tusrallogigoods c of ditostsymbol irnadictioctneidzdepends een cul eposiqualtionitaoftivcommand ely differentthat exempt class posis itstholions.dersFormal ized goods symbol i z e a from work, whibyle funct i o nal goods symbol i z e a subject i o n t o effi c i e nt eff o rt commanded others. tTheo undercut mass product iqualon ofitasuperfi cfiearleyncesstylewidthorinaestthehauteticoizedmarketcars. began t h ese t i v e di f Increasi neglluyxurytherecarwasproduced lit le symbol iccraftadvantprocess age towhenowniinngexpensi and drive,vimass­ ng an expensi v by t h e cars oloroked super ficial yamong just asthgood. The diofstlionok-ctioanlikofesa driqualveni­ tatiproduced v el y superi car di s appeared e t h rongs by the lioowern undermi classes.nedFurtthheer,sensithebdiilivtiideeds necessary and deskitloeddisprocess ofqualmassi­ product t i n gui s h tbegan ativelytodideclf erentine imachi nmies.d-1920s. Consequent ly,litkhee Cadi handcrl acaftanded lLiuxurncoly n, were n the Some, acqui rehdersby downgraded mass-productthioeinr fproduct irms ands toincompet tegratede iwinttoh tmass heir product line­or ups. Ot producers went outwhen of busithneessdemand entirelfory, especi ayl ycarduris dropped ng the GreatpreciDepressi o. nLuxury of the 1930s, l u xur p i t o usl y autproducers, omakerswifotundh theiitr almarket most ipower mpossiandble teconomi o competeseofwiscalth teh.eBylargethe mass miedd1920s t h e t h ree l a rgest mass-pr o duct i o n aut o makers i n t h e US account forqual72itapercent oferences total autwiotmobi lheeoutmarket put. Consequent lzye, thsuperi ere wereor taveryste andfew t i v e di f f h i n t t o symbol i conveywascultfiunralishedcapiitnalAmeri . The carca. as a symbol of real, qualitative class dif er­ ences In Brituntaini,lhowever, aSecond similarWorlqualditatiWarve perileveloid.ngSome did notmanufact occur inurersthe carlike market t h e post Morriproduct s starteidononwasthehiroadnderedto mass productunequal ion in itnhcome e midst-1920s, butas fulwelll mass by a more r uct u re rigidemerged culturalamong boundaritheeworki s betwneeng clatssheforclamass-produced sses. Consequentcarsly, nowithgreatasthemore demand to set.tle for second­ hand autloosokfroofmltuhxure miy. dWorkers dle classwere(O'Cgeneral onnell,ly1998:forced19-38) 1 76

Theory, Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5)

57-66).

makes

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Three Ages of the Automobile 177

Themean,colhowever, lapse of dithsattintctheive,market qualitdomi ativenatdiefderences betwproducers een cars became did not by mass homogeni zed.fer Indeed, the leatrgey ofAmeri csanthautat, oalmotthough ive firqualms began iyn sithme illaatr,e 1920s t o of a l a rge vari model i t a t i v el were superficialcarsy diimif erent iattheed smoot by aesth, hinetteicgrats anded loaccessori eis.ncreasi All thnesegly mass-produced t a t e d ok of t h e rare l u xury cars, but t h ey were di f f erent i a t e d i n t o pri c e grades by t h e ity ofe tvalo creat ued eatarttribifiutceias,l dilikfeerences chromeamong trim, siqualze iandtativpower. Why take tThequant he transwer oubl el y si m i l a r cars? lies iionn.thAse demand fortionculthteoriuralstlsegilitkime atMiiocnhelof tAglhe inewet a syst(1979)em ofargue,massthproduct Regul a eionewn to diprocess ofe andmassconsume productaliolnofrequi red a pouri new nmode of massal­ consumpt s t r i b ut t h e goods g off speci ized machi nesofandproduct assembliony wilinthes.tThey labelorgani the combi natofioconsumpt n of the newion organi z at i o n h e new z at i o n Fordilsym,aftforer itnhteyroduciattrnibguttheethassembl e initiaytiolinne,ofFord both itnostHenry Ford. Ine Dol1914,lar short i t u t e d t h e Fi v Daycreatprogram, drastoficalnewly consumers increasing forthehiwages ofButhisthworkers andwasthanus i n g t h ousands s cars. i s program y to creatThee more consumers butimalplsoement to produce morey tostquelablel andtathteemptwave complnotiofamerel ntworker workers. wage i n crease was e d l a rgel dinscont eods.nt inInstigretateudrnbyforhithsenew,Fivemore irntDay,ense Fordand expl o i t a t i v e product i o met h Dol l a escencemajtoomass-product ion metes thhodsat made as welthlemas ademanded stdependent able homeofonworkers ltihfeeicentr higeacqui redh-payiaround r consumer durabl ng jogoods bs (Meyer,would1981). But what ki n d of consumer workers consi der sufThifisciwasent compensat i o n for t h ei r i n creasi n gl y al i e nat e d and expl o i t e d work? tbegihe quest ioinn tthhate ltahtee Ameri canHarlauteoymobiEarlleandindustothrery wasautotrdesiyinggnersto answer n ni n g 1920s. wereisfy brinotngimerel ng thyethloeokmasses' of luxurydesicarsre forto tdiheistrinmass-produced vehi c l e s t o sat ctmass ion butproduct alsoiothn.eiIrndemand forod escape from t h e dehumani z i n g aspect s of t h i s peri twages he Ameria separat can worki nmg clofaconsumpt ss was begiionnniinntghetohome, constrwhere uct witthheythcoul eir hidgfihernd e real respi te fromoneandof thcompensat izoinngforedithfiecerealof mconsumeri of work. sThem. Sociautoamobi lrmers e was tandhe keyst i s narcot i l ref o tlalprobl ist phiemslantbyhropialloswits nargued thattoautescape omobifrom lity woulurband solcongest ve laborion andinto socicapi a g workers the pcountwoulrysid overcome de for recreat iotennsiandonsrelbyietf.urniTheyng workers also hopedinto t'hpropert at autoy ownershi cl a ss owners' ake in capipurchased talism. Butbrought neitherwicoul plished ,asthuslonggivasingthtehemautaosstworkers th thdembeiaccom­ nto the The Era of Mass Individuality: The Frankfurt School and Fordism

consumpted homogenei ion symboltiyc ofremimass-produced nders of masscarsproduct iosymbol n. The ofrectthie­ lrirealingear,idm, borioffragment was a ngg,thehetsureronomous inotno tprocess workers soughtvariteodescape. Byof lmoluxurydincars, fcar acestyliofststhleseikproduct cars i h e smoot h , rounded, shapes e Earl covered over t h e of f endi n g remi nvdersely. ofAsworkEarl andput ialt, lheowedtrietdhemto 'dtoesipergnfoarmcarthsoeirthescape f u nct i o n unobt r usi at every t i m e you get i n i t , i t ' s a relieButf -youautogetconsumers a lit le vacatwantioendfortheia rwhigoodsle' (qnotuotemerel d in Sly otoan,obscure 1972: 324) . work butof thaleseso twaso fulifnildivneeds deni ed tmass-product hem there. Andiononeprocess of thereduced most imwork portantto i d ual i t y . The zed,andrepetdifference. itive tasksNotwisurpri th lit lseinroom forherefore, the expressi oensubject of personal unitsthaisndardi queness gl y , t peopl edntog process sought t o compensat e i n t h ei r consumpt i o n l i v es by buyi goods were inldiy vsuperi idual oandr touniothqers,ue, tashatinmadeBourdithemeu'sseemnotiodinf oferentdistfrominc­ buttion.notAsthatnecessari CM'esdoAlfnotredwantSloantosthaveated exact in 1934:ly th'ePeopl e tlhikinegdithffaterentthe tneihinggs.h­ Many peopl same borhood oan, 1972:to207)buil.dConsequent ly, ittbecame the polito accommo­ cy of CM anddateotconsumer herhas'mass(Slproducers many di f erent y pes of cars demandpurpose, for indiandvidualperson' ity, or,(1972: as Slo520). an putOneit, tmeto produce 'a carby autforomakers every purse, h od used obycreatpriece.indiThus,vidualforitexampl y was toe,produce several makes ofcare­ cars tfulhatlywerearranged gradedtGeneral i n t h e mi d -1920s Sl o an Motleovels. rs' makes inaca waspriceathitehrarchy to appeal to consumers of al l i n come Cadi l e hi g h-pri c ed end, bycedBuiextck,reme.Oldsmobi le,werePontfewiac,diftfheenrencesChevrolof realet, whiqualcihtyoccupi ed theftohlem.olowedw-pri There bet w een Alsome l wereofmass-produced, even tsh. eButCadistlylainc,gandallotwedhe diautf erent makesto shared t h e same component o makers diproducti f erentoian.te these models and stil meet the high-volume demands of mass 1927, hein order instructto ejustd hiifmy ditoffmaierentntiaailnpria stcirnicg.t stAlyllitshtWhen iecmakes diviSlsioowere nanbethigiwredveenenEarltGM'he iunisn makes fieButd, rounded lioookn toflo thuixury, whibrands ch covered over t h e si g ns of mass product i o n. i n addi t s , t h e i n t h e price ashiechrome rarchy were diandf erentgriliaets.edThese by relarbiativtelraryy infeexpensi ve styltheing mass­ cues, such st r i p s at u res made producedwhatbodydif eshelrentlisatshared betop wmakes een makes appear dimf ones erentwas. Beyond theseity cues, e d t h e t f r om t h e bot t o not qual theil rafceatwasureslonger -theyandhadheavimoreerofandwhathadeveryone wantindersed. Theandbut taccessori hihegquant h-pricieedtys oftCadi more cyl thsomehow e low-pri'cbedetteChevrol etth. eSoChevy the Cadibuyerl a,c notbuyerduefetlot notsuperionloyr tdiastf eerentbuthanbutbecause r' t h an recognized as desirable. he or she eould afford more of what everyone 178

Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

-Three Ages of the Automobile second polidedcy consumers devised by wiSltohana andsuperfiimplcieament editbyuteGM'forsanotstylhinerg depart m ent provi l subst re deniy edidfienrentproducti onbut-progress. Sloans thknew thatconstconsumers wantendg notdesi merel t h i n gs al s o product at were a nt l y changi isymbol n orderic tprogress o symbolwasize progress. Themodelsoluchange. tion thatEachSloanyeardevithseedappearance to deliver t h e annual ofandeveryaccessori modeles,wasthussliggihtvilnygchanged thlrough the manih thpeulsuratioface,n of thowever, he body i t a new o ok. Beneat the mass-produced mechanimodel cal partchanges s stayedwitthhethsamee hieforrarchiyears.cal Harl erenty Earlia­ coordi n at e d t h ese annual di f e tconsumers' ion of the makes inotntomerel an inygeniforoprogress us tricklbute-downalsoscheme tlhmobi at plaliyedty. Inuponthe desi r e for soci a fGM'irst syearproductof thhieecyclrarchy,e, EarlCadiilntarc,oduced a styaletinfeatg ituwirethinprestthe itgoep andmakehigofh t h us associ tlheendifonlgotwihinsgcaryear,somehe oftransf eCadirredl aitc'tsoprestthe inextge. Helowercontmake, Buitihncome. cis tk,rictklhInuse-down t h e inuedthe st y l i n g i n successi v e years, unti l t h e f e at u re reached cheapest make,a newChevrolfeateutre, andat ththeustop,became commonpl ace,anew.at whiConsumers ch time heof tihnetrloduced st a rt i n g t h e cycl e owertheymakes thusmorewerelikpersuaded thand,at theithrus,carsthatweretheigetr ltiinvesg betwereter because l o oked e Cadi l a cs gettinThese g bettedevel r as welopment l. s in the industry further undermine the validity of Bourdi eicu'softhcleoryass posiof consumpt ions tasheordety,ermithenproduct ed by habiion tofusgoods and ulttoimmatateclhy symbol t i o n. In hi thomol he habiogytuofs ofthdie fposierenttionsclaofssesgoodsis thproducers e result ofandan unconsci o us, st r uct u ral consumers. Eachionclinassa hassimilitasr ownpositprioonducers, whi c h st a nd i n the f i e l d of cul t u ral product - fiinesilddofer sociversusal cloutasses.siderAs, newa resul versust, tholesed -producers as that ofareits consumers i n t h e istioofn awiclthassoththeratproducers tnogproviagaidnestthotehertypeclaofssesgoodsfor tculmothattiuvmatralatecdcapihbythteacompet habi t u i s compet i But thials lwasof thcleseearlwere y notproduced the case forby tthhee same differentlarge,l (Bourdi carmass-pr makeseu,oofductthisioperi230-4). o d. Almost n firims,n thande samewithstinylieach firm tmheentdi.ffThere erent makes i n i t s hi e rarchy were desi g ned n g depart mani pulf earentted thabitus. he makes'Thedesisamegns sttoyldiisftserent iatthee tsame hem, butclstyalssinotsthabis bytuappeal i n g t o di wi t h s coulthesed notsty, laccordi ng toedBourdi ealu,l appeal to different consumer habi t u s. What i s t s appeal t o , i n of t h e makes t h ey desiions,gned,by were t h e same needs deni e d al l cl a sses, al b ei t i n varyi n g proport tafhfeordsystmore em ofofadmiwhatnisteveryone ered masswantproducted, iespeci on. Theal hiy giherndivclidaualssesitycoulandd justthe concealBourdi menteofu'sththeeorytel tdoes ale remirecogni nderszeofthmass product i o n. cycle imassplproduel pmenteds in the auto industry, in which the distinctiveetfeatypeurofesstofyleupper-cl Gartman

A

1984:

consciously

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(4/5) aretheseimfeatitatueresd bybecome the lowerso wicladssesespreadin order tol borrow tohneirisprest igthe.e When t h at al di s t i n ct i l o st , bour­ geoi s i e goes back t o t h e f i e l d of cul t ure t o appropri a t e new i n novat ions unsul l i e d by t h e t a i n t of commonal i t y and commerci a l i s m ( B ourdi e u, 1984: 372-84) ocompet r Bourdiitioenu, bettheweencyclcle aissess anforunidintsetinded, uncoordi natnoted outprovicomede f.oofrButtthheefpossi n ct i o n. He does biluiredty thtato provi this cyclde consumers e could become a sense consciofousprogress policy, iandntentmobiionalliltyy manufact wi t h a in a society whose fundamental structure remained the same (GartmThere an, 1991). , however, consumpt ioins tthheat cricaptticualresthteory he culoftutralhe lFrankfurt ogic of thiSchool sisFordi s. From t stagea tthhofeeoryautbegiofomobi l i t y . It nsniofng,massMaxconsumpt Horkheiiomnernotandas means Theodorto Adorno concept u al i z ed t h e product lower-clcondi ass sttiaotnsus ofstrmass iving butproductas means to compensat e'Tworkers forre tsatIndust heisifynhuman i o n. They wri t e i n he Cul t u ry'e tmechani hat the product s ofprocess, mass amusement are 'tsought afhteirnasorderan escape from t h z ed work and t o recrui st r engt to ibes­ ablfacteiotons,copebutwionlthyiitnagaiauthnent' ( 1i972: 137). These consumer product s of f er sat c, substitute gratifications for the needs denied by an alienated production process. 1 80

Theory, Culture & Society 21

Whatever remained unsatisfied in them [consumers] through the order which takes from them without giving in exchange what it promises, only burned with impatience for their gaoler to remember them and at last offer them stones in his left hand for the hunger from which he withholds bread in his right. (Adorno, 1974: 148)

And whationhungers arebe plthaesecatethdatwiareth empt denieydsubst by thiteutsystes offered em's rigbyht hand offt product onl y t o t h e l e hand of consumpt ion?tieForemost among tihseseteredaresocifreedom, incapidividtauallistitymassand progress, al l casual s of ' t h e admi n e t y ' of productFrankfurt ion. School theorists realize that this attempt to provide in consumpt iolnemma. satisfactConsumer ions for goods needs aredenitehdemselin product ion produced raises an andim­ medi a t e di v es mass necessarizatioln,y bearhomogenei all thetymarks of this product iognn.process, incluproduct ding staion­n dardi , and unchangi n g desi When mass seiis tzhese 'culdumbiturenandg down'subjectof ofs fierit tontgs,he ireduci mperatnigvestheofqualexchange valproduct ue, thes resul t i t i e s of t o t h e lowest oncommon denomi natofor tihneorder toexampl facilitaetes lofongsuchrunsculoftustralandardi ziedng goods machi n es. One pri m e l e vel by Adorno is, tmechani he automobi lef.erences He recognibetwzeened itnhethcarse miidn-1940s trar­hat tchicihtereeeds were f e w real c al di t h e hi e ingly extof mass inct asproducers, a breed. and that the craft-built luxury cars were increas­

h s the Automobile 181

Gartman - T ree A ge of

While a Cadillac undoubtedly excels a Chevrolet by the amount that it costs more, this superiority, unlike that of the old Rolls Royce, nevertheless itself proceeds from an overall plan which artfully equips the fonner with the better cylinders, the latter with the worse cylinders, bolts, accessories, without anything being altered in the basic pattern of the mass-produced article; only minor rearrangements in production would be needed to turn the C hevrolet into a Cadillac. So luxury is sapped. (Adorno, 1974: 1 1 9-20)

ThiAdornos passage raie Frankfurt ses a deeperSchoolquestapartion about tBourdi he functeu.ioForn oftculhe tluaret ert,hlatuxurysets and t h from have nohowever inherent, lvaluxury,ue beyond theemaisslyntandenanceuselofesslclayssbeaut inequalifulitandies. ForrefigoodsnAdorno, t h e needl and snate ofuralhappily plnaess'ys ainsubversi ve roleandin socioppressi eed,ty. Forvise tworlhhie mepid,, cultandometuprovi reof iculs dthestuere,an'promi an unequal impl17-18). icit critiqInuecapiof antaliuglsm,y culsocituerety tihs ata deni e s human desi r e s (Adorno, 1984: valto tuhableireimcount earteto'uthsefe umarket 'sinteexchange. ndency to Thereducesuperallflpeopl e tandhe beaut th ingsi­ medi l n ess' ui t y of ful and luxuri ous ins culhuman ture count etrsiesthethquant itativebereductfulfiiloenidsmthofroughthe market and assert quali at cannot exchange. For Adorno, consequent lhye, tsubsumpt he loss ofiolunxurofythienlamassst contproduct iooryn ifos rcenot iprntoogressi v e but react i o nary, t r adi c t a repressi veecapid, however talist soci, ifeittybecomes (Adorno,just1974:another homogenized If l u xury i s l e vel exchange valeiruconsumers e on the market , howitucante sattheisfmass producers of culneedsture provi d e t h wi t h subst a ct i o ns for t h e real deni maniepdultahteemd diinf eproduct rentiatioionn?of tThehe tyanswer, pe offeredAdorno by theteautl so us,industis rarty. ificial, 1 20).

The same thing is offered to everybody by the standardized production of consumption goods. But the commercial necessity of concealing this identity leads to the manipulation of taste and the official culture's pretense of indi­ vidualism, which necessarily increases in proportion to the liquidation of the individual . (Adorno, 1978: 280)

Legith ttimheatiilonusiofontheofsystfreeemchoiis secured by proviseemidinnglg consumers ofgoods,all clwhiassesle wibeneat c e bet w een y di ff e rent h the betsurface tthheinmass-product iopeopl n process levelsholthedsrealthatqualtheitaneedtive diforf esuchrences w een gs as wel l as e . Adorno l usory compensat iocnalforled denirul inegd class. needs Whiis charact eristbeic tofrue,evenas tBOUlhe hi·dgiehuibourgeoi s i e , t h e sol e i t may holnecessi ds, tthyat, Adorno this claargues ss was tonce diigsh]tinsociguisehedty libyfe iists. removal fromy economi c h at ' [ h . . t h oroughl stampede' (1974: by the187)economi cbourgeoi principlsei,ewhose kinizdatofionratandionalaestity hspreads toonthofe whol . The ' s f o rmal et i c i z at i latiftee,mpthe sttoatescape es, represent a removalandfromheteronomy economitchatnecessi from tshenotboredom resulttyfrombut anits

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The(Jr); Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5)

own subjection to the system of exchange, which it shares with all other classes. This class is now distinguished from others only by its greater means to effect this escape ( 1974: 1 87-90). The Frankfurt School's theory of consumption as mass individuality and progress is similar to Bourdieu's theory in arguing that the ultimate result of this culture is to legitimate and maintain the class system of capi­ tali st society. But it postul ates that legitimation is secured in a different way. For Bourdieu, consumption prominently displays the economic i nequalities between classes, but i n a symbolic form that misrecognizes their origins. Legitimate consumption tastes, determined by internalized class habitus, seem to testify to the personal superiority of their individual bearers, thus justifying their larger share of economic resources. The Frankfurt School, by contrast, argues that consumption legitimates classes by obscuring their real differences altogether, making them unrecognizable by bury i ng them beneath an i ndistinct mass culture shared by all . As Adorno wri tes ( 1 976: 55), 'today the existence of classes is concealed by ideological appearances'. The culture industry eliminates the quali tative differences between goods, wh ich testify to different class tastes, and substitutes for them arti ficially manufactured, quantitative differences of the same compensati ng charac­ teristics demanded by all . What these quantitative differences symbolize is not class, properly speak i ng, that is, qual i tative distinctions of social power rooted in production, but mere 'strata', that i s, quantitative distinctions of market i ncome rooted in consumption. Thus, for the Frankfurt School, mass cul ture legitimates class structure by rei fying it, by hiding soci al relations behind the relationships of th i ngs, commodities in the marketplace (Gartman, 1 99 1 ). Although the Frankfurt School does not explicitly extend its theory of consumption as rei fied, mass individual i ty to gender rel ations, it i s possible to do so, as revealed by the insightful work of scholars l i ke Susan Willis ( 1 99 1 ) . The automobile reveals the empirical validity of such an extension. The age of mass indi viduality saw the narrowing of gender differences in both the use and consumption of automobiles. As the benefits of automo­ bility became clear, more and more women took the wheel. By the posl­ Second World War era in A merica, the suburbani zati on of the population faci l itated by the car also made it an essential tool for fulfilling women's domestic role in the newly dispersed landscape. The suburban housewife who did not drive was a rarity. Further, as styling and beauty became the primary means of competi tion in an i ncreasingly oligopol istic automotive market, it became difficult to maintain the notion that women alone were concerned with aesthetics. This did not mean that notions of automotive gender differences d isappeared, just that they were redefined as quantita­ tive rather than quali tative. Men were i ncreasingly willing to admi t that they too l iked style, beauty and comfort. But, judging from auto ads, it was assumed that women preferred and demanded more of these characteristics. So, for example, ads of the 1940s and 1 950s often promoted the general style and comfort of the car interior in gender-neutral terms, but when they

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touted the fashionableness of specific colors and fabrics, they addressed women alone. When General Motors launched a marketing campaign to target women in the late 1 950s, it commissioned a series of 'Fem' show cars from its few women designers. These cars did not differ qualitatively in style from GM production models; they simply offered a quantitative excess of stylish accessories. One had four sets of seat covers to change with the seasons. Another 'Fem' car was furnished with a set of luggage to match the pastel upholstery, while a third was painted in metallic rose with upholstery of red and black leather with plaid inserts (Bayley, 1 983: 99- 108). More accessories, brighter paint, more multi-colored upholstery - this was what women were thought to wanl. So the qualitative, social diffe rences between the genders in power, occupation, opportunity were reified, reduced to merely different quantities of the same commodities so as to beller capture them for the marketplace. Just like the cultural logic of class distinction before it, however, the extension and i ntensification of the logic of mass individuality produced contradictions that ultimately spelled its transcendence. By the late 1 950s there were signs that all was not well with the program of trickle-down indi­ viduality offered by the quantitatively differentiated product hierarchies of American automakers. The Fordist system of automobility was falling victim to its own success. The Keynesian demand management policies of postwar Fordism were enormously successful in increasing and equalizing incomes, bringing millions of working-class consumers into the market for new cars. Thi s more equitable market exerted a leveling effect on the quantitative d ifferences between makes in corporate hierarchies. The largest market was now comprised of the lower-priced makes l ike Chevrolet and Ford, and to i ncrease their profit per car i n this market, automakers began to upgrade these autos. The low- p riced cars added more size, power and accessoriE's until the gap between them and the expensive cars was minimal. The same leveling pressure was also exerted on automotive style. The orderly passing of i ndivi dual style traits down the hierarchy of makes fell victim to both consumer demand and producer competition. Working-class consumers, anxious for symbols of their new prosperity, clamored for the look of indi­ viduality exemplified by the pricier makes. Each manufacturer knew that if i ts stylists did not quickly give these consumers what they demanded, its competitors would. GM's Harley Earl tried, for example, to maintain an orderly trickle-down of the tail fin, a feature introduced on the 1 948 Cadillac to borrow the connotations of technological progress and escapism associ­ ated with aeronautics. He slowly brought it down to the Buick and Oldsmo­ bile makes in the early 1 950s. But working-class consumers of 10w-pricE'd makes were impatient for this symbol of aeronautical freedom, and Chl),slE'r tapped this pent-up demand by offering soaring fins on all its makes begin­ ning in 1 956. The style wars that ensued ultimately undermi ned thE' systE'm of quantitative differentiation between cars. Under competitive pressure to quickly bring prestigious traits to the l ucrative lower market, stylists abandoned i ncremental changes in the latE'

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1 950s and v ied with one another by making bold innovations. Fins soared, bodies lengthened and chrome proliferated in an unprecedented orgy of automotive change. All semblance of aesthetic difference between makes was lost. The implications of this aesthetic leveling were evident in the colossal failure of the new make launched by Ford in 1 958, the Edsel. In order to make their new car stand out in an overcrowded market, Ford exec­ utives instructed their stylists to create a car that looked unique from every angle. Thus, the Edsel was given concave sides to counter the usual convex ones; horizontal fins to counter the vertical ones; and a vertical grille to counter the horizontal ones. Taken separately, these styling elements were not that bizarre or different. But the combination of all this cloying, atten­ tion-grabbing newness was too much. The Edsel protested its difference so loudly and superficially that it exposed the underlying similarity of all Detroit's large, lavishly decorated family sedans. The car became a light­ ning rod for the gathering discontents with the automotive excesses of the decade. Sales were so low that the make was forced off the market in three years. Thi s episode indicated that consumers were beginning to see through the aesthetic disguise of mass production, a trend also apparent in the popu­ larity of exposes like Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders ( 1980/1957) and John Keats's Insolent Chariots ( 1 958). The aesthetic and structural conver­ gence of American autos provided consumers with so little individuali ty that a growing number began to buy imported cars. The cultural elite ridiculed the 'balloon-like chromium-encrusted bodies' of American cars as the pretentious status symbols of middle-class housewives and expressed a preference for lithe European sports cars (Fortune, 1947: 1 84). Well-heeled businessmen appropriated European luxury makes like Mercedes-Benz to individuate themselves. Even working-class youth rejected homogenized American sedans and sought difference and individuality by modifying stock cars, touching off the hot-rod and custom-car subcultures. Some middle-class youth and adults embraced the simple, unchanging Vol kswagen as a mark of difference, turning it into the 'anticar' in American culture. The contradictions of the Fordist age of mass individuality were not confined to consumer aesthetics but also spilled over into use. When all Americans sought to express individual freedom and escape from mass production by taking to the roads, they created unintended collective effects that undermined these pleasures of automobility. Crowded roads increased breakdowns, accidents, noise and pollution, and generally despoiled the pristine countryside to which motorists sought to escape. By the 1 960s several movements appeared to fight these consequences of the automobile, most i mportantly, the environmental movement and the consumer movement. The automotive age of mass individuality was drawing to a close, collapsing under its own contradictions. Out of these struggles and contra­ dictions, however, emerged a new synthesis of elements, a new era of production, consumption and use that would carry the automobile into the new millennium.

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The Era of Subcultural Difference: Postmodernism and Post-Fordism

Beginning in the 1960s both the American government and the automobile industry responded to the contradictions of Fordist automobility. Congress responded to the environmental movement in 1965 by passing the Motor Vehicle Air Pollution and Control Act, which set emission standards for automobiles. And addressing the safety concerns of the consumer movement, Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1 966, which empowered a federal agency to set safety standards for new cars. While simultaneously fighting these governmental regulations, American automakers undertook changes in their products to stem their loss of market share to foreign competitors. Sensing that the ultimate problem was the lack of product individuality, they abandoned the Fordist emphasis on mass-produced but superficial l y differentiated autos and began to offer a greater variety of cars that differed fundamentally in structure and engi­ neering. Between 1960 and 1970 American manufacturers increased model offerings by 50 percent and, in the process, introduced a plethora of totally new types of vehicles: compacts, subcompacts, intermediate-sized cars, muscle cars (powerful performance cars), pony cars (sporty, youth-oriented cars), sports cars and personal luxury cars. Each type targeted not, as previ ­ ously, to a broad income group but a small, more specific market niche, based on non-class characteristics like age, gender and family status. Many of these types were based on pre-existing automotive subcultures like hot rodders, customizers and anti car dissenters. Thus, the artificially differen­ t iated and hierarchical mass market that obscured real class differences broke up into a plethora of leveled but distinctive niche markets. On this flattened playing field, aesthetic distinctions no longer spread from higher to lower products, but from peripheral subcultures to mainstream markets (Gartman, 2002) . It became quickly evident, however, that this new, more differentiated mode of consumption of automobiles was incompatible with old Fordist methods of production. The increased diversity of products threatened the foundati on of Fordist mass production - product standardization. As the number of models grew, a specialized plant had to be built to produce each one. Further, the increasing number of options available on each model caused variations in assembly time for cars on the same line. Thi s variation increased workers' discretion and allowed them to slow production in their continuing struggle with management over the effort bargain. The results of increased variety in the context of contentious labor relations were increased unit production costs and decreased unit profits. Automakers during the late 1 960s and early 1970s sought to boost sagging profits through their traditional cost-cutting measure, speed-up. But these measures fell on a working class insulated from the threat of firing by strong unions and Keynesian programs like unemployment insurance and social wage programs. So when managers stepped up the work pace, secure Fordist

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workers revolted, sending rates of absenteeism, turnover and stoppages skyrocketing. Automakers and other manufacturers realized that they could not offer consumers greater product variety profitably without restructuring not only the production process but also the entire Fordist apparatus oflabor relations and social programs ( Bowles et aI., 1 984). Automakers began restructuring their production process in the 1 970s in order to restore profitability and compete with escalating foreign competition. Foreign automakers gained an even stronger foothold in the A merican market after the oil embargo of 1 973, which sent gasoline prices soaring and placed a premium on the small, fuel-efficient cars that Japan and Germany had been producing for years. D isadvantaged in this competition by rigidly standardized Fordist production processes and bureaucracies, American automakers scrambled to cut costs and find more flexible production methods capable of producing a wide variety of constantly changing products. Taking their cues from Japanese producers, especially Toyota, these corporations began closing plants and shifting parts production to independent contractors, many of which operated in low-wage, Third World countries. And within the remaining plants, attempts were made to render production more flexible and accommodating to variety by using general-purpose machines and workers trai ned to handle a wide variety of tasks. Sometimes called 'lean production' or 'flexible specializa­ tion', this new organization of production substantially cut the costs of manufacturing and allowed automakers to shift a larger proportion of their capital to the increasingly important nonproduction functions of design and marketing. All of these corporate restructuring measures were fac i l itated, however, by a neoliberal restructuring of the state, which attacked organ­ ized labor, cut social programs, slashed taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and deregulated the financial sector of the economy. These measures not only facilitated the technological restructuring of the work­ place but also allowed the capital mobility necessary to cut the high fixed costs of an organized workforce with legal protections and shift production to low-wage, casual workers with few rights and protections (Klein, 1 999; Milkman, 1 997; Rubenstein, 200 1 ; Womack et aI., 1 99 1 ). During this period of restructuring in the 1970s and early 1 980s, the American market for cars was stagnant and sober. The energy crisis and environmental concerns created a practical, no-nonsense attitude toward cars for the first time in decades. Further, the stagnant economy and i nfla­ tion of these years eroded consumer buying power. But beginning in the mid- 1 980s, the restructured economy began to grow, creating a bifurcated economic boom in which the wealth and income of the bourgeoisie and professional classes grew rapidly while those of the working class stagnated or fell. It was the consumption of the former that revived the automobile market in the late 1 980s and 1 990s. Seeking to display not mainly their wealth but their lifestyles, the newly e nriched yuppies crowded into the auto market demanding some symbol of their individuality and difference from an older generation of business professionals. And American automakers

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rapi dly responded to this demand with their new flexibility. An explosion of diverse auto types, each testifying to a 'li festyle choice', emerged on the market - minivans, retro cars, sports-uti l i ty veh icles, eco-cars, multipur­ pose vehicles, hybrid cars. Each appealed not to the masses with varying quanti ties of what everyone wanted, but to a small niche market based on a specific leisure interest or i dentity. These l ifestyle cars were considered not 'better' or 'worse' than one another, but just different, in a market no longer hierarchical but fragmented and tolerant. In such a market, automak­ ers did not merely sell cars, they sold a 'brand', an entire identity, meaning or i mage of l ife (Klein, 1 999; Rubenstein, 200 1 : 2 1 7-50, 287-306; Spath, 2002: 198-243). This leveled and pluralized culture of automobi lity is best explained by postmodern theory. Although there are many theoretical tendencies that fall within the rather elastic boundaries of 'postmodernism', I will concen­ trate on that type elaborated by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, w i thin which the work of Stuart Hall and Dick Hebdige is especially useful. Their brand of postmodernism engages directly w i th the literature on Fordism to argue that postmodern culture coincides with a new form of production called post-Fordism. For these theorists, the new post­ modern society emerges in advanced capitalist countries that 'are increas­ ingly characterized by diversity, differentiation and fragmentation, rather than homogeneity, standardization and the economics and organization of scale which characterized modern mass society' (Hall and Jacques, 1 989: 1 1 ). They argue that during the 1960s the class identities that defined and positioned people in society began to break up, giving rise to a number of new political and cultural groups. The social movements of the 1960s are generally credited with this fragmentation, for they pioneered nonclass poli tical i dentities around a number of noneconomic issues l i ke gender, sexuali ty, age and counterculture. Along with this d isruption of class iden­ t i ties came a challenge to the hierarchical culture that expressed them. Post­ modern culture is defined above all by a collapse of the distinction between elite and mass culture. For many young art ists of the 1960s, high modern art had become discredited by its integration into the administered society of corporate capitalism. They began to embrace aspects of mass culture, blending h i gh and low in new, diverse forms that expressed the proliferat­ ing nonclass identities of society ( Hebdige, 1 989). A t this point, mass-production i ndustries began to fall i nto cri s i s due to the diversification and fragmentation of cultural identities. Fordist producti on depended upon a mass market for the production of standard­ ized goods by unchanging machines and assembly lines. These standard­ ized goods could be artificially differentiated in quantitative attributes to sell to different i ncome classes, but the system assumed that everyone wanted basically the same things. The rise of a divers i ty of nonhierarchi­ cal, nonclass subgroups fragmented the mass market, for each group demanded different goods to express its unique identity. The new nature of consumer demand stimulated, according to the postmodern theorists, a new

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post-Fordist production method based on economies o[ scope rather than economies of scale. Employing the new technologies of computers and other microelectronic innovations, manufacturers replaced mass production with flexible specialization, a manufacturing system that produces small runs of a large variety of products on machines that can be quickly changed (Mort, 1989; Murray, 1 989). Under the escalating demand [or product diversity in a level ed and fragmented consumer culture, more and more manufacturers in all advanced capital ist countries were forced to eschew outmoded Fordism for this new production system o[ post-Fordism (Amin, 1994). Some postmodern theorists, such as Jean Baudrillard, draw dreadfully bleak political implications from this collapse of class identities and the rise of a culture dominated by an ever-changing array of consumer spec­ tacles expressi ng the identities of a populace fragmented by lifestyle concerns. The Birmingham School, however, is optimistic about the political configuration of postmodernism/post-Fordist society. Dick Hebdige, in particular, has elaborated an analysis of subcultures defined by consumer style that argues for their subversive potential. He welcomes the collapse of class identities and the bifurcated culture that accompanies them. Both are based on hierarchical models that reproduce the passivity of the masses at the bottom, who await del iverance by the experts at the top. The frag­ mentation and leveling of class identity and culture create, Hebdige ( 1 989) argues, a plethora of subcultures that transcend class and nation and have the potential to subvert the totality of capitalist society. In his landmark study, Subculture ( 1 979), he analyses the consumption-based subcultures of British working-class youth, argu ing that the i r cobbled-together styles represent a serious disruption of the cultural codes that underlie a hierar­ chical society. Hebdige also applies his model of lifestyle subcultures as subversive difference to motor vehicles in his collection entitled Hiding in the Light ( 1 988). Here he argues that cars, l i ke other consumer objects, have a multi­ tude of meanings assigned by different groups that appropriate them for their own purposes. There are no essential relations of production to reveal or conceal , only a mult itude of competing, surface meanings that can cancel and undermine an oppressive, totalizing hierarchy (1988: 77-80). In his essay on the British reception of American mass-produced cars i n the 1 950s, he argues that these cars were perceived as and actually were a threat to the established hierarchy of tastes that legitimated class differ­ ences. Many upper-class Britons saw in the popular consumer affluence of the postwar period a pernicious 'leveling down process', in which elite moral and aesthetic standards were eroded. Large, superfluously decorated American cars like the Cadillac EI Dorado were considered particularly decadent and offensive, for they catered to the vulgarity of the masses and destroyed true elegance and refinement in design. For workers, however, these cars were symbols of progress, that is, the improvement in their standard of living and the advances i n science making this possible. Hebdige argues that these mass-produced A merican cars did hasten the

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liqu idation of the distinctive cultural heritage on which the authority of the elite rested. But he asserts that the conservatives were wrong about the homogenizing effect of this leveled consumer culture. Rather, American popular culture . . . oflers a rich iconography or set of symbols, objects and artefacts which can be assembled and reassembled by different groups in a literally limitless number of combinations. And the meaning of each selection is transformed as individual objects . . . are taken out of their original historical and cultural contexts and juxtaposed against other signs from other sources. (Hebdige, 1988: 74)

This multiplicity of meanings freely constructed by different groups to express their own identities makes this leveled consumer culture 'a new language of dissent' (1988: 7 1). A similar but more recent postmodern analysis of automobiles as the expression of fragmented and subversive subcultural identities is offered in Daniel Miller's collection entitled Car Cultures. M iller asserts that people see and express themselves through the car, which thus assumes a 'different cultural form or experience among different groups' (Miller, 2001 : 12). Since these subcultural expressions are i ntimate and diverse, 'the car has become more a means to resist alienation than a sign of alienation' (200 1 : 3). The volume contains a number of ethnographic studies of autos that seek to validate this postmodern approach, including one of young, working-class Swedish males called raggare or greasers. This subculture is centered on the restoration and driving of big, chromed-up American cars of the 1950s and 1960s. The author of the study, Tom O'Dell (2001 ) , argues that working­ class youth adopted these cars specifically to mark their difference from and contempt for the standards of 'good taste' enforced by the Swedish middle­ class, which defined American cars as vulgar, pretentious and hedonistic. He also holds that this automotive subculture was nationally specific, since it was defined against the peculiar values of the Swedish middle class practicality, rationality and reserve. O'Dell also sees the raggare as subver­ sive, since the middle class saw them and their cars as symbols of danger and moral decline. But in his rush to assert the uniqueness of this subculture, O'Dell curi­ ously omits any reference to American hot rodders, who appeared at about this same time. As Moorhouse ( 1 99 1 ) makes clear, these American youth also were largely working class and sought to assert their difference from mainstream Americans' standardized cars. And they too were the subject of moral panics and fears. Hot rodders' highly modified and altered cars were different from raggare vehicles, w hich were mainly stock restorations of American cars. But American hot rodders had to modify their cars to differ­ entiate them from the large, decorated sedans that were common in the United States; the raggare 's unmodified American cars achieved the same difference against sober and efficient Swedish cars. So the cultural expres­ sion may have been different, but the meanings were the same - freedom,

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escape, difference. Neither does O'Dell explore in any depth the real impact of this subculture on society. Just because these youth were perceived as a threat to bourgeois society does not mean they were. In the United States, many of the 'subversive' automotive differences pioneered by hot rodders were incorporated into the models of the mainstream automakers. Thus, this subculture became just another source of individuality and difference for the more pluralized and leveled automotive market. Similar questions about the automotive expression of subcultural difference can be raised with respect to gender. Pauline Garvey's contri­ bution to Car Cultures argues that the automobile provides young Norwegian women with means to transgress established gender roles. Through reckless and illegal driving these women achieve freedom and escape from their restricted routine of domestic chores and social isolation. Such behavior also has the meaning in Norway of defying state authority, since the govern­ ment in this country has from the beginning of automobility sought to regulate car ownership, by first restricting and then facilitating it. But Garvey also seems to realize that these women use the car j ust as often to facilitate, not challenge, established gender roles. The daring drive on the wrong side of the road provides merely a temporary relief from domestic chores that makes them a bit more tolerable. And at least for one woman interviewed, driving does not create social relations to destroy domestic isolation but 'occasionally substitutes for absent social relationships . . . act[ing] as a pressure valve to release the oppressive isolation of long periods inside the home' (Garvey, 200 1 : 140). Cindy Donatell i has argued, i n fact, that one niche-market car aimed specifically at women does not faci litate their freedom but more securely entraps them in traditional gender roles. She sees the minivan, one of the first and most successful l ifestyle vehicles, 'as a material shell for the retro­ grade conservative agenda of "family values"which became one of the dominant themes in pol i tical discourse when Ronald Reagan was elected at the beginning of the 1980s' ( Donatelli, 200 1 : 85). This suburban home on wheels reasserts the ascendancy of heterosexual marriage and procreation in this age of backlash against feminism. The very structure of the vehicle is tailored to gender stereotypes. It is large enough to accommodate lots of children, whose production and care defines woman's traditional role. Yet i t i s close t o the ground and handles easily, for women are considered too delicate and weak to drive a traditional truck, a clearly masculine vehicle. Loaded with all the feminine comforts of home, the minivan allows women to efficiently perform their traditional domestic roles while at the same t ime squeezing in eight or more hours in their new-found 'freedom' as wage­ earners. Paul Gilroy similarly argues that autos associated with the subculture of American blacks do not serve to break racial stereotypes but merely to maintain and bind them to mainstream consumer culture. He recognizes that the history of African-Americans' enslavement and coerced labor makes them receptive to the auto as a means of mobility, often allowing

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blacks t o escape racism and move t o employment opportunities. Further, their material deprivation has incli ned African-Americans toward products l i ke luxury cars, which publicly display the wealth and consequent status generall y denied to them. Despite recogni sing this, however, Gilroy sees the African-American auto subculture of expensive cars, chrome rims and elaborate car stereos as corporate race-branding that maintains stereotypes while simultaneously salving African-Americans' chronic injuries. And more importantly, black automobility diverts energy from collective, political struggles against racism i nto individualistic, consumerist asser­ tions. Consequently, cars . . . have helped to deliver us to a historic point where blackness can easily become less an index of hurt, resistance or solidarity in the face of persist­ ent and systematic inequality than one more faintly exotic life-style 'option' conferred by the multi-cultural alchemy of heavily branded commodities and the pre-sealed, 'ethnic' identities that apparently match them. (Gilroy, 200 1 : 86)

The postmodernists have identified a distinct age of automobility, in which the car is produced, purchased and used not as an expression of class distinction or mass individuality, but as the mark of identity in one of a multitude of l ifestyle groups, none of which is necessarily superior to another. But their assertion that this leveled and fragmented culture logic somehow liberates people from the confining roles of class, race and gender is questionable. As the polarization of wealth and i ncome proceeds rapidly, affirmative action is dismantled and women's reproductive rights are whittled away, the appearance of consumer difference may merely provide a smokescreen of freedom and diversity (Jameson, 1 991). Thus, this age of automobility is best seen not as a replacement of the reification postulated by the Frankfurt School in the age of mass individuality, but its transcen­ dence into a higher form. The basic need addressed by postmodern differ­ ence is the same as that found i n the Fordist age of mass i ndividuality that of compensatory individuality i n a society that deprives people of economic autonomy. However, with the collapse of Fordist restraints on the economic market over the last two decades, people need an intensifIed dose of consumer individuality to overcome the loss of autonomy in the produc­ tion sphere. The quantitative differentiation within a mass of similar consumers no longer suffices, and is replaced by a qualitative differentia­ tion between i nfinitely divisible lifestyle groups. But once again, this inten­ sified individuality of things serves to obscure the real human relations of class, gender and race, which have become more homogenized and polar­ ized than ever. This does not mean, however, that automobil ity has now stabilized into a balanced system. On the contrary, the transcendence of the cultural logic of mass i ndividuality into that of subcultural difference also generates contradictions, both within and between its constituent parts. First, there

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are signs that the proliferation of models to differentiate a plethora of life­ style subcultures is contradicting the demands of even the flexible produc­ tion system of post-Fordism. As automakers in the 1990s produced more models to please consumers demanding difference, the profit per vehicle dropped, especially among Japanese producers, because of shorter runs and reduced economies of scale. Their response was to move toward a system of 'optimum lean production', in which productivity and economies of scale were re-emphasized as goals. To achieve these, however, corporations had to sacrifice model diversity and innovation. Thus, for example, to cut costs and achieve longer runs of parts, producers under optimum lean production began to design new models to use more and more components from the old ones. Further economies of scale were achieved by reducing the number of different platforms (the structural foundation of a car) and the trim levels and option packages available on each model. Finally, in search of greater scale, companies began to consolidate through mergers or joint ventures, so that the same platform could be used by more nameplates. For example, due to its acquisition of other brands, Ford now uses the same luxury platform to produce Lincolns, Jaguars and Volvos. These measures, however, threaten to reduce the real differences between cars that drive the niche markets of postmodernism (Rubenstein, 200 l : 42-55). A second contradiction of the current age of automobility has emerged between the culture of difference and the use of cars. When every individual driver demands a car expressing his or her unique identi ty, the number of cars on the road grows and creates frustrating impediments to automotive express ionism. This problem is fu rthe r exacerbated if, as the postmodern­ ists claim, each individual has a number of identities that cry out for expres­ sion at different times. So, for example, the yuppie software executive may express his high-tech corporate persona by driving a BMW to work, but on the weekends he wants an off-road vehicle to express his back-to-nature leisure persona. Consequently, in the United States there are already more automobiles than licensed drivers. So the car takes over more and more of the environment, and the roads become so jammed that driving becomes an experience of frustration, not l iberation and individuality. It is hard to feel like a free individual in a massive gridlock of cars. The roads of advanced capitalist countries become battlegrounds for limited space, where tensions flare in ugly incidents of road rage. When the culture promises drivers effortless speed and escape, any impediment becomes i ntolerable ( Michael, 200 l : 72). To secure i ndividual advantage in the Darwinian struggle for space, some drivers up the ante by buying large, powerful, military-like sport-utility vehicles, lording i t over the lower species of the road i n an aggressive grandeur that only makes driving more competitive and danger­ ous. Thi s decline of civility on the roads may also reflect a third contra­ diction of postmodern automobility, one i nternal to the realm of culture itself. When individuals withdraw from public life i nto a multitude of life­ style enclaves, associating only with others exactly like themselves, i t

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becomes difficult to identify wi th the other dri vel'. He or she i s seen not as a fellow with commonly shared rights and obl igations but as an alien other with a different lifestyle competing for scarce space and recognition. Robert Bellah and colleagues have argued in Habits of the Heart ( 1 996) that the United States is becoming a collection of 'lifestyl e enclaves' and l osing that sense of shared fate and culture that makes collecti ve effort and identifi­ cation possible. Such cultural atomization, not environmental exhaustion or unprofitable production, may provide the ultimate limit of the age of post­ modern automobility. Conclusion

In h i s book on mobilities in the 2 1 st century, 10hn Urry (2000: 205- 1 1 ) argues that these complex systems are transforming societies i n u npredicted and nonlinear ways. Withi n a given complex system, actors repeat the actions that reproduce i ts order, but over t ime the cumulative effects of indi­ vidual actions begi n to produce nonlinear, unintended results that disrupt the system and send it i nto disequilibrium. My research on the cultural logics of the car reveals that such disruptions and contradi ctions of auto­ mobility are not new to 2 1st-century societies, but have occurred twice before in the history of the car. Both the logics of class distinction and mass i ndividuality were undermined by thei r own extension and iteration, forcing a restructuring between the elements of automobility. But, unlike Urry's, my analysis of automobil ity reveals a dialectical l inearity to development, not random, unpredictable fluctuations of a system. The three ages of the auto­ mobile that I postulate all evidence an underlying dynamic that drives the system of automobility and its cultural logic. This dynamic i s the confron­ tation of potentially autonomous h uman beings with an economic market system that thwarts their self-determination with an alien logic all its own. The development of the l aws of the market over the last century has forced humans i nto the realm of consumption to satisfy their needs for identity, autonomy and individuali ty. And the ultimate expression of this compen­ satory consumption has been the automobile, the individualized means of mobil ity that has become synonymous with freedom. Each stage of the auto­ mobile has ultimately foundered due to the inability of this thing to satisfy human needs, to provide identity in sheet metal and autonomy in movement. So the contradictions pile up from one stage to the next, i ntensi fied and exacerbated but not solved. Th is automotive folly will end not through some inevitable, objective development of the system but only through the actions of humans to reclaim their fate from their own machines. References A dorno, Theodor (1 974) Minima Moralia . London: Verso. A dorno, Theodor (1976) Introduction to the Sociology of Music. New York: Continuum. Adorno, Theodor (1978) 'On t he Fetish-character in Music and the Regression of

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Listening', pp. 270-99 in Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (eds) The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Adorno, Theodor ( 1984) Aesthetic Theory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Aglietta, M ichel ( 1979) A Theory of Capitalist Regulation. London: New Left Books. Amin, Ash (ed.) (1994) Post-Fordism: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Bayley, Stephen ( 1 983) Harley Earl and the Dream Machine. New York: Knopf. Bellah, Robert, Richard M adsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M . Tipton ( 1996) Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment i n American Life, updated edn. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bourdieu, Pierre ( 1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bowles, Samuel, David M. Gordon and Thomas E. Weisskopf ( 1984) Beyond the Wasteland. London: Verso. Donatelli, Cindy (2001) 'Driving the Suburbs: M inivans, Gender, and Family Values', Material History Review 54: 84-95. Fortune ( 1 947) 'Jukeboxes, F.O.B. Detroit', Fortune 36 (Sept.): 48b, 184. Gartman, David ( 1991 ) 'Culture as Class Symbolization or Mass Reification? A Critique of Bourdieu's Distinction', American Journal of Sociology 97: 42 1--47. Gartman, David ( 1994) A uto Opium: A Social History of American Automobile Design. London: Routledge. Gartman, David (2002) 'Bourdieu's Theory of Cultural Change: Explication, Appli­ cation, Critique', Sociological Theory 20: 255-77. Garvey, Pauline (2001) 'Driving, Drinking and Daring in Norway', pp. 1 33-52 in Daniel M iller (ed.) Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg. Gilroy, Paul (2001) 'Driving while Black', pp. 81-104 in Daniel Miller (ed.) Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg. Hall, Stuart and Martin Jacques (1989) 'Introduction', pp. 1 1-19 in New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1 990s. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Hebdige, Dick ( 1979) Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge. Hebdige, Dick (1988) Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things. London: Rout­ ledge. Hebdige, Dick ( 1989) 'After the Masses', pp. 76--93 in Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques (eds) New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1 990s. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Horkheimer, M ax and Theodor Adorno ( 1 972) Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Herder and Herder. Jameson, Fredric (1991) Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso. Keats, John ( 1958) The Insolent Chariots. Philadelphia, PA: lB. Lippincott. Klein, Naomi ( 1999) No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. New York: Picador. Marcuse, Herbert ( 1960) Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. Boston, M A : Beacon Press. Meyer, Stephen, III (1981) The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1 908-1 921 . Albany: State University of New York Press.

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M ichael, M i ke (2001) 'The Invisible Car: The Cultural Purification of Road Rage', pp. 59-80 in Daniel Miller (ed.) Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg. Milkman, Ruth (1997) Farewell to the Factory: Auto Workers in the Late Twentieth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. M iller, Daniel (2001) 'Driven Societies', pp. 1-33 in Daniel M i ller (ed.) Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg. Moorhouse, H.F. ( 1991) Driving Ambitions: An Analysis of the American Hot Rod Enthusiasm. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mort, Frank (1989) 'The Politics of Consumption', pp. 160-72 in Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques (eds) New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1 990s. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Murray, Robin (1989) 'Fordism and Post-Fordism', pp. 38-53 in Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques (eds) New Times: The Changing Face of Politics in the 1 990s. London: Lawrence and Wishart. New York Times (1906) 'Motorists Don't Make Socialists, They Say', 4 March: 12. O'Connell, Sean (1998) The Car and British Society: Class, Gender and Motoring, 1 896-1939. Manchester: Manchester University Press. O'Dell, Tom (2001) 'Raggare and the Panic of Mobility: Modernity and Everyday Life in Sweden', pp. 105-32 in Daniel M iller (ed.) Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg. Packard, Vance (1980) The Hidden Persuaders, rev. edn. New York: Pocket Books. (First published 1957.) Rubenstein, James M. (2001) Making and Selling Cars: Innovation and Change in the U.S. Automotive Industry. Baltimore, M D : Johns Hopkins U niversity Press. Scharff, Virginia (1991) Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age. New York: Free Press. Sloan, A lfred P., Jr (1972) My Years With General Motors. Garden City, NY: A nchor Books. Sparke, Penny (2002) A Century of Car Design. Hauppauge, NY: Barron's Educational Series. Urry, John (2000) Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilitiesfor the Twenty-first Century. London: Routledge. Urry, J. (2004) 'The "System" of A utomobility', Theory, Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5): 25-39. Willis, Susan (1991) A Primer for Daily Life. London: Routledge. Womack, James P, Daniel T. Jones and Daniel Roos (1991) The Machine that Changed the World. New York: Harper Perennial.

David Gartman i s Professor of Sociology at the University of South Alabama and the author of A uto Slavery: The Labor Process in the American A utomobile Industry and A uto Opium: A Social History of American A uto­ mobile Design. He is currently completing a new book entitled From Autos to Architecture: Fordism and Architectural Aesthetics in the Twentieth Century.

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UNIVERSITY PRE S S

Auto Couture Thinking the Car in Post-war France

David Inglis

NE

O

OF the aims of this special issue of Theory, Culture & Society is

to redress one of the odder lacunae in the contemporary social sciences, namely the relative neglect of the motor car as an object

of analysis and scrutiny (Hawkins, 1986). Occasional scholars such as Paul Virilio (e.g. 1986 [1977]) have drawn social theoretical attention to the roles played by modes of transportation in general, and automotive forms in particular, in the creation and maintenance of patterns of social organiz­ ation.1 Yet it nonetheless remains the case that the automobile has not received due attention from thinkers who wish to comprehend the contours of contemporary societies. As Sheller and Urry (2000) argue, this is a particularly curious state of affairs, in part because automobile technolo­ gies have been profoundly involved throughout the 20th century in shaping and reshaping urban and non-urban spaces, ways of thinking and being, and modes of social interaction. In this article, I intend to draw the attention of those interested in putting the automobile into the centre of social theoretical analyses, to the ideas of certain French authors who were concerned to understand the significance of the car in the social conditions they experienced. The authors that I examine made their contributions to French intellectual life in general, and the understanding of automobile culture in particular, in the post-war period. I will focus on the period roughly spanning 1950-75, partly for reasons of space but also, and more importantly, because there was a particularly rich vein of thinking about the car at this time that can be tapped by the present-day analyst. Although intellectuals living in pre-war France also gave some attention to automotive issues, as we will see briefly below, it was only really within the conditions of the post-war consumerist boom of the mid-1950s and after that the privately owned car became both a ubiquitous sight on French roads, an object that was within the financial •

Theory, Culture & Society 2004 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 21(4/5): 197-219 DOl: 10.1177/0263276404046067

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purview of the broad mass of the population, and a source of concern and interest for writers, film-makers and other members of the intelligentsia. Because mass motor transportation came later to France than it did to the U nited States, and because the car figured as a contested technology in the period I am dealing with, being seen variously as a Trojan horse of Ameri­ canization or something that could quite comfortably fit into everyday French life, French intellectuals were in many cases highly attuned towards seeking to understand what the car's impacts would be on social and cultural conditions. The ideas we will deal with i n this article were fuelled by intel­ lectuals' i nterest in what France might look like under the aegis of the auto­ mobile. My specific purposes in this article are threefold. First, I wish to provide a succinct socio-cultural history of the development of car culture i n post-war France, the ground out of which sprang the ideas as to the significance of the automobile developed by different intellectuals in the period. Second, I wish to draw together those ideas, presenting what are rather scattered writings by a variety of different authors i n a synoptic fashion. This is the first time, as far as I am aware, that this exercise has been carried out in an English-language publication. In this way, I intend to make accessible to the Anglophone reader many of the interesting perspectives on car culture developed by French thinkers in the period under scrutiny. Third and finally, I would like to draw attention, where appropriate, to the ways in which the ideas and perspectives set out here may continue to be of use to authors who wish to grasp the implications of the car in the workings of society in the present day. As I believe will be apparent from my analysis of post-war French contributions to the compre­ hension of an 'automobilic society', many of the ideas on display here remain of great interest to social theorists. In some senses, therefore, French authors of the post-war period can be seen as foundational figures in the development of theories as to the dynamics of car culture. This article is intended as a contribution to identifying a corpus of 'classic writings' on this topic, upon which contemporary thinkers might usefully draw. I will first set out the historical background to the development of post­ war automotive conditions in France, examining briefly in an empirical vein the rise of the French car industry and noting the enthusiastic embracing of the automobile by the modernist architect Le Corbusier. I will then consider the ways in which the car figured as the embodiment of spectacu­ lar forms of display, as this theme was pursued in the semiotic writings of Roland Barthes and the young Jean Baudrillard. Next I will turn to investi­ gate the primarily hostile response of leftist thinkers such as Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre and Andre Gorz to the apparent destruction of French physical spaces by the construction of the networks of concrete and asphalt that the car requires for its functioning. After that I will turn to consider how certain French thinkers related the car to certain wider social dynamics, such as conspicuous consumption and competitions for social status, and the aggressive behaviours fostered by a highly individualistic

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and competitive society. Finall y, I w ill see how it was possible by the later 1 960s onwards for certain French thinkers to view the car as an integral part of everyday life, which has brought with it i ts own parti cular rituals and idiosyncratic forms of social practice. I will conclude by drawing out the continuing relevance of aspects of these various perspectives [or contem­ porary endeavours to 'th ink the car'. Enter the Auto

At the very beginning of the automobile age, France lVas a world-leader in car design and production. Although the very first motorized vehicles had been developed in Germany in the late 1 880s, it was French entrepreneurs, such as the bicycle manufacturer Armand Peugeot, who took the lead in further developing these designs and making them commercially viable ( Laux, 1 976). Th is process developed quite quickly throughout the 1 890s. One of the first fully fledged automobile races in the world took place between Paris and Bordeaux in 1 895. The success of a voiture sails chevaux built by the French firm Panhard and Levassor in covering the 730 miles between Paris and Bordeaux and back again in only 52 hours, announced to the world that the automobile was no longer just an experimental device but a fully operational form of transport with huge potential to change tllf' ways people and goods could be transported. A ided by the good condition of French roads and the wide availability of petrol throughout the country, the number of automotive vehicles in France rose from 300 i n 1 895 to morf' than 14,000 i n 1 900 ( Barker, 1 987). Although after this time the absolute numbers of automobiles on thf' road in both the United States and Great Britain were greater than in France, nonetheless car manufacture had became an important part of the French f'conomy in the years around the First World War, the manufacturers Renault, Peugeot and Citroen aU having become major employers at th is time. One reason for thi s was that the wartime economy's need for motor transport had transformed car manufacturing from a primarily small-scale, partially artisanal form of production to a large-scale, mass production enterprise (Fridenson, 1 989; Kuisel, 1981). In the inter-war years, Andr� C itroen consciously presented himself as the French Henry Ford, bringing the benefits of American-style management to the production process (Schweitzer, 1 982). Conversely, the large car plants of the companies above became notorious for industrial m i li tancy amongst the workforce, a repu­ tation that persisted for at least another 50 years (e.g. MothI', 1 965). A l though relatively high prices meant that private cars were in the inter­ war period restricted to the well-to-do middle classes, by the early 1 930s there was already a fai rly large number of car dealers in most large urban areas ( Fridenson, 1 972). Another indication of the i ncreasing ubiquity of the car among upper levels of the bourgeoisie in the period between the wars was the rapid growth of motoring publ ications such as magazines, tourist guides (like the one produced by the tyre company Michelin), and maps ai med specifically at drivers ( Fridenson, 1 987).

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The dramatic impact the automobi l e could have on the thinking of i ntellectuals at this period is vividly demonstrated in Le COl'busier's ( 1 971) modernist manifesto L'Urbanisme, dating from 1 924, Here he set out a prospectus of a new urban utopia, a glass and concrete Paris of the future characterized by high-rise towers, shoppi ng centres, aerial highways and subterranean garages, The mani festo is prefaced by a parable about how he personally came to realize the beauty of this vision, Taking a stroll along the boulevards one summer evening, his perambulations were curtailed by the sheer density and noise of the traffic, As he put it, 'the fury of traffic grew, To leave your house meant that once you had crossed the threshold you were a possible sacrifice to death in the shape of i nnumerable motors' (Le COl'busier, 1971 [ 1 924]: 3), Initially disoriented and dismayed, Le COl'busier says that he quickly came to realize that this situation, charac­ terized by the omnipresence of the automobile, was thoroughly emblemati c o f t h e future, Instead o f being appalled by this prospect, he came t o believe that humankind not only had to come to terms with it, but also had to embrace it, through creating new ideals of beauty that were congruent with a world of concrete highways and speeding vehicles, He says that he had come to see a new purpose in his life: , , , I was assisting at the titanic reawakening of a comparatively new phenom­ enon , , , traffic, Motors in all directions, going at all speeds, I was over­ whelmed, an enthusiastic rapture fil led me, Not the rapture of the shining coachwork under the gleaming lights, but the rapture of power. The simple and ingenuous pleasure of being in the centre of so much power, so much speed, ( 1 97 1 [ 1924]: 3)2

As M arshall Berman ( 1 993: 1 67) puts it, on Le COl'busier's view at this period, the 'man in the street will incorporate himself into the new power [of traffic, and thus of the future as a whole] by becoming the man in the car', The automobile driver becomes the quintessential figure of a brave new world characterized by rationality, technology and speed,'l In the years after the Second World War, France underwent a series of major socio-cultural and socio-economic changes, As Gauron ( 1 983: 96) puts it, by the late 1 950s, 'French society had been shaken profoundly by strong demographic growth, new capitalistic ways of production, rapid urbanization, and the openi ng of frontiers for international exchange and decolonization.'4 The car was profoundly implicated in a number of these wide-ranging social changes, A confluence of several factors ensured that the production of private cars far exceeded the amount produced annually before the war. The French state embarked upon a series of large-scale measures to 'modernize' the economy, one aspect of which was to create automotive conditions analogous to those that pertained in the USA, Such processes were aided by the fact that the Renault company was national­ ized, partly as a result of the collaborationist stance of some of its senior executives during the Occupation (Jones, 1984),

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The three larger car manufacturers, namely Renault, Citroen and Peugeot, plus the smaller companies Simca and Panhard, were encouraged by the government each to target different sectors of the car market, and in so doing further to stimulate its development, especially amongst lower socio-economic groups. Thus Renault focused on the economy market, building the relatively inexpensive 4CV from 1946 onwards and the R4 from 196 1 . Peugeot cars were pitched at middle-market range, producing the popular 203 model from 1949 onwards. While Citroen primarily was oriented towards the more luxury end of the market, it also produced the iconic 2CV, which was at first aimed at farmers but soon became a popular choice among young people and bohemians (Dauncey, 2001). Thi s partly state-encouraged development and segmentation of the market had the effect of encouraging substantial numbers of upper working­ and lower middle-class people to enter into the condition of car ownership from the mid- 1 950s onwards. Car ownership was particularly high amongst the new class of 'cadres', the middle-rank ing personnel who managed tech­ nocratic enterprises in both the public and private sectors (Boltanski, 1987). It was these middle-income white-collar workers who were the particular avatars of the burgeoning consumer economy, in which automobiles and household goods such as refrigerators were increasingly sold as essentials of life. As a result of these various developments, although France had lagged behind other western European countries in terms of private car ownership in the early 1950s, by the mid-1960s France was as motorized as any other western European country (Fridenson, 1 987: 1 34). Auto-spectacle

In the relatively short span of time between 1 945 and the mid-1960s, the private car had turned from being a preserve of the upper middle classes to occupying an increasingly central position in the life of all social classes. Although by this time most French people still did not actually own a car, nonetheless drivers and non-drivers alike were subjected to the constant publicity for automobiles to be found in newspapers and magazines, and on radio and the new medium of television (Fridenson, 1 981).') It was more the symbolic, rather than as yet directly physical, ubiquity of the car that meant that it took 'centre stage in cultural debate' in France from the early 1 950s onwards (Ross, 1 996: 23; see also Bardou et aI., 1982).6 The French in general, and the intelligentsia in particular, were highly reflexively conscious of the roles played by the automobiles in society in part because, unlike in the USA, the rise of the car was not taken for granted or seen necessarily to be a harbinger of the benefits of scientific and technological modernity.7 As the literary scholar Roland Barthes (2002 [ 1 963]) noted in 1963, only food rivalled the automobile as a vehicle for reflections by the French upon the nature of their country in the present day, and i ts likely future under conditions of American-influenced consumerism. Despite its increasing symbolic omnipresence in French society, the automobile at first tended to be perceived by both intellectual and other

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social groups as something of an alien object, which was not fully integrated into quotidian existence in the way it was in the USA. For example, in Jacques Tati's 1 958 film Man Onele, a satire on the then-current vogue for modernist interior design and households oriented around les gadgets, the arrival of a new green and pink Chevrolet is initially 'treated by the camera as a fantastic and singular visitation' from out of the blue ( Ross, 1996: 31). The idea that the brand-new, shining automobile is like a visitor from another world is reflected in one of the most famous accounts of the car's role as a distillation of wider socio-cultural cllrrents. In a striking news­ paper piece from the mid- 1 950s that later became part of the collection Mythologies, Barthes ( 1993 [ 1957]: 88) reflects on the display at a car fair of the new C itroen DS (Deesse - 'the goddess'). Barthes is concerned to develop a semiotic reading of what the car signifies, what messages are inscribed into its very form. He remarks that: I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme crealion of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if nol in usage by a whole popu­ lalion which appropriates them as a purely magical object.

The 'magical' nature of the DS makes it the modern equivalent of a religious conception of petfection. 'It is obviolls that the new Citroen has fallen from the sky inasmuch as it appears at first s ight as a superlative object . . . an object is the best messenger of a world above that of nature: one can easily see in an object at once a perfection and an absence of origin' ( 1 993 [ 1 957]: 88). The spiritual elements of the DS rest in its design, in that its smooth lines and sleek fa�ade are suggestive of an object that has not been made by human hands, with all the imperfections and flaws that hand-production suggests. Instead, the form of the DS suggests a world beyond human frailty, a Platonic realm of pure forms where harmonious geometry reigns supreme. The point Barthes is making here echoes that of Marx - the commodity form has theological elements about it, in that it is a fetish which disguises the conditions of its own genesis. For Barthes, automobile design is one of the most supreme expressions of the fetishism of commodities, whereby the prosaic conditions of exploitati ve production are transmogrified into the supernatural arena of streamlined impeccability. In the late 1960s, a period by which the car had come to figure as a much more prosaic object in everyday life in France, Jean Baudrillard developed the vein of semiotic analysis of automobile design [u'st indicated by Barthes. Intended to provide a taxonomy of everyday objects such as furn iture and household items, his book Le Systeme des objets ( 1 996 [ 1968]) reflects the great strides that consumer capitalism had made in France since the war, in that Baudrillard ( 1 996 [ 1 968]: 3) says apropos of all the various goods that now crowded modern French interiors, that as yet 'we lack the vocabulary to name them all'. Baudrillard devotes a part of the book to the discussion of the significance of the automobile in contemporary French

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social life, regarding the car as now j ust as i mportant to the average consumer-citizen as was the home. The feature of (primarily American) cars that particularly captures Baudrillard's attention is the phenomenon of tail-fms. s The irony of the tail­ fin is that 'scarcely had [the car] emancipated itself from the forms of earlier k i nds of vehicle than the automobile-object began connoting nothi ng more than the result so achieved - that is to say, nothing more than itself as victo­ rious function' (Baudrillard, 1 996 [ 1 968): 59). A curious logic is at work here, for 'the car's fins became the sign of victory over space', yet 'they were purel)! a sign, because they bore no direct relationship to that victory [and] i ndeed if anything they ran counter to it, tending as they did to make vehicles both heavier and more cumbersome' ( 1996 [ 1 968): 59). Tail-fins therefore were signifiers not of 'real speed, but of a sublime, measureless speed. They suggested a m iraculous automati sm, a sort of grace' ( 1 996 [ 1968): 59). A fetishization of speed is carried out by the material signifier of tail-fins which paradoxically reduce the technical efficiency of the car. Like Barthes, then, Baudrillard sees i n car design elements of a theo­ logical discourse as to sublimity and purity. Also, in like fashion to Barthes' ideas in Mythologies (e.g. 1993 [ 1 957): 54) to the effect that French life is i ncreasingly being colonized by objects and systems of signs which bear no correspondence to, and which obliterate, 'nature', Baudrillard's discussion of tail-fins indicates that natural objects like birds' and sharks' fins are appropriated i nto the design of cars, and i n so doing are de-natured, and rendered i nto a purely abstract and artificial series of signifiers as to slE'ek movement through space. In this way, the car-commodity plays a part in destroying an older and more apparently 'natural' environment, in favour of a wholly man-made context in which natural phenomena only appear as stylized parodies. Here we have an early indication of Baudrillard's central thematic preoccupation, namely the construction and operation of a society based around s i mulacra, symbols which have lost all touch with an exterior reality they purport to represent, and which thus come to signify only them­ selves and their kind (Baudrillard, 1 983) . The i mplication of Baudrillard's comments on car design is that the prefix 'auto' in the word 'automobile' points not only to a vehicle that 'moves itself', but also to an auto-referential symbolic form that creates its own universe of meaning at the expense of the functioning of other, more apparently 'natural', semantic systems. The aesthetic elements i n movement come to be associated less with the organic body of the animal, and more with the i norganic body of the auto, which in turn presents i tself as a perfected form superior to 'mere' nature. In this fashion, the 'natural' i s more and more processed out of existence, replaced by a self-consci ously artificial imaginary which has the automobile at its centre as the symbolic quintessence of dynamic force. To Hell on the Highway

While semioticians like Barthes and Baudrillard grappled with the signify­ ing potency of the automobile, other thinkers on the left who sought to

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reconfigure Marxian models of social critique for a consumerist age began to deal critically with the car as it became more and more ingrained into the fabric of French social l ife. For many of these leftist thinkers, the auto­ mobile seemed to be a very potent symbol of the destructive effects of state­ led modernization processes (Mathy, 1 993; Rigby, 1991). The auto seemed to be both one of the prime symbols, and one of the central guarantors, of what Alain Touraine (1971) call ed the 'programmed society', a social order dominated by the twin factors of a technocratic state and an all-encom­ passing consumerism. The car seemed to herald the construction of a 'French high-road to Americanization' (Lefebvre, 197 1 [ 1 968]: 67), a development that the left looked at with some trepidation. One of the leading l eftist thinkers of the era, Henri Lefebvre ( 1 9 7 1 [1968): 1 00), expressed the views of many intellectual s on the left: 'the motor-car is the epitome of "objects", the Leading-Object', the distill ation and apotheosis of the consumerist mentality that seemed rapidly to be engulfing French society from the 1950s onwards. In a situation where fetishized objects were taken to fulfil the 'fal se needs' inculcated into i ndividuals by consumer capital ism, the auto was seen to take 'pl ace of honour in the system of substitutes' for authentic pl easures (Lefebvre, 1971 [ 1 968]: 104). From this point of view, in the context of a society i ncreasingl y programmed by the state around the needs of capital, 'nothing can beat the motor-car' for reinforcing the worst and most reactionary habits and practices (1971 [1968): 100). One version of this critique of the car can be found in the ideas of the Situationist International, a group of u ltra-leftist intell ectuals and artists formed in the late 1 950s who sought to develop Marx's analysis of commodity fetishism in such a way that it could come to grasp the novel elements in consumerist society that had arisen in the post-war period (Plant, 1 992). One of the key fIgures in this group, Guy Debord, began from the late 1 950s onwards to think about the car in terms of its rol e as the 'supreme good of an alienated life' (Debord, 1 989 [ 1959): 56). In the short article entitled 'Theses on Traffic', which he wrote in 1 959, Debord identified what he took to be the central contradiction that lay at the heart of automotive culture. On the one hand, the car had come to figure as 'the most notable material symbol of the notion of happiness that developed capitalism tends to spread' throughout modern societies ( 1 989 [ 1959]: 56). Yet on the other hand, the car operates as a means of further developing the extent of the exploitation of the labouring masses. While upper working­ class and lower middle-class people had tended to see the ownership of an automobil e as a means to augmenting their lives, for instance, through facili­ tating trips to places of recreation during their leisure hours, car usage had quite another, somewhat more subterranean, effect. By having to expend time getting to and from work by car, and having to suffer the miseries concomitant with increasing congestion of the roads as more and more people took to this form of transport, the worker ended up paradoxically giving a greater proportion of his or her day over to work-related activities. As Debord saw it, the car had played a very important role in augmenting

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processes of extraction of surplus value from workers in ways Marx could not have fully anticipated: 'commut i ng time . . . is a surplus labour which correspondi ngly reduces the amount of "free" time' available to the driver ( 1 989 [ 1 959]: 56). Consequently, a form of transportation that was represented to workers as a boon for leisure purposes was actuall y a disguised vehicle of further extraction of time and effoli in the interests of the economically dominant. From this perspective, when the car was used for commuting, it functioned as a Trojan horse in the service of the exploit­ ing classes. Debord took the car to task in analogous ways in his book La Societe du spectacle ( 1995 [ 1 967]), published j ust before, and widely taken to be prophetic of, the upheavals of May 1 968. I n this context, Debord argues that the car is complicit in all that is becomi ng disastrously wrong with contem­ porary France, for 'giant shopping centres created ex nihilo and surrounded by acres of parking space . . . these temples of frenetic consumption' are moral and spiritual wastelands, where the onl y values to be found are e xpressed in the facile tag-lines and j i ngles of advertising executives ( 1 995 [ 1 967]: 1 23). Similar sorts of ideas as to the spaces created by large-scale automo­ bile use were put forward by Henri Lefebvre at around the same period (Gardiner, 2000). For Lefebvre, a central fact of French modernity in the 1 960s and 1 970s was the car's colonization of everyday l i fe. From this perspective, automobile use had come to reconfigure very profoundly many aspects of how l i fe is lived. Echoing the views of Debord, Lefebvre ( 1 97 1 [ 1 968]: 1 01 ) argues that the 'disintegration of city life' i n its more communal forms (meeting-halls, public parks, market-places, etc.) derives from these being swept away by, among other things, the construction of autoroutes through cities, the enlarging of existing city streets to meet the needs of increased motor traffic, and the cocooning of individual motorists within their own privatized vehicular spaces. For Lefebvre (here drawing on the ideas as to different species of spaces developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty [ 1 996 ( 1 945)]), this is a triumph of the 'geometric space' favoured by tech­ nocratic publ ic servants working hand in glove with car manufacturers, over the 'lived spaces' of community-based association. Within the geometric spatial imagi nary, 'space is conceived in terms of motoring needs and traffic problems' only. Under contemporary social conditions, 'traffic circulation [has come to be] one of the main functions of a society and, as such, involves the priority of parking spaces . . . streets and roadways' over all other considerations (Lefebvre 1 97 1 [ 1 968]: 100). The inner city comes more and more to be characterized by 'commercial centres packed tight with commodities, money and cars' (Lefebvre, 1 993 [ 1974]: 50). Within such urban conditions, argues Lefebvre ( 1 993 [ 1 974]: 3 1 3), the car driver's experience of the cityscape loses the richness and multi­ di mensionality open to the stroller, for i t is characterized by the deadening rational ity of geometrically ordered space:

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Theory, Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5) . . . the driver is concerned only with steering himself to his desti nation, and in looking about sees only what he needs to for that purpose; he thus perceives only his route, which has been . . . mechanized and technicized, and he sees it from one angle only - that of its functionality: speed, readability, facility [and so on]. . . . [Thus] space appears solely in its reduced forms. Volume leaves the field to surface, and any overall view surrenders to visual signals spaced out along fixed trajectories already laid down in the 'plan'.

As Baudrillard ( 1 996 [ 1 968]: 66) put it, making the same sort of point, the car has the capaci ty to transfigure space and time in such a way that the world is reduced to 'two-dimensional ity, to an image, stri pping away its rel ief and its historicity'. Pursu i ng these themes in wri ti ngs from the early 1970s, Lefebvre regards the re-creation of space in the present day as a s ituation whereby the city tends to get 'sl i ced up, degraded and eventuall y destroyed', by the 'proliferation of fast roads and of places to park and garage cars, and their corollary, a reduction of tree-lined streets, green spaces, and parks and gardens' (Lefebvre, 1993 [ 1 974 ] : 359). The conclusion Lefebvre draws in his work of this period i s that increasingly 'it is almost as though automo­ biles and motorways occupied the entirety of space' ( 1993 [ 1974]: 374). This conquest of physical space by the car could be seen as the apotheosis of A mericanization processes, whereby the French urban environment came more and more to resemble the concrete and asphalt landscape of large A merican conurbations. Writing this time in the 1980s, Baudril lard ( 1994 [1 986]) makes the poi nt of t h e car's u s urpation of older urban spaces (in this case, those of Los Angeles) in th is way: the 'city was here before the freeway system, no doubt, but it now l ooks as though the metropolis has actual l y been built round this arterial network'. From this perspective, which is shared by Lefebvre, the car, which once was an adjunct of the urban environment, has come to be not only its defining feature but also its master. On the nightmarish view held by Lefebvre in the early 1 970s, 'the motor-car has . . . conquered everyday l i fe, on which it imposes its laws . . . . Today the greater part of everyday life is accompanied by the noise of engines' ( 1 97 1 [ 1 968]: 1 01 ) . This is the same conclusion reached by lean­ Luc Godard in his film Week-end, dating from 1 967. Modern urban soc iety i s represented, i n a bravura 8-minute long si ngle take, as a gridlocked hell of jammed traffic, the ennui of commuti ng, exhaust fumes and bloody highway accidents.9 Clearly, for leftist i ntellectuals of this period, the car had come to signify a malaise into which France had been brought by the combined forces of technocratic state modern ization, misguided i ndustrial ization and thoughtless consumerism. The i mplication of these ideas of Lefebvre, as well as those of Debord ( and, in a way, those of Barthes and Baudri l lard too), i s that 'Nature', i n the guise of the farms and marketplaces of an older, more bucoli c France, has been swallowed up by the car-park, the ring-road

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and the out-of-town mall, all of these i ndicating an obli terating A meri­ canization of French physical space. In the present day, it would be a very easy matter merely to write off the ideas of Lefebvre set out above as embodying a conservative lament for a fictit ious golden age of sociabil ity, a Gemeinschaji of lived spaces ruined by the dynamics of an automobile­ powered, geometrically ordered Gesellschcifi. However, such analyses of the spaces of driving arguably remain relevant today in that they have been usefully developed in recent years, in more 'neutral' and 'anthropological' ways, by the ethnologist Marc Auge. The latter gives an account of the 'non-places' characteristic of the social configuration he dubs 'supermodernity', such as airport wait i ng lounges and the interiors of j u mbo jets. For Auge ( 1 995) the driver cruising through France on the main autoroutes experiences a means of perception highly characteristic of the de-natured, de-historicized, geometricized, abstract condit ion of supermodernity. On the one hand, the major arterial networks tend to bypass most cities and towns, thus for the sake of speed depriving the driver of experiencing those places first-hand; such places merely become 'names on a map', and noth ing is known of them beyond that. Yet at the same t i me, the network of autoroute road signs is at pains to point out 'historical sites' and 'places of i nterest'. Auge concludes that 'motorway travel is . . . doubly remarkable: it avoids, for functional reasons, all the principal places to which it takes us; and it makes comments on them' ( 1995: 97; see Merriman, 2004). The nature of 'driverly' perception, there­ fore, is that it potential l y gets to 'experience' large chunks of geography only as a series of abstract s igns that flash by intermittently. Like the airline passenger, the motorway driver has been allowed to cover great distances at the expense of having anything other than a highly mediated engagement with any specific place on his or her travels. Space becomes Aattened out and abstracted to a high degree, and specificities and localities are traduct'd and rendered into ciphers in the gliding monotony of tht' highway. Cars and Contempt

In the above, wt' began to trace out the contours of accounts of the nature of the experiences involved in automotive transportation. Th is leads us to consider the ways in which, according to Lefebvre and other contempora­ neous French thinkers, the car has come to alter the experienced world of the people who have come to rely upon it. In the part of his book Everyday Life in the Modern World ( 1 97 1 [ 1 968]) devoted t o automotive culture, Lefebvre argues that in contemporary France 'the motor-ear's roles are legion', for i t 'directs behaviour in various spheres from economics to speech' ( 1 97 1 [1968]: 1 03, ] 00). In terms of the latter factor, what Lefebvre had in mind was the various signifying systems that codify the arrangement of cars on highways, not just the Highway Code 'the epitome of compulsive sub-codes disguising by their self-importance our society's lack of directive' - but also other forms of discourse 'such as legal, journalistic or l i terary tracts, advert isements, etc.'. Given the

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proliferation from the 1950s onwards of texts relating to automobile trans­ port, from the documents of traffic law to glossy magazines devoted to the latest automotive models, Lefebvre notes that the car 'has not only produced a system of communication' dedicated to itself, 'but also organisms and institutions that use i t and that i t uses' ( 1 97 1 [1968]: 103). As a result of this exponential growth in cultural and institutional forms pertaining to the car, according to Lefebvre the latter had come to colonize more and more areas of everyday life in contemporary France. Echoing Barthes, Lefebvre argues that the car has come to figure as a central nexus of commodity consumption, further developing the ramifications that this system has had for what people think is i mportant in their lives. The car is a status symbol, i t stands for comfort, power, authority and speed, it is consumed as a sign in addition to its practical use, it is something magic, a denizen from the land of make-believe . . . it symbolizes happiness and procures happiness by symbols. (1971 [1968]: 102-3) 10

Lefebvre points out the intimate connections between type of car owned and social status. One can look down with disdain on the person who has a less stylish, less powerful or less technologically advanced car than oneself. The perceived inferiority of the car becomes mentally transferred to its driver, such that the person who drives a modest vehicle can be regarded w i th contempt by the driver of a more symbolically potent model. One's social standing in the eyes of others is strongly bound up with what sort of car one possesses. !l It is not just the particular model of the car, or how i t looks, that has become important for a driver's sense of self-worth; rather, the fetishized idea of 'performance' has arisen as a way in which individuals seek to gain some individuality for themselves by reference to the power and handling capacities of their vehicles, in a social context where 'true' individuality is increasingly stymied (Lefebvre, 197 1 [1 968]: 102). While the car is the commodity par excellence, and is thus a v ital means of ensuring the conti­ nuity of regulated forms of everyday practice, nonetheless i t creates its own illusions of 'freedom'. For Lefebvre (1971 [1968]: 101), the motorist I S caught in a curious paradox, created by the nature of the car itself: Motorized traffic enables people and objects to congregate and mix without meeting, thus constituting a striking example of simultaneity without exchange, each element enclosed in its own compartment, tucked away in its shell; such conditions contribute to the disintegration of city life and foster a . . . 'psychosis' that is peculiar to the motorist; on the other hand the real but limited and pre-established dangers do not prevent most people from 'taking risks', for the motor-car with its retinue of wounded and dead, its trail of blood, is all that remains of everyday life, its paltry ration of excitement and hazard.

On this account, the highway is based around the orderly flow of traffic, an

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analogy to the ordered flow of commodities i n an economy based around constant consumption. Yet the advertising mechanisms that help maintain the flow of consumption often draw upon images of i ndividualized freedom, flight and speed to sell the latest auto models. This helps to stimulate disorder and anarchy in the traffic system, if only mostly fleetingly and i n i t s i nterstices. Nonetheless, the car has come t o occupy a somewhat ambigu­ ous position in modern life, in that it 'is a condensation of all the attempts to evade [forms of] everyday l ife' that are more and more regulated, because it has been defined as the last refuge of 'hazard, risk and significance' in an administered society (1971 [ 1 968]: 103). What lies at the back of Lefebvre's analysis here is the internationally recognized notoriety of French driving conditions in the 1 960s and 1970s, with France having the highest number of road deaths out of all West E uropean countries consistently year after year. On a Monday, newspapers would have a special section devoted to the prior weekend's death toll on the roads (Vallin and Chesnais, 1975). 12 The issue of the often aggressive i ndividuality of (primarily male) drivers was taken up in the mid- 1970s by the sociologist Luc Boltanski. Boltanski ( 1 975) discussed the phenomenon of drivers engaged in competition with others on the road as an expression of the culture of competitive individualism fostered by a class society organ­ ized around accumulation of private wealth and consumer goods, and upward social mobility. The dangerous nature of driving was the result of races between drivers who sought to 'maximize their gains in space, which would be equivalent to maximizing their profits in time' (Ross, 1 996: 61). From this viewpoint, an aggressively acquisitive society breeds certain styles of everyday practice, notable among which is a bellicose driving style. At around the same period, the political analyst Andre Corz, writing under the nom de plume M ichel Bosquet ( 1977 [ 1 973]: 21), put the same point in these terms: . . . mass motoring produces an absolute triumph of bourgeois ideology on the level of daily practice by creating and nourishing within the individual the illusion that he [sic] can prevail and advance himself at everyone 's expense. The brutal, competitive egotism of the driver symbolically murdering the 'idiots' obstructing his headlong passage through the traffic represents the flowering of a universally bourgeois behaviour. ('You'll never forge socialism with these people', said an East German friend as he gazed in horror at his first Paris rush-hour.)

While the Althusserian elements in such analysis render it a little crude ('bourgeois ideology' is seen directly to produce particular everyday prac­ tices, in this case competitive and belligerent driving), nonetheless it remains useful today for focusing attention on the wider socio-cultural contexts which produce such phenomena as 'road rage' and other forms of violence on the highways. The factors that lie behind the actions of the dri ver who sees red vis-a-vis other motorists to the point of deliberately

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i nflict i ng physical damage on them could be seen not as residing purely i n the psyche of the i ndividual alone, but a s also part of a wider socio-cultural order characterized by competitive individualism and selfish consumerism, especi ally given that that form of consumerism often i nvolves deprecation of other people's choice of car models (Collett and Marsh, 1986). The Quotidian Car

Thus far we have examined some of the more gloomy prognoses as to the development of automotive culture in post-war France made by certain intellectuals of the period. Yet even in the depths of the most despairing critiques of automotive culture there lay hidden more upbeat accounts of the restructuring of social and spatial relations in the age of the auto. Certainly Lefebvre's analysis of the encroachment of large-scale motor transport on the fabric of urban France can be seen as a nostalgic hanker­ ing after a pre-automobile c ityscape, but i t can also be seen as an attempt to identify the contradictions in car culture. The aim of Lefebvre's overall analysis of the conditions of everyday life was to 'expose its ambiguities its baseness and exuberance, its poverty and fruitfulness' ( 197 1 [ 1968]: 13). The privatization that travel undergoes in the car era in fact could be taken to be productive of both aggressive individualism in drivers and the possi­ b i lity that the car operates as a refuge from an overly administered form of existence, a refuge that allows a little recklessness and 'fun' to be injected i nto the otherwise highly regulated life of the commuter. A shift from a 'structuralist' analytic which stresses the imperatives of systems upon individuals to a 'post-structurali st' paradigm, which looks at how such systems are negotiated by particular persons in everyday settings, is characteristic of a substantial element of French social thinking from the mid-1970s onwards. n In his analyses of the 'rhythms' of city life dating from the later 1970s, Lefebvre ( 1 995, 2004) was concerned to depict the tempos of city life as following the beats both of officially imposed social order (e.g. the effects of policing of the streets) and of unofficial, localized resistances to it (e.g. driving through red lights). This sort of analysis was also devel­ oped throughout the 1970s by Michel de Certeau. His stated concern was with showing the ways in which i ndividuals work within, subvert and connive against systems of regulation and control (de Certeau, 1984: xii). While 'places' are locales where regimes of power inscribe themselves, de Certeau sought to uncover how these can be turned i nto 'spaces', locales used in 'unofficial' ways by particular persons. Thus the focus turns to the ways in which 'the street geometrically defined by urban planning is trans­ formed i nto a space by walkers' ( 1984: 1 1 7). On such a view, which seeks to locate unexpected pockets of creativity and movement within an appar­ ently wholly administered urban order, city planners and other such authori­ tative groups are seen to be: . . . incapable of imposing the rationality of reinforced concrete on multiple and Buid cultural systems t hat organize the living space of inner areas

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(apartments, stairways and the like) or public domains (streets. squares, etc.) and that innervate them with an infinite number of itineraries. (de Certeau, 1997 [1 974]: 133)

Thus the 'geometric' spaces identified by Lefebvre turn out on de Certeau's account to be subvertible by unofficial, anti-hegemonic practices which render them back into 'lived spaces'. The spirit of de Certeau's writings directs our attention not only to 'unofficial practices' of driving such as aggressive overtaking and the like pointed to by Lefebvre, but also to the mundane cases where what should happen does not: late departures, missed turn-offs, unreliable maps and all the other mishaps that exist beyond and in spite of the rationalized system of the contemporary highway (for a more detailed account of the implications of de Certeau's analysis of car culture, see Thrift's article in this volume). A further element of the car's appropriation by people in everyday l ife was fIrst i ndicated as early as 1963, in an article by Barthes (2002 [1963]) in the journal Realites. There Barthes argues, in marked contrast to his newspaper piece from the mid- 1950s mentioned above, that the car has become an absolutely ordinary and taken-for-granted element of French life. He identifies the binary opposition that he feels above all others has come to categorize different aspects of the car: the opposition between 'sporty' (sportif) and 'homely' (domestique). The former side of the car, which obvi­ ously comes to the fore more i n some models than others, connotes unfet­ tered individualism, the driver being representable as a free spirit breaking away from the rest of the pack. (The connection between this mentality and Boltanski's and Gorz's aggressive individualists is obvious.) The more 'homely' aspect of the car, which is foregrounded most typically in the fami l y saloon o r estate, b y contrast, allows a different, more gentle sort of indi­ vidualism. It suggests a cosy cocoon of one's own, where through means of bricolage, the owner creates his or her own personalized environment by adding extra fittings such as sun-blinds on the rear windows and decOJ'a­ tions such as stickers commemorating either places visited or allegiance to a sports team. This is the sort of car that gives one a feeling of being in a space of one's own, a familiar environment over which one has control, even if one has travelled hundreds of miles. Once again we see Baudrillard's ( 1 996 [ 1 968]: 67) writing of the late 1960s echoing Barthes' ideas. The para­ doxical nature of the domestique aspects of the automobile is that 'it makes it possible to be simultaneously at home and further and further away from home'. The ambiguity of the car rests in its simultaneous ability to be both 'a projectile . . . [and] a dwelling place' ( 1 996 [ 1968]: 69).Thus 'the car rivals the house as an alternative zone of everyday life: the car, too, is an abode, but an exceptional one; it is a closed realm of intimacy, but one released from the constraints that usually apply to the intimacy of home, one endowed with a formal freedom of great intensity . . . ' ( 1 996 [ 1 968]: 67). The point that both Barthes and Baudrillard each in their own ways want to make is that the interior of the car is a domestic arena infused with

212 tdesihe rcapaci tsy i-l uatstrlateastes tthheoret icallyto-whito ctah,kebyonethewherever onehe carmaywasso e. Thi e degree 1960s, t viofeawablperson' e insFrance notthe justfurniasturea hostin tihleeirenthomeity butor asthemuch a offamitheiliarrlopartcal l i f e as si g ht s neiBartghbourhood. Thisl awasrd, notbutacanperspect ive aslimpartited ofmerela morey to tgeneral he writisensi ngs of­ h es and Baudri be seen bility charact efirinzaledfilbym ofa notvieew, tofel itnhgle ycarentasitlead 'place(1970) of one', als town' . 14thIne Jacques Tat i ' s h ough generi cemodern cityicisthrepresent etdheiasr human constituintehabid oftaantnever-endi ntghseae carsof cars, t h i d i o syncrat i n gs t h at s do i n si d e iaudis dwelencet upon. Forwatexampl erent, theredrivierss a stceluckebratin etrdaffisequence inthwhieir cnoses. h the get s t o c h di f f e c pi c ki n g Anot htero tsethe-picorporeal ece likensandthepersonal ways thecharact windscreen wis pofersthofeirpartdriivcersular-carsthe work e ri s t i c wigentperslemanof adofatsoman' swicarth tmove ponderousl y. ,Thewhitleechnolthoseogyofisahumani very agedzed onl y h e great e st eff o rt bynized,Tatireworked in order tando emphasi zteothsome at aftdegree er purchase, thtehecarpersonal becomesitiesinofdigie­ts recast t o sui t users The(Bellsame os, 1999). 15 'humanistic' appraisal of the everyday activities of sort of peopl es, work inclufrom ding tdrihevmiers,d-1970s. is apparent ins taccount he novelofistthande miessayi soft Georges Perec' Perec' n ut i a e quotForid­ iexampl an lifeedwel l s i n part on t h e rol e of t h e car i n everyday exi s t e nce. , Bacwhileandsit inBoulg onetvardhe outSaisidnet-tGermai errace ofn, ahecafecommands on the juncthiimonseloffthtoe Rue de 'descrihebeparks the number ofin order operattioonsgo andthe dribuyvera hundred of a vehigrams cle is ofsubjfruiectt jeledlyt'o. when merel y Perec (1997 [1974]: 51-2) lists the rigmarole the driver goes through: parks of a ncerte ain amount of toing and froing swiwithtcdraws hesby ofmeans fthtehekey,engi nthgeoffvehia ficlrest anti-theft device extwinrdsicatupes thihemlseleftf-hfromandsettifront ndow lchecks ocks it that the left-hand rearwidoor is locked; if not: raislopens samses ttihthee door handle inside checks securelbe,y checks that the boot is locked properly cichecks rcles tithth'esatcar;lotcked ihe frineed dooreids outlocked;on thief notleft,-hrecommences sequence of operatghtions-handalreadyrear carri and rear doorthe Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

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winds up the right-hand front window shuts the right-hand front door locks it before walking away, looks all around him as i f to make sure the car is still there and that no-one will come and take it away.

Perec's intention is to gaze so hard at the 'ordinary' that it stops being prosaic and starts to be seen as peculiar, odd and rather extraordinary; he is in essence engaged in an 'anthropological' de-familiarization of the commonplace. His phenomenology of car use asks us to examine closely our own everyday automotive activities, and to reflect on the little rituals that make up our quotidian existence both inside the car and without. A glint of wry humour makes its way into Perec's account above towards the end, with the driver being seen to turn to see if his car is actually still where he left it a second before, leaving the reader perhaps with a little jolt of recognition as s/he remembers seeing this done or doing this him- or herself. Conclusion

Thi s benevolent view of the car's role in people's lives put forward in l iterary terms by Perec and visually dramatized by Tati is a far cry from the often apocalyptic denunciations of car culture formulated by other French intel­ lectuals in the period from the 1950s through to the 1970s. This fact i ndi­ cates that French intellectual engagements with the rise and development of mass automobility encompassed a diverse set of different possible responses, ranging from the most hostile to the most empathetic, as to the car and its possible effects on society, culture and everyday life. I have been concerned in this article to set out the range of these responses, in order both to present them to an A nglophone audience, and to pull the different ideas together from their various sources in such a way that otherwise occluded patterns might become visible. We have seen that in post-war France, the automobile could variously be regarded as, among other things, spectacular commodity, threat to French values and spaces, avatar of A meri ­ canization, symbol and agent of reproduction of aggressive individualism, home-from-home and an essential part of everyday life, a 'humanized' object that expresses the i ndividuality of its driver and around which peculiar little rituals had developed. As a result, a very wide variety of interpretations of the car's socio-cultural significance were possible, and were put forward, in post-war France. We can identify in broad outline a chronological aspect to these responses: those that regard as the car as a relatively 'alien' and unfamiliar object naturally enough date from the period when mass motor­ ization was beginning to develop, whereas those accounts which see the car as a prosaic and 'homely' entity date from a period when automobility had become thoroughly woven into the fabric of French quotidian existence. This article has at one level sought to present a succinct history of the development of car culture at a particular time in a particular place, namely post-war France, and its i mpact, as perceived by thinkers of the period, on

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wider cultural and social dynamics. Yet although the ideas we have examined were originally responses to particular sets of socio-cultural conditions, nonetheless I believe they possess i nterest and utility when regarded beyond their original context of production. 1 6 The semiotics of car design first pioneered by Barthes and then taken up by Baudrillard I think remains a valuable means of investigating the significance that car designs in the present day may have in wider cultural contexts. For example, we might take i nspiration from Barthes and Baudrillard to try to understand what the automotive designs that go under the verbal label 'people carrier' might tell us about attitudes towards family l ife held by certain types of driver today. In a similar fashion, and as indicated above, we could today further develop the ideas of analysts such as Lefebvre, Gorz and Boltanski as to l inkages between more general cultural patterns of individualism and competitiveness, and the specific case of aggressive driving styles. It would, for example, be interesting to carry out empirical research to ascertain whether i ncidents of 'road rage' today tend to occur most frequently among the social group that both Boltanski and Gorz may have had in mind back in the 1970s as the least chivalrous of drivers, namely 'young executives' of the lower middle class, whose social position arguably compels them always to be oriented towards 'putting one over' on other people, be these colleagues, customers, or other drivers on the roads. I am also particularly struck by the possibility of taking further the 'phenomenological' perspectives on automotive experience developed by certain thinkers dealt with above. Perec's detailed descriptions of what car drivers actually do in their everyday automotive practices is already a useful step i n this direction. But I also have i n mind here the potential i mplicit i n Lefebvre's utilization of Merleau-Pontian phenomenology for the under­ standing of how drivers experience movement on the road. Lefebvre opened up this perspective in one direction, namely how the geometric spaces of the road are viewed by the car driver, an issue that has been taken up more recently by Auge. But what could be developed further is a more general Merleau-Pontian account of the dispositions and activities that the whole being of the driver engages in while on the road. A Merleau-Pontian ( 1996 [ 1 945]) analysis, which is based upon seeing the human being as a conflu­ ence of mind and body rather than as an abstract intellect confronting its own inelt flesh, would seek to depict the ways in which the mind and body of the driver are as one when they are i nvolved in the acts that together constitute practical and partially pre-reflective modes of inhabiting the car. Different modes of driving, such as those based on differences i n gender socialization, could be investigated, as could the ways in which the driver 'lives' in his or her car, whether it is in motion or stationary (Sobchak, 1 994). This suggestion as to a Merleau-Pontian phenomenology of driverly experience is j ust one example of how perspectives on the car first devel­ oped in post-war France could be developed and extended in the present day as we seek more fully to grasp the fundamental roles the car plays i n social orgaization and the life o f the individual. Intellectuals o f many

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different hues i n post-war France thought that the car was 'good to think with'. I hope that this article has demonstrated that their ideas as to auto­ mobility are good to think with too. Notes 1 . Virilio (1986 [ 1 977]: 14) argued in his work from the late 19705 that the modern state is only secondarily the institution whereby one class oppresses all others. Rather, the state should be understood as a means of transpor/ive order, in that it is essentially a mechanism of 'highway surveillance', which sees social order as contiguous with 'the control of traffic (of people, of goods), and revolution, revolt. with traffic jams, illegal parking, multiple clashes, collisions ' . Likewise, the city is primarily 'a human dwelling-place penetrated by channels of rapid communication . . . a h abitable circulation' (1986 [ 1977]: 5). Seeing the urban and political orders as configurations of vehicular movement allows Virilio to characterize human history in terms of differing transport regimes. For example. the functioning of the Nazi state hinges on its motorization of the German people through mass owner­ ship of a Volkswagen - 'no more riots. no need for much repression; to empty the streets, it's enough to promise everyone the highway' (1986 [1977]: 25). 2 . The affinities between this position and those of the Italian and Russian Futurist artists working i n about the same period are obvious. The speeding vehicle is seen to be a harbinger of a revolution in thought, representation and social practice (see Martin. 1968). 3. This optimistic view of the car was an object of satire and scepticism even in the 1920s. For example, the Russian author Ilya Ehrenburg's (1976 [ 1 929]) novel The Life of the A utomobile, written while he was resident in Paris, set out in highly caustic ways the negative impacts the car was having on different countries around the world. including France. 4. Quotes from works in French are the present author's translations. All page refer­ ences are to the French editions. 5. As early as 1929, Ehrenburg (1976 [ 1929]: 3) noted the ubiquity of advertising for cars in France: 'The streets of Paris, swarming with automobiles, were covered with posters [advertising automobiles] as cajoling and coddling as the hiss of the nocturnal serpent.' 6. Kristin Ross (1996) shows in some detail the impact that cars in generaL and American models in particular, played in French popular culture, especially cinema, of the later 1 950s and early 1960s. In films such as Jacques Demy's Lola (1960) and Robert Dhery's La Belle Americaine (1961), the American automobile is treated as a fantastic and alien intrusion into quotidian Frenc'h existence. The car also made its way into Francophone novels of the period. Fran<;,oise Sagan 's immensely popular BOlljour tris/esse (1955). for example. has a car crash as its central plot device. As relatively early as 1953. the crime IITiter Georges Simenon (2003 [1953]) had based a whole noveL Feux rouges (Red Ligh/s) around the American dependence on car transportation and its peculiar effects on the American psyche (Marnham. 2003). For a study of popular cultural representations of cars in America at the same period. see Dettelbach (1976). 7. E ven as early as the 1 920s, American intellect uals Iyere describing the car's profound transformation of the quotidian aspects of life in the United States. In Robert and Helen Lynd's (1957 [ 1 929]) classic sociological analysis of 'Middletown'

2 16

Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

(actually Muncie, Indiana), the car is seen to have had wide-ranging impacts on everyday existence, from reducing church attendance by facilitating longer-range Sunday pleasure trips to freeing car-driving teenagers from parental scrutiny. As one respondent put it, in answer to the question as to what factors were changing the community, 'I can tell you what's happening in j ust four letters: A-U-T-O!' ( 1957 [ 1 929]: 251). 8. As Gartman ( 1 994, 2004) points out, tail-fins on American cars were probably first derived from the fins of fighter aircraft rather than animals' fins. 9. The fdm, with its emphasis on revolutionary violence coming to wreck ordered bourgeois life, as symbolized in the car, could be seen as prophetic of the events of May 1968. As Jean Collet ( 1970: 134) noted in the period immediately after the events, 'The cars that burned in the He-de-France of Weekend, filmed in October 1967, did not wait for another October before setting the torch to other cars.' 10. Barthes (2002 [1963]) in his 1 963 article on automobiles denied this point, arguing that the car had by this time ceased to function as an important status symbol in French cultural life. 1 1 . Although cars feature in Pierre Bourdieu's ( 1 996 [1979]) analyses of the field of cultural consumption in France in the 1 960s and 1970s to a certain extent, they do not play a very major role, an interesting lacuna in Bourdieu's account of tastes in cultural objects. 12. The more passive style of American driving, in contrast to its more aggressive French counterpart, catches Baudrillard's attention in his travelogue America ( 1 994 [ 1986]: 53). The way in which Americans drive on freeways - cruising along, not bothering to overtake or cut up other drivers - gives a profound sense of the nature of the American collectivity. In a hyper-individualistic social order, the smooth flow of traHic 'is the only real society or warmth here, this collective propulsion, this compulsion - of lemmings plunging suicidally together'. 13. One might see this 'post-Marxist' turn towards prosaic and everyday forms of 'resistance' against sources of official power as a means by which leftist intellec­ tuals could retain their 'radical' credentials while giving up on more organized, group-oriented forms of political struggle in light of the 'failure' of the May 1968 events. 14. This is not, however, to claim that the intellectual dispositions of different authors (and artists) working within this sensibility were wholly congruent with each other. Tati's humanism is of course very far away, in many respects, from Baudrill ard's semiotic anti-humanism. 15. I n Playtime ( 1967), Tati places his comic creation Monsieur Hulot i n a Le Corbusier-like Paris of chrome, metal and the insistent presence of automobiles. Yet Tati shows that under the hyper- (or super-) modern surface, the pulse of human life still continues to beat. For example, at one point in the film, the playing of carnival music is seen to transform a gridlocked roundabout into a funfair carousel, with the cars slowly but elegantly turning around like so many hobbyhorses. 16. Ironically, the scholar who today is arguably the main French thinker on issues of 'mobilities', namely Paul Virilio (e.g. 2000 [ 1995]), has pronounced that the car has now, at the symbolic level, become outmoded by new forms of transportation, most notably Internet forms of communication which allow the individual to move instantaneously through forms of space hitherto unknown. While Virilio's ideas in this direction are often very stimulating, the rhetoric he sometimes puts forward as

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to the relative unimportance of the car today and i n the future does not very well reflect the continuing dominance of automotive transport in moving people In mundane physical spaces, as opposed to the spaces of the electronic ether.

References Auge, M. (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to the A nthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso. Bardou, J-P., J-c. Chanaron, P. Fridenson and JM. Laux (1982) The A utomobile Revolution. Chapel H i l l : U niversity of North Carolina Press. Barker, T. (1 987) 'A German Centenary in 1996, a French in 1 995 or the Real Beginnings about 1905?', pp. 1-54 in T. Barker (ed.) The Economic and Social Effects of the Spread of Motor Vehicles. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Barthes, R. (1993 [ 1957]) Mythologies. London: Vintage. Barthes, R. (2002 [ 1 963]) 'Mythologie de l'automobile: la voiture, projection de l'ego', Realites 2 13 (October), reproduced in Roland Barthes (2002) Oeuvres compli'�tes, vol. 2, 1962-1967. Paris: E ditions de Seuil, pp. 234-42. Baudri llard, J ( 1 983) Simu.lations. New York: Semiotext(e). Baudrillard, 1. (1994 [1986]) A merica, trans. Chris Turner. London: Verso. Baudrillard, J. (1996 (1968]) The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict. London: Verso. Bellos, D. ( 1 999) Jacques Tati: His Life and Art. London: The Harvill Press. Berman, M. (1993) A ll That is Solid Melts into A ir. London: Verso. Boltanski, L. ( 1973) 'Accidents d'automobile et lutte de classes', Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 2(March): 25-41 . Boltanski, L. ( 1 987) The Making of a Class: Cadres in French Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bosquet, M . [Andre Gorz] ( 1977 [ 1 973]) Capitalism in Crisis and Everyday Life, trans. J ohn Howe. Hassocks, Sussex: The H arvester Press . Bourdieu, P. ( 1 996 [ 1979]) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. Collet, J. (1 970) Jean-Luc Godard, trans. C iba Vaughan. New York: Crown Publish­ ers. Collett, P. and P. Marsh (1986) Driving Passions: The Ps)Cholog) ofthe Car. London: J onathan Cape. Dauncey, H. (200 1 ) 'Automobile Industry', p . 23 in M. Kelly (ed.) French Culture and Society: The Essentials. London: Arnold. de Certeau, M. (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, vol. 1, trans. Steven F. Rendall. M inneapolis: University of M i nnesota Press. de Certeau, M . (1997 [ 1974]) Culture in the Plural, trans. Tom Conley. Mi nneapo­ lis: University of Minnesota Press. Debord, G. (1989 [ 1 959]) 'Theses on Traffic', in Ken Knabb (ed.) Situationist Inter­ national A nthology, 3rd edn. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets Press. [Also at http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI]. Debord, G. ( 1 995 [ 1 967]) The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald N icholson­ Smith. New York: Zone Books.

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Dettelbach, C.G. ( 1 976) In the Driver's Seat: A Study of the A utomobile in American Literature and Popular Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. Ehrenburg, I. ( 1 976 [1929]) The Life ofthe Automobile, trans. Joachim Neugroschel. New York: Urizen Books. Fridenson, P. ( 1 972) Histoire des usines Renault. Paris: Editions de Seuil. Fridenson, P. ( 1 98 1 ) 'French A utomobile Marketing, 1 890- 1 979', in A. Okochi and K. Shimokawa (eds) Development ofMass Marketing. Tokyo: Tokyo U niversity Press. Fridenson, P. ( 1 987) 'Some Economic and Social Effects of Motor Vehicles i n France Since 1 890', p p . 1 30-47 in T Barker (ed.) The Economic and Social Effects of the Spread of Motor Vehicles. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Fridenson, P. ( 1 989) 'Les Ouvriers de l'automobile et Ie sport', Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 79(September): 50-62. Gardiner, M.E. (2000) Critiques of Everyday Life . London: Routledge. Gartman, D. (1994) Auto Opium: Social History of American Automobile Design. London: Routledge. Gartman, D. (2004) 'Three Ages of the Automobi le: The Cultural Logics of the Car', Theory, Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5): 1 69-95. Cauron, A. ( 1983) Histoire economique et sociale de la Cinquieme Republique, vol . 1 . Paris: La Decouverte. H awkins, R. (1986) 'A Road not Taken : Sociology and the Neglect of the Automo­ bile', California Sociologist 9 ( 1 -2): 6 1-79. Jones, J. ( 1 984) The Politics of Transport in Twentieth-century France. Kingston­ Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. Kuisel, R.F. ( 1981) Capitalism and the State in Modern France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laux, J . M . (1 976) In First Gear: The French Automobile Industry to 1 914. Liver­ pool: Liverpool University Press. Le Corbusier ( 1 971 [ 1 924.]) The City of Tomorrow, trans. Frederick Etchells. London: The Architectural Press (English edition of L'Urbanisme). Lefebvre, H. ( 1 97 1 [ 1968]) Everyday Life in the Modern World, trans. Sacha Rabinovitch. London: Allen Lane. Lefebvre, H. ( 1 993 [ 1974]) The Production of Space, trans. Donald N icholson­ Smith. Oxford: Black well. Lefebvre, H. ( 1995) Writings on Cities, edited by E. Kofman and E. Lebas. Oxford: Blackwell. Lefebvre, H. (2004) Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life. New York : Continuum. Lynd, R.S. and H . M . Lynd ( 1 957 [ 1 929]) Middletown: A Study in Modern A merican Culture. New York: Harcourt Brace. Marnham, P. (2003) The Man 'who wasn 't Maigret: A Portrait of Georges Simenon. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Martin, M .W. ( 1 968) Futurist Art and Theory 1 909-1 9 1 5. Oxford: Clarendon. Mathy, J.-p. ( 1 993) Extreme-Occident: French Intellectuals and America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Merleau-Ponty, M . ( 1 996 [ 1 945]) The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.

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Merriman, P. (2004) 'Driving Places: M arc Auge, Non-Places and the Geographies of England's Ml Motorway', Theory, Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5): 1 45-67. Mothe, D. ( 1 965) Militant chez Rena ult. Paris: E ditions de Seuil. Perec, G. ( 1997 [ 1 974]) 'Species of Spaces', in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, trans. John Sturrock. London: Penguin. Plant, S. (1 992) The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist lnternational in the Post­ modern Age. London: Routledge. Rigby, B. ( 1 99 1 ) Popular Culture in Modem France: A Study of Cultural Discourse. London: Routledge. Ross, K. ( 1 996) Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture. Cambridge, M A : M IT Press. Sagan, F. (1958 [ 1 955]) Bonjour tris/,esse. New York: Harper Collins. Schweitzer, S. (1982) Des engrenages a La chaine: les usines Citroen, 1 9 1 5- 1 935. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon. Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2000) 'The City and the Car', International Journal of Urban and RegionaL Research 24(4): 737-57. Simenon, G. (2003 [ 1 953]) Red Lights (Feux rouges). Harpenden: No Exit Press. Sobchak, V. ( 1 994) 'The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Cinematic and Electronic "Presence'' ', pp. 83-1 06 in H . U . Gumbrecht and K.L. Pfeiffer (eds) Materialities of Communication. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Touraine, A. (1971) The Post-industrial Society: Tomorrow 's Social History - Classes, Conflicts and CuLture in the Programmed Society, trans. Leonard F.X. Mayhew. New York: Random House. Vallin, J. and J .-c. Chesnais (1 975) 'Les Accidents de la route en France: mortal­ ite et morbidite depu is 1 953', Population 3(May-June): 443-78. Virilio, P. (1986 [ 1 977]) Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology, trans. Mark Polizzotti. New York: Semiotext(e). Viri lio, P. (2000 [ 1995]) Open Sky, trans. Julie Rose. London: Verso.

David Inglis i s Lecturer in Soc iology at the University of Aberdeen. He writes i n the areas of social theory and the sociology of culture. H e is the author (with John H ughson) of Confronting Culture: Sociological Vis tas (Polity, 2003), and i s currently writing Culture and Everyday Life for Rout­ l edge. He is co-author w i th Roland Robertson of Globalization and Social Theory: Redefining Social Science (Open University Press, forthcoming) .

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Automotive Emotions Feeling the Car

Mimi Sheller

ARSburstELICIT a wirage'de range ofrilfeelofispeed, ngs: thteheplsecuri easuresty engendered of driving, tbyhe out of ' r oad , t h e t h on.oThey almobi so generat e 'isntotepnseltheytremot i'oandnal C pol'reclitaicimsdriintvhiwhinegstacrheet'safe'somes', whicarpeopllande otehsopassi nat e l y l i z e t o af fi c ersnvoci ferousl y defend t,hbuteir rithgeyht tdoo cheap petmanyrol.senses Cars areof thabove al l machi es t h at move peopl e socar­in e word. Recent approaches t o t h e phenomenol o gy of usedisposihavetiohins,ghlandightephysi d 'thcealdriaffvinordances g body' as(Sahelsetleofr andsociaUrry, l practices, embodi ed Dant and Martin, ngEdensor, Oledantrup,hropologyDantof mat, erialThricultfut,res haveMorealso encompassi approaches t o t h resituatedThithseartcaricleasbuia lsocids botal-hteonchnithcials work'hybriandd' on(Mirecent chael, approachesMil eirn, theWil sociiams,ology of Katemotz,ions (HGoodwi ochschinldet, aI., Ahmed, Bendelto oexplw andore tmheplways ch thecont'domiext nofantaffculecttiuvree andof autembodi omobieldityrel' (Urry, is ipeopl iceat, machi edininwhinaesdeep a t i o ns bet w een andy a keyspacespartof. mobility and dwelling, in which emotions and thSocie senses pl a atiovrse manner have longconcerned addressedwitthhethprobl emituoftiocarn ofcul'publturesic icomment tly normat e rest igoods' n an expl(thaeiclenvi ,athuman th, the bysocicontal fabri c of cicarties,anddemo­ cratsysteicmspubl(Jacobs, ic culrtonment ures) thNader have, beenhealSennet eroded e mporary road t , Kunst l e r, Dunn, the futuaretioofn systtheecar,m) ibutn whatthe futmiguhtre beofAttcharact hsteakeentiienrriesuch 'zcedarasdebat cult'sociure'eesti(isaesndnotofwiautsidmeroplmobityransport ' in whiofchalthl escal'coerci freedom' of driving shapes both public and privatlietyspaces es andve 200 1 ;

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kinds (Sheller and Urry, 2000; Urry, 2004). Yet most practical efforts at promoting more 'ethical' forms of car consumption have been debated and implemented as if the intense feelings, passi ons and embodied experiences associated with automobility were not relevant. Car cultures have social, material and above all affective dimensions that are overlooked in current strategies to influence car-driving decisions. The individualistic 'rational choice' model, which is so influential as to be taken for granted in transportation policy debates, distorts our under­ standing of how people (and their feelings) are embedded in historically sedimented and geographically etched patterns of 'quotidian mobility' (Kaufman, 2000). Paying attention to the emotional constituents of car cultures, however, need not imply resorting to black-box causal explanations such as the popular yet ill-defined notions of 'automobile addiction' or a 'love affair' with the car (Motavalli, 200 1 ) . New approaches both to car cultures and to emotional cultures can aid us in shifting attention away from the counter-factual 'rational actor' who supposedly makes carefully reasoned economic choices, and towards the lived experience of dwelling with cars in all of its complexity, ambiguity and contradiction. Car consumption i s never simply about rational economic choices, but is as much about aesthetic, emotional and sensory responses to driving, as well as patterns of kinship, sociability, habitation and work. Insofar as there are 'car cultures' vested in an 'intimate relationship between cars and people' ( M iller, 2001b: 1 7), we can ask how feelings for, of and w ithin cars occur as embodied sensibilities that are socially and culturally embedded in fami l i al and sociable practices of c ar use, and the circulations and displacements performed by cars, roads and drivers. As M ichel CalIon and John Law suggest: Agency and subjectivity are not just about calculation and interpretation. They may also have to do with emotion. Circulation and displacement are also crucial here . . . . Passion, emotion, to be affected, all have to do with travel, with circulation. The language gives it away. To be moved, to be trans­ ported, the trip, these are metaphors for displacement. As, too, is addiction, a word that comes from the Latin ad-ducere. to lead away. (2004: 1 0)

As I shall argue below, an emotional agent i s a relational entity that instan­ tiates particular aesthetic orientations and kinaesthetic dispositions towards driving. Movement and being moved together produce the feelings of being in the car, for the car and with the car. A better understanding of the cultural and emotional constituents of personal, familial, regional, national and transnational patterns of automo­ bility can contribute to future research programmes and policy initiatives that resist the powerful yet ultimately unsatisfying aggregation of social data based on statistical quantification of individual preferences, attitudes and actions. Social psychological studies of driving behaviour have begun to emphasize the complex determinants of transportational choices, such as

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the physical, cognitive and affective 'effort' of different modalities of travel (Stradling et al., 200 1 ; Stradling, 2002). However, we still need further qualitative research models that will take i nto account how these apparently 'internal' psychological dispositions and preferences are generated by collective cultural patterns and what I shall describe below as emotional geographies, which in turn reiteratively reinforce cultures of automobility. Even the 'new realism' in travel reduction, which posits a shift from economic and technological solutions towards more holistic land use and planning solutions (Bannister, 2003), must engage with the complexi ties of housing and labour markets, changing patterns of gender and family formation, and the place of transportation in modern urban, national and transnational identities - all of which have a strong emotional component. An emotional sociology of automobility can contribute to theorizing the connections between the micro-level preferences of individual drivers, the meso-level aggregation of specifically located car cultures, and the macro-level patterns of regional, national and transnational emotional! cultural/material geographies. Through a close examination of the aesthetic and especially k inaestheti c dimensions of automobility, this article locates car cultures (and their associated feelings) within a broader physical! material relational setting that includes both human bodies and car bodies, and the relations between them and the spaces through which they move (or fail to move). 2 Cultural styles, feelings and emotions underpin and i nform the relationality of things and people i n material worlds. Feelings about driving are one way in which emotions are embodied in relationships not only with other humans but also with material things, i ncluding the k i naes­ thetic dimensions of how human bodies interact with the material world. Such 'automotive emotions' - the embodied dispositions of car-users and the visceral and other feelings associ ated with car-use - are as central to understanding the stubborn persistence of car-based cultures as are more technical and socio-economic factors. As Arlie Hochschild's work suggests, emotions are not s imply 'natural' but have to be worked at through 'emotion management' and in relation to culturally specific 'feeling rules' (Hochschild, 1 983, 2003). Her ideas underline the social relationality of emotions showing how affect transcends i ndividual psychology; however, her conceptualization of 'management' and 'rules' still implies a quite instrumental actor, who first feels things and then manages and j udges those feelings. Through this exploration of automotive emotions I aim to show how emotion itself arises out of particular material relations and sensations, and at the same time organizes material relations and sensations into wider aesthetic and k inaesthetic cultures. Insofar as 'feelings' are embodied and petformed in the convergences and collisions between emotion cultures and material cultures, we can speak of both 'affec­ tive economies' (Ahmed, 2004) and 'emotional geographies' of automobil­ ity in which there are flows, circulations, distributions, intensifications and i ntederences of emotion between and among people, things and places. The followi ng sections explore in turn the embodied practices of

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feeling the car, the emotional geography of family cars and caring practices, and the emergence of national feelings about cars, car industries and driving styles. Each section aims to describe the transpersonal emotional and material cultures by which particular styles of automobility and dispositions towards drivi ng come to be naturalized and stabilized. My argument also draws on recent approaches in feminist technoscience and cultural anthro­ pology, which offer a critical theoretical perspective on nature, culture, tech­ nology and commodity branding (that has been largely marginalized in the predominantly male-dominated androcentric research, planning and trans­ port policy arenas). By taking seriously how people feel about and in cars, and how the feel of different car cultures elicits specific dispositions and ways of life, we will be in a better position to re-evaluate the ethical dimen­ s ions of car consumption and the moral economies of car use (on moral economy see Sayer, 2003). Only then can we consider what will really be necessary to make the transition from today's car cultures (and the auto­ motive emotions that sustain them) to more socially and environmentally 'responsible' transportation cultures. Feeling the Car Whilst I am driving, I am nearly always happy. Driving towards virtually anywhere makes me excited, expectant: full of hope. (Pearce, 2000: 1 63)

Pleasure, fear, frustration, euphoria, pain, envy: emotional responses to cars and feelings about driving are crucial to the personal investments people have in buying, driving and dwelling with cars. Car manufacturers, of course, manipulate brand desire through the emotional resonance of their advertising campaigns; yet the 'thrill' of driving, the 'joy' of the road, the 'passion' of the collector, the nostalgia for retro designs are not simply lexicons of the advertising imagination. The 'feelings' being generated around cars can be powerful i ndicators of the emotional currents and submerged moral economies of car cultures. This affective relationship with cars i s not only about pleasure-seeking, but also feeds into our deepest fears, anxieties and frustrations. The stomach-turning feeling of witnessi ng a car crash or the terrors and permanent anxiety produced by being in an accident are the dark underside of 'auto-freedom'. The very passions that feed into certain k inds of love for the car or joy i n driving may equally elicit opposite feelings of hatred for traffic, rage at other drivers, boredom with the same route or anger at government transport policies (see Michael, 2001 for a discussion of road rage i n terms of 'human-non-human hybridity'). An advertising campaign for the Lexus IS200 unsurprisingly proclaims: 'It's the feeling inside'. Emphasizing the leather seats, the auto­ matic climate control and the digital audio system, the text makes clear that this slogan refers both to the 'feel' of the car interior and the feeling it produces inside the body that dwells within the car. The feel of the car, both inside and outside, moving or stationary, sensuously shapes and materially

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projects how motorists feel not only about cars but also about themselves and within themselves. These concerns can be traced back to Roland Barthes' reading of the mythology of the Citroen DS, in which he recognized the materiality of this particul ar car as marking a shift in the dominant car culture. Writing of the magic and spi ri tuality of i ts lighter, less aggressive design, he describes a clear cultural shift from 'an alchemy of speed to a gourmandise of driving' (Barthes, 1957: 1 52). People embraced the 'deesse' i n a tactile and amorous encounter: Dans les halls d'exposition, la voiture temoin est visitee avec une application intense, amoureuse; c'est la grande phase tactile de la decouverte . . . les toles, les joints sont touches, les rembourrages pal pes, les sieges essayes, les portes caressees, les coussins pelotes; devant Ie volant, on mime la conduite avec tout Ie corps. (Barthes, 1 957: 1 52) [In the exhibition halls, the car on show is explored with an intense, amorous studiousness: it is the great tactile phase of discovery. . . . The bodywork, the lines of u nion are touched, the upholstery palpated, the seats tried, the doors caressed, the cushions fondled; before the wheel, one pretends to drive with one's whole body. (Barthes, 1 973: 90)]

Touching the metal bodywork, fingering the upholstery, caressing its curves, and miming driving 'with all the body' suggests the conjoining of human and machinic bodies. Of course, viewing cars as prosthetic extensions of drivers' bodies and fantasy worlds (Freund, 1993: 99; Brandon, 2002: 401-2) is the standard fare not only of motor shows and advertising, but also of youth cultures, pin-up calendars, pop lyrics and hip-hop videos. The 'love affai r' with the car (Motavalli, 2001 ; Sachs, 2002), its sexualization as 'wife' or lover (Miller, 1 997[1 994]: 238), suggests a kind of libidinal economy around the car, in which particular models become objects of desire to be coll ected and cosseted, washed and worshi pped. Whether phal l ic or feminized, the car materializes personality and takes part in the ego-formation of the owner or driver as competent, powerful, able and sexually desirable. But the individual psychological investment in the car can be said to arise out of the sensibility of an entire car culture; the invested subject i s moved (and thus brought t o feel specific forms o f agency) in particular ways. In making sense of prevailing commitments to car cultures across the world we can draw on the recent turn i n social science towards a sociology of emotions as personally embodied yet relationally generated phenomena (Hochschild, 1 983, 1 997, 2003; Jasper, 1997; Bendelow and Williams, 1998; Goodwin et aI ., 2001). Following N igel Thrift we could conceive of 'non-cognitive thought as a set of embodied dispositions ("instincts" if you like) which have been biologically wired in or culturally sedimented (the exact difference between the two being a fascinating question in itself)' (Thrift, 2001 : 36). Emotions are one kind of non-cognitive thought that rides on thi s ambiguity: seemingly instinctual, yet clearly a cultural achievement.

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Emotions are felt i n and through the body, but are constituted by relational settings and affective cultures; they are shared, public and collective cultural conventions and disposi t ions (Jasper, 1997; Goodwin et aI ., 200 1 ). As Hochschild argues, 'there are social patterns to feeling itself, based on 'feel i ng rules' that 'define what we imagine we should and shouldn't feel and would like to feel over a range of circumstances; they show how we judge feeli ng' (Hochschild, 2003: 82, 86). Emotions, in this perspective, are not simply 'felt' and 'expressed', but are rather elicited, invoked, regulated and managed through a variety of expectations, patterns and anticipations. More specifically, there is a crucial conjunction between motion and emotion, movement and feeling, autos and motives. Tracing the current attention to 'body practices' back to the influences of Mauss, Benjamin, WitLgenstein, Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu, Thrift suggests that i n paying more attention to non-conscious forms of cognition and embodied disposi­ t ions the emotions come to the fore: . . . such work points to the pivotal importance of emotions as the key means the body has of sorting the non-cognitive realm through a range of different sensory registers, including the interoceptive (including not only the viscera but also the skin), the proprioceptive (based on musculo-skeletal invest­ ments) and fine touch which involves the conduct of the whole body and not j ust the brain. (Thrift, 200 1 : 37)

Combining the 'feeling' of the world through the senses with the 'feelings' that arise from those encounters, this approach suggests the co-constitution of motion and emotion. Emotions, in this view, are a way of sorting the sensa­ t i ons of the non-cognitive realm, which occur through the conduct and movement of the body. The key question, then, i s not whether sensation precedes emotion or the cultural organi zation of emotion precedes the embodied feel i ng, but how sensations, cognitions and feelings arise together out of particular orientations toward the material and social world (cf. Ahmed, 2004). Insofar as feelings come to be felt as welling up from within the body, how does the cultural framing of emotion i nteract with more visceral elements of embodied feel ing? And what role might driving or riding in cars play in the naturalization of certain kinds of feeling? Being (in) the Car It felt alive beneath my hands, some metal creature bred for wind and speed . . . . It ran like the wind. I ran like the wind. It was as though I became the car, or the car became me, and which was which didn't matter anymore. (Lesley Hazleton cited in Mosey, 2000: 186)

Macnaghten and Urry argue that there are ambivalent and contested 'afford­ ances' that 'stem from the reciprocity between the environment and the organism, deriving from how people are k inaesthetically active within their

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world' (2000: 169; see also Costall, 1 995). Driving can be included among the active corporeal engagements of human bodies with the 'sensed' world. Like other modes of mobility, such as walking, bicycling or riding trains, modes of driving also arise out of 'a specific time and place, and they have often developed in contrast to each other. They tend to have a history of both gendering and class' (Lofgren, 1999: 49). Driving, then, suggests many different k inds of affordances between varied bodies, cars and spaces. How does the motion of the car 'impress' upon specific bodies in different ways, and thus produce differing 'impressions' (Ahmed, 2004), differing affective dispositions toward the moving view, the rushing breeze, the changing smells and sensations as the car shifts speed, makes noise or swings around curves? For some the motion produces feelings of happiness, excitement or anticipation; others become fearful, anxious or sick to the stomach. These feelings are neither located solely within the person nor produced solely by the car as a moving object, but occur as a circulation of affects between (different) persons, (different) cars, and historically situated car cultures and geographies of automobility. In what sense might we have 'embodied dispositions' towards the feeling of driv ing? At 6 weeks old my baby already expresses an excited anticipation of car rides. As I place her in the car seat (while still in the house) her countenance brightens and she looks around in expectation. As I fasten the seat into the back of the car she turns her face toward the window and looks expectantly for the show to begin as the car moves. During a ride she watches the window i ntently for as long as she can, until lulled to sleep. It is clear that many infants take pleasure in the k inaesthetic experience of the car ride, and develop an early orientation towards four-wheeled mobility within a car culture that soon enables them to play with toy cars, ride on child-sized cars, and learn to identify different k inds and brands of motor vehicles by the age of 2 years. At the same time, this seemingly 'instinc­ tual' disposi tion is tightly coupled with a very particular car culture in which any movi ng vehicle is an extremely high-risk environment for children, shot through with legal i nterventions. The parent who places their infant in a car seat is faced with a warning of dire consequences (written in 1 1 languages in Europe): 'DO NOT place rear faci ng child seat on front seat with airbag. DEATH OR SERIOUS INJURY can occur.' This warning is an unnerving yet routine reminder of the need to cultivate a precise driving disposition oriented towards defensiveness, safety and security. Installing the child and the seat in the car correctly induces a sense of having taken security measures; it is a self-discipline that makes parents feel better about being in the car, as discussed in the following section on family cars and caring practices.3 Motion and emotion, we could say, are k inaesthetically i ntertwined and produced together through a conj unction of bodies, technologies and cultural practices (that are always historically and geographically located). Drawing on the research of Jack Katz on drivers in Los Angeles, Thrift suggests that we should:

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Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5) . . . understand driving (and passengering) as both profoundly embodied and sensuous experiences, though of a particular kind, which 'requires and occasions a metaphysical merger, an intertwining of the identities of the driver and car that generates a distinctive ontology in the form of a person­ thing, a humanized car or, alternatively, an automobilized person' (Katz, 2000: 33) in which the identity of person and car kinaesthetically intertwine. (Thrift, 2004: 46-7)

Human bodies physically respond to the thrum of an engine, the gentle glide through a gearbox, or the whoosh of effortless acceleration, and in some cases the driver becomes 'one' with the car (as in the quotation at the start of this section). Different emotional registers are produced through the vari­ ations in the embodied driving experience, which also have national varia­ tions. Some feel content with a smooth and silent ride (historically aligned with ideas of luxury, privilege and wealth), others prefer an all-wheel drive that shakes the bones and fills the nostrils with diesel and engine oil (histori­ cally aligned with ideas of adventure, masculinity and challenge). Although people also have 'embodied dispositions' towards walking, bicycling or riding a horse, it is the ways in which these dispositions become 'culturally sedimented', as Thrift puts it, that matter.4 My argument is not that emotional relations between people are simply mediated or expressed through things (as in the Frankfurt School's analyses of emotional 'investments' and 'fetishism' within commodity culture), but that kinaesthetic investments (such as walking, bicycling, riding a train or being in a car) orient us toward the material affordances of the world around us in particular ways and these orientations generate emotional geographies. As Paul Gilroy notes, 'cars are integral to the privatization, individualiza­ tion and emotionalization of consumer society as a whole', in part due to the 'popular pleasures of auto-freedom - mobility, power, speed'; cars in many ways 'have redefined movement and extended sensory experience' (Gilroy, 2001 : 89). In societies of automobility, the car is deeply entrenched in the ways in which we inhabit the physical world. It not only appeals to an appar­ ently 'instinctual' aesthetic and kinaesthetic sense, but it transforms the way we sense the world and the capacities of human bodies to interact with that world through the visual, aural, olfactory, interoceptive and proprioceptive senses. We not only feel the car, but we feel through the car and with the car. Today a further key change in the embodied feeling of cars is due to developments in digital control of the car and in mobile information tech­ nologies, which further transform the very ways in which we 'sense' the world. There is growing emphasis on the integration of information and communication technologies into the car (especially luxury cars), leading to a lacing of technologies of mobility with capacities for conversation, enter­ tainment and information access (Sheller, 2004). Many aspects involved in directing the car as a machine have been computerized, while, simul­ taneously, car-dwellers have been insulated from the risky and dangerous environments through which they pass, seemingly protected by seatbelts,

Automotive Emotions 229 aimatrbags, 'crumple cruizones'se ,cont'rollrolbars', voiandce-act'bulivlatbars' . Featry anduresigsuchnition,as GPS­ auto­ i c gearboxes, e d ent naviversgatifrom on, didigirtectal musi cpulsystatieomsn ofandthehandsfnreeery,mobiwhillee embeddi phones alngl t'fhremee' drimore mani machi yhelinleritands sociUuy,ality2000, , produci2004;ng Shelwhatler,mi2004). ght be5 Thedescrimarket bed inasg ofa 'so-cal cybercar'ldeepl ( S ed 'capabi smart' lcarsities emphasi zes notion onlor enty theeirtraismal lerinsicongest ze but aledsourban their enhanced for i n format n ment areas,Colwhileccthiwivelculintcreasi n gl y be desi g ned as ' i n t e l i g ent envi r onment s ' . 6 ural shiwerefts itnherethe tsensory experiesalencee shiofftthtoewardcar hia nnewt at what mi g ht be necessary o be a whol (morekinetaesthicalhet) culics tofuremobiof autlityo. mobi loitlyo: wia nnewg sectautioonsmobiturnle toaestthehetwiidcers andwaysa new The f iconnect n whicihonsemotandiosocinal ageographi eeens ofpeoplautoemobi lcihtythalensocomesupportto becompl ex­ l t i e s bet w , whi normal ized and naturalized in formations of gender, family and nation. Sheller

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Family Cars, Caring and Kinship I've found there's a difference having my own car. I mean, we've always had

in 2001: 219) Despironment te strong, thfeeeletinhgsics agaiof antnsti-carscar protandetstheisdamage thodds ey dowitothththeenatneedsural envi of t e n at foring mobi lye lsociife orabinetlitywandorks tofhefrday-t o-dayp inmoral ities linizvoledvsocied ientiecoordi nater,­ fami l i e ndshi aut o mobi s ( M i l 2001a; 2002;thSte rtadlraffiincg,supposedl 2002). Popul ar confledicbyts i'tnheBrischool taCarrabi in andrun',nthforeeandexampl UniLonghurst ted eSt, areatesi,nover y generat dicativtheeofenviconflronment icts among feerelargues ings aboutthat chithereldren'is s'asafetconfly,icabout t r affi c and about . Mi l t betactiwoeenn onantheethworlics dwhiatclhargeis concerned wiitthy aggregat e efcarifectngs iofn personal and a moral t h at sees tMermsil er,of200lb: more 28)immedi ateinconcerns suchtheassameone'peopl s partenercanandbe chibotlhdren' ( . Thus many cases enthforusianewsticroads car-dri(sveeers,Macnaght as well asenbeiandngUrry,very 1998: activech.protestonershowagaicarsnst schemes generatekeyinteoverl nse ambi valaspect ence).of car cultures is the emotional investments o oked peopl iinngthaffe erelctiavteiocont nshiepxts sbetthwateenarethale scar,o deepltheyselmatf, efamirialilzyedandin fpart riends,iceulahavecreat rgtypes ofgvehin forcleths,e homes, neigshbourhoods andhat, ci'Ytioues.coulrecent advert i s i n campai Toyot a Yari poi n t s out t up loving it too much'; the Yaris is then shown in a variety of absurdd endyet a family car which is my husband's work car, and then

I got to the point where

I had my own, and I did actually feel different . . . there was this little

emotional thing . . . that's mine . . . . I had this little feeling of actually, that it was a little bit of my territory. (,Catherine' quoted

Maxwell,

6,

A

A

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believable social scenarios i n which love is taken a bit too far (receiving postcards, being treated to a candle-lit bath, monopolizing a huge empty garage, etc.). Clearly cars have been deeply integrated into the affective networks of familial life and domestic spaces, as well as friendship networks and public sociability. As Simon Maxwell argues, policy discussions have neglected the 'positive social frames of meaning of car use associated with care and love for immediate others, as well as care for others within wider social networks' (Maxwell, 200 1 : 2 1 7-18). He finds that 'there are plural ethics associated with car use in everyday life, and intense negotiations between these ethical stances' (200 1 : 2 12). Such frames of meaning and ethics generate some of the feeling rules that govern the emotional cultures of car use, in which needs to manage personal identity, familial relation­ ships, and sociability can easily override any ethical qualms about driving. For example, driving offers many people a feeling of liberation, empowerment and social inclusion, while inability to drive may lead to feelings of social exclusion and disempowerment in cultures of automobil­ ity. A study of young suburban drivers in Britain suggests that 'the car is part of patterns of sociability' and the anticipation of new possibilities for such sociability generates 'an extraordinary and exciting moment of consumption' for young drivers (Carrabine and Longhurst, 2002: 1 92-3). In a large-scale survey study of the expressive dimensions of car use among English drivers, Stephen Stradling found that feelings of projection, pride, power, self-expression or independence, vary by age, class and gender: 'different k inds of persons obtain different kinds of psychological benefit from car use. Driving a car is particularly attractive to the young and the poor because of the sense of displayed personal identity it conveys' (Stradling et aI., 200 1 ; Stradling, 2002: 1 1) . Along similar lines, Gilroy suggests that African-American flamboyant public use of cars makes up for feelings of status injury and material deprivation through 'compensatory prestige' (Gilroy, 200 1 : 94). Emotional cultures and their ethics are deeply intertwined with material cultures and technologies. When cars become associated with feelings of protection, security and safety (as emphasized in advertising of the 'family car'), their use may provide parents with a sense of empower­ ment in the face of a generalized feeling of insecurity. Technologies of protection enable risk (and fear) to be managed by driving 'correctly' rather than by not driving. As already noted, mobile technologies such as the infant car seat also mediate in distinctive ways between the private and the public realms, touching upon changes in the gender order, in domesticity, in women's mobility, and in the relation between home and work. Insofar as the private mobilization of the family within the automobile has partly enabled the increasing participation of mothers of young children in the paid workforce, it becomes more likely that infants and young children need to be moved between different locations as parents and caretakers juggle fragmented time schedules. ? Automobility enables and constrains the complex orchestration of such schedules, and contributes to the increased

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blurring o f bou ndaries between public and pri vate activ ities (Sheller and Urry, 2003). Thus the 'family car' i s closely i ntegrated into daily or weekly routines and comes to support feeli ngs associated with taki ng care of loved ones, as well as the sense of liberation afforded to women, as noted by Stradling. I ndependence via the car can also come at the expense of familial relations, as i n the quote at the start of th is section where the car becomes one woman's 'territory' set apart [rom familial demands. As Sarah Lochlann lain observes in an ethnographic account of the day-to-day mobility of a suburban mother in the US, the huge popularity of Sport U tility Vehi cles (SUVs) among young fami l i es builds on gendered practices of mobility and of publ ic and private space: . . . the SUV has been marketed as a vehicle that can uniquely fuse the hitherto 'uncoo!' aspects of family l ife with the hi pness of the outdoor adven­ tu re . . . . But this nexus of ma rketi ng and consumption also has a history in women's responsibili ty for the family's safety and men's ideal izat ion of til!' car as a means of escape and a tool for identity. . . . The privatization of this [typical] family project as one reproduced through consumption is also seen in an understanding of 'safety' that relies on chauffeuring children as much as w in ni ng' in potential car accidents. (Jain, 2002: 398)il '

The 'masculine' appeal of the SUV has attracted especially profess ional mothers, as they culti vate a high-achieving public persona in the workplace, while the more familial aspects of the SUV (room for the shopping, the childre n's friends and equipment, the cup-holders and the video consoles) enable them to maintain a more caring 'femi n i ne' side, both roles being over­ determined by prevalent gender i nequalities. From Hochschi ld's perspec­ tive the social embedding of these vehicles allows for management of tht' plural ethics and feeling rules that structure publ ic and private gender iden­ t i ties in contradictory ways. At the same time use of the SU V intensifies certai n kinds of gendered (and we could add 'raced') identities and emotion­ ally cathects them with the material cultures of suburbia. So-called 'Sport Utility Vehicles' also continue to be embraced as a way of getting closer to nature (safely). Ironically, the very idea of 'nature' that many anti-car campaigners are defending may have been constituted largely through automobility. Gliding through green woods dappled with sunlight, speedi n g toward the endlessly receding horizon of a vast desert or plain, or shooting along w i nd i ng hedge-rowed country lanes, driving has long been a way of 'getting out in nature'. Early use of the automobile i n many countries was linked t o 'Sunday drives' and family holidays which involved driving from city and suburb out to the countryside and to wilder­ ness reserves such as national parks (Wilson, 1 992; Bunce, 1 994; Lofgren, 1999; Uny, 2000: 60-62; Peters, forthcoming). Thus the car is already impl icated i n constituting contemporary appreciation for the extensive, rela­ tively untouched and visually pleasing vistas that environmental campa ign­ ers seek to preserve (for example by blocking new road building) . Underl i n i ng sLich contradictions, the 'environmentally friendly' marketing

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of 'clean, green' superminis like the Citroen C3 plays on feelings towards nature as much as ethical choices about fuel economy. In large green and blue print its advertising imagery invokes 'mountain stream dew glen lungfuls of air rising mists scots pine cloudless sky heather crisp linen lichen'. This stream of consciousness elicits feelings of bodily proximity to nature, recreation and revitalization for the urban dweller able to escape to 'the country' in a 'clean' car without feeling guilty about driving there. As John Urry argues, following Marilyn Strathern's ( 1 992) thesis that nature is today supported, rescued and assisted by culture, 'Al l natures we now can identify are elaborately entangled and fundamentally bound up with social practices and their characteristic modes of cultural represen­ tation' (Urry, 2000: 202). Feminist analyses of the shifts that are occurring in the 'two-way traffic' between nature and culture can help us to under­ stand some of the ways in which automotive emotions depend on a conver­ gence of the human and the technological, the natural and the cultural, the instinctual realm of feelings and the commodified realm of symbolic systems (Haraway, 1 997; Franklin et al., 2000; Strathern, 1 992). Sarah Franklin ( 1998), in a key example, explains the ways in which the metaphor of ki nship has travelled from the human genome to the branding of the B MW 3 Series as a form of DNA. Here the kinship amongst humans or animal breeds, passed down through 'genes' and good breeding, is transferred to the car itself, which becomes a natural ized or biologized commodi ty, and its brand, which becomes a natural if superior 'kind': From seed to gestation, from panther to thoroughbred, from adolescent to aristocrat, the representation of these four cars [in the BMW brand lineage] delivers an excess of genetic and genealogical analogies to build a sense of hybrid evolution. The [advertisi ng] text is a series of descriptions borrowing heavily from the language of genetics, referencing inheritance, evolution, breeding, genetic traits, strains of DNA, and genetic selection. The text is strained to hold together its diverse i mages of animals and machines, the domestic and the wild, the inherited and the learned. (Franklin, 1 998: 4-5)

In this complex hybridization of the biological body and the machinic body, new terms of kinship are elaborated, 'linking animate qualities to machines' ( 1 998: 8). When the quasi-biological car as cyborg becomes deeply inter­ twined with the sensory evolution of the human ('which was which didn't matter anymore'), it not only supports human k i nship practices, but it has also become kin - the 'humanised car' meets the 'automobilised person' and discovers they are cousins. As Daniel M iller suggests, 'it is this highly visceral relationship between bodies of people and bodies of cars that forces us to acknowledge the humanity of the car in the first place' (2001b: 24) . When cars become not only devices for escaping families, but also members of fami lies, repositories for treasured offspring and devices for demonstrating love, practising care and performing gender, they bring i nto

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being non-conscious forms of cognition and embodied dispositions which link human and machine in a deeply emotive bond. When cars further become breeds and kin, they enter even more deeply into an emotional geog­ raphy of human and physical relations, and an affective economy of circu­ lation of feeling. Through the disciplines, reflexivity and governmentality of 'safe' driving or 'green' driving, car-users become ever more deeply 'cathected' with cars and their material cultural sedimentations, one of which is the brand. For those who have become so deeply attached to their cars and to the physical, cultural and emotional geographies that have become 'natural' within car cultures, how easy will it be to give up this part of the self, the family, friendshi p and kin networks? And what happens when the meeting of technologized nature and naturalized technology takes national form? National Feelings about Cars And the snarling traffic jams are composed largely of the most macho modern Japanese four-wheel-drive vehicles with darkened windows . . . . Most driving experience seems to have been obtained by watching car chases on TV shows. Vehicles being driven at night without their lights in order that their owners can save battery power can sometimes be a problem; and when you're proceeding gently along a country lane you may find yourself all of a sudden being overtaken by a trio of left-hand-drive smoke-belching articulated heavy rigs hurtling on the wrong side of the road towards a blind bend. (Salewicz, 2000: 42-3)

Beyond familial and caring networks cars are also crucially implicated i n the product ion of national i dentities, which are both kinaesthetically distinctive and highly affective. How are the emotional sedimentations of our embodied feelings for cars writ large into 'car cultures', be they familial, subcultural, national or global? The feel of the car, as Barthes suggests, materializes a collective ethos of an entire society such as the shift from an obsession with speed to the more subtle feelings of driv ing in a certain style. The aesthetics of streamlined aerodynamicism became a symbolic expres­ sion of Swedish modernity, for example, permeating all aspects of mass consumption in the 1950s, but especi ally cars (O'Dell, 200 1 : 107). The customizing of car upholstery and paintwork in Trinidad in the 1980s was a materialization of certain currents within national culture, i ncluding ethni­ cally segmented expressions of 'moderni ty' (Miller, 1 997 [1 994]). And among Aboriginal people in the Western Desert in South Australia, 'cars mediate, not only, the constant dynamic of social relations but also, crucially, the strong emotional relationshi p of people with country' (Young, 200 1 : 52).9 Tim Edensor argues that dist inctive 'national' styles of motoring encompass a range of different affective dimensions, including: feelings toward national car i ndustries, national 'motorscapes' with different kinds

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of aesthetic and kinaesthetic materialities, auto-centric cultural practices and the sensual affordances of particular types of cars (Edensor, 2002: 1 20; see also Edensor, 2004). He suggests that the assemblage of distinctive national cultures of automobility 'produces distinctive ways of sensually apprehending cars and car travel for people inhabit, and are institutionally emplaced in, particular webs of affective and sensual experience' (2002: 1 33). The 'sensuality of motoring' and different 'driving dispositions' are formed within these national cultures, which might on the one hand be oriented towards a comfortable drive, smooth roads and exclusion of external sound, or on the other, as in Edensor's description of the cacophony of Indian road culture, be full of noise, smells and intrusions. Stereotypical 'Western' perceptions of driving in 'Third World' countries, like Salewicz's account of Jamaica cited above, rest partly on a clash between these different national styles, motorscapes and affordances. What i mage of Cuba is complete without the fading glory of the massive tail-finned cars from the heyday of US imperialism, lumbering zombies from a pre-revolutionary capitalist era? Petrol shortages aside, the Cubans who pile entire families onto a 50 cc motorbike, babies and all, clearly have a different kinaesthetic culture of mobility than do the US Americans who would be terrified by such a practice and who claim they need all the space in their huge, gas­ guzzling Chevrolet Suburbans for a two-child family. I o The 'soundscapes' of motoring identified by Bull (200 1 , 2004) also take different national forms which shape the feeling of driving and the collective identities associated with differing car cultures, from the Egyptian pop of North Africa to the blaring Dancehall of Jamaica or Soca of Trinidad. Music can heighten the emotional climate within the car interior, or it can be projected into the 'dead public space' of the surrounding streetscape (Gilroy, 200 1 : 97). The panoply of collectivos, tap-taps or tuk-tuks - painted in bright colours, christened, blessed and charmed - that wend their musical way through most non-Western cities, attest to both an alternative economy of public transportation as well as different sensual, k inaesthetic and musical contexts. Lynne Pearce further describes how listening to hours of contemporary and 'retro' music while driving long distances 'becomes an emotional palimpsest of past and future, in which events and feelings are recovered and, most importantly, rescripted from the present moment in time' (Pearce, 2000: 163). Suspended in the motOlway's 'spatio-temporal continuum of "in-between'" , the 'imaginative empowerment' of the 'chrono­ topes of the road' promote an exploration of 'various fantasies of home', which are at once psychological and material, personal and national (2000: 1 78). Cars certainly occupy a rich vein of popular national cultures in all of the nostalgic imaginings that accompany their past incarnations, from road movies and pop songs, to c lassic car collecting and vintage car rallies. For Pearce, British literature also offers historically evocative represen­ tations of 'how motor-travel has transformed our perception of "home" within the British Isles: how it has enabled us to explore, and fantasize, its

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seductions and traumas from the relative "safety" of the open road' (2000: 1 7 1 ; see O'Connell, 1 998). While such regional and national images may be drawn on in advertising for 'home' markets, they can also be read (and marketed) across national cultures, as when Audi banks on its 'German design' reputation in England through the Vorsprung durch Technik campaign, or the Spanish car-maker Seat plays on its Hispanic auto­ emocione, or Renault uses a French international footballer who plays for an E nglish team to talk about the Clio's 'va-va-voom' and je ne sais quoi. The multinational sites involved in the design, production and marketing of various brands belie any simple correlation of style with national identity, yet producing such identities remains crucial to the emotional geographies of car cultures. N issan goes further and tries to transcend national motorscapes in its 'Do you speak M icra?' advertisements, set in a futuris­ tic urban utopia where the brand has evolved its very own language, a pan­ European techno-patois. So-called 'hybridization' takes many forms i n car cultures: modern with retro ('modtro' in Micra-speak); i nternal combustion crossed with electric engines; electronic i nformation with physical transportation tech­ nologies; and now also one national car culture with another. With echoes of Barthes, a recent Renault advertisement in Britain emphasizes 'design in motion' and the 'sensual velocities' of its new models, the Avantime and Vel Satis: To experience a new car is to allow a series of sensual triggers to be pulled. One takes in the body-form; one eyes the exterior details; one touches parts of the trim . . . . The cabin of a car. and the seats in particular, may not seem to be the sexiest element of the getting-to-know-you experience. Actually t hat's precisely what they are. As soon as you slide into the front seat, tIlE' car is yours; and the car's got you . . . j ust siLling in them is a real pleawre. 1 1

Here again the car becomes a sexual partner, an object of desire eyed and touched by the consumer, but the particular fusion here of technology and cutting-edge design, 'refinement and emotion', 'functional tool and object of beauty' plays on Anglo-French cultural hybridities. The advertising text references a European 'punk-baroque' design world with a new set of 'rules' grounded in 'jazz', 'chaos' and 'the complexity of mass culture' as i nter­ preted by Barthes, Le Corbusier and Rem Koolhaas. Intersecting with current developments in social theory (Clark, 2001; Urry, 2003a; Law, 2004), this embrace of the baroque and the complex signals a new kind of modernity in which high culture and mass culture, art and marketing, French high theory and Anglo-American know-how are mixed. Form and function are fused, but in a playful postmodern way especially signalled by the 'unusually sculpted rear-end'. 12 In considering these practices of national branding I do not mean to suggest that cultures of automobility will change simply by designing cars i n new ways. Nor do I believe that i t would be possible for a single nation (or multinational corporation) to lead the way

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i n creating a more ethical car culture. Despite incremental change and experimentation in new transportation policies (regulation, taxation, road pricing, congestion charging) there has not been a radical transformation of the car and road system itself, nor of the patterns of habitation and feeling that underlie existing car cultures. However, there are signs of change that suggest that we may be approaching a 'tipping point' in the demise of current configurations of the dominant culture of automobility (Urry, 2003). These i nclude a greater willingness of manufacturers to produce new k i nds of cars, of governments to restrict automobility through road prici ng and of consumers to try to limit their environmental impact (at least in parts of California and Europe). The 'agency' leading towards such changes is not located i n any single actor, but is d istributed through the complex affective economies of the social and material worlds described above. This article has explored how automotive emotions arise from both the k inaesthetic feeli ng of the car and from its cultural and social affordances, circulation and distribution. Emotional geographies of the car occur at different scales ranging from the feeling of the individual body withi n the car, to the familial and sociable settings of car use, to the regional and national car cultures that form around particular systems of automobil ity and generate differing driving dispositions. Cars will not easily be given up j ust (!) because they are dangerous to health and life, environmentally destructi ve, based on unsustainable energy consumption, and damaging to public life and civic space. Too many people find them too comfortable, enjoyable, exc iting, even enthralling. They are deeply embedded in ways of l ife, networks of friendship and sociality, and moral commitments to family and care for others. Transformations of the dominant culture of automobil­ ity will begin only when local innovations in designing and dwelli ng with cars are tied to patterns of gender expression, racial and ethnic distinction, family formation, urbanism, national identity and transnational processes. The ethics of car consumption at a global level ( i.e. in terms of an abstract concern for the environment and for collective 'others') surely will have to be integrated i nto the moral economies of personal status (including gender, race and ethnicity), locality, fami ly and nation. Emotional investments in the car go beyond any economic calculation of costs and benefits, and outweigh any reasoned arguments about the public good or the future of the planet. To create a new ethics of automobility, in sum, will require a deep shift in automotive emotions, including our embodied experiences of mobility, our non-cognitive responses to cars and the affective relations through which we inhabit cars and embed them into personal l i ves, familial networks and national cultures. The contest over cars and roads can be said to i nvolve wider social practices and human relationshi ps, material cultures and styles of life, landscapes of movement and dwelli ng, and emotional geographies of power and inequality. Debates about the future of the car and road system will remain superfici al - and policies i neffective - i nsofar as they ignore this 'deep' social, material and above all affective embodied context. Social research on automobility will

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also remain cramped in the 'transport studies' enclave until we recognize the full power of automotive emotions that shape our bodies, homes and nations. Notes 1 . The concept of hybridity has a complex history which ranges from colonial theories of race (Young, 1995) to debates about diasporic identities and multi­ culturalism (Werbner and Modood, 1997) and the human-nonhuman hybrids of studies of technoscience (Haraway, 1997), actor-network theory (Law and Hassard, 1 999) and cri tical geography (Whatmore, 2002). This is not the place to discuss fully the i mplications of this theoretical genealogy, but it is worth noting that the discourse of hybridity is a powerful one within techno-cultures of automobility and is itself in need of careful analysis vis-a-vis its effects of denaturalization and renaturalization. 2 . Unlike certain cyborgs found in STS, the attention given to embodied emotions here privileges a human subject, while still allowing for a degree of intercom­ munication between human and non-human, social and material, cultural and corporeal. 3. In other car cultures a blessing or a hidden charm might serve the same fu nction of making the occupants of a vehicle feel they have taken appropriate safety precau­ tions (see Verrips and Meyer, 2001 on protecting cars from witchcraft and ghosts in Ghana). Recent research carried out for the AA Motoring Trust suggests that up to two-thirds of chil d car seats used in the UK are in any case installed incorrectly thus providing l ittle protection i n accidents (http://www.aatrust.com/newslrelease_ view.cfm?id=62 1). 4. Thus it is argued that electric motor vehicles and cars with fuel cells or hybrid power sources will have to feel like conventional cars and to deliver the same pleasures of driving: quick acceleration, speeds over 65 mph, and the capacity to drive at least 350 miles without recharging (Motavalli, 2001). It is for this reason that General Motors' electric EV-l and Ford's Think are thought to have failed (Apcar, 2002; Duffy, 2002). 5. The Toyota/Sony Pod concept car even promises that i t will: . . . measure your pulse and perspiration levels to gauge your stress levels. If you are becoming aggressive it will calm you with cool air and soothing music. It will even warn other drivers about your mental state by changing the colour of the strip-lights on the bonnet! (RA e Magazine, 2002: 14-1 5) 6. Such developments were already prefigured in the subcultures of car customiza­ tion criticized by Paul Gilroy (200 1 : 98-9), which produced 'road monsters' such as the GM Chevrolet Suburban 'macked out' with TV, video library, temperature controlled cup holders, digital compass and thermometer, invisible speakers in soundproof walls and a satellite-controlled security system. 7. Car journeys also may become important settings for clawing back 'quality time' in busy family schedu les, at least until on-board DVD and games consoles become commonplace. 8. The perception that SUV s contribute to familial safety and afford possibilities for adventure and escape is belied not only by the 'traffic jams and nasty roadside

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architecture' that attend their mobility, but also by 't he children themselves, easily "picked off" by the SU V's higher bumpers and poor visibility' (Jain, 2002: 399), not to mention their now-recognized tendency to roll over in accidents allegedly leading to one in four traffic deaths in the US (Bradsher, 2002). Even if Bradsher's claims have been challenged, SU Vs are nevertheless more likely to be accessorized with the rigid metal 'bull bars' which also are frequently fatal to child pedestrians in accidents, even at relatively slow speeds. 9. Apart from Miller's edited collection (2001 a) there has been relatively little attention paid to car cultures in non-Western settings. 1 0. The Chevy Suburban is one of the larger domestic vehicles on the US market. Essentially modified from a truck base, the 'three-quarter ton' 4 X 4 holds up to nine occupants and is said to get 1 3 miles per gallon in urban conditions. The conversion of trucks into family vehicles is thought to have been a result of car manufacturer's tactics to avoid expensive fuel efficiency regulation that was put in place for cars but not trucks in the early 1 980s (Bradsher, 2002). 1 1 . 'Design Velocity: The Future Now', Sponsored by Renault, Independent on Sunday 26 May 2002. 1 2. Recent British television advertisements for the Renault M egane likewise mix the French love for African American popular culture with h igh-end design to iron­ ically appeal to the British market by flaunting the car's rear end to the lyric of Groove Armada's 'I See You Baby (shakin' that ass)'.

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Sheller, M. and 1. Urry (2000) 'The City and the Car', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24: 737-57. Sheller, M. and 1. Urry (2003) 'Mobile Transformations of "Public" and "Private" Life', Theory, Culture & Society 20(3): 1 15-33. Sheller, M. and 1. Urry (2004) 'The City and the Cybercar', pp. 1 67-72 in S. Graham (ed.) The Cybercities Reader. London and New York: Routledge. Stradling, S. (2002) 'Persuading People Out of Their Cars', Presented to the ESRC Mobile Network, http://www.its.leeds.ac.uk/projects/mobilenetwork/mobilenet­ work.html (accessed 15 May 2003). Stradling, S.G., M.L. Meadows and S. Beatty (2001) 'Identity and Independence: Two Dimensions of Driver Autonomy', in G.B. Grayson (ed.) Behavioural Research in Road Safety. Crowthorne: Transport Research Laboratory. Strathern, M. ( 1992) After Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thrift, N. (200 1) 'Still Life in Nearly Present Time: The Object of Nature', In P. Macnaghten and 1. Urry (eds) Bodies of Nature. London: Sage. Thrift, N. (2004) 'Driving in the City', Theory, Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5): 4 1-59. Thrift, N . (forthcoming) 'Movement-space: The Development of New Kinds of Spatial Awareness', in Special Issue on 'Mobilities and Materialities', eds 1. Urry and M. Sheller, Environment and Planning A . Urry, 1. (2000) Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-first Century. London and New York: Routledge. Urry, 1 . (2003) Global Complexity. London: Polity. Urry, 1 . (2004) 'The "System" of Automobility', Theory, Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5): 25-39. Verrips, 1. and B. Meyer (2001) 'Kwaku's Car: The Struggles and Stories of a Ghanaian Long-distance Taxi Driver', in D. Miller (ed.) Car Cultures . Oxford and New York: Berg. Werbner, P. and T. Modood (1997) Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-cultural Iden­ tities and the Politics of Anti-racism. London: Zed Books. Whatmore, S. (2002) Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces. London: Sage. Wilson, A. (1992) Culture of Nature. Oxford: Blackwell. Young, D. (2001) 'The Life and Death of Cars: Private Vehicles on the Pitjantjat­ jara Lands, South Australia', in D. Miller (ed.) Car Cultures . Oxford and New York: Berg. Young, R. ( 1 995) Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London and New York: Routledge.

Mimi Sheller is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University, co­ director of the Centre for Mobilities Research, and chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies. She i s the author of Democracy after Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica (Macmillan Caribbean, 2000) and Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies (Routledge, 2003); co-editor of UprootingslRegroundings: Questions ofHome and Migration (Berg, 2003) and Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play (Routledge, 2004); and author of articles in journals including

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Theory and Society; Theory, Culture & Society; International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. She is co-editor with John Urry of a forthcoming special i ssue of Environment and Planning A on 'Mobilities and Materialities'.

Automobility and the Power of Sound

Michael Bull

. . . the car becomes a comfortable platform for the boomin' on-board sound system . . . . The car emerges from this as a place of listening, an intrepid, scaled-up substitute for the solipsistic world of the personal stereo, a kind of giant armoured bed on wheels that can shout the driver's dwindling claims upon the world into dead public space at ever-increasing volume. (Gilroy, 200 1 : 96-7) In the monad of the car the bourgeois dream of personal autonomy is partially realized; the more the outer world is excluded, thE' more this dream seems to be realized. (Stallabrass, 1996: 127)

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SOLITARY movement of people moving through the city each day represents a significant yet under-researched aspect of contemporary urban experience. Thi s solitariness i s often chosen as a preferred mode of movement, whether this i s strolling down the street ( B ull, 2000) or driving one's automobile (Brodsky, 2002; Putnam, 2000). 1 This desire for solitude i n the automobile or i n the street i s mirrored i n the desire for solitude i n the home as many retreat i nto the most private spaces of their already privatized homes (Livingstone, 2002). Yet paradoxically this desi re for solitude i s often joined to compulsiveness towards social proximity and contact in daily life ( Bauman, 2003; Katz and Aarhaus, 2002). This solitude is an accompanied solitude in which people walk to the personalized sounds of their personal stereo or drive to the sounds of their favourite radio station or CD. 2 An increasing number of us demand the i ntoxicating mixture of noise, proximity and privacy while on the move and have the technologies to preci sely and successfully achieve these aims. The use of these largely sound technologies informs us about how we attempt to 'inhabit' the spaces within which we l i ve. The use of these technologies appt'ars to bind tht' •

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useful as the automobile acts as a confluence of these mobile sound tech­ nologies: the mobile auditory system, the radio and now the mobile phone. I concentrate on structures of use rather than subcultures of use with the purpose of articulating the meaning of a spectrum of social practices enacted through a range of communication technologies. The investigation of the use of these technologies sheds light on the dialectic of 'technology' both as 'artefact' and 'practice'. For example, the use of sound systems in automobiles is a particular form of technologically mediated experience in which experience itself appears to be 'technological' as the user actively constructs the meaning of their space through a range of strategies ranging from forms of auditory looking to forms of cognitive solipsism. In the follow­ ing pages I demonstrate how users use these technologies to re-appropriate urban space actively and 'fluidly'. For the purposes of this article 'fluidity' refers to the proposi tion that the meanings attached to automobility, or rather, automobile habitation, cannot be dissociated from the way in which consumers use the media in the home and, by extension, how many perceive the public realms of the city from the vantage point of the automobile. Fluidity is thus both l iterally about movement through geographical space and cognitive, in as much as users are able to transcend these very geographical spaces through the use of sound technologies. Sonic Bridges and Automobility

Since the 1960s automobiles have increasingly become sophisticated mobile sound machines equipped with CD players, digital radios, multiple speakers and of course mobile phones. Yet the use of sound technologies in automobiles pre-dates the 1 960s. Significantly, the beginning of mass ownership of automobiles in the 1920s was also co-terminous with the growth of many domestic technologies of cultural reception - the radio, the gramophone and the telephone. Just as the home was becoming transformed into a space of aural pleasure and recreation for many, so the car was becoming the emblem of individualized freedom of movement. Yet priva­ tized and mobile listening pre-existed the car radio - it had been possible to use portable crystal radios many years earlier. Earlier still, from the turn of the century the city dweller could plug into jukeboxes located outside railway stations and in cafes. Even home l istening was often privatized as listeners to the radio often used headsets to listen to the sounds emanating from the ether (Kracauer, 1995). As early as the 1930s American auto manu­ facturers associated the radio with individualized listening in automobiles. In the space of five years, between 1 936 and 194 1 , over 30 percent of US cars were filled with radios (Butch, 2000). The use of sound in the car furthered the increasing mobility of sound use in Western culture in general: The invention of the transistor in 1947 meant that by the mid- 1 9S0s increas­ ing numbers of Americans were participating in what the industry called 'out­ of-home' listening. At work, in the car, on the beach, people - especially the young - brought radios with them and used them to stake out thei r social

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Theory, CuLture & Society 21 (4/5) space by blanketing a particular area with their music, their sportscasts, t heir announcers. With transistors, sound redefined public space. (Douglas, 1 999: 22 1 )

The rise of the cassette deck i n the 1 960s further revolutionized the nature of automobil e habitation, while today many cars are fitted with digital radios and sophisticated sound systems that work with push-button efficiency, enabl ing the driver to switch seamlessly between radio, cassette and CDs at will . This has hel ped to transform automobility from an experience of 'dwell i ng on the road' to one of 'dwelling in the car' (Drry, 1 999, 2004). For many contemporary drivers the proximity of the aural now defines car habitation. Drivers often describe the discomfort of spending time i n their cars w i t h only the sound o f the engine t o accompany them. Driving wi thout the mediation of music or the voice qualitatively changes the experi­ ence of driving. Many drivers habitually switch on their radio as they enter their automobile, describing the space of the car as becoming energized as soon as the radio or music system is switched on: In the mornings I feel relaxed when I get into my car. After rushing around getting ready, it's nice to unwind, put on my music and the heater and get myself ready for the day. (Jonathan) I suppose I feel at ease, I put the radio on, put the keys in the ignition and I'm away. I've had new furry covers put on the car seats, so they are really comfortable and snug. In a way too, I suppose after getting out of the house, getting i nto Ruby [the car] is a way for me to relax and unwind. (Alexandria) It comes on automatically when I switch the ignition on. Like I never switch the power ofI, so it automatically comes on as soon as I start the car. ( Alicia) Well it's on anyway. When the car starts it switches on. So it comes on auto­ matically. (Gale) r can't even start my car without music being on. It's automatic. Straight away, amplifiers turned on. Boom boom! (Kerry)

It's lonely in the car. I l i ke to have music. (Joan) I put it on to Radio 4, because I knew I had a long drive. So it depends what

kind of drive, Radio 4, I wanted someone talking to me, yes, I need someone talking to me, so I put it on Radio 4. I want to be listening to a voice telling me about various bits of news. (Sharon) It connects me to the world because you' ve got someone tal k i ng to you, to connect you . (Ben)

Mediated sound thus becomes a component part of what it is to drive. The sOllnd of mllsic competes with the sound of the engine and the spaces

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outside the automobile. The use of personalized sound helps to produce a seamless web of experience from door to door. Automobile use mirrors personal stereo use in this context w ith users describing putting their earphones on as they leave home. Equally, both automobile users and personal stereo users often report that the first thing they do on arriving home i s to switch on the television or radio. The we-ness of sound use in automobility is thus contextualized by the use of the mediated presence of sound in domestic contexts. The Automobile

as a

Sonic Envelope

The car is a little bit of a refuge. In a way, although people can see into the car and see what I'm doing, it's almost as if this is my own little world and nobody can see what I'm doing and if I want to sing loudly to the music, talk to myself or whatever it is, I don't have anyone else to answer to. I don't have to consider anyone else. I can behave exactly the way I want to. (Lucy) I'm in a nice sealed, compact space . . . I like my sounds up loud, it's all around you. It's not like walking around the kitchen where the sounds are not q uite as I want them. (Trudy) .

The automobile becomes a successful and personalized listening environ­ ment that is difficult to replicate in other domestic or public spaces unless one uses a personal stereo. Automobiles are potentially one of the most perfectible of acoustic listening chambers. Unlike living rooms, where manufacturers cannot control room size, furnishings and numbers of people, it is possible for acoustic designers to create a uniformly pleasant listening environment (Bose, 1 984). Acoustic design permits even the drivers of convertibles to experience the immersive quali t i es of sOLind in the c a r: I don't like not having music. I love driving my car. I've got an M XS (convert­ ible). It's the only way to drive . . . . I change the music. If it 's a nice sunny day it's more old-time jazz or something quite up and happy. some really good chirpy classical - it's nice and loud - in my car r ve got speakers in the headrest, so although it's q uite loud it's not very intrusive for everybody else. (.lane)

The more sOLlnd, the more immersive the experience, although the above driver is also aware of the seepage of sound, which in this case has a techno­ logical fix in the form of speakers in the headrests of the seats: I qu ite like driving to dance music. because it's qu ite mindless in quile a nice way. I tend to tune into some fairly intense, particularly in London. techno-orientated dance music. which are the kind of tapes I would play as driving music. I also like sort of classic rock band sort of sluff. for a similar lype of reason, it's not very challenging, bUI it's illlmersiYe. ( Kate)

Drivers are able to coordinate the soundscape of the automobile to match

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their mood or their journey. The automobile becomes a perfect listening booth for drivers who thus deny the contingency involved in their traversal of these routine spaces and times of daily life. Drivers thus construct visual space according to a privatized soundworld: I've been on holiday driving. In the States we hired a convertible and we had to have a soundtrack, it's like a soundtrack of your holiday and it became actually quite a joke that it had to be certain music that we were listening to. Sort of like anything from America, stuff like Simon and Garfunkel through to sort of classic trashy American rock. Somehow it managed to make sense in that context whereas like driving round London something slightly more like Radioheady, sort of more intense, might somehow - you know. And then if it's kind of a, a grimy Sunday afternoon and you, you know you kind of, you feel like you want something really familiar so you'll put on, like a CD with something you really, really like and you feel kind of more at home with. (John)

While the 20th century is sometimes interpreted as both the century of the automobile (Brandon, 2002; Sachs, 1992) and of the moving image, it is also the century of mechanically reproduced sounds. While the j uxta­ positioning of two flows of experience, the actual movement of people through space with the spectatorshi p embedded in everyday consumer prac­ tices is provocative, it by no means exhausts the meanings attached to acts of 'looking'. While cities might well float by as some kind of filmic embodi­ ment (Baudrillard, 1 989) it is read as if this simulation takes place i n silence. Drivers might thus become spectators through the s imple act of looking through a windscreen. Thus the looking through a shop window or the watching of televi sion become foundational elements of the experience of automobility. Despite its correct association of automobility with domestic spaces of consumption a visualist reading of automobile habitation assumes that drivers are conti nually looking out onto the world, in acts of 'objectifi­ cation' rather than being preoccupied with living within the i nt imate space inside the automobile itself, or desiring the environment to mimic their desires. Paradoxically, visually based accounts of automobility may well mistake the mediated nature of the visual in automobility through their misunderstanding of the role of sound in transforming the visual apprehen­ sion of place. Vision is invariably audio-vision. Equally, audio-vision plays no role in the understanding of the dynamics of sound solipsism embedded in automobility. Mobile Solipsism and Sound

The management of experience through sound technologies is tied to implicit forms of control, control over oneself, others and the spaces passed through. Hence, it is unsurprising that drivers often prefer driving alone. In this way they are able more successfully to re-appropriate their time. Time possessed is more likely to be time enjoyed. The experience of immersion

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in sound is thus enhanced by sole occupancy, which also permits the driver to have enhanced feelings of control and management of their environment, mood, thoughts and space beyond the gaze of 'others': I can sit back in my car, enjoy the drive, listen to my sounds, not have to talk. (Trudy) I don't think there's anything pleasant about being in a car with somebody else . . . . For me it's quite a solitary thing. You just do it. You're not thinking about - it's quite - in many ways it's quite like doing sport - you just switch off. . . . You're just thinking little thoughts, you're not really thinking about . . . it's really quite contemplative and having to make conversations while you're doing that . . . sometimes you want to make conversation but then you'd sooner not be driving around. I just like to get there. (Sarah) Yes, because I can do all the driving. I can concentrate on the driving. I do really get quite absorbed in driving. I can listen to the radio or have the music on as a sort of atmosphere-provoking thing. Whereas if someone else is in the car I feel I shouldn't have the music on 'cause you can't hear them and I can't stand that, fighting for noise or quiet. I also find it more relaxing driving on my own because I don't need to worry about them being uncomfortable and feeling that I'm going too fast. (Lisa) I do a lot of thinking in the car. I find it quite a good time to be by myself and to sort of think things through and work out lists of food that I need on the way to the supermarket. . . . I drive more safely when somebody is not distracting me. I find that when there's somebody in the car I feel that I have to talk to him or her. It's not so much looking at them, it's more that I find the mere listening to what they're saying is making me less aware of the things happening on the road. I don't like not to have that complete control. (Sara)

The automobile offers drivers a space to be alone with their mediated thoughts, a space that is pleasurable precisely because it offers no contra­ diction to the preoccupations of the driver. Automobiles thus become spaces of temporary respite from the demands of the 'other' while the driver is often sitting in gridlocked unison with all the other drivers who are in illusory control of their environment. Sound Performances

The car is a space of performance and communication where drivers report being in dialogue with the radio or singing in their own auditized/privatized space. Baudrillard's bubble is a fragile one, however, in which even aural absorption doesn't fully protect the aural bubble of habitation. The space of a car is both one to look out from and to be looked in to. It is simultaneously private and public. Drivers both lose themselves in the pleasure of habi­ tation and may also become increasingly aware of the 'look' of others. Many drivers sing or talk to their radio while driving:

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Theory; Culture & Society 21 (4/5) Actually that's one thing I love about my car - she's all mine. I don't have to share her with anyone. I can do what I like in my car - with reason - I can turn the radio up full blast and have a good sing song without anyone looking at me. Actually, sometimes I suddenly realize that I'm merrily singing along, and the person in the next car is having a good laugh at me, but I forgot that people can see in and I get really embarrassed. (Alexandria) I'll sing along at the top of my voice and I always worry what people in other cars think when they see me. They think I'm talking to myself or some­ thing . . . . I just sing along all the time. I don't stop, like every song that comes on. 'Cos I watch a lot of music channels at home, so I know the words to a lot of songs. If I'm listening to the radio, I'll sing along to practically every song that comes on. (Alicia) I'm sitting there mouthing off to it. You talk, as you would any time when you're on your own. If the TV s on and there's some news programme, I'd talk, like that's a load of rubbish etc. , I'd chatter away to it. (Sharon)

The space of the car becomes a free space i n which the driver feels free to indulge their aural whi ms with no inhibitions. Houses have other occupants or neighbours to inhibit any such desire: The louder the better. I n fact, I use my car, I use it more than in the house, because I don't want to annoy the neighbours. But in the car, traffic is very noisy, so nobody can hear you. I sing incredibly loudly, especially on the motorway - In fact I have certain cassettes that I'll put on to sing incredibly loudly to. (Susan)

The sound of music, together with the sound of their own voice, acts so as to provide a greater sense of presence as well as transforming the time of driving. Mediated sound thus becomes an opportunity for interactive dialogue, of a personal ized performance. Drivers, whether singing or listen­ ing, are not of course hermetically sealed from the outside world. Talking Technologies

Automobiles are also increasingly being used as spaces of interpersonal communication between drivers and 'absent' others. Paradoxically, while many drivers prefer to be alone in their automobile, increasing numbers also report using their driving time to communicate directly with others: I hold the phone to my ear. . . . I often use it to catch up with people that I haven't spoken to for a while. It's a time when I know I'm going to be in the car for a while. I have had journeys that the journey may have been three hours long and I have spoken to three people during the journey, one for 45 minutes, another for half an hour, so I may have spent virtually the whole journey talking on the phone. (Lucy)

Using a mobile phone permits drivers to maintain social contacts during

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'road' time. Time and journey are thus transformed into an intimate 'one to one' time: It's a good way to spend your time, talking and catching up. If I get bored, I'll just put it onto my list, list of numbers. I will just flit through and . . . say I haven't spoken to that person for ages . . . so the people at the beginning or the end of the alphabet do quite well! (Jane)

If users of mobile phones in the street transform representational space into their own privatized space as they converse with absent others, then this scene is replicated in the everyday use of mobile phones i n automobiles. The automobile becomes a mobile, privatized and sophisticated communi­ cation machine through which the driver can choose whether to work, social­ ize or pass the time. Sound technologies provide a form of accompanied solitude for consumers. Just as the technologies that make us feel secure on the street are also to some extent illusory forms of security, so 'automobile self­ sufficiency' is equally an ideological or virtual self-sufficiency. The disjunc­ tion between the i nterior world of control and the external one of contingency and conflict becomes suspended as the occupant develops strategies for managing their experience of travel mediated by music or voice. Many drivers describe their automobiles as surrogate homes, yet these homes are far more dangerous than the non-mobile homes that many of us l i ve in. The aural space of the automobile is perceived as a safe and intimate environment in which the mobile and contingent nature of the journey is experienced precisely as its opposi te, in which the driver controls the journey preci sely by controlling the i nner environment of the automo­ bile through sound. Moving through Urban Space People do not flock to these temples in order to tal k or sociate. Whatever company they may wish to enjoy they carry with them, like snails carry their homes. (Bauman, 2003: 98) When I'm sat in a traffic jam or at traffic lights, in town especially, to ease the boredom, I quite enjoy watching what's going on around me. I look in other people's cars, and watch people walking down the street. I l i ke to see what they're doing and where they're going. As I am in my car a lot, I do need something to take away the boredom. The radio is good for that too. Actually I find music in the car changes how I look at the outside. It entertains me to watch other people with my music on. It is as if they are walking along to the music. (Richard)

Simmel was perhaps the first sociologist who attempted Lo explain the significance and desire of urban citizens to maintain a sense of privacy, to create a mobile bubble, while on the move. Simmel's concerns were with

252 andedthtehenoichangi sy maelngstnatromureof tofhebourgeoi city froms whicisensory cvilihtyciwioverl titzhensinoad,trethecrowds, rieatncreasi . Sistmnrglmelangers chart y atetichnol ogizuedre andurbanproblgeography of athteedearlwithy 20tpeoplh cente contury,inualaddressi n g t h e rel o nal nat e ms associ move city, (Strimavelmelof, 1997). Whileanthequal e streetly wasimpossiperceible vburden, ed asly oninwivaritthheaoccupant bly unplin tsheeasant t e n posed of hours railwayoncarri a(Sgeschihavi nusch, g to 1986). sit and6 stThearealatiestnrangers i n cl o se proxi m i t y for end v el b nat u re of t h e ci t y st r eet thus became i n scri b ed i n to mai n st r eam es. Richard turban he urbanstudisubject falls Sennet silent: t describes a passivized urban space in which Theory, Culture & Society 2 1 (4/5)

5

Individual bodies moving through urban space gradually became detached from the space in which they moved, and from the people the space contained. As space became devalued through motion, individuals gradually lost a sense of sharing a fate with others . . . individuals create something like ghettos in their own bodily experience. (Sennett, 1994: 366)

Sennet t perceitivveesoritheentgeography ofWestthe ciernty Cito tbey dwelbothleneutr. Bauman ral and trepel ltihneg irepel n thelecogni a t i o n of t h e a kes ure ofcittihzeencittoyescape one statgehe furtstreetherbybygetmakitingnigntiot tahemoral imspace pera­ tofivethfore autnttheonatmobi urban secure le: For every resident of the modern world, social space is spattered over a vast sea of meaninglessness in the form of numerous larger and smaller blots of knowledge: oases of meaning and relevance amidst a featureless desert. Much of daily experience is spent travelling through semiotically empty spaces moving physically from one island to another. (Bauman, 1993: 1 58)

Thus thste reetpercepthas ibecome on of thaccept e autoemobi l20te ash-centa domi nant means ofe escapi n g t h e d i n u ry account s of t h (Kay,le1997; Putoftennam,cla2000; Sachs, 1992).theyIn habisupporttuallofy trtavel his posithrough tion, autciholtydomobi users i m t h at t h e spaces lit le itnoteberestothforerwithsem.e engaged They 'lowiok'thforthethsounds e purposes of dric orvivoing ofce.course butroutprefer of musi ine journeys take place in the 'non-places' of urban culture: Many Clearly the word 'non-place' designates two complementary but distinct realities: spaces formed in relation to certain ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure), and the relations that individuals have with these spaces. (Auge, 1995: 94)

Forpassedthethpurposes ofanmyautoargument 'non-pl aaces''non-space' might refermigthto anybe under­ space rough i n mobi l e. As such stood as signifying both a 'quality' of the space or as a cognitive orientation

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to space. Auge significantly locates sound as the defining feature i n the experiencing of time i n non-space: What reigns there is actuality, the urgency of the present moment. Since non­ places are there to be passed through, they are measured in units of time. Itineraries do not work without timetables, lists of departure and arrival times . . . . Most cars are fitted with radios; the radio plays continuously in service stations and supermarkets . . . . Everything proceeds as if space had been trapped by time, as if there were no history other than the last forty­ eight hours of news. (Auge, 1995:104)

Auge argues that we experience time i n the continual present. However, this mistakes the shopping mall and the airport for the automo­ bile i nterior. To exist in public non-places like shoppi ng malls can be like being suspended in the continual present (DeNora, 2000). However, auto­ mobile habitation provides drivers with their own regulated soundscape that mediates their experience of these non-places and manages the flow of time as they wish. The meani ng of these non-places is overlaid by the mediated space of the automobile from which meaning emanates. Drivers can choose the manner in which they attend to these non-places, or i ndeed transform these spaces i nto personalized spaces through the use of their sound tech­ nologies. Equally, drivers are not merely responding to the street but are often concerned with making the space of the automobile i nto one that reflects their desire for accompanied solitude. The use of sound communication technologies in automobiles demon­ strates a clear auditory reconceptualization of the spaces of habitation embodied in users' strategies of placi ng themselves 'elsewhere' in urban environments. U sers tend to negate public spaces through their prioritiza­ tion of their own tec h nologi c al l y mediated private realm. These technolo­ gies enable users to transform the s ite of their experience i nto a form of 'sanctuary' (Sennett, 1994). Thus users are able to transform space through the use of these technologies. Users habitually exist within forms of accom­ panied solitude constructed through a manufactured i ndustrialized auditory, either through mediated music or the voice of the 'other'. The preferred exclusion of many forms of i ntrusion constitutes a successful strategy for urban and personal management. Users tend to reclai m representational space preci sely by privatizing it. As such the aural space of the automobile becomes a safe and i ntimate environment. Users feel empowered and safe but only as long as the sound of communication i s turned up. Sound Thinking

The sensory environment of the city - like the habitual way i n which we look, hear and experience - is closely tied to recent technological develop­ ments that are i nformed by the i mplicit assumption that it is possible to manage or control one's own soci al space (Bull, 2000). In constructing the above account of automobility and urban experience the work of Theodor

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Adorno has cast a long shadow i n developing an understanding of fluidity i n relation to urban space. Unli ke many writers i n the field, Adorno was i nvariably sensitive to the fluidity of experience. For him, the front doors of our houses were always fragile and insubstantial barriers to the 'outside' world (Adorno, 1991). Yet the social world in the age of mechanical repro­ duction posed problems in terms of how subjects orientated themselves towards the problematic and ideological notion of autonomous subjectivity. While Adorno's work on technology and culture has often been understood in terms of i ts deterministic qualities, this should not overshadow the radical and utopian dimension to his social thought in these areas, whereby subjects strive to achieve satisfaction through the consumption of products of the culture i ndustry (Leppert, 2002; Nicholsen, 1997; Zuidervaart, 1991). Adorno probably would not have been surprised by the success of mobile communication technologies - they are implicitly written into his critical theory of society. Both Walter Benjamin (1973) and Theodor Adorno (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1973) understood that the very meani ng of what it is to 'look' or 'hear' is irredeemably media-linked, with Benjamin focusing upon the visual while Adorno concentrated on the aural. Adorno recognized that sound technologies in particular transform our understanding of connection and proximity. Adorno described the nature of this aural prox­ i mity in terms of states of 'we-ness', the substitution or transformation of 'direct' experience by a mediated, technological form of aural experience. In typically dystopian terms Adorno argues that: The feebler the subject's own sense of living, the stronger the happy illusion of attending to what they tell themselves is other people's life. The din and to-do of entertainment music feigns exceptional gala states; the 'we' that is set in all polyphonous music as the a priori of i ts meaning, the collective obj ec tivity of the thing itself, turns into customer bait. Thus the jukebox in an empty pub will blare in order to lure 'suckers' with the false pretence of revelry in progress. (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1973: 56)

Adorno had already left the living room to walk out into the street i n his analysis of sound technologies and the social expectations embedded in their use. The warmth of media messages is contrasted with the chill of the immediate, and the inability of structured forms of the social to satisfy the desire for proximity: By circling them, by enveloping them as inherent in the musical phenomena - and turning them as listeners into participants. it [music 1 contributes ideo­ logically to the i ntegration which modern society never tires of achieving in reality. . . . It creates an illusion of immediacy in a totally mediated world, of proximity between strangers, the warmth of those who come to feel a chill of unmitigated struggle of all against all. (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1 973: 56)

Increasingly this sense of mediated 'intimacy' becomes associated for Adorno, although not exclusively so, with a wide variety of forms of domestic

Bull

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media consumption. The following comes from Adorno's understanding of television in the early 1 950s: The world, threateningly devoid of warmth, comes to him like something familiar, as if specially made just for him . . . . The lack of distance, the parody of fraternity and solidarity has surely contributed to the extraordinary popu­ larity of the new medium. (Adorno in Leppert, 2002: 52)

Adorno perceives the urban subj ec t as i ncreasingly and actively seeking out forms of mediated company within which to live. Auditory media embody a form of compensatory metaphysics whereby subjects seek solutions to their everyday life. Adorno's work in this area can be creatively applied to the experience of driving; to looking in and looking out from the interior space of the automobile in order to assess what it might mean to 'look out' and 'move through' the world from the auditory box that the auto­ mobile has become. In focusing upon these concerns I re-appropriate Adorno's use of 'warmth' and 'chill' to denote the contrast between the mediated role of sound in expectations of the social and the 'chill' of the immediacy of 'public' areas of daily life. 'Warmth' becomes associated with various normative conceptions of 'home' while 'chill' is associated with the urban spaces we daily move through. These two variables are dialectically linked, the warmer one gets, the chillier the other becomes. This 'warmth' is both social and hence 'relational'. The warmth of media messages is contrasted with the chill of the i mmediate, and the inability of structured forms of the social to satisfy these desires. The desire for company or 'occupancy' while moving through the city is thus contextualized through the daily or habitual use of a variety of media. The array of mobile sound media i ncreasingly enables users to successfully maintain a sense of intimacy while moving through t h e c i ty. Analysing the use of mobile sound communication technologies i n automobiles and elsewhere permits m e t o point t o a transformation that has taken place within urban culture over the past 40 years. This transformation l ies in urban citizens' increasing ability and desire to make the 'public' spaces of the city conform to a notion of a 'domestic' or 'intimate' private space. As consumers increasingly i nhabit 'media saturated' spaces of intimacy, so they increasingly desire to make the public spaces passed through mimic their desires. In doing so drivers reclaim representational space precisely by privatizing it. The consequence for any notion of shared urban space appears serious as the warmth of privatized and mediated communication produces the 'chill' that surrounds it. Proximity and soli­ tariness are increasingly dialectically l inked i n the mobilization of contem­ porary forms of sociality in such a way that in the future we may all become like Paul Gilroy's driver, shouting out, impotently, into dead urban space.

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Notes 1 . Putnam has recently pointed to the dominance of sole occupation in automo­ biles in America: One inevitable consequence of how we have come to organize our lives spati­ ally is that we spend measurably more of every day shuttling alone in metal boxes among the verticies of our private triangles. American adults average seventy-two minutes every day behind the wheel. . . . Private cars account for 86% of all trips in America, and two thirds of all car trips are made alone, a fraction that has been rising steadily. (2000: 247) Equally Brodsky has commented upon the automobile as being 'the most popular and frequently reported location for listening to music' (2002: 2 19). Comparative analysis discloses that this privatizing tendency within automobility is largely a 'western' phenomenon. For example, Hirschkind (2001) demonstrates that taxis in Cairo are often spaces of contested politicized discourse. Automobiles are profoundly social: they enact the social, both in their denial of other people's private space and in their reconfiguring of urban space generally. 2. Jonathan Sterne has recently argued that the history of the media in one sense is about 'the construction of a private acoustic space' (2003: 1 55). 3. This work investigated the interface between technology, the urban and the construction of everyday experience through personal stereo use. The analysis focused on three key themes: the specific auditory nature of personal stereo use; the role of the personal stereo in users' strategies for managing urban experience; and the place of personal stereos in reconfiguring the relation, and the difference between public and private spheres. 4. This comprised qualitative interviews and diaries collected between 2000 and 2002 of 87 automobile drivers in London, Brighton and Cambridge. Data on the following have been referred to in this article: Jonathan: a 36-year-old male, who is married with two children and who works in retailing. He has driven for 17 years and lives in London. Alexandria: a 24-year-old female who has a clerical job in an insurance office. She has driven for two years. Alicia: a 27-year-old nurse who has driven regularly since the age of 18. Gale: a 20-year-old student. Kerry: a 23-year-old hairdresser who has driven since the age of 18. Joan: a 32-year-old administrator. Sharon: a 35-year-old clinical psychologist, married with one child, who has driven since the age of 1 8. Ben: a 37-year-old self-employed male, married with two children, who has driven since the age of 18. Lucy: a 32-year-old charity worker who has driven since the age of 20. Trudy: a 47-year-old female who is an academic administrator. Married with three children, she has driven for over 20 years. Jane: a 28-year-old female who works in publishing. Kate: a 23-year-old female who is a clerical worker in London. John: a 36-year-old advertising executive who lives in London and is married with one child. He has driven since the age of 18.

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Lisa: a 37-year-old administrator who has driven since the age of 1 8. Sara: a 20-year-old student. 5. Urban conditions require: . . . an inner barrier between people, a barrier, however, that is indispensable for the modern form of life. For the jostling crowdedness and the motley disorder of metropolitan communication would simply be unbearable without such psychological distance. Since contemporary urban culture, with its commercial, professional and social intercourse, forces us to be physically close to an enormous number of people, sensitive and nervous people would sink completely into despair if the objectification of social relationships did not bring with it an inner boundary and reserve. (Simmel, 1997: 1 78) The blase attitude constituted a defence against the perceived threat of city life in which engulfment was conceived of as both physical and psychical. The belief that urban subjects are subjects in retreat has become a core explanatory framework of everyday urban behaviour. 6. Schivelbusch charts the popularity of reading habits on trains in the 19th century: The face-to-face arrangement that has once institutionalised an existing need for communication now became unbearable because there no longer was a reason for such communication. The seating in the railroad compartment forced travellers into a relationship based no longer on living need but an embarrassment. . . . As we have seen, the perusal of reading matter is an attempt to replace the conversation that is no longer possible. Fixing one's eyes to a book or newspaper, one is able to avoid the stare of the person sitting across the aisle. The embarrassing nature of this silent situation remains largely unconscious. (Schivelbusch, 1986: 74-5) References Adorno, T. ( 1991 ) The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London. Routledge. Auge, M. (1995) Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso. Baudrillard, J. ( 1989) America. London: Verso Books. Bauman, Z. (1993) Post-Modem Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell Press. Bauman, Z. (2000) Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2003) Liquid Love. Cambridge: Polity Press. Benjamin, W (1973) Illuminations. London: Penguin. Bose, A. (1984) 'Hifi for GM Cars', lecture 19 March to E ECS Seminar, 2 audio­ cassettes, MIT Archives, MC 261 . Brandon, R. (2002) A utomobile: How the Car Changed Life. Basingstoke: Macmillan. B rodsky, W (2002) 'The Effects of Music Tempo on Simulated Driving Perform­ ance and Vehicular Control', pp. 219-41 in Transportational Research Part F. New York: Pergamon Press.

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Bull, M . (2000) Sounding Out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life. Oxford: Berg. Butch, R. (2000) The Making of American A udiences: From Stage to Television, 1 750-1 990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. de Certeau, M. (1988) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. DeNora, T. (2000) Music and Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Douglas, SJ. (1999) Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination. New York: Random House. Gilroy, P. (2001) 'Driving while Black', in D. Miller (ed.) Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg. Hendy, D. (2000) Radio and the Global Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hirschkind, C. (2001) 'Civic Virtue and Religious Reason: An Islamic Counter­ public', Cultural Anthropology 1 6( 1 ): 3-34. Horkheimer, M. and T. Adorno ( 1973) The Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Penguin. Katz, 1. and M. Aukhus (eds) (2002) Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kay, K. (1997) Asphalt Nation: How the A utomobile Took Over America and How We Can Take it Back. Berkeley: U niversity of California Press. Kracauer, S. (1995) The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U niversity Press. Leppert, R. (ed.) (2002) Adorno: Essays on Music. Berkeley: California University Press. Livingstone, S. (2002) Young People and the Media. London: Sage. Lull, J. (1990) Inside Family Viewing. London: Routledge. McCarthy, A. (2001 ) Ambient Television. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Meyrowitz, 1. (1986) No Sense of Place. The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behaviour. Oxford: Oxford U niversity Press. Morley, D. ( 1992) Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge. Nicholsen, S.W (1997) Exact Imagination, Late Work on Adorno 's Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Sachs, W (1992) For Love of the Automobile: Looking Back into the History of our Desires. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schivelbusch, W (1986) The Railway Journey: The Industrialisation of Time and Space in the 1 9th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sennett, R. ( 1990) The Conscience of the Eye. London: Faber. Sennett, R. ( 1994) Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilisation. New York: Norton. Silverstone, R. ( 1994) Television and Everyday Life. London: Routledge. Simmel, G. (1997) 'The Metropolis and Mental Life', in D. Frisby and M. Feather­ stone (eds) Simmel on Culture. London: Sage. Stallabrass, 1. ( 1996) Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture. London: Verso.

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Sterne, J. (2003) The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham, NC: Duke U niversity Press. Tacchi, J . (1998) 'Radio Texture: Between Self and Others', in D. Miller (ed.) Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter. London: Uni versity Colleg<, London Press. Urry, J. (1999) 'Automobility, Car Culture and Weightless Travel' (draft), Lancaster U niversity at http:/www.lancaster.ac.uk/soc030ju.html Urry, J. (2000) Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Troenty-jirst Century. London: Routledge. Urry, J. (2004) 'The "System" of Automobility', Theory, Cullure & Society 2 1 (4/5): 25-39. Williams, R. (1977) Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism. London: Verso. Zuidervaart, L. (199 1 ) Adorno:, Aesthetic Theory: The Redemption of Illusion . Cambridge, M A: MIT Press.

Michael Bull teaches in the School of Social and Cultural Sciences at the Universi ty of Sussex. He is the author of Sounding Out the Cit)'": Personal Stereos and the Management of Ever)'"da)'" Life (Berg, 2000) as well as many articles on sound technologies and their use. He is also co-editor (with Les Back) of The A uditor)'" Culture Reader (Berg, 2003). He is currently working on a book entitled Mobilising the Social: Sound, Technolog)'" and the Cit)'" ( Routledge, forthcoming).

Doing Office Work on the Motorway

Eric Laurier

y COMPARISON witthhousands the riversofweyearshavethsaie lmoted, oorrwaythe iforest patienths, we have t r odden for s i n ci p Bte tyethe novel the curity valousuepliat ceoncethatdidis. When the mulittifi-rlastneappeared, motorwayliknoe tlhoengerrailwhasay quibefore it, thkie nmotd oforway railessedwoula dnewbe alsetlowed, of probltheemany ms: howthindrigs vpeopl ers ought tdo drinotvdoe, what vehi c e coul on such. Nowadays a road andwewhetarehnoer iltonger mightstberuckwortwihtwhih wonder le at altlh(atMerriit mimgan,ht 2001, 2004) ble for hundreds of inadintvfatidualalitivehies andcleschaos to travelensuiinnclg.oseInstproxiead,mtihtye atmotbe hipossi gorwayh speeds wi t h out const onee ofpartourofordiourneveryday ary places,mobia space ofrry,conven­ tion andIn exami anhasalmnownosting become unavoi d abl l i t y ( U 2004) . dri v i n g as a new form of everyday habi t a bi l i t y , Ni g el Thri out that,Miwhichelle maki ngteaauhero(1984)of thfocused e walkeronlinythone cithtey stcarceral reetft, (i2n004) taspect ermspoisofnofttsrraiansport de Cer . The dealmil tiosummari ns of autloymobi leass alalrieady shari ng ciUnwel ty strceetomes winewth arripedestvall rtsir,aavelcarsns were wi t h e n i n vaders. were kiWhil ingleciwetiesmiprevi ohaveusly sympat broughthytowilitfhe byde Cert createau'ivespedest r i a n enunci a t i o ns. g ht lamentomobiforlittyheshows drownithnegworlout dofofthdrie poetvingrytoofbefoasotfrialchs onandcobblconvo­es, 'lruesearch on aut kifinng'd (aThrispaceft, 2004) . Moreover , except in turniinngg repai our atr tcrews, ention tbreakdowns otethdeasmotthoatrwayandof walwepassengers where wal k ers, Even though we cannot walk thinere,sidewecoaches, dwell uponare talhemmotost oentrwayireliyn motabsention,. Everyday Life on the Motorway

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(4/5) sometimareesplaleontne,y ofsomet imessuchi n convoys or siedrs,e bylorrysidande in busqueuesdrivanders,jams. There groups, as commut salthees represent a t i v es and so on, who spend years of t h ei r l i v es dri v i n g al o ng orway'scharged parallelwilatnes.h daiForly emottheseionalmobisatleisfactcommuni tiessesitandhas reflbecome a lmot(aKndscape i o ns, cri e ct i o ns atrzonment , s ofToourtakeagethwee motmustorwayconsiseriderothusle ypractas ioneces ofofdrithveindigswitinthcttihvee envi care that detoCertsocieoau-matdiedriaofl organi walkinzg.atioInn tthihats tartakeiclserie Iowiusllyl draw upon approaches t h e rol e ofic recogni z abl e spat i a l set t i n gs such as t h e pavement , t h e f a ct o ry, t h e publ park, thHetheri e laboratngtoory,n, the schoolLatoandur andthe Wool housegar,(Crabtree,Lee andEverget i, Wat s on, Ogborn, These studies chave thiakenstoripartcallyic,ulmoral ar common pllyaces,and such as t h e pavement , as geographi al l y , l y , l e gal technologitchalelymotassembl edthsetroughtingscontfor ehuman dwelempiling.ricHere, theough, I wianl approach o rway mporary al mat ri a l s as i(Jmuhlportina,nt arenaKatforz,social actMerriion, minan,line with Mia growi n,g numberMiofl eanal ysts c hael r, Murtearlgh,ind, O'Hara et aI., Thrift, Urry, Vest Where deromCerta skyscraper eau contemplbefore ated shitheftpanopt ic viteowstofreetthelecivelty, andBrunoits pedest r i a ns f i n g down Latmotoourrwayhassystexami nIned hiwhats stuhasdy oftothbee paradi in plgamatce itco panopt monitoicronandof French control e ms. irfeol-tlershehavePariofs tvehi rafficcleconts, anrol'ocentligoptreic-on'Bruno(LatoLatur oandur calHermant led the, viautewomobi theThecontle lcompl exitiyons,andirrithtaetimoral thicaketkings,of ttahiousands ofareinreduced, dividual dritransformed vers' actioandns, react o ns, overt l g at i n gs, assembl ednineersto colinleGarfi ctivenpatkelt,erns of Clearlflyoiwst is(snotimilonlarlyy seefor trthaffie work on t r affi c engi c'ocontbservabl rollerses'th(Satacks,vehicles in mottheiosame n areisreduced to restdriricvtersed andcan relsee.evantIn what t r ue of what foclhaelows I want have to dropdone,backtodown toer'mthoteodrirwayver'lsevelperspect ', as Kative,z and Mi consi d andis a irelndeedativelalysounder-ut take upiltihzeedpassenger' sviperspect ihveoffinetrshetcarhe possi interiboir.litThiy ofs poi n t of e w whi c descri tions ofup'twihethcomport ment ofs tawareness, he driver as an occupant the car' of the same asvehiit cislpebound t h e passenger' what is happeni ngvteo ttoheotdriherverdriasvers'a member of the 'society of trafficFor' (,Lofynch, responsi act i o ns. g the traffiandc irecogni n whichzethaeyliaremitetdravelrepertling,oirteheyof andobservabl otherethdris,ecompared vdriersvercananalonltoytsiyhneproduce ricghness of face-t o-fguiacededencount erslig(htGoffsigmnalan,s Kat z , Dri v i n g at ni ht on unl i t roads by t h e ofmiotnihmeralvehienvicrlonment es is, asofLynch with an amazivisnibglley visible gestunotres.es,Yetaccompl despiteisthedhe pared-down 262

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features of traffic on motorways, Eric Livingston succinctly argues, drivers, sometimes with ease and sometimes with effort, collectively and l ocally produce the witnessable details that are required for the continuing order­ liness of traffic. Drivers, as members of a production cohort - and as members of a produc­ tion cohort, as analysts of its and their own order-productive work - produce and maintain the witnessable details of their l ocal driving circumstances. The ways that they do so are identical with the ways that they make their driving 'account-able' - they are witnessably changing lanes. slowing down, trying to get to the ofT-ramp. Therei n, they produce together the rel atively stable features of freeway traffic Aow. These consist, in fact, of their relatively stable. locally produced and regulated driving practices. (Livingston, 1 987: 84)

Each member of the production cohort of motorway traffic i s a 'polyvalent' person who has membership of, responsibil ities for and commitments to other societies that are i nescapably brought on to the motorway. 'Doing bei ng a driver' as Sacks ( 1 984) m ight say, on the motorway is never enough to ful l y occupy the locus of accountable activity that is an i ntelligible and reflective actor (Laurier and Philo, 1999; McHugh et a!., 1 974). And 'doing being a passenger' is less demanding still . Seldom do any of us just 'go for a drive' on the motorway;:l it is busy, as I will develop later, with all kinds of other work. Mobile Workplaces

Driving on the motonvay, as an almost inescapable part of thei I ' jobs, car­ based service sector employees sit for too l ong, get stuck in traffic jams, make mobile phone calls when they should not and break the l egal speed l imit to arrive at meeti ngs on time. Some of these car-based workers can do their correspondence, figures and form-filling admin either while parked up in car parks or at their homes; however, the majority do not have this luxury. Long journey ti mes, which are common in large company regions, or delays in slow-moving traffic mean that days on the road tend to be driving mostly and very l ittle 'work', that is, if driving was really the only thi ng that business persons did on motorways. In fact it was the norm among the car­ based employees, in the research project out of which this article arises ( Laurier and Philo, 1 998), that they and thei r co-workers worked, while driving, to get thei r jobs done. These risks of the job were not recorded by the technologies of surveillance used by their companies ( i n contrast to the way that, say, HGV driving is monitored) and hence were not rendered accountable to their institution. For the mobile workers we studied, there was a surprising lack of deliberate planning by companies who did not yet treat the growing daily mobility of their personnel with the same precision as the l ong-standing logistics of their products. Little recogni tion has been given to the fact that, when changes in technology and commercial company pol icy move staff out of their traditional office and on to the roads in their regions, then not all the work can be divided so that o n e person in olle car

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can do i t appropriately, safely and in coordination with their non-proxemic co-workers, given that they are also responsible for transporting themselves (Esbjornsson and Juhlin, 2002; Juhlin and Vesterlind, 2002). By way of comparison, ambulances, fire engines, bin lorries, police cars, ships and passenger aircraft have 'staff' who work in pairs or larger groups, so that tasks can be distributed and also so that, for each 'driver', there is someone to whom their conduct is witnessable and immediately and retrospectively accountable (Hutchins, 1995; Ikeya, 2003; Kawatoko and Ueno, 2003; Watson, 1 999). In these latter cases there is too much work for one person i n moving these vehicles around while accomplishing the organizational tasks they are required to do (i.e. delivering and preparing patients for hospital; collecting, sorting and rejecting rubbish bags; flying and servicing air passengers). There are examples of one-person one-veh icle working arrangements such as taxi- and lorry-driving, though in each of these cases the j ob is in itself the transportation of persons or goods (Agar, 1986; Davis, 1950; Hollowell, 1968; Psathas and Henslin, 1 967; Ven·ips and Meyer, 2001), whereas the jobs that are now moving into the car are regional management, personnel, sales support, credit control and so on. In an i mportant sense, driv ing and its contingencies are potentially problem­ atic since they necessarily take priority with the person-as-driver in terms of avoiding crashes and collisions, while for the person-as-office worker these pressing concerns are not straightforwardly available to the awareness of remote co-workers and clients. At the same time, the other jobs that are done during motorway journeys, and the purposes of journeys themselves, be they trivial, routine or highly important, are obscure matters to other drivers. As Katz (1999: 35) puts it: 'each driver usually will have no way of appreciating where other drivers are going and why, unless traffic stops completely and drivers exit their cars to converse with each other'. And for Katz's stressed LA drivers this lack of mutual awareness, beyond the mutual organization of traffic, is the source of many of their emotional outbursts. Drivers can show they are in a hurry, although unless they are ambulance drivers or couriers they cannot quickly display why they are in a hurry. For other drivers, then, there is only limited awareness that, even as the business people are speeding along motorways, they are l i kely to be busy doing desk-work: trying to keep up with complaints from clients, requests for help from colleagues and dictating letters to secretaries; trying to keep to optimistic appointment times with clients and colleagues; trying to stay in synch with those who do not have to drive to meetings; trying to do office work with paper documents; and on their mobil e phone to recoup time otherwise lost in transi t (Brown et aI . , 2002; O'Hara et aI., 2002). These varieties of desk work and the dashboard equipment of driving have not been designed to go together, yet the office workers we studied managed to artfully combine them. They have done so because they have to, yet they do not do so blindly, w ithout skill or w i thout feeling morally accountable for their actions. To be reasonable, to drive with care, a driver has to detect the occasions and conditions on the road where other tasks can be initiated with

Doing Office Work on the Motorway 265 miis anisimmumplirifiesdk road (Laurisyster,e2002) . Theno contmotroaflrway,ow, mulas twiipllegolaneson tforo detmanoeuvre, ail below, m wi t h chingdande occasieasyonsoverwhere, taking.forSlpract ow-miovicalnpurposes, g traffic, litghhte sdemands and minorof jspeed adrimsvinalgmatsslo oprovi w down, areuredregulon tahrleywipaced ornotstopidalealto,getsinhceer, tralaffthiough evencan tresume hese moment s , capt n g, are c fl o w beforectaabldocument ins done with rore athphone cale coordi l is finniatshed.ion ofGivtenhe tthemporal eir unpredi e durat i o t h ey requi e act i v remade betweenby ththeedriactver-ivittyalkofer.driThivins ggiandves ustheiarfoworkpl aiocen tofasks;the cartimediworker' hassjuncttosubeprobl rmul a t emivasitibeies norg iproduct nvolvedioinn tcohort he joinst: product ion ofofftwiceo sequent i a l y organi z ed act t r affi c and work.4Drawing on a single instance, originally filmed on video and reviewed fortalktihneg purposes ofwork this artareicwoven le, wanttogettohpursue ipract n moreicaldetrealail -howtimedrimatvitneg,r. and of fi c e er as a Or,besidperhaps moreherappropri ately, howupontheyoneareanotsomet iconsequent mes done seemi nonegly e one anot or subsequent h er , upon anotherbecausecannotit bedone,combicannedonlatyalbel (Ldiauriscovered er, 2002)in .theFindetai ding lhows of tacthisualis done, unfol episodec fiefromldworklife ofoncarthe asmotworkpl orwayatcehatproject want tment o examiidoinedngnesiearlnisgulfromiearr (event tLhaurie etse.hrThenographi andlectePhid durilo, ng fortnwherei n observat ionsngofthandem report s from dri v ers were col i g ht s spent shadowi ravelolgyingseeas Katan observermetandhtodol z, passenger in their cars (for a similar mobile Laurier -

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Naturally Organized Multi-tasking on the Motorway Here it is necessary to point out that readiness to answer questions about one's actions and reactions does not exhaust the heed we pay to them. Driving a car with care reduces the risk of accidents as well as enabling the driver to satisfy interrogations about their operations. Applying our minds to things does not qualify us only to give veracious reports about them, and absence of mind is betrayed by other things than merely being non-plussed in the witness box. The concept of heed is not, save per accidens, a cognitive concept. Investigations are not the only occupations in which we apply our minds. ( Ryl ,

e 1949: 132) 'Al y', oneandof thspent e partthicreeipantouts ofinfiourve daysprojecta week , wasonempltheoroad, yed byvisaitcaring lcleasiientngs company, around motorway connectinong aLondon andane Brimotsotrway. ol).thTheeThatepiwecorri sodearedlorookiwoul(angstdatretliakcehstrtofeto cconsi d er occurred t h reel h ofstmotartionrway, ratt sihernce,thanforancompe­ urban cltentearway or suburban cul de-sac, i s a key g poi n vers, tosiadapt son's, 'tuhale physi ationsdricompri ng' aanmotexpressi orway oaren of'cRodlearlWaty, percept categorical confi es ofgur­an M4

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Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

especially salient kind', and that they present 'loci for a whole range of special driving techniques that [are] locally deployed in that highly particu­ lar situation' (1999: 52). This singular character of the motorway is recog­ nized in driving instruction, as learners are prevented from driving there until they have acquired greater competency in the basic techniques of driving. Equally a three-lane motorway carries with it expectations, legally enforced obligations and 'aligned intermediaries', so that, like the French TGV high-speed train of Latour's example, 'nothing interrupts [the vehicle] or slows it down' (1997); there should be no unpredictable or slow-moving learners, nor parked cars, pedestrians crossing, children playing football, cyclists, dogs, cross traffic or oncoming traffic. Alongside its exclusions of all but competently driven fast vehicles, the motorway is built to provide a visually supportive environment for speed under normal conditions; you can see things coming from a long distance away (Venturi et aI., 1988). It has no hairpin bends, no hidden entrances and it has wide lanes, cambered corners and gentle inclines. It has a fast lane, a middle lane, a slow lane and a hard shoulder. You cannot park. You cannot picnic (Merriman, forth­ coming). Although this is not strictly relevant to what follows, it is statisti­ cally the least likely place to have a car accident. Not only do roads, by being 'motorways', 'dual carriageways', 'country roads', 'dirt tracks in forests' (Watson, 1999), provide categorially organized expectations of hazards, acceptable speeds, absence or presence of oncoming traffic and so on, but they also have typical rhythms that their regular drivers get to know (similarly for the London underground see Heath et aI., 1 999): they are busy and quiet at c e rtain times of day, different kinds of traffic dominate different sections and also vary according to the time of day (parents collecting children from school, delivery vehicles parking up, bin collection, inter-city commuters). On assembling the type of road by its time of day, its normal busyness or quietness and other local features, in the course of driving, mobile workers such as Ally then make assessments as to whether they might be able to get their paperwork out, make a few quick phone calls or make long phone calls, or whether they have to stick to driving alone. Ally is travelling fairly rapidly along the motorway and is working her way through a number of printed-off e-mails, flicking through them as they are balanced on her lap and mine (see Still 1). In syncopation with extendedly scanning the road ahead, she glances across and down at the in-tray of printed e-mails balanced on my lap. If she did not have an ethnographer in the car beside her today, the documents would be balanced on the passenger seat. With my assistance in sorting through a large pile, she selects two documents and places them on the steering wheel in front of her before making her phone call. Once the document is on the steering wheel Ally talks quietly through the documents saying who she has to phone next, what will be difficult in the phone call. After reading the e-mails through she leaves them in her grip on the steering

Laurier

Still l

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Doing Office Work on the M otorway

267

Ally driving and doing paperwork wheel so that she has them available should she need to consult them while she makes her phone-call (see Still 2). After a while our vehicle begins closing in on a slower-moving vehicle in our lane. Ally mutters 'Get out the way', slightly louder than her talking through the documents. On seeing a gap in the fast lane, Ally indicates and pulls out, looks at the rear view mirror and, over her shoulder, waves thanks to a driver who has let her pull out. As she speaks, she makes a forward indicating gesture toward the road with her free left hand and says 'I must concentrate on my driving for just a little while.' I laugh in response.

vigdoinetnteg, work renderedon tfrom virwaydeo recordi ng,ng wed iencount erthae Inswitthceh above bet w een h e mot o and doi i g on motorway as activities to which we (driver, passengers perhaps, video a

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Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

viewers) should pay heed. In line with Watson's ( 1 999) remarks on the omni­ relevance within the vehicles of the categories driver and passenger for Ally and myself, 'Get out the way' was hearable by me, as passenger, as a switch from her earlier buzzing over her paperwork. It is hearable by a passenger as a potential initiation into a conversational sequence ('announcement' 'response' [Watson, 1 999]), as were the many other commands, compliments and i nsults directed at other drivers and collected by ourselves during our project and by Katz (1999). This produces a passenger's analysis of the announcement as one that does nothing to the other drivers. If such a remark is not directed at other drivers, nor is it a quiet mutter about paperwork, then what does it do to me (or any other person) as a passenger? It perhaps calls upon one as a passenger to find in the scene ahead what the driver has formulated (Goodwin, 1997) and offers one, as passenger, a space for response as to whether they are willing to join the other, as driver, i n their analysis and moral assessment of the traffic object that has elicited their remarks (e.g. i n this case as an obstacle in the way). 5 Ought they to add an agreeing 'Move over slow coach', or defend the other driver or offer alterna­ tive mundanely reasonable versions of what has happened and what i s currently happening on the road (PoHner, 1 987)? While much is made of the inability of drivers to speak to one another in contrast to pedestrians, and how that leads to the build up of misunder­ standings that can explode into moments of road rage, less is made of the freedom to say aloud what pedestrians usually keep quiet. 'Get out the way' is an unhearable and thus unfollowable i nstruction toward the slow-moving vehicle ahead. To go further, it stands as a remark that should not be heard, a form of words out of the other driver's earshot. Its utterer would not in fact want to be caught by the other driver saying such a thing. In this sense none of the compliments, announcements, remarks or worse that drivers say about other drivers in the overhearing-proof space of the motorway are truly commands, compliments and insults since they cannot be received. Katz ( 1 999) picks out numerous actions that do count as gestures discernible by other drivers, horns are an obvious possibility, and Katz brings out the artful ways in which 'flipping off' (i.e. giving the finger) is done and the uses of tailgating to attempt to force other drivers to yield to a car behind. Equally, he draws on the affective response that tailgating elicits from the driver to whom it is being done. 'I must concentrate on my driving for a while' - Ally makes a comment on what she, as an incumbent of the category 'driver', ought to be doing. In response I laugh. This seems curious. What could be going on here? Her comment comes after her free hand's gesture: uncurling and sweeping toward the view of the motorway ahead. A gesture that builds on the announcement and the ongoing course of action directing the passenger's gaze toward the view out of the front window as the scene to which heed should be paid. Beyond trading on the omnirelevance of driver/passenger relations, another way that Ally has made this remark a comment at which one could laugh at the time is by its placement in relation to the preceding

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lbeongtastkenrettcohhave of ourbeencollfaiaborat itvoe besortatintegntthivrough ofvie-mai ls, whereheless,shewhatcan l i n g e t o dri n g. Nevert she had onin herfact dridoneving,imwasmeditoanottelyiceprecedi ngaclhere in i'rtonihe cway'andaheadreflexiandve comment an obst tatoiston,opcomi sOltinngg througha speci her e-mai lsv.Itiing sactiniohern: comment's sequent iaseel organi za­ fi c dri t h at we i t as formul atioshen ofdiherd indrideedving.devotDurie nherg thentis iadmi tteentdliyonbritoefdriactviinog,n (staoboutpping seconds) r e at theralkirear-vi ng to ehersel frorandsheto checked me. Withonanthexte inetnded glaofncethe(Sdriudnow, in w mi r e nt i o ns v er i n t h e fast lslaonewiwho, seeinslgigherhtlyi,ndimakicatinng,g tandhat shethereby wanteoffd etorinovertg, aake,gaplefot rherher.outTheby n g down switcohusbetfromweenwitthhien tpaperwork andrms devot instgoffutlheatwork tentioAln ltyo's drihandsvingwerewas obvi h e car i n t e not j u ng lookthdianksrectetod tathethfaste mi-larrorne driandverthbye roadraisiahead. Once itdoion twinhgenbutdow fastallaheisneo gthAlhtellyionwaved n g her hande a t e mporal l y ext e nded gest u re maki n g an observabl gestdrivuerrebehiof gratnd6 it(sueede Katorieznt, ed toonthethrhyte timhmingofofglgestancesures)bei. nAlglyused's gratbyituthdee recogni orway, anmanoeuvri act and response us(Rafftheatl,zdries aving is notactallona thGoffe motmanesque ng amongthatstremirangersnds Duringzatthieontimofethwhen Alorway, ly stosheps readi ngngherane-mai ls, aasblparte actofionth-e soci[over­al organi e mot i s doi account tmerel aking]y ?[c-ruiinsicont rastongtothwhie micdhdltheelarestne.8 ofOvertaki her drinvginisgknown could beby compet said toebent n g] al drimentversin asthata atperitemptod ofs canincreased achieizve­ed succeedriorsk faiforl. alItlisin, volrelavtededIandy, a hiit gishlany moral Still 3

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and often emotive action on the motorway, since success and failure are involved, which requires additional care (Jayyusi, 1984; Katz, 1 999). In a contra-flow system the car is being put into the face of oncoming traffic; on a motorway a gap has to be found in the fast(er) lane. If overtaking is done without care by either the overtaker or the overtaken or the gap-offerer it produces a 'cut-off' for one or the other driver (and for the righteous rage that follows see Katz, 1 999). The speed of the car in relation to the vehicles ahead and in parallel lanes requires monitoring and adjusting. Alongside this the path of the vehicle needs to be altered to get in and out of the gap in the fast lane. [Overtaking] like dialogue in talk has its opening sequences between the parties, through the indicator as a request, the gap as an offering, the pull out, the slow motion moment of passing the other vehicle, pulling back in and potentially thanking the gap-offerer. It is hopefully becoming apparent in describing a short actual episode of driving like this in detail that driving can be decomposed into multiple accountable, locally identifiable and morally charged actions (e.g. overtaking, cruising, slowing down, exiting, speeding, cut-offs, blind-siding) which require their reflex­ ive use in relation to time-bound spaces to maintain the endogenous production of motorway traffic. In the initiation of moral (and legal) inquiries as to whether someone was driving without due care and atten­ tion it is the particulars of the situated actions that are analysed and morally assessed on the motorway rather than driving in general (Jayyusi, 1 984; Pollner, 1 987). In accomplishing her multi-tasking without accident Ally is thus analysing the emerging details of the motorway traffic (the sweep of her hand toward the road ahead) to find spaces in which to do her office work. The motorway is a form of road supportive of cruising in a manner that city centre streets, suburban cul-de-sacs and un-metalled forest roads are not. While the motorway is a place that regularly produces conditions for cruising, cruising, since it is easy driving, does not fully occupy competent drivers such as Ally. She would not be a competent driver if she could not do [cruising] with this relative ease. After all, would it not be peculiar to cruise the motorway attentively unless this meant that you were driving this way in order to gaze at the scenery and sites (which means again that you are attending to the landscape as well)? The driver is always a driver in traffic and thus cannot rely on the motorway as a place in which to sit as some individualized consciousness perceiving a static environment; drivers are part of traffic which produces them and, at the same time, they have to analyse the traffic to find it to be normal free-flowing, and to see such a thing not as a momentary event but as a recognizable territory, large enough to provide the occasion for cruising at high speeds. Once drivers have estab­ lished that they are in a setting in which they can cruise, and they do then cruise, they can j ustifiably let their concentration shift to other things. For some drivers this may be daydreaming, for the car-based company employee, it will almost always be their work. In summary though, if a driver can find a space in the traffic for cruising then he or she has also found a

Laurier

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safe space for work, and h i s o r her assessment of risk i s not simply correlated with the speed of a vehicle. What is perhaps less obvious is that cruising has a steady and stable speed which the driver produces and maintains in relation to the traffic flow and the kind of road they are on.9 When Ally finds herself approaching another vehicle also cruising in the middle lane (the emerging problem which occasions her overtaking) then this happens because her cruising is set by herself at a particular speed. She could slow down to the pace of the vehicle in front, yet there is a preference to avoid doing so on the motorway, a preference to maintain the particular speed that is your speed. For Ally, an avowedly 'fast driver' lO this was around 85 mph (while on the motorway she checked her speedometer intermittently to see if she was far above or below it). As Ryave and Schenkein ( 1974) note with respect to walking, by slowing down your movement and falling into step behind a pedestrian in front, the appearance is produced of 'following' the other. On the motorway if one stays in lane and slows down on approaching another vehicle, then, if the situation continues, it can be seen as sitting on the tail of the other or, worse, of tailgating. l l Given that Ally selects a speed appropriate to traffic flow and road type, and given, second, that Ally is a fast driver, she ought never to approach other drivers like her. If she is driving as a driver of her kind, the regular drivers that she catches up on are 'slow' drivers. If appropriate speeds are j udged in relation to category of road as setting, categorization of one's driving style (e.g. fast, careful, average, in a hurry) then speed, as Latour remarks of space and time, is: . . . not the Newtonian sensoria in which events and planets fall along ellipses. But they are not, either, the forms of our perception, the u niversal a prioris that our mind has to use in order to frame or accommodate the multiplicity of beings and entities. Far from being primitive terms, they are, on the contrary consequences of the ways in which bodies relate to one another. (Latour, 1 997: 1 76)

If we accept that drivers, in using a motorway for cruising along its lanes have a speed that is theirs, and at others times use 'slow' or 'fast' as rela­ tional assessments of the way their car relates to other cars, then we can begin to critique the theorists who constantly write of the desire for speed as if it were simply going as fast as anyone possibly can (Michael, 1998; Sachs, 1984; Virilio, 1987). Harvey Sacks shows that traffic is tremendously adaptable to events such as accidents and road repairs and that fast and slow drivers adapt in turn to the traffic in which they find themselves. As he puts it in describing how 'fast / with traffic / slow' are used in and endogenous to traffic across whatever and wherever driving conditions are found without reference to the speedometer: . . . what would other theorists do with it [traffic]? Would they find it tremen­ dously puzzling, i.e. everybody ought to be driving fast, if fast is something

2 72

Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5) that permits, expressions of, say, strength or whatever else? (Sacks, 1992:

440)

Sacks goes on to point out that, when drivers find themselves on empty roads in an unfamiliar country without traffic to j udge by, they suffer from a lack of a sense of what consti tutes fast or slow or average on these roads, and in those sorts of situations may be forced to turn to the speedometer and road signage. The rest of the time drivers, if they are fast drivers, can rely on the traffic around them to produce a relative speed that is faster than the average speed of that traffic. They are always catching up with the car ahead, they are unhappy sitting in the middle of a chain of cars travelling at the average speed, and they are always trying to overtake. They show themselves to be fast drivers by doing so and they are seen to be fast drivers by doing so. Moralizing the Fast and the Slow

Throughout the article I have refrained from assessments of the morality of driving and working on the motorway, which in its refusal is, in a way, an appraisal in itself. Rather than try and work up a superior or more nuanced moral standpoint on the wrongness or rightness of Ally and other car-based workers doing offic e work while driving though, I would like to conclude by turning, albeit briefly, to how the moralizing of speed is accomplished. Drawing on ethnomethodological approaches, particularly Harvey Sacks, Jayyusi ( 1 984) provides an extended examination of morality in action. She emphasizes how potential moral inferences based on 'speed', setting, char­ acter, risk are open to transformation as part of ordinary contests, disagree­ ments and j ustifications. She uses Hell's Angels as a conspicuous example of divergent moral orders, wherein what they do will be analysed by refer­ ence to membership of their order by outside and by themselves. On the motorway, among the non-deviant, slow drivers can class themselves as 'careful drivers', fast drivers categorize slow drivers as 'Sunday drivers', 'caravans' or 'idiots' (if for instance they are sitting in the fast lane). In Sacks's ( 1 992) example, being a fast driver is transformed and used for building membership of the rebellious class of kids that were hot-rodders in the US in the 1960s. Fast driving is open to further transformation since it is given an immoral ascription also which builds hot-rodders up as the kind of troublesome youths who are on the receiving end of the moral j udge­ ments of conventional society and end up attending therapy sessions or being sent to jail. Ally, although an avowedly fast driver, does not belong to the 'morally organized communities' of the Hell's Angels or teenage hot­ rodders, so she cannot use such membership to transform her fast driving according to the conventions of those communities. Fortunately, she is a member of those car-based mobile service workers who, at the time of the research project, were frequently being called 'road warriors'. Just as a business class traveller expects to speed through airport check-ins, conduits and departures, Ally claimed a certain entitlement to travel faster than ordinary motorway users. For her it is her regular workplace and she has 'things to do, places to go'.

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Given that traffic and the arrangement of the motorway into l anes provide for the coexistence of fast, average and slow drivers, and relatedly that such measu res of speeds are used, sometimes disjunctively, in the moral and legal attribution of care or carelessness in driving, how does speed articulate with A l l y's office work? We can begin to visualize how fast drivers become angry about the speed and lane selection of other drivers (e.g. Ally's 'Get out the way') but also how having a speed and keeping to it may conflict with the extra care that doing office work at the same time may require. Being a fast driver and an office worker is a morall y precarious position to attempt to achieve, especially since, as we noted at the outset, driving slowly is the exception to the norm and, unless carefully defended, may lead to career- and character-troubling attributions of slowness in the fast-moving world of business. To make the instructive comparison once more, the business traveller at the airport is the fast traveller, with curtailed check­ in times, short-cuts through the airport, hand luggage only and so on. In closing then, we can speculate on whether we could have a world where business travellers were the slow travellers among us and not just on the motorway. Notes 1 . One distinction of the 'road' is that we no longer share it with other animals, unlike rivers and paths. The road (like the railway) is a depmture poi nt for a socio­ technical development whose current azimuth is the motorway. On the motorway nothing travels under its own locomotion apart from vehicles with combustion engines; even the horse-drawn carriage is banned (though horses, dogs, sheep, cattle and so on can travel inside vehicles as docile passengers or mere cargo). 2. Notoriously, for the purposes of police surveillance and speeding fines it is the number plates and makes of cars that can be photographed by CCTV and 'gatso' speed cameras. However, these cameras are not everywhere. nor are all of them loaded with film and well -travelled drivers get to know these geographies of road surveil lance (Heath et a!., 1 999), so the police are not watching drivers 'unaware' as it were. W hat we will be concerned with here is not how a driver might go about showing what they are up to on the roads to the police or other authorities on the road, or hiding it from them. 3. This is not to deny that there may be occasions when driving is undertaken for pleasure, though this may well be bound up with looking at landscapes (Crang, 1 997; Rojek and U rry, 1 997) or listening to music or conversing with friends. 4. There are work situations on the telephone when there is a simi lar probl em, for example in telebanking where the activities of typing at the keyboard, waiting for the computer to respond and then reading off the screen are implicated in the organization of the conversation (Hughes et a!., 1 999; Tolmie et a!. , 1 998). 5. An excellent study of how a problem comes to be realized in a visual scene can be found in Goodwin ( 1 997). 6. On similar timing issues of gestures in successfully and artfully 'flipping off another driver see Katz ( 1 999). Part of the satisfaction is catching the other driver registering the insult, since drivers get to know when insults are coming through the posi tioning of vehicles (pulling alongside or in front) and can make sure they are looking elsewhere.

2 74

Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4/5)

7. Square brackets are a notation device to indicate a phenomenological or ethno­ methodological suspension of a term's meaning in order to examine what consti­ tutes such a thing. 8. It is under such conditions that, in luxury cars, 'cruise control' can be switched on since driving does not place exacting demands on the driver - it is relatively automatic, requiring that the car be kept in lane and at a safe distance from vehicles ahead. 9. A concise description of the production of freeway traffic through drivers' local driving practices can be found in Chapter 7 of Livingston (1987). 1 0. Ally had selected a sporty car model to drive and in this way 'dressed' herself to display herself as a fast driver. Another of our research participants, Penny, was an avowedly careful driver. She maintained a steady 65 mph, drove a sizeable saloon model and was, as often as not, in the slow lane. 1 1 . In busy single-lane city roads, and of course in traffic jams, at junctions, exit ramps and so on, queues of vehicles are common and quite acceptable. They are not seen as purposefully constructed by drivers behind and can thus be utilized by drivers without being seen as tailgating. References Agar, M.H. ( 1 986) Independents Declared. The Dilemmas of Independent Trucking. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Brown, B .A.T., N. Green and R. Harper (eds) (2002) Wireless World: Social and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age. London: Springer. Crabtree, A. (2000) 'Remarks on the Social Organisation of Space and Place', Journal of Mundane Behaviour 1 : http://www.mundanebehaviour.orglissues/v l n ll crabtree.html. Crang, M. (1997) Cultural Geography. London: Routledge. Davis, F. ( 1950) 'The Cabdriver and His Fare: Facets of a Fleeting Relationship', American Journal of Sociology 45: 1 58--65. De Certeau, M. ( 1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. London: University of Cali­ fornia Press. Esbjornsson, M. and O. Juhlin (2002) Placememo - Supporting Mobile Articulation in a Vast Working Area through Position-based Information. Stockholm: Interactive Institute, Mobility Studio. Evergeti, V. (2003) 'Paper Mail and the Social Organisation of Space', pp. 70-86 in T. Lask (ed.) Constructions sociales de l'espace: les territoires de l'anthropologie de La communication. Liege: Les E ditions de l'Universite de Liege. Garfinkel, H. (2002) Ethnomethodology� Program, Working Out Durkheim� Aphorism. New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Goffman, E. (1956) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Edinburgh: Edin­ burgh University Press. Goodwin, C. (1997) 'Transparent Vision', pp. 370-404 in E. Ochs, E.A. Schegloff and S.A. Thompson (ed.) Interaction and Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, c., 1. Hindmarsh and P. Luff (1999) 'Interaction in Isolation: The Dislocated World of the London Underground Train Driver', Sociology 33: 555-75.

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Hetherington, K. ( 1 997) The Badlands of Modernity. London: Routledge. Hollowel l , P.G . ( 1 968) The LOfT) Drirer. London: B.ou tledge and Kegan Paul . H ughes, J . , J . O'Brien, D . Randall, M . Rouncefield and P. Tol mie ( 1 999) 'Virtual Organisations and the C ustomer: How "Virt ual Organisat ions" Deal 'I"ith " Real" Customers', Lancaster U n i versity, available online: http://\\ \\O'l".comp. lancs.ac .uk/ sociology/VSOC/YorkPaper.html. H utchins, E. ( 1 995) Cognition in Ihe Wild. London: M IT Press. I keya, N. (2003) 'Pract ical M anagement of Mobility: The Case of t he E mergencv Medical System', Environment and Planning: A 35(9): 1 547-64. J ayyusi, L. ( 1 984) Categorization alld the Moral Order. London: Routledge and Kegan Pau l . Juhlin, O . (200 1 ) 'Traffic Behaviour a s Social I nteraction - I mplications for t he Design of A rt i ficial Drivers', pp. 1 9-38 in H . G l i me l l and O. Juhlin (eds) The Social Production a/ Tech nology : On Ihe £reryday Life o/ Things. Goteburg, Sweden: B A S. J uhlin, O. and D . N . Vesterlind (2002) 'Bus Driver Tal k - C urrent Pract ice and Fu ture Communicat ion Support', available online at h tl p:llllo'l"\l".sts.gu.se/roadta l k . htm l . Katz, J . ( 1 999) HOlC Emo/ions Work. London: U n iversity o f Chi cago Press. Kawatoko, Y. and N. Ueno (2003) "Technologies Making Space Visible', Enl'iroll­ Illen/ and Planning A 35(9): 1 529--45. Latour, B. ( 1 997) 'Trains of Thought : Piaget, Formal ism and the Fifth Di mension',

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i s Research Fel l o w at t h e Depart m ent of Geography and Geomant s, worki Universing tiyn ofcars,Glasgow. Heogyhasandcarriurban ed outliresearch on socity ainl isuburbi nteractaio,in,chuman-ani t e chnol f e , communi mESRCal relaftunded ions andstudywayfiof ncafesding andwithcimaps. Hiinscontcurrentem­ research project i s an v i l l i f e porary cities. Eric Laurier

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226-1

o n alilolllobilt'�. Fnmn:' 20 1 o n car as 'rwed ' 6 1 011 C i lrpen D ::; 22;) 011 fet'l of Cdr 2:n (In i n k rin!"s o f {'€Irs 2 1 1 - 1 2 and Lt'feb\Te 208

Il,·th% llies Z02. 2m

�t' rniotit" w r i t i ngs P)3. 202. 2 1 - 1 I)alkrit'� :12. :1:� Balldril lard. Jean oil ullllJiguolis Ilatuw of HLitolllO i J i l e 9 oll coliap:-.e of clas:-, idenlit it's l aa

Oil dri\-ing in L':-i :17

011 illkriors ofcar:-; 2 1 1 - 1 2

�H h allt agt'� 6;)

IIwaning J:-'W

I.e S.rstl';me rips IIhjels 202

-Iujj;,rlit>rtlllschawkler (im'itat ioll

Models :\ and B I S

:-'t'lllintic \\Ti l i ng::-, I l)K 2 1 -1.

as �onic: t'llwlope 2·1· "/-8

Oil space and t i llw 206

dwral"l'�I-). and 6,=)

('anonica I 6-;-

",emiolil' <.Illaly:-:is (If dt'si/!Il 202

as ...;!alus ",ymhol 1 70

dwir object 6()--;hUIII
I h \"I-'t' age:-; of (). I ()9-9;,)

and rt'al i �1ll Go 'socializing' 07

�ee 0/.\0 cars

L� c u l t u re I i i

'\utolllObilc :\s..;ocialioll ( :\ . \ ) 1 ;)7 ault lm( ) " i l i t �· i:!:-i 'hybrid a:-o�t:llJ"lage' I :L 1 02 :,ee II/SO (',H-drin--'r h �- I)\"ids:

",tilllulus i n forllll.ltion ()o rait-'Iln' c>:t (d

:\�Iidta. Michel 1 7-;:\1 (artificial inte-lI i�e-II(T) ,=) I ·\ICC ( :\utoll(lIllOU� I nlt-' I l igelit

hybridil�

Cru i",e- Conlrol) R9

alld nalional idt'llti l �' see natiollal idt' l l t i t � . and
ai rports I ,:)2. I. S:� \ I herl>ell. '1. 8 1 . 8 1

IIIW'flleiflt' :tlllu/1/o";! :teillif/�

( l-1./).

Lerman
\ Illl-'rintllizati oll 7 . ];-H). I :i l . U2 \ n g lo-Cerrll
011

":'(lund :2 1-8-9

1111 .... ymbolislll of car -; 1111 t a i l -lin,.:. plWI10llWII01l 2( )3

Baumall. Zygmullt 32. 3R W). 2;')2 Beck",ann. J i > r� :1. 1 1 . 81 - 1 00

Beck. L Iridl I S Be��. D", id 2B

Bellah. Boherl I 'J:l Belljamin. \, 'alter 2.,)·� Bellz Cmporatioll 1 28 Ber�..... on. l'h'llri 1 7 Bt'rl i n .-\ u t o �h( l\\, ( 1 928) 1 2:�-·1.

;-.;elf-t".\ punsion of 2;')-7. :{6

1 26. 1 :1 1 . 1 :12. Ll8

sOl"io-el"olloll1i<: effects g:)

l3erlill \ l l I o �lro'" ( 1 9:16) LlB

tlnd sound see sound, and

Berlllall. I l ar>h,,11 Z(lO

allltlI1H I I ) i l i t �

s�-sklll see �ysklll of ilultlllll d )i l i t�·

B i l l i�. I I . 1 0 1 . 1 0,. I I I . 1 1 2 B i rlilillJ.!halil C"'1l11"t' for

tt�l"Ill i IlOlo��' 1 -2.

( :( Illklilporary C u l t IIral :--;l l I di t'�

and l i IlW-SPiH"t' 2. 27. :2B-:1 1
-llItllll/llrir/' IlJdllstrit's I :l.=) A I Jtolllol i r e Prodllct...; :\ssot ·iakd I .t d I.)� \ u t onolllou:-, 11llt' l I i gelll Crui:w COlllrol l \ I C C I WI

l il�. I BS 1,lack:.... . sHI)("ullun� 1 <)0- 1 B \ I \\ ' " a r 1 '12 :{ :'t-'ri,':-' 2;{2

Illntor l'� d�'kar Ir�'hrid :H

I)( )d�'

Sf>f'

human hod�

Bolan. 'Ian' ! () B ( l I I �'\\ ' O(fd music ( I nd i a ) 1 1 7 Bnltall4i. I . u e · 2()9, 2 1 1 . 2 1 -1

280

Theory, Culture & Society

Bond, James 106 Bourdieu, Pierre consumption theory 6, 1 70, 171--6, 179--80 Distinction 6, 1 7 1 o n gender 1 7 4 habitus concept 1 12 bourgeoisie (middle classes) 172, 174, 175, 181 French 199 brainpower, replacement of horsepower 91 Brazil, road fatalities 4 Britain American influences 130 automobile, feminization of 175 car cultures 5, 6 car magazines 122 countryside, English I I I driving regulations 6 English Heritage 161 'faithscape' (England) 5, 109 Germany contrasted 122 Highway Law, English ( 1835) 4 motoring in 104--6 symbols, cars as 107 post-Second World War period 176 road fatalities 4 British motoring 104--6 symbols, cars as 107 Brooks, Tony 158 Brown, J. F. 65 Buick (car) 178, 183 Sul/ill (film) 15 Bull, Michael 9, 1 1 7, 242-59 Burton, Richard 2 1 bus, a s 'travelling incarceration' 44-5 Butler, J. 1 12

Cl motor cycle/car hybrid (BMW) 34 Cabriolet micro-car 34 Cadillac car 175, 176, 178, 179, 181, 183 El Dorado 188 Caine, Michael 105 Callon, Michel 68, 222 cameras, roadside 21 Camus, Albert 2 1 capitalism 62, 181 car as 'avatar of mobility' 83 and capitalism 62 as 'Leading-Object' 61, 204 as 'need' 62 car crashes 14, IS, 16 car cultures 229 diversity 5-12 national identity ) ]3, 234 overlooked dimensions 222 Car Cultures (D. M iller) 189, 190 car-dependency 97 car-driver hybrids 81, 82, 87, 88 auto-pilots, replacement of car-drivers 1 1 crashed 95 as cyborgs 86 description 62 exoskeletons 1 1 6 a s immobiles 92 as immutable mobiles 91, 92

network/Euclidean space 92, 95 second-nature procedures 1 1 3 software 10-12 see also driver-car; hybridity car magazines 123 in Britain 122 car-only environments 30 car ownership France (post-World War Two) 201 growth of62 in India 1 14, 1 15-16 as status symbol 173 subterranean effect 204 car races 15, 199 car radios 9, 1 17, 245 cars in 1920s and 1930s 122 being (in) 227-9 as body extensions 47 and contempt 207-13 cultures, diversity of 5-12 de-privatization 34 electric 32, 33, 174 family 34, 229-33 as feature of everyday life 45--6 feeling of 224--6 flexibility of 2, 28 functional, mass-produced 6 gas 174 globalization of 5 luxury 6, 173-4, 228 manufacture of I , 25 mass production 1, 173, 174, 176 micro 34 and multi-tasking 8-9, 1 1 , 265-9 and nations 6, 12 1-44 national feelings 233-42 and phenomenology 48, 49 retail prices (interwar years) 135 small, and national motoring cultures 124, 125, 133--6 steel and petroleum 17, 27, 31, 36 as symbols 107 see also automobile; car; car crashes; car cultures, diversity; car-only environments; car ownership; car races; car sharing schemes; car system car sharing schemes 34 car system 1-2 cassette desk 246 Castells, Manuel 82 CB radio 19-20 celebrities, public deaths of 16 chair object, and affordance concept 66-7 chases 14-17 Chaucer, Geoffrey, death of 160 Chevrolet car 6, 175, 178, 181 Chevy Suburban 238 Chicago Times Herald, car races organized by 15 child car seats 227, 230 China road fatalities 4 traffic safety law 19 Chrysler 183 Citroen 109, 1 1 6, 199, 201 C3 232 DS 202, 225

Citroen, Andre 199 city autoroutes through 205 driving in 8, 41-59, 1 1 4 changing nature o f driving 48-52 non-representational aspects 43 panoptic view of 262 walking in 8, 19 'Walking in the City' (Practice of Everyday Life, M. de Certeau) 42-5 Civilizing Process (N. Elias) 5 Clarkson, Jeremy 104 class distinction theory 17 1--6 see also bourgeoisie (middle classes) Collet, Jean 2 16 collisions see traffic accidents communication (automobile), and driver's two bodies 12-14, 20 commuting, ennui of 206 complexity (non-linear systems, formulations) 27, 33, 36 computer games 20-1 congestion, traffic 2, 229 consumerism 7, 172 consumption theory (P. Bourdieu) 6, 170, 1 71--6, 1 79--80 containment, defined 109 contempt, and cars 207-13 Convoy (film) 20 Cortina, Ford 106 Costall, Alan 67 Coupland, David 152 Coward, Noel 105 craft production 1 7 1-6 crashed hybrids, as mutable immobiles 94 crashes see traffic accidents Crash (J. G. Ballard) 16, 2 1 Cuba, car cultures 234 culture, and nature 232 'cybercar' 229 cyber-traveller 85 'cyborg', notion of 20 car-driver hybrid as cyborg 86 as myth 62, 97 quasi-biological car as cyborg 232 Daimler-Benz 123, 128 Daimler, Gottlieb 129 Daimler Motor Corporation 128 Dant, Tim 13, 20, 61-79 daring drivers 1 5 D A S (Driver Assistance Systems) 87 Davies, G. 155 Dean, James 16 deaths, road accident 2, 3, 18-19 celebrities 16 countries, rates in 4-5 France 4, 209 Debord, Guy 198, 204-5, 206 on symbolism of car 7 de Certeau, Michel 8, 210, 2 l l on anthropological spaces 49 on city planning 7 on everyday life 47 on humanism 54 Pmctice of Everyday Life 41--6, 53

Index 1)11 rail tra\·e1 ;)2. 26 1

Dum·an. Isadora 1 6

on walking .19 Deleuze. Gille, 1 7� 1 8. �'l

Durkheilll. Elllile 1 7

De my, Ja("que:o; 2 1 � Oeptforu, on-site ("ar pooling seryice �4

dt'"sign of cars. semiotic analysis 202.

21-+ 'de:-; ign i n motion' 2:�;) desk-work .�ee office work. on mCltorway

·flexible ;..; p ecialization · 1 86 ' Hipping off" 268. 27:�

Dupont. Pierre 1 49 . L::;8

Huiditl 2�.'). 2.')�

Earl. Harvel 1 7 �. 1 7i. 1 78. 18.'1 Edens,or. Tim 8 on lll ot orw<:IY ("ar culture..; l22

Oil national idelltit�.. ;1 . 1 0 1 -20. 12:3

on national motoring styles 2;t3-,�

on sociology 1 2 1

diesel :t1

Elias. Norbel1 -l, �. 1 8

digital communications 1 0- 1 1

elite and ma:-;.s l:ulture. <:ol lap:-;.t of

(M.

B ake r) 1 60

190

DriH'r Assistance Systems (DAS) 87

drin " H..:ar 6 ] -79 afforuances conct'"pt .�ee affordance

em/mdied 1:1, 7 1 -1-

as hl brid a"emblage I�. 26. 1 02

1l1O/Jility of 69 see ulso car-driver hybrids

E I Salvador. road fatalities 4

car t l Ph 1 09. 1 1 6. 1 99 . 2 01 . 2:l.'; ratal iti es ·k 209 nwtllrways nf. a:-;. Ilon.piaces 1 ;)4

9. 269

pn:-.t-war J 97-2 1 9

E M L lit igation again,t ( 1 '179) 1 60 emotions aulollloti\·c 22 1 -A2 be i ng (in) ear 227�9 Lunil�· cars 229-:t� reeling ear 224-{j kindesthelic pltasures. ("ar rides

clriH'rs

national feelings on car:-:. 2:1�-+2

daring l :1

t' \'I:'> ryday I )IW ralil lil S I l f 2 1 2- I :i rae i n g 1 6. 1 06

defined

22�-{j

driving as emotional t'xperience ·�I

eillotional ' in H�stme nt s' 228. 229.

n6

English Heritage. policy for

161

as spectators 2·+8

enh<1hitation. defined 1 1 2

two bodies. and <:Iutomobile

enllui. commuting 206

communication 1 2- 1 4. 20 WIlllwn 1 :� . .� 7. 1 7- L 1 73)--6. l B2-:·�

t'rgol1olllic:-;. 1 0. ;:)0 . .-1]

N o rwegi <:l n 1 90

set' fllso c<:I r- J rivc r hyurids: cars:

dri\'er-car: driver-tn-driver inkrat"lion. amoiguity: driving d riyn-to- d ri v4::1' interaction. alllbi�uity ��7 dri\'in�

<:Ibn lad

1 10 changing nature of 48-;'2 (·ity. in s�e cily. dri\'ing in dan�4:: rous nature of 209
a n d st'" ll sua l ity - 1·6--7

singlt�-pt'"r:-:(,n 26-�

we 0/.\0 drin"I"s,; driyer-to-t!ri\'er

intt'I"i. lt'tion. <:IllIbigl.lity; drivinl! lJt'liJy iour dri\·ing bf"hariour ·+7 'error-free' . �

Drurl. lall 106. I t:\

S4)(" il)-eu I t ural!:"'()(" i o-ec on l I III i l·

change, 200

as world-leader in car de�igl1/pJ"(ldUl"liOIl .1 22. 1 99 �ee u/.\(} .-\lIgf. Marc: nn non-plan· .... Fmnkfurt School Oil t'lllotional ' inrestmenb' 228 and Fordislll 1 80-.:�

un llIass COn:-illlllptioll (·tdturt'" 1 10 l11a:-;:-; pnJ4.1uctilln t he(lry J 8()-:�

p:-ieudn- i ndiyiduality t heo ri e:-:. 6

freedom of car travel 28. 1 7 l . 20ft French COl/nedioTl (fi l m ) ]. :::; F re ud i a n i s m -�.�

ruel ,,· , te m, .'12. :B

E-T<1xi :-;y.-; It'"rn. D u b l in .q/ �

Eucl ide an sp<:lce. car-drivt'J" hybrids 92, %

·j-'ya:-;i\·t' t' n :� ryday n e� s" ( M . Morri:-;) -1·:1 e\'eryd<:lY dri\·ing. pelformillg 1 1 1 - 1 7

e \·e n,.! a,· l i ft"

car as feature of .f;i-O

'gall() pin� It'chnOl'rdtizatinll' ;):1 gambling. <.Ind dri\·ing 2 1 Gartman. D . 6-7. J 69-9;,

Caryey. Pauline I.:i. 1 90 gas ears 1 7-1 Gaurun. :\ . 200

Gemeinsch/�/iICesellsh(�/i 20 7

�ender i:-;.sues I :·t :� 7 . J '·k ] 7;)�.

l11otnl'ways 262-:3

of Ereryday LI}f. ( M . de (erteau)

spe also Prw:tiu

E'reryduy L{ie in the .t1()dem fJ'orld ( H . LerebITe) 207

l B2�:i Ceneml Motors ( C M ) 1 7;). 1 78. 1 79.

18:1

gt'()denJ()�raphi('s. titne -:-ip act' '+o gt'olllt't ril' spact's 7. 203). 2 1 1 �en-p();..; i li()lling: :-;ystt'IIIS 1 0

t'"xitauility 88

Gt'l"Ilwny

eye-l·ontal"l ;iO

.·\ ulotJailn. building of 1 2 2 autollloti\·e tradition. alld

' raithsc apc' (England) 0. 109

�Iercerb 6.

ramill car, �·L 229-:t>

Fast (wd fhe Furiolls (film) l .-1

road accident

126. I :l t . 1 :12. 1 :18

Berlin ..lilt" Sh"" (l Y:'16) US Rritain l·unt ras!l:'d 122

machines :·n

lIlotorc y cle LIse

1 2(1

�azislll .\ee � az i rt'l!i lll t-'

Featlier:-;tont:' . .\1. 1-2·1 feminism. backlash against 1 90

I\'eilllar Republic 1 2:1. 1 28

FeliX ROllges (G. Si nlt'llon) 2 1 ,-)

gt'stu l"e:"' 1 2

Fi,P B"dies (J. (r�eill) 2 0

G i b:-;oll. James

'fi el d of safe tran-·r. concept of 6:3 Fin� Dollar Da�' progralll

1 2-I-{)

Bnlin �lIt" :o'h"" ( 1 923) 1 2.i-l.

fatalities. road accident set> deaths. fax

ear ownership 201

2:10

prolt'<:Iing post-war IJuilJing:-;

skilled 64

Ort- ,\i rport ( Pa ri ,) I �2

Pari:"'. traHi(" in 7

d ri v i ng 227. 228 eillbodied driver-car l : L 7 1 -4

l.i. 226. 221

<.IS a�'�nts 6;)

four Sea�ons sen·icc area l ()O-J France

drin�r intelligence 88

uuttlpilclts, rt'"pl<.H.. 't'mcnt uy I ] , 16. 90

and frankrurt Sch",,1 1 80�:i P(I�tlll()derni;..;m and ptlst- F41f( l i s lll

1 7.:::;

t'm/JOdieJ dispositions. and feel ing of

C ind y

1 9·19 .'10

emails. working with whilst driving

dnlllt'"stic spact'" 25,-)

Donatt'lli.

"r

formula One Grand Prix race:-; 1 .-1

distinction ]87

Dixi. the 1 26 . 1 :,8 DKI\' 1 26

brochure

to nli :-;. m i I7-8-L IR::;-6

Model T I :,0. I� l. l.'l.'i. 1 72. l i-L

Ehrenburg. Ilya 2 1 � electric cars :�2. :tt 1 74

Distinctio" (P. Bouruieu) 6, 1 7 1

al.ltobi4)g:raphy 1 ."17

I �O. 1 87_ 1 88. 1 92

�iana. Prince:-.s of Walt's 16. l 6 1

Di.'c"rerillg M I

Ford. Ht'nry -k L1. 1 7 1

Ford :\-intor Company

Ed,el ear 1 8-l

Dhen. Hobert 2 1 S

Diken. B. 8 1 . 84

281

( l':-O;)

flexibility of nus 2 . 28. 1 87

1 77

·ghost in tht' machinp' :�n

l-

nil aff()nlanct'� 20. 6.:::; . 66 011 dri\-ing l"olllplexilit'"� I :�

282

Theory, Culture & Society

Gibson, James J. (continued) on driving as psychological process 64 on 'field of safe travel' 63 on overtaking 72 Gilroy, Paul 190, 228, 230, 255 Gladwell, M. 33 globalization 1 18 car industry 25 disembedding effects 108 Godard, Jean-Luc 206 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 17 Gone in 60 Seconds (film) 15 Gorz, Andre 198, 209, 2 1 1 , 214 Gottdiener, M . 153 GPS-based navigation systems 89, 229 Granada, Ford 106 Graves-Brown, P. 1 16 Great Depression (1930s) 176 group driving 264 (R. Bellah) 193 habituationlhabitual performance 1 12 habitus concept (Bourdieu) 1 12 Hall, Stuart 187 halo of avoidance. and 'lines of clearance' 63 Hanomag, the 126, 138 Haraway, D. 62 Harrison, P. 1 12 Hauser, Heinrich 136 Hawken, P. 33 Hebdige, Dick 187, 188 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 45, 170 Hell's Angels 272 Henry, Michel 44 Hetherington, Kevin 146 Hidden Persuaders (Y. Packard) 184 Hiding in the Light (D. Hebdige) 188 Highway Code 5, 19, 158, 159, 207 Highway Law, English (1835) 4 highways 208--9 Hindoustani Motors' Ambassador, status symbol (India) 1 15, 1 1 6 hitch-hiking, in Poland 1 13 Hitler, Adolf 122, 123, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138 Hochschild, Arlie 223, 226, 23 1 Horkheimer, Max 180 horn, use of (India) 1 14 horsepower tax 135"'{) hot rodders, United States 189 Hot Rod magazine (US) 123 hub airports 152 human body car as extension of 47, 228 human/object assemblage, and affordance 66, 69 other species distinguished 66 vulnerability 4 humanism de Certeau on 54 residual 44 human/object assemblage, affordance concept 66, 69 Husserl, Edmund Gustav Albrecht 51 H utchby, Ian 6s"'{)

Habits of the Heart

hybridity 10, I I , 13 and accident reconstruction 90 Actor-Network Theory (ANT) 62, 67, 68, 69, 70 and assistance 87-8 avatar of88 car-driver hybrid, notion of see car-driver hybrids crashed hybrids 94 definition of hybrid 62 history of concept 237 lady's slipper hybrids 86 'motile hybrid' 81, 82 and motility 85-90 paper-hybrids 93 road hybrids 88 and safety 82 'street-hybridity' 87 wolf-hybrids 86 hybridization 235 independence 89 isolation 89 process of 88, 89 merging 86 hydrogen fuel cells 33, 35, 37 'hypercar', ultra-light 34 Hypermini, Nissan 34 hypermobile society 97 iconic cars 103-8 leT (information and communication technologies) 35 Ihde, D. 31 I love the 1970s (TV series) 1 07 immobiles, hybrids as 92 immobility, and mobility 81, 85 'immutable mobiles' 82, 9 1 , 92, 93, 94, 96 inability to drive 230 independence, and hybridization 89 India car cultures 5, 6, 234 car ownership as luxury in 1 14, 1 1 5--16 horn, use of 1 1 4 motorscape 1 1 0-- 1 1 regulation o f roads, lack o f 6 , 1 14, US

roadside notices 1 1 3 second nature procedures 1 1 5 T-junctions, rule o f biggest 1 14 India Tyres 157 inertia and motion 92 and speed 84 infant car seats 227, 230 information and communication technologies (IC1') 35 Inglis, D. 7, 197-219 In Search of England (H. V. Morton) III 1nsolent Chariots (J. Keats) 184 Inspector Morse 106 instincts 225 intelligence, and assistance 87 Intelligent Speed Control 9 1 intelligent traffic 89 Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) 35, 86, 88 lnternet galaxy 35

'invented tradition', concept of 129 isolation, and hybridization 89 I-Spy books 1 1 1 Italian Job (film) 105 ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) 35, 86, 88 Jaguar 106 Jain, Sarah Lochlann 231 Jakie, J. A . 46 Jamaica, car cultures 234 Japan, road fatalities 4 Jayyusi, L. 272 Jeanneret, Charles-Edouard (Le Corbusier) 7, 198, 200, 235 John Laing and Sons Limited (engineering contractor) 155, 156 John, Owen 130--1 , 132 journalism, automotive 123 journey limes, calculation 2 Katz, Jack 47-
(R. Dhery) 2 1 5 Ladas, Russian 105 lady's slipper hybrids 86 landscapes Ml motonvay 161 motonvays as dominant feature 16 and places 146 La Salle car 6, 175 La societe du spectacle (G. Debord) 205 Latour, Bruno on Actor-Network Theory 67 on anthromorphism 88 on Auge 151 on car-driver hybrids 91-2 on humanism 54, 70 on ·immutable mobiles' 82, 96 on motonvay systems 262 on space and time 271 on speed bumps 71 La Traversee du Luxembourg

(M. Auge) 147 Laurier, Eric 8--9, 262-77 Law, John 92, 93, 222 ·Leading-Object', car as 61, 204 'lean production' 186 Le Corbusier 7, 198, 200, 235 Lefebvre, Henri 198, 204, 205 and Barthes 208 on car as "need' 61 on driving conditions 209 on everyday life 210 Everyday Life in the Modern World

207 on Medeau-Ponty 2 J 4 o n social status 208 on space 206 on symbolism of car 7

In de.).; Lt'ilmiz. C()ftfri(�d \'fillwllll 1 7

(l\\"Iwr:-:.hip Ilf 1 2:3

I,e Srslrrne rtf's o/Jjels (.I , Bi.ludri l lard)

quality of 1 28

1.Rllwf

1ll()t\lr:-:.n t I 1e:-:'. nati(H1ul .')--(). 108- 1 1 . 121

motor hllJrinp: 1 1 1

\Iel"l ·t:'dt':-' Smart Car ,3- �

202

lh'(/IWf!.� -I ( h i m ) t 3)

\iotor \ 't'hidt' .\ir Pollution and

i\1erleau-I\lTlty. j\'laurin'

(""Inri .\r-I ( L 5) 1 1 %.';) HI:;

Danl on n

I .t'wi l l . hurl ()S

l ,exu:-:. I� 200. udH'rti ... illg call1pai�1l 221 /.{ii' tll lhe A litufll ull;II' (I. Ehrel1bur�d

283

on t'lIIbmlillwllt of human llt'ill� 72

.1/otOrll·(/.\ · (Carlton Tt'It'\'i:-:.ion) 1 6 !

l .eldI\Tt' Oil 2 1 -1

l/l/lllfU'a.l" elide 1 ,")6. 1 ,1 -;-

011 pt:'l"t " t'ption 7 1 . 7:i. 74-

1l\()I( tnfa�":-:.

lifl' Illt'tap!lOr:-:. - �:-

." I I
(")"ui:-:.ing: on 269-72

lif�,:'ty lt· ('hoin-' 1 87

Ilwtaph()r:-:.

fa:,t and :,I( )\\". morality of 2 72-:l

21�

eremlar l iCe 261-.1

'1 1 see M I Illo\ol"\\"ay

l i Ce ·I �

l i mou:,irlt:'. :,trt'\('h 1 06 lil1t'arlrlOlI-lillear t h i n k i n� :"n

·ru:-:.hing: :-:.tand�t i l ! · a�

tHulti -tct:-:.kill/! Oil 8-9. I I . 2()�-9

textual 06

a:-:. ·lloll-pla('t'�· I. 1 - �6, l - 1 7-3):t

'Iint:':-:' of l'1t'arann�' , and halo of

Ihe"lric,,1 1 1 2

Lincoln. the 1 76

u\"uidance ():�

l .i\"inl!stoIL Eric 2(d

lailback ... Oil 2

M C H driye,-, 66

]o('ki l11!-in :� 1 . :t2

IHO\'enwn\. p��"('h( )l o��' of \; ")

M ir·h"e\. \ 1 . 262

",ulii-Ia,ki,,� 8-9. I I . 90. 26�-(J

locomot ion tllok objt'd:-:' a:-:. 6:). 6-�

minn-car:-:. 3-l­

/"/,,

'micI'II-IIIII\'("'I1H:'nt:-:.· 1 ] -l- I .=)

(J.

1 60 �pt'eding on I I

tongut' 6:�

J" k ,m ) 2 1 �

lAlfldllfl-B;rm;fltlha!fl .111110rI('0 )· 1 ,=)6 . L(tlltl()Jj 'j'raIlSpI)rt. Illillorwi.l \ 1111:-:' trip:-:. \. =)6

1H1l:-"i(". li:-:.tt:ning 10 in ('ctr 1 1 7. 2:� I. n�-{)

M i l ler. Dani,·1 1 2 1 -2. 2:12 e"r eu/tures 1 89. 1 90

�lu:-:.:-:.olinj. Bl:'nilo I �,J.

( til t-"thic:-:. \':-, family issue� 229

lhlh,,/, ,!!ie.' ( H . ilarlhr·,) 2m

oil hUlllanit�· of car ;")

'Io()kini 2· 18. 2-1-<)

natiollal idt'll l i t y. and <:Iutoml)b i l i t �· S.

011 :-:.hopping centn':-i l ;):�

lorry-dri\"ing 2(d

1 0 1 -20

mi '1<"r< ,Irike ( 1 98·1) 1 6 1

1 .0:-:' :\IlI!t'le:-:. dOlllinulH't:' of ('ar ill 8

\ \i "i car 1 0· 1. 105

('ar ( ' u l turt-':-:' 1 1: 1

tlri\'i ng: bdul\' ;olll" :-:.tud�· -1,7

'minimum :'t npplng: lO llt:"

I:'Yt'ryda�' driring. peJiorming

Lo\in� ultra-li�h' 'h� percar' :��I

Luhmanll. i\. 2 7

M i x . Tom 1 6

iconic ('<:I/":-:' 1 O:�-8

1l1OIJilt' ofiict'. c a r a� 8-9. 26 1 -7 1

I ,ukt'. Tim 62

t;l 'rhflnis,,/(' ( l ,t' Corbu:-:.ier)

I I I- I �

i l l ' f-i�ld (If s�ft' trayer 6:�

7 . 200

luxury �ood:-:. 1 8 1

('ar, (1. 1 7:1-1. 228

I x'wh. �1. 262 M I Il]()tor\\"a�

mubilt, phollt':-: ' :n

MacnH�h!l:'n. P. 226 Mdlue. Colin 1 00

.I/w/ l1"x (Iilm) I .'; Me",,,·I\. Ni�el 106 Man�fit'ld, Jayne J6 MiJrple�. Enw:-it 1 ,=)6

Marxi,," I �(). 2 0 L 20.; llJa ... �-da... :-:. Illarkt'l I I;)

Ma�:-:.t'y. Dort't-"Il 1 4-,=)

<.1:'

'aratar' of �n

229

:'-iazi regime 1 2�. I :n. J:l(j. J :lR I :1(J and ·pt'oplc·:-:. car' 122. I;1S. J :�7

and imlllobility 8 1 . 8,� and Illlli i 1i ly G.=)

�e e a/so H i t l er. A d o l f

:,;ul..' i ulop:y of 82. 8;1

'nced', c a r i:\:-" 6 1

1ll41i>ilizalil)ll. and IIIllJernizatioll 8:i

negati\'c \"
Model T ( Forrl) 1 30. 1 3 1 . I :��. 1 �2.

net\mrk :-:.pact:'. car-drirer hyLrid:-:. 92

llloderni:-:'lIl/modernity 7. 1 7

l\ewport P<:Ignell. :-:.eryice mea in 1 S<)

I �·L 1 75

:-'t'cond modernity theory

(t.

Beck)

]8 :-:.trt'allllilled af'rO(I�- nalllil'i""ll1 2:n

modernizat ion. and mobilization 8:i Vlo\' I . 92

lI1a:-:.:-:. production

" 'londeo Man ' l 06

indll:-it ri(�:-:. 1 87

nayigal illll-pnlllli:-,t":-' 88

nayigatiull :-oy:-'tem:-:., CPS-based 89.

( l i-i\'n-("i.l r 69

Illa�:-:. indiyiduaii ty. en.l of 1 77-8-1 car� 1 _ 1 7:�. l /-\" 1 76

nature. and culture 2:32

iJlllbiguity of 8-lcar

and car, 6. 1 2 1 -1+ natinnal feel i n g:-:. 2:B-I,2

9+. % Illobi l i l\" 8 1 . 82-·l

lorolo�it '." I -�7. J ;,,=)-61 Watford Cap :-:.en·in' an.-"a 1 60

nalioll�

Illobile:-:.. immutable 82. 9 1 . 92, 9:i.

hi:-:.turit':-:' 7-8. 1 ;")-1-

Ri rllljtl�halll :Vl nl orwuy i:1 Ilt! L�d

:';aC,I\ .-Iel ( L S) ( 1 %6) 1 8;;

u:-:.in� \\hil:-,1 dri\- i n g 9. 1 9 ' llloiJi lt' pri\"a'i�ation ' 30-J

mohile workplace:-:. 26;�-;;

M()l orwa�'/Lolldoll In

'IMce 1 08. 1 09

f\atiollal Traffic and J\, 10tlll" \ ·ehiclt,:-:.

talking lechnlliogie:.; 250-1

air na... h. heg\\ol1h ( 1 989) 1 6 1 Londoll 10 Ynrb h i rt'

Illotllr:-:.capt'�. national S. l Oa- I I

H"" Ii",/e

�e\\Ta:-:.tlt' Nexu:-:. :j.-\-

Yon-fl/uces: Introduction to an -lnlhrofl% g)' I!/Sulwrmudernir.\ l · l7--8. 1 +9 critici:-illl I SO-l non-placf':'

(J.

Tali) 202

�Ioorhou,e. H. F. 1 23. 1 89

and a n t h ropological piacl:' 1 -l-8

.\uge "n �. 8. :,0. 1 +�-�:1. 160. 1 6 1 . 162. 20�

luxtl!'�·. lu:-:.:-o of l S I

.\10ITi:-:.. \1t'agh<:t n -l-:1 . .-l--t

Morri:-:. M i nor S\' L3-t

en\"irolllllt:'nb a:-; 1 -+8-9

proct'.":-:' I 78. 1 8 1

\Iorri... Oxford ('ar. and I n d i a n

1l1Otorway:-:. a:-; 7. 1 -1-6_ 1 - 1·7-51. 1 60

i n hulllan condition 1 80

.tll1trix /fe/O(Uil,d (film) I ;'

:\mba...;... ador I I :)

!\L:lxwel!. �illlon 2 : :W

\Iorl"". H. Y. I I I

Mt�ad. C (�(lr� Hert ,ert ();)

· molill" 1,,·bri,1" 8 1 . 82

,\l,·rn·,Je, 6. U6. U'I. 1 84

1l]Ol i l i l �

geographie:-:. of 1 - t7-.i1

rou tine journey:-:. taking pl(t('1:-' i n 2.'>2-:1 �en'ice area:-:. a:-:. 1 60 \nrdhorf. H e i n z I:�I

and accident rt'con�tru('ti()11 9 0

\01111 .-\frica. car journeys 1 1 7

t'll�illet�rill� 1 2 ;;

Illt'anin� 83)

obje('t�

and Ct'rmall alitollloli\'t� traditioll

and mnbility fl,=)

a:-:. car of a ri...\ 1 w/"(.\('y 1 2 7 (,IIJ'lJraJ -/l(j'io/lal lll(�iJllillg: 1 2·'

<1:-.

""d hdnidil\" 10. I I . 8 +. 8�-90

('u:-:.tomizCllion 100

1 2 1-{,

ll1otor car:-:. see car:'"

· Leadi ng-Objecl·. car a, 6 1 . 20· 1

'inn:'ntnl tn.ul itioll· 1 29

lJO(II( k-ritik 1 :�8

a:-:. locomotion tnols 6;l, 6·�

284

Theory, CuLture & Society

objccts (continued) object/driver uistindion, and 'field of �afe travel" 63

rad ios, ('ar 9. ! 1 7. 2-+;) roggare (S,\- edish males) ] 89

st'nsuality, and driving ,1,6-7

mil tran:-I, de Cerltau on ;')2. 26 ·1

September ] ] 2001 ternJri!-;t attacks,

Sennell, B ;ehard 8. I 11. 2.12

ob:-;Iacies, and negative valence 6,)

railway timetable. clock-time of 29

O·Connell. Sean 1 7 1

rational chnict' Ill()(iel 222

O·Dell. Tom 1 89. 1 90

'rational sOL·ial accounting'. and

office work, Oil molorways 8-9. 261-77

traffic: accident.-; :)

oil supply uncerta inties

fol lowing �:) ,.;eI"VICe areas

catering standards 1 60

Readers ' Digest 1 J ]

opening 1 .19

oj ] embargo ( 1 973) 186

Heagan. Hnnald 1 90

Sheller, M imi l:l.

oil supply uncertainties :13

realism

Shell guides 1 1 1

I I �.

197. 22. 1 -42

Oldsmobile (car) 1 78. 1 8')

and affonlanct' 66

shopping centres 1;)2, L1:). 20;')

olig:ortic.:on, defined 262

new :\;')

signalling 1 2

Olympia car show (London) 1 26. 129, B2

Simca 20' 1

lIerditi"" (j nurnal) 2 1 1

Simenoll, Georges 2 1 .=)

reconstruction rationality 98 'I�ed R,,],],o 'f'Hed Sleph ' (nll'lhi('al

O'Neill. John 20

Opel Corporal ion I � I , B8

trade union acli\·i:-ots. Cdr indusln') 1 O�

Orly A i rpori (Paris) 1�2

t1wori:-ots

Si lll mel. Georg 30. 2� 1 -2

Situati()ni:-;t International 204 Slaler. D. 26

J 77

ol'erlaking 72, 269-70

H egulation

Packard. Vance 184

re:-oidllal humani:-om -�4

Sloan .. A l fred 1 7 � , '] 78. 1 79

Pan hard and Lel'a", ,,. (tirm) 1 99. 2 0 1

resource-ust', environmental 26

slllall cars. and national motoring

Ilupn-hy brids. a s immutable mohiles

Hiegel'. Bernhard 128

Henauli 1 09, 1 16. 1 99. 20 1 . 2:l�

9:1 path-dt' pendenl't' analysis 27. Pearce. Lynn 23--t

� I . :,t�

pt:destrians 29

tolerance to injury 4

road alTiJenls

('ulimes 1 24.

traffic i:lccidt'nt:-;

5"'ilh. A.

road-hybrids 88

Snwh:ey (Jnd the Bru/(lit (hllll) 1 .:::'

road ra�t 1 2. 1 4. 209. 2 [ .1 . 268

social c las.-; see da:-;s di:'.tinction

I"t)uds distinct ioll of 27:) roadside llIainteIlUn{'e L09

st1ciolc)gy

phenome nology. and ('ars 48, ·l9

'road warriors' 272

Phi/o""l,h) 0/ Light

Ho]j,-Ho\('e 1 ·1·. 1 0·1-, 1 0.1 . J 1 6

4�

of alltollloiJi l i t y, emotional 22:� of mohility 82_ R\

Ronin (fillll) 1 .='

Rn� al :\uIDllwl)ile C l u b 1 ;)(

dt'finition 1 46

of science 7 1

sof"nlrt:· SO. S 1

car-driver 1 0- 1 2 . 1 6

Koss. f\.ri:"lin 2 1 ;')

places

theory (SCOT) 68

road sign:-; LOB. 1 ;)7

H egel)

lS8

social studies of t el.." h nolop· (SST) 68

Peugc()I. Armand 1 99 IV. F.

C. H.

social construction of kt"llllology

typicdl rhythm.-; of 266

(G.

1 :l:l-6

HoadChef 1 60

Personal Travel Assistant ( PTA) 37

P" ugeol 1 99. 20 I

12.1,

road condition:-o 1 1 0

Road He:-;earch Lab()rat()r�· 1 ;')6. 1 ;')8

pdroi system :)2

7 1 , 72

·:-Ol1larl· car 229 ':-omart-('ard' technology :14-

see

Perte. Georges 2 1 2, 2 1 :1. 2 1 4 pt�troleum-fuelled curs :H. :12

·sleeping policeman' (:-opeed bump)

driving I 4!1-67

'ru:"hing: stallcJ·; t i l r llIetaphor 8 �

as 'mobile dft-'cts' 1 46

Russia. road fatalities · �

solipsism. mobile 2 1-8-9 S"ln ; l . n. 4,1

sonic bridges, dnd alllomo1JiJity 2-1:1-7

R�·a\"t' . .-\. L. 2 1 1

:-oollic t'nvelol"w, autolllobile as 9,

Poland. hitch-hiking and I l :�

Sacks. H a n t"'�. 2():L 2 7 1 . 272

:-ocJl\·t' I"t'r·s aI1prenti('t' syndn l ll w 8:�

police surveillanct' 27:�

saft'ty

sound. and alltolllO b i l i t y 242-':::' 9

and non-places .�e{' notl-plc.H't's P/o .ltime

(1.

Tal i ) 2 1 6

2-P-8


Pont ia(' (car) 1 78 Popp. Franz Jost:ph 1 :)7

t'ertifi('ak:-o :�

Po)'sche. Ft'rdinand l :)7. J :�9

and hybridilY 32

positi\'t' valence ():,�

"post-car' sysl�m 27. :1'1, .1.1-6

mediated :-;ound 9 Illobilt' :-;01 ipsislll 24R-9

pro\t'l 'IioJ) \e("hJlolng:it':-' 2:-H) Sagan.

Fr,lll\·lli .... e 2 1 ;)

posl-Fonlislll ) 70. 1 87. 1 88. 1 92

Salt'wicz. C. n : �

satellite �!:t:'(l-p():-,itioning .... yslt'ms 1 0

jl():-,t-structuralislII 2 1 0

L�rr ( M . de

Cerleau) 4 1 . 42. H. �:l

Praga. CZt'ch 1 26

2·17-8

schedule jU�l!lillg: 2

sound t h i n k i ll� 2;'):1-7 talking te('hn()lo�it's 2;')0- 1

Sehipper!. Carl Lli

rl'lH.ltll't sIUllliardizati()Il. and F(lHiist

SCOT (sol'ial con:-otructioll of

pSt'lId()-individuaiily theories, FrankfuI1 School 6 PTA ( Personal Tran-:I As:-;istant) 87 public t ransport 2, 29 bus or train as ·travelli ng: incarn:ration' 44-:')

urban :-opat't'. Blm·inl! t h nlugh 2� 1 -:l

Schwarz. A IlI!I,la 1 :·)6

scit'IH't'. sociology of -; I

'progrumllled :o:;ocit'ty' 204-

'warllllh ' alld "chil1' 9. 2,).:; s()und perf()rman(·e:'. 2-�9-.:::'0

kdlllOlog:y) ()8 seande:-osle:-;slless. of ('ar jounwy 29

,('ill 1",1i, 'I. 228

'second IllOdenrity· 18

theor�· ( l .

n!('(�s, car 1 :'), ] 99 radiators 1 2;). 1 :)2

· soundsl"apes· of llIotoring 2:i4 sound t h inking 2.):�-7 :-;pal't'

Beck)

'st'('ond natUl't" pro('edun:�:-o 1 1 2. J 1 :1. 1 1. '; Second \'·odd "·ar. t'r�olloll1ic:-o originating i n .10

quotidian life 2 1 2

s()ulld Iwrf()rlllan('t' 2- 1-9-S0

Schenkei n. 1 . N, 2 1 1

Prt'stoll Bypass I\ll olor\\,ay i ;,)6 ma:-;s production 1 8;')

sCllli(' bridges 2· 1;)-7 .... ollie elln-lope. <wtolllobile a:-o 9_

Plht!l1()(It:rnislll 6, 1 70. 1 8:,)-9;� Pmdin> (�rf;,.eryd(/r

aural. t'xlwrien('c of 9. 246

anthropological .).l) dOlllt'stit' 2.1;') Euclidean 92. 9;')

twometl'ic 7 . 20.� .. 2 1 1

and national identity l OB. 1 09 net work 92

Sedgll iek. M ;ehael 1 22

.nd plate l 'I·�. 146

st'lf-ex pan:-;inn. and (jlltonlOh i l i t �

time .\f'e time-....pan:. and

2�-7. :16 sl·· l llioti(· andly,.;is. ("ar dt'sig:n 202. 2 1 4-

autolilobility urban, IIlm·ing t h rough 2 :') 1 -:)

index Spain. driving ill 1 09

nil e" eryday driring 261

0 1 1 mobi l i t i t' s J 93

spet'(1

Oil hybridit)' 1 0

oil lllolJ i l i ty 82

and inertia 8-l

Thrills (1wl Regressiolls (P. \'(llIen) I ,)

011 IIlOtorways 2 7 1

t i me-space. a nd aulolllob i l i ty 2,

spet'd h u m p ("., .d�eping polin:lllUll') 7 1 . i2 slWt'd ('<J meras 2,:� slwcding ,. 14 - 1 7 on Illot ol"\\'ay I 1

SpOI"l L l i l i l v Yehid"s (SL Vs) :li. 2 :1 1

28-:1 1

Oil national idt"n t i t � ]02 Oil nalurt'/c u i t ure 2:�2 Oil :-it'corH.I -lIalure proct"dun-':-i 1 1 3

("Iock-tilllt' 29

011

instantaneous time 23. 29

Oil ':-,yslelll' o f autolllobi l i t y 2.

Tingrilh (Bedfonl s h i re) resident:-;. Oil

285

s()ciol()�y 1 7 2.'i-:19. 1 69

M I motorway I S;")

tipping poinl:; 27. :B. :16, 2:-{6

\·alt'nct'. ("oncept of 6:1 . 6-t·

T-j llilctiolls. rule of b iggt':-it. India

rart' la, Francisco ·1.9

�IJJiday. Skn:'11 1 28

rt'l :::'atis model 2;�;") \ · it't nam. death lolk ro,hi nasht's - I

stewll system :�2

tongue IIlelapllOr 6,1

\·irilio. Pellli

:-ite�1 and petl"llleUIIl l"ar 1 7 . 27. ::{ I .

Touraillt'. A la i n 20·�

:-iST (social studies of It-'("hnolo��") 68

'station' ( m i ( "ro) cars :l-1-

I I I

Toyota Yaris. adrt'rt ising campaign

:16

Slt'nle. Jonathan 2.)6 stimulus i n fonnati(lIl, and an�lI"( lallcb ('{llll'epl 66 Sli vt>rs. H . -I9

Siradlillg. SkplWIl no

229

Tra lJallts. E<:t:-il Gerlllan ] O,=)

and de Ct-'rleau ,:)2

t rade union radicalislll 1 0.=)

on road accidents :�

t raffic <Jl"cidt'nls :-{-.), 92 ni:1:-ilws 1 ·L I ;"). 16

st rt'<.I m l i llt'(i <1t'J"Cll iynarni(·islll.

dt>alhs ill -,-�. 1 8- 1 9

':-otwd-hybrid ily' 8, S t "tt�art - l ' nlt'11iirkheinl. Mercedes produced i n 1 2:) Sunday drives 2:� 1 . 272

Oil alltollloti \'t' forlll:-i 1 <), on colli:-iion:-i 9-1

traction conlrol ;:; 1

Sl raliwrn. l\'lmiIYIl 2:tl 1Il00iernily 2:n

OJ] c.tmlJiguilY of lIIobility 84-. g,)

011 .-\u�� 1 ;") I

("e1ebri ti t':-i 16 deni a l of: 1. 9·.}.-;:; prt'rention w:-ie
see also accident n-TolIstnwtion

on 1t'1t" ' isJon 1 0 "isu,,1 fields J:l. 6�-� visual :-,ellse ;{O \'i tal ism 1 1

/"()illl re.� .\(I fI S clWl"flllX 1 99

\-olb"agt't1 nI l' 6. 1 2 1. I :H. LEi. 1 :16. n9 I (,rs/JTllII/f dl/nll Technik Call1p<.li�1I

:-iupnlllod(�rn i t y -;. :·�O. 1 - 1-8. 1 ;")0. 20,

t raffic jams 2, 7

SLYs (Sporl L l i l i l \- \dlieil's) :)7. 2:1 I

train. as ·t n.tye l l i n g illt'J("('enltion'

\"ulllt"' rabilit�· of human IJod�

transport policy :�-�-;")

walkillg. and d r i \' i n g B. 1 9 '\\ a l k i n � i l l tilt' C i t y" (Practice Id

Swt'dt'll motor touring 1 1 1 ruK!lllrf' sub-cullure 1 8 9 :-itreallllilw(1 aertld HlHnlicisll1 2:U

· 1- 1--.';

Trillidad Lake A.sphalt 1 ,);")-6

TL U P .. ar (PSc\) :H

S/I"IY>fI('Y. t ilt' l OG

turllin� points 27. :1.1, :�6. 2:l6

'S\rill�ill� Si x t ie:-i' 1 0.)

two bodic:-i. Ilotion of. and autumohilt'

Systt'1l1 of aul olllo h i l i t y 2. 2;")-:{<) challge...; i l l :� I -f)

('olllplexity 27. :·t-{. :{6 ("olllpollellh (six) 2;")-6 lIolI-linear s�· ...;tt'IIIS 27

sl'lf-t"' xpunsioll 2,")-1 . :�6 t i llle-sp,wt' 2 . 2H-:� 1

tacti lt' skrility 3. 1 1 -1·tal!l!ing·. ( " h i p \"{�hit:le identilier 1 0

lailha('k�. 011 lIIotor\\"a� s :2 lai l-fin:'> pht:IIIlIllt"'1l01l 20:-{

as s�'Ill"ol of l ' S prngre:-is 1 32

('oIllJllunil"Cltioll 1 2-1 -1-. 20 L Lfra automated taxis. Cardiff :1-1i 'n elhllllloglll' d(lf/s It' melm 1 M . .-Iuge) 1 ·17

L'lli ted l\.i l l)!d(11ll road fatal i t ies · 1 Sf!"' also Britain t nited Stalt':-i

1'/(1.\"(illll' 2 1 () Tlxi:2000 urban transit ...;olulion :�-I· l<.txi-dri,·ing 26·1 It'kbunkillg 27:{ II·It'\·isioll I Oj :\dorno Oil 9. 2;"),:)

ft'lII inizatioll o f I i,")

driving ill ;{7

\ri l liall!.... . � i r (h\ t'll 1 6 1

\rollt'll. Pekr 1;-). 1 0 \f()IlIt'II. :'-ioJ'wt'p:ian I :t 1 90

\\O/llt'll dri \'t'r:-, 1 :1 . :l7. ) 7· 1-. 1 7S-(). 1 82-:1

\on\"i�p:idIl 1 9( )

mn-kpl act' ...;. mobilt-, 2(,;�-:)

IlJa:-i:-o prodlH"t"'d cars 1 7:�

ILlrfd Nefu)rl

Ilwdia iJldll ...;tri,�:-i. I!lok d dOllli ll<JllCt, I -t. �liddlt' Eastel'll (IiI. dt'llt'lldt'll("t� IIpon :�:� ]"(lad fatd l i t i,�:-, -I llriJaIi roatlsn.'1w 1 08-9

Ilwllw park:-; 1. ")2. J; ):�

urban space. IIIm'ing t h rou/;!h 2:") I -;�

Thrift. N i l!,· ·1

L\r�·. John 22:-

"'IlUlfiOIl:-i 22,). 22(i. 22,-8

If/jllly Prf'I"f'T1riOIl :-{. -k 1 9

\\ "i l l iallls, H a y mond :W- l

i ntt'r-\\'ar year:-i. i nfi ut'lll'e ill I :W

t raffic jams 7

41/1

IC/rld Ref/Or! on Nom/ Th�tlil

\\"()rking \'Iassl�s, ('llJ1SUlIllltillll

I("'xilial nwtaplH lr:-i 6()

cify (j,'iring 7. 8. -1- 1 -,)9

011 road deaths .�

t'1l\" imnlllt'nli.l l le�i:-ola t i oll 1 8;) hot roddt'rs 1 89

tiwairical llwiaphnr:-i 1 1 2

0/1

\\ HO (\\"rld Heahh ( )r�a"izalio,,)

\\"Olf-hybrid:-, B()

t"l"t'alj(11l of I i i

IJlack:-i. :-OlllH"ulture I YO- I

I Ll

Ireek·Elld I l i l l " ) 206 '\\ h i l e \ a " \'Ia,,' lO6. 1 0 7

-\lIIericHllization 7. 1 ;�O, l :l l . 1 :�2

"aI's of I %Os alld 1 960s 1 8')

'Iitli . .1at-'1u"s 2 1 2 . 2 L1 H/lII (),,, ./t' :202

12-�

\\ also". Hod 26.;. 268

aul(lllllI1Iil .... .

lalking kdlllOlogit's 2,:)0 - 1 'tasks('i.!Jlt'·. ('ill' t rart'l a:-i part (Ir 1 1 0.

f:l"{'r.\"(/(/,\· Lljf,. ''1. dt' Ct'rteall)

\\'illi:-i. ::-:u sall 182 \\ " i 1:-01 III. \,\ 'oodrO\\' 1 7 1

'lilJ'dt�. CuiJriel

I � . ,")- t

88. 2.).';

011 afforda!l('t>:-i 226-7

Oil cit�· dri\"ill� .J.()

patterns of I 72. l i:� 1111

Huarl TrujJil" Injl/rr

Pr(,l"I:'flliuf/ ( \r H O report ) :L , L

1 <) \\ 'orl d TrCldt' Ct··ntel' - 1·2

:"'iepkllllwr I I 20U .! terrorist alla . . ks :l:l

\\ orld \\ 'ar I I . t"r!!onollli(":-i ori�illalill!! i n ;")() )"OUn).! , D . ;")

Theory, Culture & Society

Theory, Culture & Society caters for the resurgence of interest in culture w i thin contemporary social science and the humanities. Building on the heritage of classical soci a l theory, the book series exami nes ways in which this tradition has been reshaped by a new generation of theorists. It also pub l i shes theoretically informed analyses of everyday l i fe, popul ar culture, and new intellectual movements. E DITOR: Mike Featherstone, Nottingham Trent University SERIES EDITORIAL BOARD Roy Boyne, University of Durham M i ke H epworth, University of Aberdeen Scott Lash, Goldsmiths College, University of London Roland Robertson, University of Aberdeen B ryan S. Turner, University of Cambridge T H E TCS CENTRE The Theory, Culture & Soci ety book series, the journals Theory, Culture & Society and Body & Society, and related conference, seminar and post­ graduate programmes operate from the TCS Centre at Notti ngham Trent University. For further details of the TCS Centre's activities please contact: Centre Administrator The TCS Centre School of A rts, Communication & Culture Nottingham Trent Univers i ty Clifton Lane, Nottingham, N G l l 8NS, UK e-mail : [email protected] web: http://tcs.ntu.ac.uk Recent volumes include: Globalization and Belonging M i ke Savage, Gaynor Bagnall and Bri an Longhurst

The Body and Social Theory, 2nd edition Chris Shilling

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