Pacific Automobilism: Adventure, Status and the Carnival of Mobility, 1970-2015

by Gijs Mom

Overview

The beginning of the 21st century has seen important shifts in mobility cultures around the world, as the West’s media-driven car culture has contrasted with existing local mobilities, from rickshaws in India and minibuses in Africa to cycling in China. In this expansive volume, historian Gijs Mom explores how contemporary mobility has been impacted by social, political, and economic forces on a global scale, as in light of local mobility cultures, the car as an ‘adventure machine’ seems to lose cultural influence in favor of the car’s status character.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781800735637
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	09/13/2022
Pages:	1002
Product dimensions:	9.13(w) x 5.98(h) x 2.20(d)

About the Author

Gijs Mom is Associate Professor emeritus at Eindhoven University of Technology. He is the author of Atlantic Automobilism (Berghahn Books, 2015) and Globalizing Automobilism (Berghahn Books, 2020). He is a co-editor, with Georgine Clarsen and Mimi Sheller, of the Berghahn Books series “Explorations in Mobility.”

Table of Contents

Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface

Introduction: ‘Pacific Mobility’: Irony, Class and the Car as Medium

Part I: Doom, for Some? Questioning the Car

Chapter 1. The Shock of the Oil: Energy and the Carnival of Mass-Produced Car Adventure (1970s–1990)
     Introduction: A Postmodern Automotive Adventure?
     Western Mobilities: Energy, Environment and the Middle Classes
     Banalizing the Automotive Adventure: Highbrow Automotive Culture
     The Revival of Automotive Adventure: The Car in Western Popular Culture
     The Limits of Mobility Growth: The Urban Crisis
     Globalizing Environmental Consciousness: Towards a “Pacific Century”
     Conclusions: Beyond a Nihilistic Automotive Adventure?

Part II: Confusion: Where Is the Adventure?

Chapter 2. The Motorization Miracle: The Quest of the Rest (1990–2015)
     Neoliberalizing Mobility: Introduction
     Opening up: Motorizing the Chinese Middle Class
     On the Road to Hyperautomobility? Turn of the Millennium ‘Development’ through Motorization in the Rest of the World
     Neoliberal Mobility: Automotive Adventure, Ecological Concerns and ‘the War on the Car’
     Conclusions

Chapter 3. The Adventure Machine Redux? Searching for the Motives of the Neoliberal Motorist
     From the ‘West’ to the ‘Rest’: Introduction
     Parallel Worlds: Post-Postmodern Reflections on a New Multi-Modal Mobility Culture
     Emancipatory Mobilities: Adventures Produced by Women, Ethnic Minorities and Working-Class Youth
     Carnivalizing Adventure: Popular Culture and the Shifting Class Base of the Adventure Machine
     Bipolar Dichotomies: Diasporic Mobilities between South and North
     Provincializing Adventure: The Commodity Character of the Car in Heavily Layered Mobility
     Billionaires, Brothers and Other Incarnations: Car Adventure and Family in China
     The Loss of Automotive Irony: Conclusions
     Conclusion. ‘Deplorable’ Mobilities and the Future of the Car Adventure

Bibliography
Index