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Globalizing Automobilism
Exuberance and the Emergence of Layered Mobility, 1900–1980
Gijs Mom
688 pages, 23 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-78920-461-2 $199.00/£148.00 Hb Published (August 2020)
eISBN 978-1-78920-462-9 eBook
Reviews
“Mom has access to an extraordinarily broad palette of source materials and methods. There is no other monograph in the field of such vast comparative scope.” • Peter Norton, University of Virginia
Description
Why has “car society” proven so durable, even in the face of mounting environmental and economic crises? In this follow-up to his magisterial Atlantic Automobilism, Gijs Mom traces the global spread of the automobile in the postwar era and investigates why adopting more sustainable forms of mobility has proven so difficult. Drawing on archival research as well as wide-ranging forays into popular culture, Mom reveals here the roots of the exuberance, excess, and danger that define modern automotive culture.
Gijs Mom is Associate Professor emeritus at Eindhoven University of Technology. His monograph Atlantic Automobilism: Emergence and Persistence of the Car, 1895–1940, was published by Berghahn Books in 2015. He is a co-editor, with Georgine Clarsen and Mimi Sheller, of the Berghahn Books series “Explorations in Mobility.”
Subject: Transport Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Mobility Studies
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction: Questioning the Car: Prolegomena for a Historical Analysis of Global Mobility
New Perspectives, New Questions
Looking Back: Emergence and Persistence of the Adventure Machine
Extending Adventure: The Car as Possession and Status Symbol
Producing Commodification: Status, Narcissism, and Self-Development
Diversifying Automotive Identities: The Non-Hegemonic Self
New Mobility Studies: Bodily Senses, The Car as Medium, and the Challenge of Representation
The Trouble with Travel Writing: Meandering between Fictionality and Representation
This Study: Sources and Terminology
Part I. Emergence and Persistence (Again): The Shaping of Mobility Layerdness beyond the West
Chapter 1. Modernizing without Automobilization: Subverting and Subalternizing Mobility History (1890–1945/1950)
Imperialist Mobilities: Japan and the Modernization of Manchuria
Urban Mobilities: The Rickshaw and the Motorization of Asian Cities
Between Long March and Long-Haul: Rail and Road Network Building in China
Dual Networks of Rails and Roads: The Modal Configuration in Other Asian Countries
Migration, Colonialism and the Struggle between Rail and Road: The Case of Africa
More than Modern: Constructing a Latin American Adventure Machine
The Rest and the West: Subversive and Subaltern Mobilities?
Part II: Exuberance, with a Twist: Spreading the Gospel of Automobilism
Chapter 2. Fragmenting Automotive Adventure: Western Exuberant Automobilism and Middle-Class Guilt (1945–1973)
“Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan”
A Multimedia Feast: Folk, Beat, Rock and Other Mobilities
Motorizing the Worker: Fragmentation and Convergence of Western Car Cultures
The Attack on Public Transport: Hegemonic Car Cultures in a Cold War Setting
Experiencing the Car in a Fragmented Culture: Shifts in Autopoetic Adventures
Songs and Movies: Rejuvenating the Adventure Machine in Popular Culture
Flow Interrupted: Crash and the Systemic Aspects of Automobilism
Chapter 3. Layered Development: The Transnational Construction of a World Mobility System (1940s–1970s)
What is ‘Layered Development’?
Alternative Developments: Soviet Mobility and the Modernization of China and India
Conceiving ‘Development’: Mobilizing the ‘Rest’
Mediating Modernization: Japan and Asian ‘Development’
Constructing ‘Circulation’: The IRF and the "Development" of Africa
Developmentalism vs. Dependentismo: Latin American Mobilities and the Frustrations of Middle-Class Modernity
Conclusions: Road, Rail, and Development
Layered, Fragmented, Subversive, Subaltern: Conclusions
Bibliography
Index