Globalizing Automobilism

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.”

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