Pacific Automobilism

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.”

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