Mike Featherstone & Nigel Thrift 
Automobilities 

Mobility – flows, movement and migration in social life – has emerged as a central area of sociological debate, yet one of its most dominant forms, automobility, has remained largely ignored. Edited by three leading social analysts,
Automobilities presents one of the first and most wide-ranging examinations of the car and its promise of autonomy and mobility. Drawing on rich empirical detail, from ethnographies of office work on the motorway to the important of the car in French cultural theory, the contributions demonstrate just how significant have been the economic, technological, social and political consequences of a pervasive and accelerating culture of the car.

A broad array of theories are put to work to illuminate this vast and yet neglected topic: strategy and tactics, complexity theory, performativity, actor network theory, film theory, material culture, theories of non-places, embodiment, sensuous geography/sociology, ethnomethodology and non-representational theory.

This book will firmly establish automobilities as a key topic for theory and research. Automobilities represents a landmark text that will contribute to and provide a significant impetus for the emerging analysis of mobilities in contemporary societies.

Table of Content

Introduction – Mike Featherstone

The ′System′ of Automobility – John Urry

Driving in the City – Nigel Thrift

The Driver-Car – Tim Dant

Mobility and Safety – Jörg Beckmann

Automobility and National Identity – Tim Edensor

Representation, Geography and Driving Practice

Cars and Nations – Rudy J Koshar

Anglo-German Perspectives on Automobility Between the World Wars

Driving Places – Peter Merriman

Marc Augé, Non-Places and the Geographies of England′s M1 Motorway

Three Ages of the Automobile – David Gartman

The Cultural Logics of the Car

Auto Couture – David Inglis

Thinking the Car in Post-War France

Automotive Emotions – Mimi Sheller

Feeling the Car

Automobility and the Power of Sound – Michael Bull

Doing Officework on the Motorway – Eric Laurier

About the author

His main research in recent years has been in advocating and developing a new paradigm for the social sciences, the new mobilities paradigm