Car Cultures (Materializing Culture)

ISBN 10: 1859734073 / ISBN 13: 9781859734070

Published by Routledge, 2001

About this Item

Seller Inventory # ABE-1779642377870

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Car Cultures (Materializing Culture)
• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1859734073
• ISBN 13: 9781859734070
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New
• Dimensions: 15.6W x 23.39H x 1.43D centimeters 15.6 centimeters width by 23.39 centimeters height by 1.43 centimeters depth
• Weight: 408 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Anyone who assumes that a car is simply a means to get from point A to point B, or who even thinks that they know what a car is, should read this book. Profoundly shaped by culture, the car gives rise to a wide range of emotions, from guilt about the environment in the UK to aboriginal concerns with car corpses, to struggles to keep the creatures alive with everything but the proper spare parts in West Africa. Cars and their landscapes prove central to human life from its most intimate to the widest sense of global crisis, and are capable of inspiring epic passions. From road rage in Western Europe to the struggles of cab driving in Africa to the emergence of Black identity in the US, this book examines the essential humanity of the car, which includes the jealousies, gender differences, fears and moralities that cars give rise to. Firmly grounded in detailed ethnographic and historical scholarship, this is the first book to provide an informed sense of cars as one of the most familiar and significant forms of material culture.

About the Author

Daniel Miller is Professor of Anthropology, University College London. Recent books include 'A Theory of Shopping' and 'The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach' (with Don Slater).