Automobile Politics

Matthew Paterson is Professor of Political Science in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of Understanding Global Environmental Politics: Domination, Accumulation, Resistance (2000), Energy Exporters and Climate Change (with Peter Kassler, 1997) and Global Warming and Global Politics (1996).

• 1. Introduction: (auto)mobility, ecology, and global politics; 2. Automobility and its discontents; 3. Don't stop movin': the pro-car backlash; 4. Automobile political economy; 5. The car's cultural politics: producing the (auto)mobile subject; 6. Swampy fever, Mondeo man; 7. Greening automobility?; 8. Conclusions'.

'Quite simply the definitive book on car culture and global environmental politics. Paterson convincingly explains the rise of automobility, its umbilical link to the ecological and socio-economic unsustainability of capitalist accumulation as well as outlining the powerful cultural and ideological dynamics that 'naturalise' and 'normalise' the car; while also offering strategies of resistance to the car and alternative mobility futures for car-addicted societies. Comprehensive, authoritative, scholarly and eloquently written, Paterson has set the gold standard by which other contributions to this field must be judged.' John Barry, Reader in Politics, School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Queen's University Belfast