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.”

• ContentsList of IllustrationsPrefaceIntroduction: ‘Pacific Mobility’: Irony, Class and the Car as MediumPart I: Doom, for Some? Questioning the CarChapter 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 ClassesBanalizing the Automotive Adventure: Highbrow Automotive CultureThe Revival of Automotive Adventure: The Car in Western Popular CultureThe Limits of Mobility Growth: The Urban CrisisGlobalizing 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: IntroductionOpening up: Motorizing the Chinese Middle ClassOn the Road to Hyperautomobility? Turn of the Millennium ‘Development’ through Motorization in the Rest of the WorldNeoliberal Mobility: Automotive Adventure, Ecological Concerns and ‘the War on the Car’ConclusionsChapter 3. The Adventure Machine Redux? Searching for the Motives of the Neoliberal MotoristFrom the ‘West’ to the ‘Rest’: IntroductionParallel Worlds: Post-Postmodern Reflections on a New Multi-Modal Mobility CultureEmancipatory Mobilities: Adventures Produced by Women, Ethnic Minorities and Working-Class YouthCarnivalizing Adventure: Popular Culture and the Shifting Class Base of the Adventure MachineBipolar Dichotomies: Diasporic Mobilities between South and NorthProvincializing Adventure: The Commodity Character of the Car in Heavily Layered MobilityBillionaires, Brothers and Other Incarnations: Car Adventure and Family in ChinaThe Loss of Automotive Irony: ConclusionsConclusion. ‘Deplorable’ Mobilities and the Future of the Car AdventureBibliographyIndex