Hi! Here is our first paper. It was submitted by Kate Goodwin:
Agency in Automobility: Delinking Gasoline, Cars, and Mobility
Katherine Goodwin | Presented at ISA-NE, October 3, 2009
Abstract:
Automobility, the global system of human movement built around petroleum-fueled cars, clearly has significant negative environmental consequences. Yet transforming this system presents a nearly overwhelming technological, cultural, and political challenge. The production of oil and cars is fundamental to modern capitalism and is a source of geopolitical power, while the consumption of these goods intimately structures the lives of billions worldwide. This article offers a conceptualization of the challenge presented by automobility. It argues that automobility operates according to a socially constructed logic linking gasoline, cars, and mobility to human flourishing. Using examples of industry decisions, public policy adjustments, and shifts in cultural meanings, this article illustrates that automobility has never been inevitable nor its future assured. Rather, its logic has been constructed and is continually reconstructed through human agency.
You can access the full paper here
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hi kate, and hi all,
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot for your article. I must say I enjoyed reading it, as it was making me think about the "real world" more than abstract concepts.
I wonder if you want to extend this paper for publication. If that is the case I would recommend including some original data collection and interpretation. This is already a good framework for understanding the logic of automobility, and perhaps it could be a good second step to carry out a small survey or case study in a manageable small town to put some "meat" on the conceptual "bones" you already outlined.
Can you show that the linear logic in your article does not take place somewhere? how does the mobility logic play out? Are there any experiments of changing the links between gas, cars, mobility, and human flourishing, that you can document?
One side comment: adding a "sic" after a british spelling can make some lads furious... :)
Thanks again for the read!
Thanks Sebastian for these great comments!
ReplyDeleteI submitted it to Global Environmental Politics, where it's under review, so here's hoping.
You're right that it's a framework rather than a study or piece of actual research. I actually just presented this paper today at the NPSA conference (I'm sitting here in the hotel lobby as I type, in fact, waiting for a train), and it made me really want to go back and revisit it. There's a lot of room for expansion, as you say (and as the discussant today said), and there are innumerable cases around the world - and even in the US (and even in the DC/MD/VA area) - to put, as you said, meat on the bones.
Though frankly, the sheer ubiquity of instances where the linkages between gas/cars/mobility/flourishing are negotiated in some way has discouraged me from pursuing it much further, at least as a dissertation project. Ironic - I developed it as a comprehensive way to conceptualize the centrality of the car in the past century, but its comprehensiveness actually makes it difficult to translate into a meaningful research project. I think it would require an actual theory, rather than just a framework, to be able to pick meaningful cases. And, in fact, I also sort of developed it as a tool for thinking about targeting change, rather than as a tool for developing theory.
So.
And sorry to [sic] that noise, but what else am I going to do? be inconsistent in my spellings...?
I guess I would keep the British spelling in the quotes and be consistent with American spelling outside of them.
ReplyDeleteHere is what the Q&A of the Chicago Manual of Style says about it:
"Q. Should “ibid.” in citations be italicized? Are block quotes always a smaller font size than the rest of the text? If a publisher specifies that only U.S. and not British spelling should be used in a manuscript, should quoted words be changed as well?
A. No. No. No."
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Documentation/Documentation41.html
Kate,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I meant (and promised) to get you comments before your conference. I failed. Sorry.
This is a really interesting piece on something I had not considered in this way. That said, I have one major question, followed by lots of comments (more or less listed by page number).
Why constructivism?
I actually don’t think constructivism is doing much conceptual lifting for you. In arguing for constructivism, you implicitly offer a number of other explanations that I find more convincing. (Sure, these too might be constructed in their own way. But constructivism doesn’t explain them.) Primary among these, you give an account that is close to historical institutionalism. We use cars because of path dependence. Small choices and accidents have been magnified because they closed off other paths, led to increasing returns, etc. I think this is your most convincing path, and actually it seems like you are doing historical institutionalism with a little bit of culture stirred in. A second option is hinted at with the GM conspiracy.
Maybe automobility is a structure built by elite interests, who make sure other options are closed. (This doesn’t rule out path dependence.) Any way, I think a combination of these two takes you further than does talking about how things are constructed. Of course they’re socially constructed … but what does that really explain?
Regarding Seb’s points on empirics, I agree. I think there are interesting and very feasible comparative case studies for this—even within the U.S. That is, explore Manhattan versus D.C. (Actually, I think there was something in WaPo about this a couple Sundays ago.) I think this could be enlightening by looking to what extent cultural aspects change and to what degree there is an economic basis. Or is it just path dependence? (Hint: It’s always path dependence.)
My comment was apparently too long. Here are the page-by-page comments:
ReplyDelete1: Is automobility by definition only “petroleum-fueled” cars? What about electric, which may or may not be indirectly carbon fueled? Do they fall outside the concept?
2. You highlight the negatives of automobility. I think you also need to consider why it is so engrained, which of course is the reason why it is hard to change. Is this point assumed in the literature, or explored?
Likewise, you seem to take for granted that it should be changed. Why not keep the automobility, but make it more efficient? What about those with vested stakes, both companies and labor?
I don’t think your point about using gasoline to produce happiness follows. This seems to imply more intentionality, as opposed to a structure. That this structure is reinforced by action still doesn’t seem to imply intentionality. Also, I’m not sure I understand the paragraph on linkage.
Does cash for clunkers reconstitute the link between cars and mobility? I don’t think so…I think it is more tailored to the economic production of those cars. That is, the program encouraged the replacement of old cars with new cars. Mobility doesn’t change. Certainly this money could have been used for other purposes (even mobility-centered ones), but I think the point was production. Perhaps this reconstitution was a byproduct? I do think it exhibits how cars are engrained in economic structures, but I’m not sure the linkage was mobility in this case.
3. Your argument about change reminds me of Ian Hacking’s The Social Construction of X, i.e., show something is constructed, therefore not inevitably, therefore it should be changed.
OK, here I see what you meant by links/linkages (I think you are using them interchangeably. You might want to pick one). But earlier it sounds like cars are the only thing that you can plug in to get mobility and flourishing. Actually, it can be whatever, right?
5. Your history of the first link brings an alternative explanation to mind that it more materialist / pseudo-Marxist than constructivist – maybe the link is the result of elite actors who had something to gain? Maybe it wasn’t “socially” constructed, but a top-down ruse reinforced by path dependence.
7. On conspicuous conservation, do you think this is a real values shift? Or is it just a fad? Just driven by price? Of course, the real conservers wouldn’t be driving Priuses, but showing you how awesome their new bikes are.
Pp. 13, after footnote 37. Farther should be further.
13: Re: cars and sex. Having sex in the backseat of a bicycle is very difficult. I think this explains it.
15-16: I wonder to what degree these links are necessary as you argue, and to what degree they are just beneficial—one path of many to mobility or flourishing.
17: On mobility—One could argue that it is a fundamental component of a modern labor market. Many have argued, for example, that U.S. economic dynamism is related to the higher-than-average willingness of Americans to move to places with better labor markets.