IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/glenvp/v10y2010i4p60-78.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reconstructing Automobility: The Making and Breaking of Modern Transportation

Author

Listed:
  • Katherine J. Goodwin

    (Katherine Goodwin is a doctoral student at American University's School of International Service in Washington DC. She also serves as managing editor for the Journal of International Relations and Development. Her interests revolve around international communication, mobility, and environmental politics. Her current research is on the international politics of urban transport.)

Abstract

Automobility, the global system of human movement built around petroleumfueled 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 of people 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 essay illustrates that automobility has never been inevitable, nor is its future assured. Rather, its logic has been constructed and is continually reconstructed through human agency. (c) 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Katherine J. Goodwin, 2010. "Reconstructing Automobility: The Making and Breaking of Modern Transportation," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 10(4), pages 60-78, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:10:y:2010:i:4:p:60-78
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/GLEP_a_00031
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:10:y:2010:i:4:p:60-78. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.