Mobility without Mayhem: Safety, Cars, and Citizenship by Jeremy Packer (English

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While Americans prize the ability to get behind the wheel and hit the open road, they have not always agreed about what constitutes safe, decorous driving and who is capable of it. This title presents a cultural history of America's fear of and fascination with driving, from the mid-twentieth century to the present.

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description

While Americans prize the ability to get behind the wheel and hit the open road, they have not always agreed about what constitutes safe, decorous driving and who is capable of it. Mobility without Mayhem is a lively cultural history of America's fear of and fascination with driving, from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Jeremy Packer analyzes how driving has been understood by experts, imagined by citizens, regulated by traffic laws, governed through education and propaganda, and represented in films, television, magazines, and newspapers. Whether considering motorcycles as symbols of rebellion and angst, or the role of CB radio in regulating driving and in truckers' evasions of those regulations, Packer shows that ideas about safe versus risky driving often have had less to do with real dangers than with drivers' identities. In each chapter, Packer focuses on a different cultural figure that has been singled out as particularly dangerous. Women drivers, hot-rodders, bikers, hitchhikers, truckers, those who "drive while black," and road ragers have all been targets of fear.As Packer debunks claims about the dangers posed by each figure, he exposes biases against marginalized populations, anxieties about social change, and commercial and political desires to profit by fomenting fear.Over-stressed women, youthful hitchhikers, African Americans purportedly engaged in criminal activity--certain populations have been labeled as dangerous or deviant, he argues, to legitimate monitoring and regulation and, ultimately, to curtail access to automotive mobility. Packer reveals how the boundary between personal freedom and social constraint is continually re-negotiated in discussions about safe, proper driving.

Notes

Funny and engaging history of our shared and evolving cultural myths and fears centered on cars and driving: women drivers, black drivers, hitchhikers, motorcycle riders

Back Cover

"Engaging with lively debates in contemporary cultural studies, including critical geography, technological and social history, and popular culture studies, Jeremy Packer denaturalizes the common-sense assumptions that inform our culture's conceptions of drivers and driving."-Jeffrey Sconce, editor ofSleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics

Author Biography

Jeremy Packer is Associate Professor of Communication and a faculty member in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media graduate program and the Science, Technology, and Society program at North Carolina State University. He is a coeditor of Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality and Thinking with James Carey: Essays on Communications, Transportation, History.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments viiIntroduction: Auto-Mobile America 11. The Crusade for Traffic Safety: Mobilizing the Suburban Dream 272. Hitching the Highway to Hell: Media Hysterics and the Politics of Youth Mobility 773. Motorcycle Madness: The Insane, the Profane, and Newly Tame 1114. Communications Convoy: The CB and Truckers 1615. Of Cadillacs and "Coon Cages": The Racing of Automobility 1896. Raging with a Machine: Neoliberalism Meets the Automobile 2317. Safety to Security: Future Orientations of Automobility 267Notes 293Works Cited 325Index 341

Review

"Engaging with lively debates in contemporary cultural studies, including critical geography, technological/social history, and popular culture studies, Jeremy Packer denaturalizes the common-sense assumptions that inform our culture's conceptions of drivers and driving." Jeffrey Sconce, editor of Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics "For all that the United States trumpets individualism, it is a nation of obedience--to church, kin, commodity, conquest, and, perhaps above all, car. Jeremy Packer takes us along a wild but always disciplined drive in the fast lane of cultural studies."--Toby Miller, author of The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject "Jeremy Packer has scoured the byways of American history and media to bring back this telling account of how mobility is governed. Along the way, he deepens our understanding of how a culture of individualism, risk, and competitiveness is in fact organized and controlled--by inculcating self-discipline in the name of safety. Freedom is constrained by security, self-expression by surveillance; the American Dream fizzles out in 'road rage.' What does this tell us about contemporary America?"--John Hartley, author of Television Truths: Forms of Knowledge in Popular Culture

Promotional

Funny and engaging history of our shared and evolving cultural myths and fears centered on cars and driving: women drivers, black drivers, hitchhikers, motorcycle riders

Review Quote

"Whether you think of the car as symbolizing freedom, or environmental degradation, you'll find Packer's book thought-provoking, even entertaining." - Cliff Bellamy , Durham Herald-Sun

Promotional "Headline"

Funny and engaging history of our shared and evolving cultural myths and fears centered on cars and driving: women drivers, black drivers, hitchhikers, motorcycle riders

Details ISBN0822339633 Author Jeremy Packer Publisher Duke University Press Language English ISBN-10 0822339633 ISBN-13 9780822339632 Media Book Format Paperback Year 2008 Imprint Duke University Press Subtitle Safety, Cars, and Citizenship Place of Publication North Carolina Country of Publication United States Short Title MOBILITY W/O MAYHEM Birth 1970 DOI 10.1604/9780822339632 UK Release Date 2008-02-26 AU Release Date 2008-02-26 NZ Release Date 2008-02-26 US Release Date 2008-02-26 Pages 360 Publication Date 2008-02-26 DEWEY 303.48320973 Illustrations 38 illustrations Audience Professional & Vocational We've got this

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