Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface

Introduction: ‘Pacific Mobility’: Irony, Class and the Car as Medium

Part I: Doom, for Some? Questioning the Car

Chapter 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 Classes
     Banalizing the Automotive Adventure: Highbrow Automotive Culture
     The Revival of Automotive Adventure: The Car in Western Popular Culture
     The Limits of Mobility Growth: The Urban Crisis
     Globalizing 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: Introduction
     Opening up: Motorizing the Chinese Middle Class
     On the Road to Hyperautomobility? Turn of the Millennium ‘Development’ through Motorization in the Rest of the World
     Neoliberal Mobility: Automotive Adventure, Ecological Concerns and ‘the War on the Car’
     Conclusions

Chapter 3. The Adventure Machine Redux? Searching for the Motives of the Neoliberal Motorist
     From the ‘West’ to the ‘Rest’: Introduction
     Parallel Worlds: Post-Postmodern Reflections on a New Multi-Modal Mobility Culture
     Emancipatory Mobilities: Adventures Produced by Women, Ethnic Minorities and Working-Class Youth
     Carnivalizing Adventure: Popular Culture and the Shifting Class Base of the Adventure Machine
     Bipolar Dichotomies: Diasporic Mobilities between South and North
     Provincializing Adventure: The Commodity Character of the Car in Heavily Layered Mobility
     Billionaires, Brothers and Other Incarnations: Car Adventure and Family in China
     The Loss of Automotive Irony: Conclusions
     Conclusion. ‘Deplorable’ Mobilities and the Future of the Car Adventure

Bibliography
Index