THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE ROAD

Americans are a broad-minded people. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife-beater, and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive there's something wrong with him.
--Art Buchwald

Consider the following:

• In the late 1970s, Ms. Sandra West was laid to rest in San Antonio in her nightgown behind the wheel of her Triumph. Sixteen years later, in 1994, the cremains of 71-year-old George Swanson were placed in the driver's seat of his 1984 Chevrolet Corvette, which was then buried in Hempfield, PA.



• In the Scipio Cemetery near Fort Wayne, Indiana, the tombstone of Archie Arnold (1920-1982) is flanked by two parking meters.
• There is a thirty-six-ton, exact-size granite replica of a 1982 Mercedes-Benz 240D in the Rosedale Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey. Sculpted in seventeen months from a sixty-tone slab, it was commissioned by the brother of the deceased, who had promised but failed to deliver the real vehicle to his sibling before his death.

Elsewhere, is developed how perhaps only death has, across cultures and time, the power to reveal a people's core set of values, meanings, and hopes. Death is a measure of life, which is why much of what we know of past civilizations is inferred from funerary artifacts. What do the illustrations above mean and what do they say about who we are as a people?

In a couple of thousand years from now, when archaeologists poke around the remnants of our civilization, besides finding Ms. West behind the wheel on her eternal tour, I suspect that much of what will remain of our times will be related to our cars. The social infrastructure laid down because of our vehicles--the oil rigs, supertankers, refineries, roads and bridges, suburbs, and all of those 7-11s and fast-food outlets--is considerable.

This page is designed for students taking introductory courses in sociology, a place where the concepts, theories and methods of the discipline are illustrated and where the sociological imagination is exercised. This site can be approached in several ways:

• as a case study in technology and society: The Impact of the Automobile on  Culture & Society.  See David Demeritt's (Keele University) Car Trouble site for links to the anti-automotive movements.



• as a measure of broader American life. It seems almost daily that we are bombarded with various economic indicators supposedly gauging the "health" of the economic order: rates of unemployment, inflation, trade balance, inventory build ups, and so forth. Here let's run with the idea that our roadway behaviors gauge the quality of the social order (see the 1999 Annual Urban Mobility Study). When you think about it, we do also receive a daily dose of driving/highway related statistics along with the economic: the number of cars produced, exported or imported; fatality rates during highway weekends; the number of drive-by shootings; the six months the average American spends over a lifetime at stoplights and stop signs; etc. And consider how auto designs over the years reflect the cultural ethos of their times.
• and as a working model by which basic sociological principles can be understood. By looking at driving behavior and the social and cultural aspects of the road as a metaphor for conceptualizing social life in general, perhaps new insights into the human condition can be gleaned. This is not the first time this metaphor has been employed to conceptualize individuals' relationships with each other: This very electronic medium, for instance, has been depicted as the information highway or superhighway, connecting virtual communities (some gated and others open) and replete with detours and deadends.

OUTLINE OF THIS SITE

• THEORETICALLY SPEAKING
• THE ROAD, ONE'S WHEELS, AND THE AMERICAN PSYCHE: THE CULTURAL ORDER
• THE SOCIAL ORDER OF THE ROAD
• THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF DRIVING
• STRATIFICATION ORDERS OF THE ROAD

• Social Class
• Gender Systems
• Age Systems
• Teenage Drivers
• Car Wars: Intergenerational Relations on the Road
• Race and Ethnic Systems
• Low-riding
• INSTITUTIONAL SYSTEMS SHAPING AND SHAPED BY THE AMERICAN SOCIO-CULTURAL AUTOMOTIVE ORDER
  
• THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM BEHIND THE DRIVING EXPERIENCE
• DRIVING AND THE SACRED

• DRIVING AND FAMILY LIFE
• SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 
  
• MADD
• I Can't Drive 55
• Environmentalism and "clean" cars
  



• SOCIAL CHANGE
• Nostalgia
• Utopian Envisionments of the Future

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But as a tax for taking some of my sociological tours, I make the following request of my visitors. Now knowing what I am looking for, your contribution of relevant web sites and ideas for this page will be most appreciated. I am trying to get this page off the ground before the Fall semester begins.



















Return to Index of A Sociological Tour Through Cyberspace