Transfers

Last year President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela announced the appearance of what a Dutch national newspaper called an “anticapitalist car.” The two models, named by Chávez himself as the “Orinoco” and the “Arauca,” after rivers that run through Venezuela, are locally assembled under a preferential license agreement with the Chinese automaker Chery. The cars are sold for half the price of other makes and are marketed to the expanding Venezuelan middle class. They are intended as “new attainments of the revolution” that are meant to raise the “standard of life of the people.” This new venture was in a tradition that Chávez’s opponents claim started in 2006, when he came close to making a similar deal with Iranian president Ahmadinejad.

This international overview focuses on the conflict between drivers and non- drivers in Britain, France, the United States, Germany, and Sweden during the interwar period. It suggests that on neither side of the Channel did pro-pedestrian movements make a major impact on national safety legislation. In the U.S.A. automobile-manufacturing interest groups undermined what they perceived to be threatening neighborhood opposition to the onward rush of the automobile. In Germany, which had earlier experienced high levels of anti-car activity, Hitler-inspired commitment to modernization nevertheless led, by the mid-1930s, to the consolidation of punitive measures against erring drivers. In Sweden, however, there appears to have been a high degree of complementarity between pro-motorism and policies designed to minimize dangerous driving. The paper concludes that an understanding of this “deviant“ position may be deepened through scrutiny of the values associated with the Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party (SAP). A similar approach might be applied to the other nations discussed in the article.

During their transnational circulation, bicycles became glocalized as local users tailored them to fit local laws, customs, user preferences and cultures. Bicycles thus acquired many different local meanings as users incorporated them into daily lifes and practices in diverse global settings. To show the importance of 'normalized use', i.e. rural bicycle use, in which cycling became enduring, sustainable, new, old and new again, we need globally grounded histories of mobility.

Bicycles have a wide range of functions and roles in West Africa. They have vital functions for everyday necessities, but they also constitute prestige objects. The appreciation of bicycles in Africa started very early, almost simultaneously with their diffusion as consumer goods in Europe. However, the adoption of bicycles followed a specific pathway, which is explained in this article within the conceptual framework of appropriation. Cultural appropriation highlights the significant modifications of bicycles in Africa and the abandonment of some functions like braking. In spite of the technical simplifications, modified bicycles are perceived as having higher value, by virtue of their fitness for the tough roads and their increased reliability. Appropriation results in a specific “Africanized“ bicycle, which makes possible a prolonged usage. This essay argues that the “Africanized“ bicycle constitutes a model of sustainability in matters of transport, one which is not sufficiently recognized in current debates about sustainable innovations.

The article studies rural cycling in Finland in the 1920s and 1930s through a folklore survey conducted in 1971-1972. Written memories enable a rare insight in the disappeared practices of bicycle use in the countryside. Comparing the role of the bicycle in the remembered time and the time of remembering, the article furthermore scrutinizes the role of historical narratives in the cultural constructions of the bicycle. Instead of demonstrating a linear, universal decline in the face of motorization, changes in bicycle use and redefinitions of the bicycle are linked to fundamental societal changes.

Japan is one of the great bicycle nations of the world, ranking alongside the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark in terms of per capita bicycle ownership and use. This article reviews the history and characteristics of Japan as a bicycle nation. It examines the emergence of a distinctive bicycle culture that offered personal mobility to ordinary people in prewar Japan and traces the contribution of the bicycle to postwar Japan's social and economic development. It reviews postwar bicycle history in: the period of reconstruction and recovery (1945-1956); the period of high economic growth (1957-1973); the period of rapid motorization (1974-1991); and the period of raised environmental consciousness (1992-present). The conclusion seeks to offer reasons for the persistence of Japan's vibrant and pervasive bicycle culture.

Introduced into China in the late nineteenth century, the bicycle had to compete with a variety of alternative modes of personal transportation that for a number of years limited its appeal and utility. Thus, during the 1920s and 1930s it took a back seat to the hand-pulled rickshaw and during the 1940s to the pedicab (cycle rickshaw). It was only in the 1950s that the bicycle became the primary means of transportation for most urban Chinese. For the next four decades, as its use spread from the city to the countryside, China was the iconic “bicycle kingdom.“ Since the 1990s, however, the pedal-powered bicycle has been overtaken by the automobile (and motorcycle). Nevertheless, with the recent appearance and growing popularity of the e-bike, the bicycle may yet play an important role in China's transport modal mix. This overview history of the bicycle in China is based on a wide range of textual sources in English and Chinese as well as pictorial images.

There is frequently a dilemma in the making of transport policy between prioritizing what appear to be the most immediate problems and seeking to find the quickest and most straightforward solutions that will satisfy public demand; or to search for the deep perceptions that shape social and political norms over long periods of time, and which provide the powerful dynamics that drive stability and change. A common factor, therefore, in all four of the insightful case studies in this special section is that they demonstrate how greater understanding of these stability and change dynamics is crucial not only in the framing of more effective policies, but also in gaining knowledge of the interactions (or perhaps lack of them) that construct transport systems over time. Consequently, they reveal that it is this factor of time that is a vital, but often overlooked, element in transport policy-making.

Gambiocycle is a mobile broadcast unit. It is a modified cargo tricycle containing electronic gear for interactive video projection and digital graffiti in public spaces. The Gambiocycle was developed as part of Gambiologia, which is an open-source art movement based on the fusion between technology and “gambiarras”: the Brazilian cultural do-it-yourself practice of solving problems in alternative ways or giving unusual functions to objects, a slang word for technical makeshifts and kludges.

Cobb + Co. Museum, 27 Lindsay Street, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia http://www.cobbandco.qm.qld.gov.au/

Drive (U.S.A., 2011, FilmDistrict, Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Screenplay, Hossein Amini, based on the book by James Sallis. With Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks).

Volkert Ebert and Phillip-Alexander Harter, Europa ohne Fahrplan? Anfänge und Entwicklung der gemeinsamen Verkehrspolitik in der Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft (1957–1985) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2010) (Reihe Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Beihefte 211), 278 pp., €52

Christian Henrich-Franke, Gescheiterte Integration im Vergleich: Der Verkehr— ein Problemsektor gemeinsamer Rechtsetzung im Deutschen Reich (1871– 1879) und der Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft (1958–1972) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2012) (Reihe: Studien zur Geschichte der Europäischen Integration), 434 pp., €56

Christian Kassung, Die Unordnung der Dinge. Eine Wissens- und Mediengeschichte des Unfalls Claudia Lieb

Matthieu Flonneau and Arnaud Passalacqua, Utilités de l'utilitaire. Aperçu Réaliste des Services Automobiles Donald Weber

Fred Dervin, Analysing the Consequences of Academic Mobility and Migration Anita Perkins

Regine Buschauer, Mobile Räume. Medien- und Diskursgeschichtliche Studien zur Tele-Kommunikation Monika Domman

Sébastien Gardon, Goût de bouchons. Lyon, les villes françaises et l'équation automobile Manuel Appert

Peter Adey, Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Effects Liz Millward

Rainer Ruppmann, Schrittmacher des Autobahnzeitalters: Frankfurt und das Rhein-Main-Gebiet Ueli Haefeli

Frances Steel, Oceania under Steam: Sea Transport and the Cultures of Colonialism, c. 1870-1914, Studies in Imperialism Heloise Finch-Boyer

Kelly Shannon and Marcel Smets, The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure Natalie Roseau

Andrew Bush, Drive Charissa Terranova

Paul M. Weyrich and William S. Lind, Moving Minds. Conservatives and Public Transportation Massimo Moraglio

Ann Johnson, Hitting the Brakes. Engineering Design and the Production of Knowledge Christopher Neumaeier

Barron H. Lerner, One for the Road: Drunk Driving Since 1900 Clay McShane