Join our Email List Berghahn Books Logo

berghahn New York · Oxford
Browse
A World History of Mobility: An Essay on Road Cultures and Beyond

View Table of Contents


Series
Volume 8

Explorations in Mobility

Email Newsletters

Sign up for our email newsletters to get customized updates on new Berghahn publications.

Click here to select your preferences

A World History of Mobility

An Essay on Road Cultures and Beyond

Gijs Mom

252 pages, bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-83695-091-2 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Published (August 2025)

eISBN 978-1-83695-092-9 eBook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781836950912


View CartYour country: - edit Request a Review or Examination Copy (in Digital Format)Recommend to your LibraryAvailable in GOBI®

Reviews

“The social construction of road technology presented here offers an enlightened reading of one of the fundamental elements of modernity, and of the prosperity and crises of our societies.” • Mathieu Flonneau, Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, SIRICE, IAES-EDS

“Gijs Mom’s trilogy on world mobility history is a monument in the field. Vast in scope, it integrates global problems in transport, technology, society and culture, defying boundaries of nationality, language and discipline. As at great architectural monuments, however, dimensions may intimidate. But now, in A World History of Mobility, we have the architect himself to guide us on an insider’s tour. Mom has distilled decades of global mobilities scholarship into a readable essay. Specialists will savor it, and newcomers will find it the best available introduction to the field.” • Peter Norton, University of Virginia

Description

As a tool of globalized mobility, the car provides a useful barometer for charting the global development of socio-cultural, economic, technical, and political modernization. Shaped by prevailing gender and racial norms and popularized by a Western-driven car culture, it is a commodity whose access and use embodies wider inequalities. In this comprehensive world history of (auto)mobility, Gijs Mom draws upon his extensive research into the field to assess the past and present of road cultures, and hypothesize their future. Ranging from the impact of climate change to decolonization, this volume spotlights how profoundly ‘automobilism’ impacts our sense of identity and imagination.

Gijs Mom is Associate Professor Emeritus at Eindhoven University of Technology, specializing in the history of mobility. He is the author of Atlantic Automobilism (Berghahn Books, 2015), Globalizing Automobilism (Berghahn Books, 2020), and Pacific Automobilism (Berghahn Books, 2022). He was a co-editor, with Georgine Clarsen and Mimi Sheller, of the Berghahn Books series “Explorations in Mobility,” and the founder and first editor of Transfers, Interdisciplinary Journal of New Mobility Studies.

Subject: Travel and TourismSociologyCultural Studies (General)


Contents

Download ToC (PDF)

Back to Top



Library Recommendation Form

Dear Librarian,

I would like to recommend A World History of Mobility An Essay on Road Cultures and Beyond for the library. Please include it in your next purchasing review with my strong recommendation. The RRP is: $135.00

I recommend this title for the following reasons:

BENEFIT FOR THE LIBRARY: This book will be a valuable addition to the library's collection.

REFERENCE: I will refer to this book for my research/teaching work.

STUDENT REFERRAL: I will regularly refer my students to the book to assist their studies.

OWN AFFILIATION: I am an editor/contributor to this book or another book in the Series (where applicable) and/or on the Editorial Board of the Series, of which this volume is part.