Men, Movements and Automation : Imagining (un)sustainable transport futures

• This presentation addresses sustainability in relation to intersections of men, movements and transport futures. As an unsustainable system, transport not only support and enacts the predominant global form of ‘quasi-private’ mobility that subordinates other less resource intense means of movement, it also cause damaging effects on the environment locally and globally (Urry 2004). Central actors are to an overwhelmingly degree men of power, men that dominate and control its interlinked centres, such as the auto-, oil- and road industry. To critically consider how these institutions not only are gendered, but also changing, is therefore important.The relations between men, movements and transport put focus on the complexity of power and power resources in relation to technology and technical institutions more generally. While the automobile managed to change the world, self-driving vehicles are imagined as the next major transportation technology revolution. This technology is imagined to ‘solve’ many gendered problems associated with the current automobility system, such as congestions, pollution and ‘man-made’ risk taking. Against this background, the phenomenon of autonomous cars is here thought upon as challenging the foundations of a gendered car culture. Even though the automobilic system may be thought of as connecting many transnational centres of power, while also distributing power to individual men as car users, the ‘new’ technology is about to repudiate the power over the vehicles gradually and reassign it to the designers and engineers. In the context of transport, the balance between power enforcements by state bodies, the auto-industry and power enactments by individual men, are likely to change. Scenarios of “re-gendering and re-segregation” (see Balkmar & Mellström forthcoming) are discussed where certain institutions and forms of men’s power will lose ground and others will become more foregrounded.References:Balkmar, Dag & Mellström, Ulf (forthcoming), Re-gendering the relation between men, masculinity and cars? On autonomous vehicles and emancipatory challenges, forthcoming in Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies.Urry, John (2004) The ‘System’ of Automobility, Theory, Culture & Society,Vol. 21(4/5): 25–39.          

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Genusstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Gender Studies (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

sustainability

de-gendering

masculinity

autonomous vehicles

trucks

anthromorphization

Gender Studies

Genusvetenskap

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