The Car Culture

by James J. Flink

Book Overview

This book is brand new, unread, and is in excellent condition. The front and back covers have some tanning otherwise this book is in great condition. Orders received before 3:30pm CST ship daily... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262560151
• ISBN13: 9780262560153
• Release Date: January 1976
• Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The car culture from bicycles to SUVs

Flink dedicates The Car Culture to the memory of his young niece killed by an automobile while at play. The circumstances are not articulated and, though the cause was undoubtedly the result of human failure, the automobile was the implement of death. This fact must have had an impact on Flink's perspective, prompting him to present a "suggestive, partisan, and controversial" revisionist argument.(4) With this in mind he tackles the impact of "automobility" on America. The term was coined by John C. Burnham, to more appropriately incorporate the combined emotional, cultural, and industrial impact of the automobile on society. Notwithstanding the fact that Europe was a decade ahead of America in the development of a gasoline-powered car, the automobile nonetheless evolved from a synthesis of inventions. The common experience of an emerging urban-industrial social order and the sharing of technical and scientific knowledge, Flink claims, made it "inevitable" that people on both sides of the Atlantic would independently "perceive the possibility and social utility of the automotive idea."(5) The bicycle craze enhanced awareness of individualized highway transportation that led to political advocacy for good roads. This in turn focused attention on advances in automotive technology, the most important of which was the internal-combustion engine. The Duryea brothers, bicycle mechanics, are credited with building the first American car powered by an internal-combustion engine. America's automobile culture developed so rapidly because a scarcity of labor, a long tradition of standardized production, and the low cost of resources resulted in industrial mechanization. Other factors in favor of America over Europe were the absence of tariff barriers between states, higher average personal incomes, and less class distinction. Government laissez faire policy promoted cheaply produced products for mass consumption and was ideally tuned to citizen's sense of individualism and freedom. Intellectually the automobile also seemed to offer progressive solutions to major social ills. In particular, since the automobile "did not involve collective political action, [it] is no wonder that automobility...became the most important force for change in America."(40-41) From a multitude of manufacturers, Ford and General Motors emerged as the leaders under their individualistic leaders, Henry Ford and William Durant. Flink tellingly undercuts the Ford myth by challenging the claim that Ford invented the moving assembly line; instead attributing it to a team of engineers. Likewise the five-dollar, eight-hour day was less altruistic of Ford than a shrewd and profitable business decision. Flink admittedly reinterprets Ford from the perspective of the "disillusioning 1970s."(67) He concludes, "the tenets of entrepreneurial capitalism and the gospel of industrial efficiency that Ford exemplified are increasingly less credible and acceptable social philosophies."(67)