Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the theoretical roots of representations of sensory impoverishment in driving in automobilities research. It goes on to highlight an emerging body of anthropological work that is attuned to the sensory dimensions of driving, and their transformation by new technologies.

Paper long abstract:

Innovations in automobile technology have destabilised boundaries between states, cars and drivers. For the driver's body, these are replete with possibilities for new sensory experiences. For example, on the matter of the transport system/car nexus, Intelligent Transport Systems have enabled new ways in which states can intervene within cars to optimise drivers' capacities to move more safely, efficiently and pleasurably. On the matter of the car/driver nexus, new in-car technologies have enabled the emergence of hybrid ontologies ('carsons') whereby, as Idhe puts it, the driver "feels the very extension of himself through the car as [it] becomes a symbiotic extension of his own embodidness." Yet, recent work on automobility tends to represent such transformations as sensorially impoverishing. This paper has three aims. (1) I review currents in automobilities research that represent sensory impoverishment in contemporary driving. (2) I argue that this trend is a legacy of post-WWII Marxian thought. In this tradition the car came to be an apposite 'vehicle' for critique of Capitalist Modernity, whose quintessential productive form was, after all, Fordism. In turn, driving came to be loaded with a range of evils. Above all, it was presented as the quintessential experience of late-Capitalism alienation, a central manifestation of which was estrangement from the environments we inhabit and, thereby sensory impoverishment. (3) Lastly, with reference to case studies from Bosnia, Turkey and the West Bank, I highlight an emerging body of anthropological work that is attuned to the sensory dimensions of driving and their transformation by new technologies.