Paper short abstract:

Saigon Bus mass transit system demonstrates the transformative powers of vehicles and transport infrastructures. Moving beyond the human-centredness of the auto-anthropocene, this paper asks in what ways are human and abiotic actors entangled in co-producing normative and subversive social lives?

Paper long abstract:

Saigon Bus, the mass transit system operating in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, demonstrates the transformative powers of vehicles and transport infrastructures on social lives. The emergence of an efficient and accessible city-wide bus network over the past decade has a broader impact than simply mitigating congestion and enabling circulation. In an earlier paper on subversive uses of mass transit I argued Saigon Bus is a multi-sited, mobile public space that, in addition to generating infrastructural and material transformations, has opened up new social spaces for stranger-interaction and new ways for metropolitan citizens to be mobile. This second paper moves beyond the human-centredness of the auto-anthropocene to reconceptualise Saigon Bus as a more than human facilitated transport system. Drawing on long term ethnographic fieldwork among undocumented migrants, upwardly mobile residents and mass transit riders, I explore ways of being on/off track with Saigon Bus. In the globalised context of post-authoritarian Ho Chi Minh City, I consider in what ways do abiotic actors of mass transit and metropolitan traffic enable human riders to challenge or reject a patrilineal heteronormative social track and experience alternative or subversive practices and behaviours. More broadly, I ask in what ways are human and abiotic actors entangled in co-producing future social lives?