Living in My Car
Interactions Between Young Adults and Cars in the Balearic Islands (Spain)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.35321Keywords:
Americanization, auto-ethnoarchaeology, auto-ethnography, automobile, young adultsAbstract
Young adults have traditionally used cars as a way to achieve a sense of freedom and independence. However, the interaction between young adults and cars is about more than just mobility, involving the creation of effective social spaces even in static situations. This paper focuses on such relationships from an auto-ethnographic and auto-ethnoarchaeological perspective by studying both the materiality present in young adults' cars and the practices typical of this group in this location. I discuss a case study centred on the university community in the Balearic Islands (Spain), demonstrating that young adults' use of cars is dynamic, and that they interpret them as habitable spaces by transferring certain domestic activities to their realm. In turn, cars are essential allies in the construction of young adults' social spaces and the configuration of auto-reflexive and group identities.
References
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____. 2004. “Automobility and the Power of Sound.” Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4–5): 243–259. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046069
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Cresswell, T. 1993. “Mobility as Resistance: A Geographical Reading of Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’”. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 18 (2): 249–262. https://doi.org/10.2307/622366
Dant, T. 2004. “The Driver-Car.” Theory, Culture
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1177/0263276404046061
Debord, G. 1994. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone.
Edensor, T. 2004. “Automobility and National Identity: Representation, Geography and Driving Practice.” Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4–5): 101–120. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046063
Falconer, R. and S. Kingham. 2007. “‘Driving People Crazy’: A Geography of Boy Racers in Christchurch, New Zealand.” New Zealand Geographer 63 (3): 181–191. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-7939.2007.00107.x
Ganser, A. 2009. Roads of Her Own: Gendered Space and Mobility in American Women’s Road Narratives, 1970-2000. Spatial Practices: An Interdisciplinary Series in Cultural History, Geography and Literature 8. New York: Rodopi.
Gardner, M. and L. Steinberg. 2005. “Peer Influence on Risk Taking, Risk Preference, and Risky Decision Making in Adolescence and Adulthood: An Experimental Study.” Developmental Psychology 41 (4): 625–635. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.41.4.625
Garvey, P. 2001. “Driving, Drinking and Daring in Norway.” In Car Cultures, edited by D. Miller, 133–152. Oxford: Berg.
Green, J., R. Steinbach, E. Garnett, N. Christie and L. Prior. 2018. “Automobility Reconfigured? Ironic Seductions and Mundane Freedoms in 16–21 Year Olds’ Accounts of Car Driving and Ownership.” Mobilities 13 (1): 14–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2017.1331017
Groombridge, N. 1998. “Masculinities and Crimes Against the Environment.” Theoretical Criminology 2 (2): 249–267. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480698002002006
Harrison, R. and J. Schofield. 2010. After Modernity: Archaeological Approaches to the Contemporary Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horowitz, M. J. 1987. “Using the Car as Perfect Personal Space.” Los Angeles Times, 19 April. Available online: http://articles.latimes.com/1987-04-19/news/vw-1656_1_car
Joerges, B. 1988. “Technology in Everyday Life: Conceptual Queries.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 18 (2): 219–237. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.1988.tb00124.x
Laurier, E. 2004. “Doing Office Work on the Motorway.” Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4–5): 261–277. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046070
____. 2010. “Driving: Pre-Cognition and Driving.” In Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects, edited by T. Cresswell and P. Merriman, 69–82. Farham, UK: Ashgate.
____., B. Brown and H. Lorimer. 2005. “Habitable Cars: What We Do There.” Institute of Geography Online Papers Series GEO-003. Available online: http://hdl.handle.net/1842/815
____., H. Lorimer, B. Brown, O. Jones, O. Juhlin and A. Noble. 2008. “Driving and ‘Passengering’: Notes on the Ordinary Organization of Car Travel.” Mobilities 3 (1): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450100701797273
Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Pres.
Leivestad, H. H. 2017. “Inventorying Mobility: Methodology on Wheels.” In Methodologies of Mobility: Ethnography and Experiment, edited by A. Elliot, R. Norum and N. B. Salazar, 47–67. New York: Berghahn Books.
Löfgren, O. 1999. On Holiday: A History of Vacationing. Los Angeles: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520217676.001.0001
Lupton, D. 2002. “Road Rage: Drivers’ Understanding and Experiences.” Journal of Sociology 38 (3): 275–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/144078302128756660
Mateu, J., J. M. Seguí and M. Ruiz. 2017. “Mallorca y sus dinámicas metropolitanas: proximidad y movilidad cotidiana en una isla-ciudad.” EURE 43 (129): 27–47. https://doi.org/10.4067/S0250-71612017000200002
Maxwell, S. 2001. “Negotiating the Car Use in Everyday Life.” In Car Cultures, edited by D. Miller, 203–222. Oxford: Berg.
McDowell, L. 1996. “Off the Road: Alternative Views of Rebellion, Resistance and ‘The Beats’.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 21 (2): 412–419. https://doi.org/10.2307/622491
McKeon, E. and L. Everett. 1998. Cinema Under the Stars: America’s Love Affair with the Drive-In Movie Theater. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House.
Méndez, J. M. and M. C. Azaustre. 2017. “El consumo de alcohol en universitarios. Estudio de las relaciones entre las causas y los efectos negativos.” Revista Complutense de Educación 28 (3): 689–704.
Merriman, P. 2004. “Driving Places: Marc Augé, Non-Places, and the Geographies of England’s M1 Motorway.” Theory, Culture and Society 21 (4–5): 145–167. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046065
____. 2009. “Automobility and the Geographies of the Car.” Geography Compass 3 (2): 586–599. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00219.x
Michael, M. 1998. “Co(a)gency and the Car: Attributing Agency in the Case of the ‘Road Rage’.” In Machines, Agency and Desire, edited by B. Brenna, J. Law and I. Moser, 125–141. Oslo: TVM.
Miller, D. (ed.) 2001. Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg.
Moorhouse, H. 1991. Driving Ambitions: A Social Analysis of Hot-Rod Enthusiasm. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Noy, C. 2009. “On Driving a Car and Being a Family: An Autoethnography.” In Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life, edited by P. Vannini, 101–114. New York: Peter Lang.
____. 2011. “The Semiotics of (Im)mobilities: Two Discursive Case Studies of the System of Automobility.” In The Politics of Proximity: Mobility and Immobility in Practice, edited by G. Pellegrino, 61–81. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
O’Dell, T. 2001. “Raggare and the Panic of Mobility: Modernity and Everyday Life in Sweden.” In Car Cultures, edited by D. Miller, 105–132. Oxford: Berg.
Pérez, J. 2007. “Reckless Driving: Speed, Mobility, and Transgression in the Spanish ‘Rock ‘n’ Road’ Novel.” In Generation X Rocks: Contemporary Peninsular Fiction, Film, and Rock Culture, edited by C. Henseler and R. D. Pope, 153–169. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
Ritzer, G. 2004. The McDonaldization of Society: An Investigation Into the Changing Character of Contemporary Social Life. London: Sage.
Sacks, H. 1992. Lectures on Conversation, Volume 1. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sanders, D. and S. Sanders. 2003. The American Drive-In Movie Theater. St. Paul, MN: Motorbooks International.
Scharff, V. 1991. Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age. New York: Basic Books.
Scott, E. S. and L. Steinberg. 2008. “Adolescent Development and the Regulation of Youth Crime.” The Future of Children 18 (2): 15–33. https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.0.0011
Sheller, M. and J. Urry. 2006. “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” Environment and Planning A 38 (2): 207–226. https://doi.org/10.1068/a37268
Suárez, C., G. Del Morala, B. Martínez, B. John and G. Musitu. 2016. “El patrón de consumo de alcohol en adultos desde la perspectiva de los adolescentes.” Gaceta Sanitaria 30 (1): 11–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gaceta.2015.06.004
Stephan, A. (ed.) 2006. The Americanization of Europe. New York: Berghahn Books.
Thrift, N. 2004. “Driving in the City.” Theory, Culture and Society 21 (4–5): 41–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046060
Urry, J. 2004. “The ‘System’ of Automobility.” Theory, Culture and Society 21 (4–5): 25–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046059
Verrips, J. and B. Meyer. 2001. “Kwaku’s Car: The Struggles and Stories of a Ghanaian Long-Distance Taxi-Driver.” In Car Cultures, edited by D. Miller, 153–184. Oxford: Berg.
Walker, L., D. Butland and R. W. Connell. 2000. “Boys on the Road: Masculinities, Car Culture, and Road Safety Education.” Journal of Men’s Studies 8 (2): 153–169. https://doi.org/10.3149/jms.0802.153
Wells, P. and D. Xenias. 2015. “From ‘Freedom of the Open Road’ to ‘Cocooning’: Understanding Resistance to Change in Personal Private Automobility.” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 16: 106–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.02.001
Woodward, I. 2009. “Material Culture and Narrative: Fusing Myth, Materiality and Meaning.” In Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life, edited by P. Vannini, 59–72. New York: Peter Lang.
Bijsterveld, K., E. Cleophas, S. Krebs and G. Mom. 2014. Sound and Safe: A History of Listening Behind the Wheel. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bull, M. 2003. “Soundscapes of the Car: A Critical Study of Automobile Habitation.” In The Auditory Culture Reader, edited by M. Bull and L. Back, 357–374. Oxford: Berg.
____. 2004. “Automobility and the Power of Sound.” Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4–5): 243–259. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046069
Campbell, B. 1993. Goliath: Britain’s Dangerous Places. London: Hutchinson.
Cardenas, E. and E. L. Gorman (eds). 2007. The Hummer: Myths and Consumer Culture. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Carrabine, E. and B. Longhurst. 2002. “Consuming the Car: Anticipation, Use and Meaning in Contemporary Youth Culture”. Sociological Review 50 (2): 181–196. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.00362
Cresswell, T. 1993. “Mobility as Resistance: A Geographical Reading of Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’”. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 18 (2): 249–262. https://doi.org/10.2307/622366
Dant, T. 2004. “The Driver-Car.” Theory, Culture
& Society 21 (4–5): 61–79. https://doi.org/10.
1177/0263276404046061
Debord, G. 1994. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone.
Edensor, T. 2004. “Automobility and National Identity: Representation, Geography and Driving Practice.” Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4–5): 101–120. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046063
Falconer, R. and S. Kingham. 2007. “‘Driving People Crazy’: A Geography of Boy Racers in Christchurch, New Zealand.” New Zealand Geographer 63 (3): 181–191. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-7939.2007.00107.x
Ganser, A. 2009. Roads of Her Own: Gendered Space and Mobility in American Women’s Road Narratives, 1970-2000. Spatial Practices: An Interdisciplinary Series in Cultural History, Geography and Literature 8. New York: Rodopi.
Gardner, M. and L. Steinberg. 2005. “Peer Influence on Risk Taking, Risk Preference, and Risky Decision Making in Adolescence and Adulthood: An Experimental Study.” Developmental Psychology 41 (4): 625–635. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.41.4.625
Garvey, P. 2001. “Driving, Drinking and Daring in Norway.” In Car Cultures, edited by D. Miller, 133–152. Oxford: Berg.
Green, J., R. Steinbach, E. Garnett, N. Christie and L. Prior. 2018. “Automobility Reconfigured? Ironic Seductions and Mundane Freedoms in 16–21 Year Olds’ Accounts of Car Driving and Ownership.” Mobilities 13 (1): 14–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2017.1331017
Groombridge, N. 1998. “Masculinities and Crimes Against the Environment.” Theoretical Criminology 2 (2): 249–267. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480698002002006
Harrison, R. and J. Schofield. 2010. After Modernity: Archaeological Approaches to the Contemporary Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horowitz, M. J. 1987. “Using the Car as Perfect Personal Space.” Los Angeles Times, 19 April. Available online: http://articles.latimes.com/1987-04-19/news/vw-1656_1_car
Joerges, B. 1988. “Technology in Everyday Life: Conceptual Queries.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 18 (2): 219–237. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.1988.tb00124.x
Laurier, E. 2004. “Doing Office Work on the Motorway.” Theory, Culture & Society 21 (4–5): 261–277. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046070
____. 2010. “Driving: Pre-Cognition and Driving.” In Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects, edited by T. Cresswell and P. Merriman, 69–82. Farham, UK: Ashgate.
____., B. Brown and H. Lorimer. 2005. “Habitable Cars: What We Do There.” Institute of Geography Online Papers Series GEO-003. Available online: http://hdl.handle.net/1842/815
____., H. Lorimer, B. Brown, O. Jones, O. Juhlin and A. Noble. 2008. “Driving and ‘Passengering’: Notes on the Ordinary Organization of Car Travel.” Mobilities 3 (1): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450100701797273
Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Pres.
Leivestad, H. H. 2017. “Inventorying Mobility: Methodology on Wheels.” In Methodologies of Mobility: Ethnography and Experiment, edited by A. Elliot, R. Norum and N. B. Salazar, 47–67. New York: Berghahn Books.
Löfgren, O. 1999. On Holiday: A History of Vacationing. Los Angeles: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520217676.001.0001
Lupton, D. 2002. “Road Rage: Drivers’ Understanding and Experiences.” Journal of Sociology 38 (3): 275–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/144078302128756660
Mateu, J., J. M. Seguí and M. Ruiz. 2017. “Mallorca y sus dinámicas metropolitanas: proximidad y movilidad cotidiana en una isla-ciudad.” EURE 43 (129): 27–47. https://doi.org/10.4067/S0250-71612017000200002
Maxwell, S. 2001. “Negotiating the Car Use in Everyday Life.” In Car Cultures, edited by D. Miller, 203–222. Oxford: Berg.
McDowell, L. 1996. “Off the Road: Alternative Views of Rebellion, Resistance and ‘The Beats’.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 21 (2): 412–419. https://doi.org/10.2307/622491
McKeon, E. and L. Everett. 1998. Cinema Under the Stars: America’s Love Affair with the Drive-In Movie Theater. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House.
Méndez, J. M. and M. C. Azaustre. 2017. “El consumo de alcohol en universitarios. Estudio de las relaciones entre las causas y los efectos negativos.” Revista Complutense de Educación 28 (3): 689–704.
Merriman, P. 2004. “Driving Places: Marc Augé, Non-Places, and the Geographies of England’s M1 Motorway.” Theory, Culture and Society 21 (4–5): 145–167. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046065
____. 2009. “Automobility and the Geographies of the Car.” Geography Compass 3 (2): 586–599. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00219.x
Michael, M. 1998. “Co(a)gency and the Car: Attributing Agency in the Case of the ‘Road Rage’.” In Machines, Agency and Desire, edited by B. Brenna, J. Law and I. Moser, 125–141. Oslo: TVM.
Miller, D. (ed.) 2001. Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg.
Moorhouse, H. 1991. Driving Ambitions: A Social Analysis of Hot-Rod Enthusiasm. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Noy, C. 2009. “On Driving a Car and Being a Family: An Autoethnography.” In Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life, edited by P. Vannini, 101–114. New York: Peter Lang.
____. 2011. “The Semiotics of (Im)mobilities: Two Discursive Case Studies of the System of Automobility.” In The Politics of Proximity: Mobility and Immobility in Practice, edited by G. Pellegrino, 61–81. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
O’Dell, T. 2001. “Raggare and the Panic of Mobility: Modernity and Everyday Life in Sweden.” In Car Cultures, edited by D. Miller, 105–132. Oxford: Berg.
Pérez, J. 2007. “Reckless Driving: Speed, Mobility, and Transgression in the Spanish ‘Rock ‘n’ Road’ Novel.” In Generation X Rocks: Contemporary Peninsular Fiction, Film, and Rock Culture, edited by C. Henseler and R. D. Pope, 153–169. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
Ritzer, G. 2004. The McDonaldization of Society: An Investigation Into the Changing Character of Contemporary Social Life. London: Sage.
Sacks, H. 1992. Lectures on Conversation, Volume 1. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sanders, D. and S. Sanders. 2003. The American Drive-In Movie Theater. St. Paul, MN: Motorbooks International.
Scharff, V. 1991. Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age. New York: Basic Books.
Scott, E. S. and L. Steinberg. 2008. “Adolescent Development and the Regulation of Youth Crime.” The Future of Children 18 (2): 15–33. https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.0.0011
Sheller, M. and J. Urry. 2006. “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” Environment and Planning A 38 (2): 207–226. https://doi.org/10.1068/a37268
Suárez, C., G. Del Morala, B. Martínez, B. John and G. Musitu. 2016. “El patrón de consumo de alcohol en adultos desde la perspectiva de los adolescentes.” Gaceta Sanitaria 30 (1): 11–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gaceta.2015.06.004
Stephan, A. (ed.) 2006. The Americanization of Europe. New York: Berghahn Books.
Thrift, N. 2004. “Driving in the City.” Theory, Culture and Society 21 (4–5): 41–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046060
Urry, J. 2004. “The ‘System’ of Automobility.” Theory, Culture and Society 21 (4–5): 25–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276404046059
Verrips, J. and B. Meyer. 2001. “Kwaku’s Car: The Struggles and Stories of a Ghanaian Long-Distance Taxi-Driver.” In Car Cultures, edited by D. Miller, 153–184. Oxford: Berg.
Walker, L., D. Butland and R. W. Connell. 2000. “Boys on the Road: Masculinities, Car Culture, and Road Safety Education.” Journal of Men’s Studies 8 (2): 153–169. https://doi.org/10.3149/jms.0802.153
Wells, P. and D. Xenias. 2015. “From ‘Freedom of the Open Road’ to ‘Cocooning’: Understanding Resistance to Change in Personal Private Automobility.” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 16: 106–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.02.001
Woodward, I. 2009. “Material Culture and Narrative: Fusing Myth, Materiality and Meaning.” In Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life, edited by P. Vannini, 59–72. New York: Peter Lang.
Published
2019-01-26
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Albero Santacreu, D. J. (2019). Living in My Car: Interactions Between Young Adults and Cars in the Balearic Islands (Spain). Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 5(2), 135-153. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.35321
