The Four Stages:
•1895-1910:
From the introduction of the motor vehicle to the opening of the Ford Highland
Park plant in 1910.
•1910-1958:
The mass idolization of the automobile and mass accommodation to automobility.
•1958-1980:
The emergence of the motorcar as a major social problem.
•1980-2012:
A complex, at times ambivalent, pluralistic response reflective of race, class,
political ideology, and generation
Stage 1 -- The Pioneer Era, 1895-1910
•Characterized
by the rapid development of an attitudinal and institutional context that made
the automobiles domination of American civilization inevitable.
•It
was envisioned that within the foreseeable future a utopian horseless age would
dawn
Why America where the automobile was adopted so readily?
.•Volume
production commonplace
•Abundance
of raw materials.
•A
more equal income distribution than Europe.
•Absence
of tariff barriers between states.
•The
motor was always seen as cleaner safer and more reliable than the horse.
•It
fit within prevailing notions of American individualism – control over the
physical and social environment and as a status symbol.
Stage 2 -- the Automobile as the backbone of a consumer -oriented society
•By
1920s first in value of product, 3rd in
value of exports
•The
lifeblood of the petroleum industry
•One
of the chief customers of the steel industry
•The
biggest consumer of plate glass, rubber and lacquers
Stage 3 -- The automobile at the the center of a religion
•“…at
the root of America’s disproportionate reverence for automobility
there is something profoundly sexual.
Few people give ultimate devotion to sex; their really ultimate devotion
goes to religions like this one.” – theologian Martin Marty, 1958
Stage 4 -- 1980-present
•Most
difficult to sort out
•Has
the automobile age ended as in the 19th
century the open American frontier became settled?
•However,
the
automobile remains key to America’s prosperity, as government can employ only
so many and do only so much!
•The
love affair was tempered by the fact that the peak of our per capita income was
reached in the 1968
•Perceptions
of the automobile refracted through race, class, political ideologies, and
generational differences.
•Despite
the critics, in general and part from the wishful thinking of bi-coastal
intellectuals, Americans will always be
wedded to the road and their automobiles! (They may be electric, however! And
the most successful will be fun to drive.)
•It
is a part of our innate restlessness and mobility.
•It
provides psychological satisfactions that mass transit cannot.
•It
plays into our notions of individualism and freedom, class mobility, and
status.
•Many
different fragmented groups will continue to love the cars they own, and to
value cars from the past.
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