Hitchhiking

The first English-language social science book to comprehensively explore hitchhiking in the contemporary era in the West, this volume covers a lot of groundit goes to and fro, in an echo of the modus operandi of most hitchhiking journeys. As scarification, piercings, and tattoos move from the counter-culture to popular culture, hitchhiking has remained an activity apart. Yet, with the assistance of virtual platforms and through its ever-growing memorialisation in literature and the arts, hitchhiking persists into the 21st century, despite the many social anxieties surrounding it. The themes addressed here thus include: adventure; gender; fear and trust; freedom and existential travel; road and transport infrastructures; communities of protest and resistance; civic surveillance and risk ecologies.

Reviews alienation, dependence, fear, sociability, protest, time and mobility through the lens of hitchhiking Explores why hitchhiking has declined in some areas, such as the USA and parts of Europe, but survives in other areas, such as Eastern Europe Probes the relationship of hitchhiking to humans, the environment, and state infrastructure

Autorentext
Patrick Laviolette holds a PhD in Anthropology from UCL. He is the co-editor of the Berghahn periodical the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures (2019/23) *and the author of Extreme Landscapes of Leisure (2016) and The Landscaping of Metaphor* (2011).

Inhalt
Start -- The Auto-Stop Diaries.- Chapter 1: Getting to the Other Ride.- Chapter 2: Dividually Driven.- Chapter 3: Carporeality, Carhesia / Whereupon the Road to Erewhon.- Chapter 4: Motorised Flânerism.- Chapter 5: Guides to the Uncanny-scapes.- Chapter 6: Thumbbuddies on the Auto Ban.- Chapter 7: The 'Carthulucene' at the End of the Road - Lost in the Ruptures Not Taken.- Fine -- Waiting for Volvo.