Driven to sanity: An ethnographic critique of the senses in automobilities

Abstract

This article reviews critically approaches to embodiment and the senses in contemporary automobilities research, highlighting particularly their critical representation of sensory disengagement in driving. In contrast, through passenger‐seat ethnography conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the article explores the roles of sensory engagement in driving in ameliorating post‐socialist and post‐war unease concerning namely identification, mistrust, insecurity and estrangement. Globally cars are the largest single item of consumer expenditure after housing, and the consequences of this are manifold and devastating. In this context it becomes pressingly important to understand why people drive as much as they do and, as part of this, how driving makes us feel. In order to achieve this automobilities research must, I argue, stand back from its disposition of critique and develop a more thoroughgoing ethnography of driving. Anthropology is beginning to provide this, albeit sparsely and belatedly. This article represents a contribution.