ABSTRACT

This chapter offers a sociologically oriented perspective on the motor vehicle conceived as an inherent component of modernity, a medium of intangible values and social practices binding social, economic, cultural, and political developments into a concept of modern automobility. By postulating the inherent role of automobility in the constitution of modern societies, I conceptualize the car as an agent of modernization whose contribution to the ongoing transformation of social systems seems indispensable for understanding a plethora of cultural contradictions of modernity, chief among them a tendency to deconstruct contemporary ideologies of progress and technological rationality by accentuating a conflict taking place between civil liberties, public safety, and sustainability.