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One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politicsof AutomobilityVincent N. Pham aa California State University , San MarcosPublished online: 10 Jul 2012.

To cite this article: Vincent N. Pham (2012) One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics ofAutomobility , Quarterly Journal of Speech, 98:3, 353-357, DOI: 10.1080/00335630.2012.700109

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2012.700109

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contradictions of the public sphere (e.g., its hailing of freedom for some at the cost of violence,

slavery, and colonial rule against others), de la Dehesa gravitates, ‘‘ambivalen[tly]’’ (211) (and

efficiently, not strenuously), toward the conceptual apparatus of the public sphere. More than

simply available in the transnational repertoire as a trope for democratic emergence, the public

sphere provides a dual normative and descriptive analytic, propels earnest interrogation of the

conditions of citizenship, and legitimates investigation of abundant actual labor that takes

party-based and electoral forms.To mitigate his ambivalence toward the public sphere*to make it more workable for his

project*de la Dehesa makes three conceptual moves. First, as discussed above, he reads

Foucault’s governmentality into the discussion of the public sphere in order better to account

for the administration of bureaucracy and the workings of expert, instrumental rationalities.

Second, he endorses the coexistence of multiple, alternative modernities; subsequently, ‘‘the’’

public sphere, inextricably linked to now-pluralized modernities, itself pluralizes. De la Dehesa

relocates theoretical discussion of the public sphere to the terrain of ‘‘hybrid modernities’’ (7).

Third, and most substantially, he asserts the need to reconfigure the public sphere as a set of

aggregated ‘‘fields,’’ or ‘‘social topograph[ies] that includ[e] the relevant agents acting within

[them], institutional structures, and commonly understood, though not uncontested beliefs,

expectations, social identities, and discursive practices’’ (61). The offering of ‘‘fields’’ clearly

invites a rhetorical sensibility; it serves the further goal of retaining heterogeneities (92). De la

Dehesa concludes: ‘‘At the national level, I sugges[t] that we might conceive of the public

sphere by disaggregating it into multiple fields within which the boundaries of representation

are contested, each with institutional and cultural parameters that constrain discourse and

limit access as well as distinct articulations with the transnational field’’ (206). Constituted via

hybrid modernities, supplemented with Foucault’s governmentality, and disaggregated into

fields, the public sphere takes new, queer form.

Daniel C. BrouwerArizona State University

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2012.700103

Zack Furness, One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility (Philadelphia: TempleUniversity Press, 2010), xi�348 pp. $71.50 (cloth), $25.95 (paper), $24.95 (e-book).

In his inaugural study on bicycling and the politics of automobility, cultural studies andcommunication scholar Zack Furness centers the bicycle as a techno-cultural artifact

and rhetorical symbol of complex and often divisive debates over mobility, transportation,

and urban planning. Dominant cultural norms and material infrastructure work simulta-

neously to render bicycling an obsolete form of mobility. Furness illustrates how these norms

came into being and examines both the ideological and cultural roots of cyclists’ invisibility as

well as how they productively, yet sometimes problematically, act to render themselves more

visible. Furness situates the bicycle in relation to the automobile to analyze the interconnec-

tions that make up what John Urry calls the ‘‘system of automobility’’ (6). Taking an

articulation theory approach to theorize the bicycle and its ‘‘pedal powered critique’’ (8�9),

Furness provides an extensive analysis of early bicycling discourses, two separate eras of bike

activism, cultural analysis of media representations in popular culture and narratives of news

media, and the onset of DIY bike culture and community bicycle organizations. Drawing upon

primary texts, historical research, media analysis, interviews, and ethnographic field research,

he argues that the techno-cultural product of the bicycle has become central to creating

communities, challenging and reifying automobility, and forging local and transnational

rhetorics of mobility, justice, and the city space.

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In chapter 1, ‘‘Introductions and Intersections,’’ Furness assumes the role of a cartographer,mapping the intersections among automobility, bicycling, and politics of transportation.Writing of disciplining surveillance, legal action, and even violence against bicyclists around

the time of the 2004 Republican National Convention, Furness draws attention to society’sambivalent and paradoxical feelings toward bicycle riding and locates them within the logics of

automobility, the rhetoric of bicycle advocacy, and representations of cycling in mass media.

Furness’ project unearths the discourses that have led to a common understanding ofautomobility and bicycling as politically neutral practices. He then proceeds to challenge those

discourses by analyzing ‘‘tensions that illustrate both how and why technology is never neutral,space is never empty, and mobility is never disconnected from power’’ (11). Furness concludes

by making clear that he intends his book to be an intervention and contribution to ‘‘a series ofdialogues and debates about the socioeconomic, cultural, and political roles of transportation

and personal mobility . . . a legacy of bicycle transportation advocacy . . . [and] a more robust

vision of ‘transportation equity’’’ (11).Chapter 2, ‘‘Becoming Auto-Mobile,’’ puts forth a critical history of the bicycle as a

technology of mobility by addressing the early tension between discourses that frame the

bicycle as a technology of ‘‘emancipatory potential’’ and those that construct a restrictiveconsumer, individual, and disciplinary paradigm of mobility (17). Thus, Furness complicates

the narrative of the bicycle as simply ‘‘a revolutionary influence,’’ one that changed cultural,

gendered, linguistic, and educational aspects of society and inevitably paved the way forautomobiles (15). Rather, Furness argues that conflicting agendas on the ‘‘production,

consumption, uses, and meanings of the bicycle in the late nineteenth century’’ produced a‘‘series of transformations in practical orientations toward mobility, technology, and space’’;

these transformations resulted in the rise of the automobile as the predominant technology of

mobility (17). Drawing upon extensive histories of the bicycle, Furness turns his attention inthe first half of the chapter to the bicycle’s articulation with advertising’s visual rhetoric of

bicycle consumption, feminism, the normalization of objectifying female mobility, and theresulting effect of subjecting female mobility to public scrutiny. He adds that early bicycling

discourses conceived of cyclists as human/machine hybrids who were engaged in a moral

activity, even though cycling as an activity was wrought with racialized and classed views ofmasculinity and nationality. The latter half connects cycling to the social movements of the

mid-1890s, particularly the Left and Socialist movements in Europe. The example of theClarion Cycling Clubs, which used cycling experiences to frame a political agenda, previews

debates over urban planning that began to erupt in the US. The final part of the chapter

focuses on bicycling as a technology for seeing and connects cycling, bicycle tourism, andeventually driving to photography and modernity. Furness concludes by showing how cycling

created a ‘‘culture of mobility’’ (45) whose next logical step was the automobile. But he pointsalso to the possibilities of cycling’s efficient and non-polluting form of transportation

unattainable by the car.Chapters 3 and 4, ‘‘Velorutionaries and the Right to the (Bikeable) City’’ and ‘‘Critical Mass

and the Functions of Bicycle Protest,’’ track the roles that bicycles historically have playedwithin environmentalism and urban reform. Chapter 3 takes on earlier tactics of bike activism

(or ‘‘biketivism’’) of the 1960s and 1970s in the Netherlands in order to think ‘‘critically aboutthe bicycle as a sociocultural and geopolitical technology’’ and the ‘‘overarching techno-

cultural project that is still unfolding’’ (48). The chapter follows a chronological timeline but

also works topically within this timeline, providing parallel accounts that reconceptualize thebicycle beyond nostalgia, while remaining critical of the conception of the city. Furness starts

with the rise of the automobile after the 1920s and the solidification of the automobile�industrial complex after World War II. He then tracks, following the rationalization of urban

space put forth by bicyclists, how the automobile began to shift cultural norms and discourses

about pedestrian mobility as well as reconfigure the city from a ‘‘metropolis’’ to an ‘‘autopolis’’

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(52). Here, Furness focuses on the debates over ‘‘urban space’’ in the Netherlands that were

addressed by the ‘‘Provo’’ in 1965, a group of Dutch political activists who were greatlyinfluenced by the situationists popularized by Guy Debord (55). Explaining that the Provo put

forth the first public bike share program, the White Bicycle Plan, and publicized the realities ofautomobile fatalities through the White Corpse Plan, Furness argues, ‘‘the Provo effectively

politicized the bicycle as a symbol of resistance against car culture, situating the White BicyclePlan within a radical critique of capitalism, public space, and environmental pollution’’ (58).

To elucidate and complicate the narrative of the Netherlands as an inherent and natural‘‘cycling paradise’’ (57), Furness explains how the Provo simultaneously positioned bicycles as

part of policy and challenged the entire ideological framework of the automobile, all in thecontext of the increased motorization of Dutch life in the 1960 and 1970s. Furness also

foregrounds other early biketivism movements, notably the French backlash againstautomobility and the Le Monde a Bicyclette of Montreal. The French backlash, which

eventually paved the way for New York and other US-based movements, occurred out of sheersurvival, especially as automobiles led to the sharp increases in fatalities of pedestrians,

bicyclists, and drivers. Additionally, the Le Monde a Bicyclette of Montreal publicizedenvironmental issues through direct action and street theater tactics of resistance. Furness

argues the early years of bike activism acted with ‘‘a firmly entrenched commitment totransforming bicycling and automobility through formal political channels’’ (67). This

commitment created a political bike culture as well as a cultural bike politic. Progressingchronologically and situating another era of biketivism within the 1970s bike boom, Furness

describes the divides in biketivism that resulted in two camps: the vehicular cyclist paradigm*which argued that cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles and

thus need training and education*and the everyday cyclist, who operated within frameworksof environmentalism, urban planning, and energy crisis. Furness criticizes the vehicular cyclist

movement for its ‘‘rhetoric of equality’’ in inherently unequal spaces, its lack of rhetoricalinvolvement in automobility critiques, and the ‘‘extent to which it assumes that cyclists

unwilling to cope with these specific factors, or the physical dangers of high-speed traffic . . .are not only wrong but also irrational and ignorant’’ (72).

Chapter 4 focuses on contemporary biketivism. Furness studies the event known as CriticalMass and the experiences of its participants to ‘‘highlight, problematize, and at times celebratethe ways in which mobile practices and public spaces co-exist under capitalism’’ and to draw

attention to the dialectic tension between theory and action (79). Begun in San Francisco inthe early 1990s, Critical Mass is an event in which bicycle riders take over the streets during

rush hour on the last Friday of each month to assert, ‘‘We are not blocking traffic; we aretraffic!’’ (79, italics in the original). Furness argues that Critical Mass is ‘‘actively shaped by

collaboration and discussion’’ and reveals power as ‘‘a central concern in the organization’’

(81). Critical Mass also functions as a ‘‘performative critique’’ that attempts to reorganize forobservers and participants what should and should not be on the streets of the city (83).

Drawing upon literature of social movements, Furness argues that the debates between CriticalMass supporters and vehicular cycling advocates are actually over ‘‘the ways in which bicycling

is both presented and represented to the public’’ (98, italics in the original). Importantly, thechapter concludes with a critique of Critical Mass, interrogating ‘‘the we in ‘We are traffic’.’’

Here, Furness examines the social privileges ingrained within public mobility and the use ofpublic space, especially as they pertain to cyclists of color (103).

Although chapter 4 posited Critical Mass as an effort to ‘‘culture jam’’ (95) the urban spacewith bicycle activity, chapter 5, ‘‘Two-Wheeled Terrors and Forty-Year-Old Virgins: MassMedia and the Representation of Bicycling,’’ turns to mediated representations of cycling. The

first half of the chapter categorizes representations of cyclists in the media, while the latterexamines public debates about cycling constructed through news media and considers why

select narratives are privileged over others. Furness proceeds through a multitude of examples

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from contemporary movies, recent television shows, the 1954 film Tomorrow’s Drivers, and

advertisements to argue that ‘‘entertainment media either systematically erase bicycling from

the landscape of popular culture or work in conjunction with other media texts to represent it

in an ideologically loaded manner’’ (118). The second half of the chapter takes up news media

construction of bicyclists as reckless urban cyclists as well as violators of the social contract of

US democracy. Furness analyzes Time magazine’s stories on Critical Mass, the attempted

midtown Manhattan workday bike ban of 1987, New York Times and other newspapers’

opinion pieces, and Libertarian nonprofit transportation/pro-automobile organizations.

While ‘‘good’’ narratives of cycling emphasize exercise and historical notions of the ‘‘patriotic’’

cyclist (133), Furness asserts that current narratives represent cyclists as menaces and as the

‘‘welfare queens of the road’’ (135), thereby positioning the car driver/consumer as both the

model citizen and the cyclists’ victim.Whereas chapter 5 highlights mainstream representations of cyclists in the US, chapter 6,

‘‘DIY Bike Culture,’’ illustrates the often-unseen side of bicyclists as they formulate ‘‘new

cultural practices around bicycle transportation’’ and incorporate ‘‘the bicycle into a variety of

art forms and grassroots alternative media’’ (141). Examining a wide body of texts and

artifacts ranging from punk songs, documentaries, comics, performance art, radio, and blogs,

Furness asserts that these cultural forms challenge the ‘‘automobile’s hegemonic status as king

of the road’’ as well as forge new counter-narratives of mobility (141). Furness’ analysis

connects bicycling to punk practices, participatory communities of technological hacking, and

resistance to the commodification of bike culture to assert that bicycle transportation via DIY

bike culture becomes a way of ‘‘doing mobility yourself ’’ (169).Chapter 7, ‘‘Handouts, Hand Ups, or Just Lending a Hand? Community Bike Projects,

Bicycle Aid, and Competing Visions of Development under Globalization,’’ continues in the

same vein of chapter 6; however, it focuses on the empowerment of communities, rather than

individuals, by drawing attention to community bicycle organizations. These organizations,

often nonprofit and run by volunteers, range from bicycle cooperatives and their youth

programs to anti-oil/pro-sustainable transport bicycle organizations. Furness argues that

community bicycle spaces draw attention to the ways in which ‘‘mobility is intricately

connected with race, class, and gender privilege’’ through low-cost prices, sliding scale pricing,

mechanics classes, youth programs, and attempts to address the typically gendered nature of

bicycle mechanic work (171). Such groups rework both physical and intellectual space to

‘‘articulate and validate their own vision of the bicycle in society’’ (186). The end of the

chapter takes a more critical look at how the organizations bridge the local and the global.

Recognizing that organizations such as the Village Bicycle Project provide bicycles to

developing countries abroad to alleviate issues of poverty and mobility, Furness positions the

bicycle within a ‘‘set of economic practices and power relations in which the bicycle was and is

deployed’’ (198). Furness analyzes development discourses’ commitments to automobility as

well as the notion of incentive pricing and argues that both reinscribe poverty as a personal

issue instead of one tied to government and colonial practices.The book’s conclusion issues a call to do ‘‘much better for ourselves’’ (205) in light of the

impending oil shortage as well as war and pollution caused by oil dependency. As part of this

techno-cultural project, Furness beckons the reader to recognize ‘‘non-motorized technologies

as a real alternative’’ (205), particularly because mainstream environmental debates consider

environmental racism, meat and dairy production, and driving as taboo topics. Furness

recognizes that riding a bicycle, as well as driving, is a political act. He reiterates that the major

contribution of this book is to question both the naturalness of driving and automobility and

the global production of the bicycle industry and its human and environmental costs. Furness

concludes with a reflection on the critical questions that intersect technology, social change,

and everyday life and advocates for the necessity of bicycle and pedal-powered technologies in

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any ‘‘long-term vision of urban transport in the 21st century’’ as well as the ‘‘possibilities formobility itself ’’ (218).

Scholars concerned with the rhetoric of technology and mobility and familiar with JeremyPacker’s work will appreciate how Furness’ book impressively charts the sociocultural historyof the bicycle, cycling’s ongoing techno-cultural project, and its relationship with a largernotion of ‘‘automobility.’’ In addition, Furness expertly and cogently maps out the ways inwhich activists, bicycling enthusiasts, everyday bicycling theorists, musicians and artists, andlibertarian organizations articulate bicycling within the notions of citizenship and the rights toa city and space. Thus, Furness’ book contributes to our understanding of the rhetoric ofeveryday life and the ways in which rhetoric is practiced, performed, and circulated throughriding a bike, performing a song, or joining an organization. Although Furness is not a self-described scholar of rhetoric, scholars interested in the rhetoric of social movements and thework of scholars such as Christine Harold, Phaedra Pezzullo, and Kevin DeLuca will enjoy thedense documentation of how bicycling advocates have engaged in pedal-powered critique toshift a notion of citizenship from automobility into one of non-motorized practices.Moreover, scholars interested in media representations will benefit greatly from studyinghow Furness analyzes media representations within a continuously expanding, historical webof discourses. Importantly, Furness also interrogates the taken-for-granted belief that bicycleculture is inherently progressive; he does not shy away from racial, gender, and class issues andinvites us to think critically about the politics of automobility.

Although Furness skillfully weaves the transnational aspects of bicycling into his studies,particularly in the early histories of biketivism between Europe and the US, a discussion of theglobal flow of bicycles to Africa, India and China is notably absent. Given these nations’bustling bicycle scenes, as well as the increase in automobility in these places, that omission isunfortunate. In addition, rhetoricians seeking a robust ethnography may also be disappointed.Furness hides own positionality within the DIY bike culture and Critical Mass; thus he givesup a productive opportunity to theorize his own subjectivity in relationship to bicyclingpolitics, culture, and community.

Despite these criticisms, Furness’ One Less Car is an innovative book that makes importantcontributions to studies of environmental communication, rhetoric of social movements,rhetoric of technology, and studies of space and place. It is a tour-de-force analysis of thetechno-cultural project of bicycles and the politics of automobility and provides the readerwith a thorough, if at times overwhelming, body of knowledge needed to understand thecomplex global, spatial, and mediated rhetorical terrain bicycles inhabit. Furness’ book is animportant read for scholars interested in how the politics of mobility and environmentalismare discursively produced, materially realized, performatively resisted, and rhetoricallyengaged in embodied practices of bicycling.

Vincent N. PhamCalifornia State University San Marcos

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2012.700109

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