Vehicles

Metaphor, as an act of human fancy, combines ideas in improbable ways to sharpen meanings of life and experience. Theoretically, this arises from an association between a sign—for example, a cattle car—and its referent, the Holocaust. These “sign-vehicles” serve as modes of semiotic transportation through conceptual space. Likewise, on-the-ground vehicles can be rich metaphors for the moral imagination. Following on this insight, Vehicles presents a collection of ethnographic essays on the metaphoric significance of vehicles in different cultures. Analyses include canoes in Papua New Guinea, pedestrians and airplanes in North America, lowriders among Mexican-Americans, and cars in contemporary China, Japan, and Eastern Europe, as well as among African-Americans in the South. Vehicles not only “carry people around,” but also “carry” how they are understood in relation to the dynamics of culture, politics and history.

Metaphor, as an act of human fancy, combines ideas in improbable ways to sharpen meanings of life and experience. Theoretically, this arises from an association between a sign—for example, a cattle car—and its referent, the Holocaust. These “sign-vehicles” serve as modes of semiotic transportation through conceptual space. Likewise, on-the-ground vehicles can be rich metaphors for the moral imagination. Following on this insight, Vehicles presents a collection of ethnographic essays on the metaphoric significance of vehicles in different cultures. Analyses include canoes in Papua New Guinea, pedestrians and airplanes in North America, lowriders among Mexican-Americans, and cars in contemporary China, Japan, and Eastern Europe, as well as among African-Americans in the South. Vehicles not only “carry people around,” but also “carry” how they are understood in relation to the dynamics of culture, politics and history.

List of Figures
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Charon's Boat and Other Vehicles of Moral Imagination
David Lipset

PART I: PERSONS AS VEHICLES

Chapter 1. Living Canoes: Vehicles of Moral Imagination among the Murik of Papua New Guinea
David Lipset

Chapter 2. Cars, Persons, and Streets: Erving Goffman and the Analysis of Traffic Rules
Richard Handler

PART II: VEHICLES AS GENDERED PERSONS

Chapter 3. "It's Not an Airplane, It's My Baby": Using a Gender Metaphor to Make Sense of Old Warplanes in North America
Kent Wayland

Chapter 4. Is Female to Male as Lightweight Cars Are to Sports Cars?: Gender Metaphors and Cognitive Schemas in Recessionary Japan
Joshua Hotaka Roth

PART III: EQUIVOCAL VEHICLES

Chapter 5. Little Cars that Make Us Cry: Yugoslav Fića as a Vehicle for Social Commentary and Ritual Restoration of Innocence
Marko Živković

Chapter 6. “Let’s Go F.B.!”: Metaphors of Cars and Corruption in China
Beth E. Notar

Chapter 7. Barrio Metaxis: Ambivalent Aesthetics in Mexican American Lowrider Cars
Ben Chappell

Chapter 8. Driving into the Light: Traversing Life and Death in a Lynching Reenactment by African-Americans
Mark Auslander

Afterword: Quo Vadis?
James W. Fernandez

Notes on Contributors
Index