Magician’s Bower and Monstrous Mechanical: The Car as Communication Technology

F#ck Your Family!: The Visual Jurisprudence of Automobility

“…Encouraged by Urry a burgeoning automobility scholarship has explored the car system to comment about consumption [8: 88-90], subjectivity [45,47,78,94], communication [37], and gender [82,87,105,106]. However a possible lacuna has been the role of law and legal processes in stabilising and maintaining automobility and also how automobility has impacted on and affected law [100].…”

Automobility and ‘My Family’ stickers

“…While the detritus of living can accumulate within a vehicle and the familiar light and views of a regular commute can give rise to affirmations of being; 2 the outside of a vehicle forms a Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 71 public declaration. As Rod Giblett suggested, motor vehicles are a medium of communication (Giblett 2000). Urry's definition of automobility was careful in its affirmation of 'hybrid assemblages'.…”

The Car as Avatar in Australian Social Security Decisions

“…Purchasing a new 'inexpensive small car -a Hyundai Getz' was considered 'entirely responsible' [92: Handley DP [14], [27]]. Applicants that downgraded from large and expensive to operate vehicles to new, small and fuel efficient vehicles were equally considered prudent.…”

“…16 The applicant in Re Trent Barrington and Secretary, Department of Employment and Workplace Relations who successively downgraded from a new Subaru Outback to a second-hand Holden Commodore and then downgraded further to a 28 year old Subaru was described as 'quite frugal and prudent' [107: Groom DP [11], [38]]. Also seen as prudent were applicants who spent windfalls on repairing their existing vehicle rather than purchasing new [69: Webb M [16], [27]].…”

“…To adopt a rather old and well breached distinction, the decisions show these aspects of automobile culture are not just in the 'private' zone of prejudices and desires about the status, class, gender and age of the human driver of certain makes and models, but pass into the public realm of law and judgment. In other words 'cars as communication' [27] is not just a frivolous feature of living with the car in the West but has become entwined in the very processes of governance [121]. Cars were not quarantined in the decisions as assets to be valued, they did more.…”