Open Conference Systems, Nordic Geographers Meeting 2011

Font Size: 
“Do you wanna go for a ride?”: Practicing Automobility and car cruising in Iceland.
Virgile Collin-Lange

Last modified: 2011-04-20

Abstract


Car cruising, "rúntur" in Icelandic is a major phenomenon for young people especially for novice drivers as it represents almost a "must do" when accessing the local car culture. Simondon claimed that the individual is never given in advance and that he/she must be produced, it must coagulate, or come into being, in the course of an ongoing process. This work explores how individuals produce and project themselves into spaces through a particular mobile experience, to look at how young people use the car as a medium to communicate and spatially individuate themselves as automobile being. In other words, this work explores the relationship between automobility and spatiality through the example of car cruising in Iceland. This is done using qualitative methods; in depth interviews with novice drivers that go car cruising, participant and non-participant observations and completed with a photographic project where each participant has been asked to take a number of pictures while cruising and discussed them.