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One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics

of Automobility
Vincent N. Pham

California State University , San Marcos

Published online: 10 Jul 2012.

To cite this article: Vincent N. Pham (2012) One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of
Automobility , 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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Book Reviews 353

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
Foucaults 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 Foucaults governmentality, and disaggregated into
fields, the public sphere takes new, queer form.
Daniel C. Brouwer
Arizona State University
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2012.700103

Zack Furness, One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility (Philadelphia: Temple
University 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 and
communication 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 simultaneously 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 interconnections 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 (89),
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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354 Book Reviews

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 societys
ambivalent 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 of
automobility 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 of
dialogues 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 restrictive
consumer, 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 for
automobiles (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 in
the first half of the chapter to the bicycles articulation with advertisings visual rhetoric of
bicycle consumption, feminism, the normalization of objectifying female mobility, and the
resulting 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 of
masculinity 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 the
Clarion 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, and
eventually 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 points
also to the possibilities of cyclings efficient and non-polluting form of transportation
unattainable by the car.
Chapters 3 and 4, Ve lorutionaries and the Right to the (Bikeable) City and Critical Mass
and the Functions of Bicycle Protest, track the roles that bicycles historically have played
within 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 about
the bicycle as a sociocultural and geopolitical technology and the overarching technocultural project that is still unfolding (48). The chapter follows a chronological timeline but
also works topically within this timeline, providing parallel accounts that reconceptualize the
bicycle 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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Book Reviews 355

(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 greatly
influenced 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 of
automobile 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 Bicycle
Plan 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 the
context of the increased motorization of Dutch life in the 1960 and 1970s. Furness also
foregrounds other early biketivism movements, notably the French backlash against
automobility 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 sheer
survival, especially as automobiles led to the sharp increases in fatalities of pedestrians,
bicyclists, and drivers. Additionally, the Le Monde a` Bicyclette of Montreal publicized
environmental issues through direct action and street theater tactics of resistance. Furness
argues the early years of bike activism acted with a firmly entrenched commitment to
transforming bicycling and automobility through formal political channels (67). This
commitment created a political bike culture as well as a cultural bike politic. Progressing
chronologically 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 frameworks
of environmentalism, urban planning, and energy crisis. Furness criticizes the vehicular cyclist
movement for its rhetoric of equality in inherently unequal spaces, its lack of rhetorical
involvement 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 Critical
Mass and the experiences of its participants to highlight, problematize, and at times celebrate
the 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 in
the 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 are
traffic! (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 for
observers 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 Critical
Mass 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, the
chapter 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 of
public 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 space
with bicycle activity, chapter 5, Two-Wheeled Terrors and Forty-Year-Old Virgins: Mass
Media 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 latter
examines 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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356 Book Reviews

from contemporary movies, recent television shows, the 1954 film Tomorrows 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 magazines 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 automobiles 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 books 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

Book Reviews 357

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any long-term vision of urban transport in the 21 century as well as the possibilities for
mobility itself (218).
Scholars concerned with the rhetoric of technology and mobility and familiar with Jeremy
Packers work will appreciate how Furness book impressively charts the sociocultural history
of the bicycle, cyclings ongoing techno-cultural project, and its relationship with a larger
notion of automobility. In addition, Furness expertly and cogently maps out the ways in
which activists, bicycling enthusiasts, everyday bicycling theorists, musicians and artists, and
libertarian organizations articulate bicycling within the notions of citizenship and the rights to
a city and space. Thus, Furness book contributes to our understanding of the rhetoric of
everyday life and the ways in which rhetoric is practiced, performed, and circulated through
riding a bike, performing a song, or joining an organization. Although Furness is not a selfdescribed scholar of rhetoric, scholars interested in the rhetoric of social movements and the
work of scholars such as Christine Harold, Phaedra Pezzullo, and Kevin DeLuca will enjoy the
dense documentation of how bicycling advocates have engaged in pedal-powered critique to
shift a notion of citizenship from automobility into one of non-motorized practices.
Moreover, scholars interested in media representations will benefit greatly from studying
how Furness analyzes media representations within a continuously expanding, historical web
of discourses. Importantly, Furness also interrogates the taken-for-granted belief that bicycle
culture is inherently progressive; he does not shy away from racial, gender, and class issues and
invites 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 the
global 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 is
unfortunate. 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 gives
up a productive opportunity to theorize his own subjectivity in relationship to bicycling
politics, culture, and community.
Despite these criticisms, Furness One Less Car is an innovative book that makes important
contributions 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 the
techno-cultural project of bicycles and the politics of automobility and provides the reader
with a thorough, if at times overwhelming, body of knowledge needed to understand the
complex global, spatial, and mediated rhetorical terrain bicycles inhabit. Furness book is an
important read for scholars interested in how the politics of mobility and environmentalism
are discursively produced, materially realized, performatively resisted, and rhetorically
engaged in embodied practices of bicycling.
Vincent N. Pham
California State University San Marcos
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2012.700109