Und es fährt und fährt . . . Automobilindustrie und Automobilkultur am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts

Gert Schmidt, Holger Bungsche, Thilo Heyder and Matthias Klemm (eds), Und es fährt und fährt . . . Automobilindustrie und Automobilkultur am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts, Sigma, Berlin (2005), 311 pp, a19.90.

The German book market seems to be more receptive to half-products than other markets, both in Europe and especially in the United States. This is a good example, exposing all the characteristics in a snapshot: contributions that do not seem to have gone through a rigorous referee process, a minimal introduction that hardly tries to give the reader some guidance as to the affiliation of the contributors and the coherence of their contributions and a complete lack of an introduction which tries to lead the uninformed reader into the jargon of the sociology of 'interculturality' of the international automobile industry. And yet some snapshots are taken just at the right moment to make their study interesting.

This bundle, the result of a conference on 'Automobile and culture' in 2003 at the University of Erlangen - Nuremberg, provides a nice overview of the contemporary German automobile industry as part of a global industrial network. Written mostly by economists and social scientists related to Erlangen University and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), together with some Japanese guests, it forms a counterpart to the publications of the leading European centre of automobile studies: the GERPISA network in Bordeaux. Especially, the first of the three parts, devoted to production concepts of the automobile economy, gives a thorough and authoritative overview of the European car industry at the turn of the century, identifying typical characteristics (such as the production of luxury and sports cars, the dominance of the diesel engine and a strong union presence) which allows to speak of an 'own European trajectory' (p. 12) despite the fact that one-third of the production is governed by non-European manufacturers. This 'Europeanness', the editors seem to suggest, is largely determined by the 'German model', characterised by high-class cars, a high-quality work force and a large influence of that work force on the production process. To contextualise this picture, the second part of the bundle contains some analyses of Japanese (Nissan, Mazda), Korean (Hyundai) and Czech (?Skoda) production processes, using the concept of 'interculturality' to lay bare the communication within and between and the mutual influences of the different production models. An interesting analysis of the development of one type of car at BMW, DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen reveals the very international character of modern automobile production. The main conclusion seems to be that quality and price are no longer a guarantee of success in this highly competitive market; instead, styling and user identification with the product are decisive. To this end, the whole system has to be retuned, including suppliers (who nowadays already produce three-quarters of the car's value) and importers and dealers (whose exclusive role in the total chain is heavily under pressure in Europe nowadays).

As an afterthought, the third part contains some cultural analyses of the car, much more sketchy than the contributions in the previous parts. Editor and head of the Erlangen group Gert Schmidt delivers a sketch of the co-evolution of car technology and user culture, echoing the work by British sociologist John Urry, whereas WZB representative Weert Canzler sketches a 'history of car criticism'. For historians of mobility the contributions to this third part are the most interesting. Their presence in the bundle raises the question of the relationship between history and social science. They testify that this relationship is not yet settled, to say the least.

Schmidt's and Canzler's contributions are examples of what I would like to call 'instrumentalisation of history' for the sake of the social sciences: Schmidt's sketch unfortunately lacks historical sources, which makes it hard to join his thesis that 'rationality' (Vernunft) was the leading concept driving the co-evolution of car culture and car technology. In a similar vein Canzler puts his own institute at the end of his history of critical attitude towards the automobile, in the process forgetting others (in the 1920s, for instance), and putting his institute much too far apart from the critical period of the 1970s, of which it is clearly a direct descendant. His conclusions are nonetheless revealing: car criticism is dead and opposition to the automobile has given way to acceptance. Canzler's sketch is followed by an analysis of the failure of one of his centre's projects, the 'Partial Car' (Portionsauto), a mix of car sharing and part-time leasing, taken over by the German railways in 2002 when the project threatened to go bankrupt. The analysis of this failure (based on detailed reports on the hundred or so users of the system in Berlin and Hamburg) reveals an interesting characteristic of modern car use, which is determined in large part by 'unreflexive use', a characteristic which makes it extremely diffi- cult to give alternatives such as public transport a serious chance.