Summary
CARS: How do cars transmit our identities behind the wheel? Laurie Taylor explores the meaning of cars from Bradford to China. Yunis Alam, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bradford, discusses his study of car ownership amongst Bradfordians of Pakistani heritage. How do cars project status, class, taste and racial identity? Also, Jun Zhang, Assistant Professor of Asian and International Studies at City University of Hong Kong, describes the rise of car consumption in China and the ways in which it has shaped the emerging, but insecure, middle class.
Producer: Jayne Egerton
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello. I was living in a cold water flat with my new wife and my very new child when my old friend Robert |
| 0:47.0 | came calling. |
| 0:48.0 | You're going through a rough time, he told me, so I've left something for you outside your flat. |
| 0:55.0 | His wildly generous presence was a Morris minivan. |
| 0:59.0 | My first car, gray, hardly used, beautiful. |
| 1:05.0 | I tell the story because it recalls the time when one could probably be proud of possessing something with four wheels and an engine. A time in the early 1970s when Roland Bart could write that cars have become the exact equivalent of the great Gothic |
| 1:24.9 | cathedrals, the supreme creation and era conceived with passion by unknown artists |
| 1:31.4 | and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population |
| 1:36.1 | which appropriates them as a purely magical object. |
| 1:45.0 | But in today's landscape, that magic has waned. |
| 1:50.0 | You can now probably more readily announce who you are by deliberately not owning a car |
| 1:56.4 | as you can by parading your Porsche or lauding your Lamborghini. |
| 2:01.0 | And that is why I was so intrigued by a new book which firmly reinstates the old idea that you are what you drive. |
| 2:08.0 | That book is entitled, Race, Taste, Class and class, and cars. |
| 2:13.2 | And its author is Eunice Alam, senior lecturer in sociology |
| 2:16.9 | at the University of Bradford. |
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