Vehicles : : Cars, Canoes, and Other Metaphors of Moral Imagination / / ed. by David Lipset, Richard Handler.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• MitwirkendeR: Auslander, Mark,; Chappell, Ben,; Fernandez, James W.,; Handler, Richard,; Lipset, David,; Notar, Beth E.,; Roth, Joshua Hotaka,; Wayland, Kent,; Živković, Marko,
• HerausgeberIn: Handler, Richard,; Lipset, David,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2014]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (224 p.)

Metaphor, as an act of human fancy, combines ideas in improbable ways to sharpen meanings of life and experience. Theoretically, this arises from an association between a sign—for example, a cattle car—and its referent, the Holocaust. These “sign-vehicles” serve as modes of semiotic transportation through conceptual space. Likewise, on-the-ground vehicles can be rich metaphors for the moral imagination. Following on this insight, Vehicles presents a collection of ethnographic essays on the metaphoric significance of vehicles in different cultures. Analyses include canoes in Papua New Guinea, pedestrians and airplanes in North America, lowriders among Mexican-Americans, and cars in contemporary China, Japan, and Eastern Europe, as well as among African-Americans in the South. Vehicles not only “carry people around,” but also “carry” how they are understood in relation to the dynamics of culture, politics and history.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- FIGURES -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- Introduction: Charon’s Boat and Other Vehicles of Moral Imagination -- Part I Persons as Vehicles -- Chapter 1 Living Canoes Vehicles of Moral Imagination among the Murik of Papua New Guinea -- Chapter 2 Cars, Persons, and Streets: Erving Goff man and the Analysis of Traffic Rules Richard Handler -- Part II Vehicles as Gendered Persons -- Chapter 3 “It’s Not an Airplane, It’s My Baby” Using a Gender Metaphor to Make Sense of Old Warplanes in North America -- Chapter 4 Is Female to Male as Lightweight Cars Are to Sports Cars? Gender Metaphors and Cognitive Schemas in Recessionary Japan -- Part III Equivocal Vehicles -- Chapter 5 Little Cars that Make Us Cry: Yugoslav Fića as a Vehicle for Social Commentary and Ritual Restoration of Innocence -- Chapter 6 “Let’s Go F.B.!” Metaphors of Cars and Corruption in China -- Chapter 7 Barrio Metaxis: Ambivalent Aesthetics in Mexican American Lowrider Cars -- Chapter 8 Driving into the Light: Traversing Life and Death in a Lynching Reenactment by African-Americans in a Multiracial Setting -- Afterword: Quo Vadis? -- Contributors -- INDEX