Empire's ecological tyreprints 1

1. Apologies are due to the appropriation of Wakernagel & Rees's (1996) concept of ‘ecological footprinting’ from which this title is drawn. For a recent application, see WWF (2004). We re-appropriate their phrase as ‘tyreprints’ to emphasise the specificity of the production of environmental degradation by automobiles and automobility.

Abstract

This article explores contemporary car advertising in order to suggest that the practices which generate environmental degradation are intimately bound up both materially and symbolically with the reproduction of and transformations within the contemporary global political order. The article argues that this order can be understood as increasingly imperial in character, that such an imperial politics is connected closely to the politics of cars, and that the specific character(s) of an emerging ‘empire’ can thus be interpreted through the symbolisms in the ways in which cars are currently being marketed.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge and thank those car manufacturers and advertisers who gave permission to reproduce their advertisements in this article, as well as Adbusters for permission to reproduce the ‘What was that bump?’ image. Thanks are due in particular to Heidi Anderson and Dale Armstrong for research assistance, and to two anonymous referees and Andrew Dobson for constructive comments and advice.

Notes

1. Apologies are due to the appropriation of Wakernagel & Rees's (1996) concept of ‘ecological footprinting’ from which this title is drawn. For a recent application, see WWF (2004). We re-appropriate their phrase as ‘tyreprints’ to emphasise the specificity of the production of environmental degradation by automobiles and automobility.

2. The SUV in particular has received a fair amount of critical attention. In broad agreement with some of what we say below, see Gunster (2004) or Luke (2001). Gunster (2004) analyses specifically SUV advertising, while Shukin (forthcoming) examines car advertising more generally, in terms of the complicated constructions of ‘nature’ in these advertisements. We concur with many arguments here, but emphasise in our analysis that such an account of ‘nature’ is always implicated with an imperial politics.

3. The reading is thus carried out in the spirit of analyses such as those by Wernick (1991) or Williamson (1981), or in the similar analysis of the film The Big Lebowski by Martin-Jones (forthcoming).

4. This advertisement appeared, among other places, in Canadian Geographic, May/June 1999, p. 16. For further information, please contact the authors.

5. Such an image was intentional: ‘Our new SUV “No Boundaries” umbrella strategy communicates to consumers that there are no limits to where a Ford SUV can take them’, states Ford's 2000 Annual Report (Ford Motor Company, 2000: 10, as cited in Luke, 2001: 316). It is perhaps worth noting that Ford's advertisements are relatively less militaristic than those, for instance, for the Cadillac Escalade or the Hummer. In part, this is because of the contradictions brought about by Ford's attempts to present itself as a ‘Green’ car company, while still developing new and bigger SUV models. On this, see Luke (2001). But nevertheless, the ‘no boundaries’ tag-line implicates it closely in a politics which is about avoiding spatial constraints, a trope which implicates individual consumers in the mode of existence of US imperialism.

6. Bradsher gives similar examples of imagery used in marketing the Escalade, with an advertisement where the main slogan is simply the injunction ‘Yield’. See Bradsher (2001: xix).

7. Head-up display refers to elements of the display projected from the dashboard onto the windscreen so it is visible at eye-level.

8. Note for North American readers: the Honda Jazz in Europe is a mid-sized ‘family’ car, not a small motor scooter.

9. Although this is a long series of advertisements, the one discussed specifically appeared, among other places, in the Guardian Weekend magazine, 22 February 2003.

10. It is also perhaps worth reflecting on the way that in many parts of the developing world SUVs come to figure as symbols of the ‘new colonialism’ of aid workers or the UN, as they are driven typically by such workers. In Nepal, for example, such a culture is known as ‘Pajero culture’, given the frequency with which Mitsubishi ‘Pajero’ SUVs are chosen by aid agencies. See Shah (2002).