‘Sir, it was my right of way!’ Examining cultural change and the contested entitlements of automobility

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study uses a frame of entitlements to explore how automobility reflects the complex tensions of cultural change, including shifting privileges within gendered and classed social relations. Through documenting the mobility of a cohort of middle-class women in Delhi, three regimes of entitlement are identified within the city’s ‘landscape[s] of power’: the car and its impact on the built environment; the constraints of gendered expectations; and middle class entitlement within a neo-liberal city. The findings highlight the capacity of competing entitlements to structure and contest cultural change, as well as the importance of contextualising mobility theory.

KEYWORDS:

• Automobility
• gender
• Delhi
• cultural change
• entitlement
• urban studies

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the participants in this study: their time and insight is greatly appreciated. This work was supported by the Humanities in the European Research Area, Grant number 12-HERA-JRP-CE-FP-586 SINGLE [www.hera-single.de]

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Generally one or two stories, colonial style architecture.

2. The category of ‘middle class’ is heterogenous and defined in different ways in the Delhi context. The women in this study are all tertiary educated with white collar professions, living in wealthier neighbourhoods.

3. There is very little base-line data on gender and mobility in Delhi and this is an area of much needed research.

4. Attempts to introduce cycle hire schemes have been unsuccessful with cycle paths often used as overflow lanes for traffic.

5. Companies in the BPO sector provide transport for workers, particularly women working the night shift. See Parikh (2018) for more detail.

6. Gauri notes that the Delhi planning authority estimate 2–4 cars per household when houses are extended.

7. Wealthier colonies tend to have at least one permanent taxi stand, therefore drivers become familiar to residents.

8. Jyoti Singh Pandey, or Nirbhaya as she was known in Indian media, was a young women raped and murdered in December 2012 while returning home from the cinema with a male companion. Her death sparked nation-wide campaigns to address violence against women.

9. There is ongoing campaigning to gain unconditional access to public space for women in India, including new forms of protest driven by a generation of young, urban middle class activists (Bernroider 2018).

10. See, for example, Safetipin and the Manas Foundation; http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-rickshaw-drivers-take-message-of-respect-for-women-to-delhi-s-streets-2034571].

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Humanities in the European Research Area [12-HERA-JRP-CE-FP-586 SINGLE].