Bulletin

Issue: April 2004

Seminars & Festivals

Who is in charge, you or your car?

Your car - and what it means to your life - was the subject of animated discussion during a public seminar entitled 'Car Wars' at La Trobe University Melbourne campus (Bundoora) in February.

The Thesis Eleven Centre within the University's School of Social Sciences staged the seminar on the car as a central symbol and fact of modern Melbourne life.

The seminar celebrated the recent publication of the book, Car Wars by Monash University's social historian, Professor Graeme Davison, about the automobile and Melbourne.

The book details how the car transformed life in Melbourne and describes how in the 1950s, 15 per cent of workers travelled to work by car. Today the figure has reversed with 15 per cent travelling by public transport. Cars also led to the development of our huge suburban shopping centres.

A number of noted speakers, including Professor Davidson, and Professor Peter Beilharz, a La Trobe University sociologist, made presentations.

Other speakers included Professor Ian Carter of Auckland University who discussed trains, Dr Trevor Hogan also a La Trobe sociologist, who discussed public transport, and Professor Ruth Fincher of Melbourne University, a specialist on urban studies.

'The car is a central symbol and fact of modernity. But while we have a gestural philosophy of money, we have no sociology of the car', Professor Beilharz said.

Professor Beilharz said that some writers had placed modernity into specific periods by the dominant mode of transport of the time. 'The car is the dominant mode of transport today - and the seminar gave us an opportunity to consider the automobile, 'automobilism' and modernity,' Professor Beilharz said.•

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