Trains, culture, and mobility : riding the rails / Benjamin Fraser, Steven Spalding.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fraser, Benjamin.

Contributor:

Spalding, Steven D., 1971-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Railroads--Social aspects.

Railroads.

Railroad travel--Social aspects.

Railroad travel.

Social aspects.

Physical Description:

xii, 309 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Md. : Lexington Books, [2012]

Summary:

Trains, Culture, and Mobility: Riding the Rails goes beyond textual representations of rail travel to engage an impressive range of political, sociological, and urban theories. Taken together, these essays highlight the complexity of the modern experience of train mobility and its salient relation to a number of cultural discourses. Incorporating traditionally marginal areas of cultural production such as graffiti, museums, and architecture, or even plunging into the social experience of travel inside the train car itself, each essay works from the act of riding the train toward questions of much larger significance. Crisscrossing cultures from the Old and New Worlds, from East and West, these essays share a common preoccupation with the ways in which trains and railway networks have mapped and remapped the contours of both cities and states in the modern period. Bringing together individual and large-scale social practices, this volume traces out the cultural implications of "riding the rails." Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Speed and Vision

Chapter 1 Cultures of Speed and Conservative Modernity: Representations of Speed in Britain's Railway Marketing / Colin Divall Divall, Colin, Hiroki Shin Shin, Hiroki 3

Chapter 2 The Speed of Signs: Train Graffiti, Cultural Production, and the Mobility of the Urban in France and Spain / Benjamin Fraser Fraser, Benjamin, Steven D. Spalding Spalding, Steven D. 27

Part II On Passengers

Chapter 3 "What to Wear and Where to Go": Picturing the Modern Consumer on the Great Western Railway 1921-1939 / Alexander Medcalf Medcalf, Alexander 61

Chapter 4 Seen from a Carriage: A Rhythmanalytic Study of Train Travel and Mediation / Rowan Wilken Wilken, Rowan 91

Part III City Networks

Chapter 5 Urban Railways, Industrial Infrastructure, and the Paris Cityscape, 1870-1914 / Peter Soppelsa Soppelsa, Peter 117

Chapter 6 Subways and Cell Phones: Seoul as a Network City / Samuel Gerald Collins Collins, Samuel Gerald 145

Part IV Inside the Station

Chapter 7 Brief Encounters and Lasting Impressions: Contemporary Train Station Architecture / Agata Morka Morka, Agata 171

Chapter 8 Digging Madrid: A Descent into Madrid's Subway Museum, Anden 0 [Platform 0] / Araceli Masterson-Algar Masterson-Algar, Araceli 205

Part V Shifting States

Chapter 9 Trains, Modernity, and State Formation in Meiji Japan / Tristan R. Grunow Grunow, Tristan R. 235

Chapter 10 "The Super-Express of Our Dreams" and Other Mythologies about Postwar Japan / Hiraku Shimoda Shimoda, Hiraku 263.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780739167496

0739167499

9780739167502

0739167502

OCLC:

754724640