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Following Germany's resounding defeat in the First World War, the loss of its status as a colonial power, and the series of severe political and economic upheavals during the interwar years, travel abroad by motor vehicle was one way that Germans sought to renegotiate their place in the world. One important question critical studies of mobility should ask is if technologies of mobility contributed to the construction of cultural inequality, and if so in which ways? Although Germans were not alone in using technology to shore up notions of cultural superiority, the adventure narratives of interwar German motorists, both male and female, expressed aspirations for renewed German power on the global stage, based, in part, on the claimed superiority of German motor vehicle technology.

Holy Motors, France and Germany, 2012, Pierre Grise Productions, directed and written by Leos Carax, starring Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue, and Michel Piccoli.

In Colonial Indochina, the introduction of motorized transportation led French authorities to focus their attention on the issue of pedestrian walking. The political and economic imperatives of the colonial state shaped the modern phenomenon of traffic, which isolated the indigenous body as a sign of otherness. The unruly indigenous pedestrian expressed a discursive and experiential crisis that questioned colonialism itself. This article invites us to examine the political potential of walking by considering Henri Lefebvre's notion of dressage and its limitations in a colonial setting through various examples, from French accounts of indigenous walking in daily activities to political disruptions of traffic by pedestrian demonstrators and the incorporation of indigenous bodies in road safety policies. Repeatedly, colonial subjects eluded, criticized, or undermined the rules of the road and the colony by the simple act of walking.

This article raises questions about the study of secularism, from an anthropological perspective. It begins by discussing some general references in the literature on secularism and its counterpart in Latin languages, “laicity”. It then discusses the approach for defining secularism that privileges models and principles, and advocates for an analysis of the devices that produce forms of regulating the religious. The study of configurations of secularism is the outcome of a consideration of all these elements (models, principles, and devices), and has a strategic focus on ways of defining, delimiting, and managing the religious. Three cases are examined in order to illustrate this approach: France, the United States, and Brazil.

Dhiraj Murthy, Twitter: Social Communication in the Twitter Age Casey Brienza

Ole B. Jensen, Staging Mobilities Fiona Ferbrache

Aharon Kellerman, Daily Spatial Mobility: Physical and Virtual Simona Isabella

Peter Merriman, Mobility, Space and Culture Thomas Birtchnell

Guillermo Giucci, The Cultural Life of the Automobile: Roads to Modernity Georgine Clarsen

Frank Steinbeck, Das Motorrad. Ein deutscher Sonderweg in die automobile Gesellschaft Christopher Neumaier

Maarten Smaal, Politieke strijd om de prijs van de automobiliteit. De geschiedenis van een langdurend discours: 1895–2010 Hans Jeekel

Annette Vowinckel, Flugzeugentführungen. Eine Kulturgeschichte Christian Kehrt

Philip D. Morgan, Maritime Slavery Paul Barrett

Neil Archer, The French Road Movie: Space, Mobility, Identity Michael Gott

Most research into road safety in Europe has focused chiefly on public action, without closely examining the role of car manufacturers or their coordination with public initiatives. This article explores how manufacturers transitioned from a fragmented conception of road safety in the 1970s—with vehicles being the responsibility of manufacturers, and prevention and roads that of institutions—to an increasingly integrated approach in the twenty-first century. The study uses industry archives to present manufacturer strategies from 1972 onward, which at first exclusively focused on vehicle safety standards. After 1986, the European Year of Road Safety, manufacturers’ official discourse increasingly stressed user education, as opposed to technical improvements to the product. Th is article will use the French case, as well as a more European approach to the automobile lobby in Brussels, to chart the gradual emergence of an integrated approach to safety combining the vehicle, infrastructure, and user behavior.

Collecting old cars, like a cocaine habit, seems to be one of nature’s ways of telling you you are making too much money. Think of Pink Floyd’s drummer Nick Mason and his private collection of Ferraris. Think of the American pharmaceutical heir Josiah K. Lilly III and his vintage automobiles displayed in an imitation Shaker barn-house at a heritage park on Cape Cod. Or remember Hans and Fritz Schlumpf, Alsatian textile magnates unable to resist another Bugatti. Indeed, the brothers’ passion helped lead their firm into bankruptcy and their collection––more than 500 vehicles, including 150 Bugattis––ended up as France’s national motorcar museum, the Cité de l’Automobile, opened at Mulhouse in 1982.

This article examines the arrangements that authorities put in place for populations of mixed ancestry from two former colonies in Asia—the Dutch East Indies and British India—and compares them with those of French Indochina during decolonization. These people of mixed ancestry, or “Eurasians,” as they were commonly called at the time, were a heterogeneous group. Some could pass themselves off as Europeans, while others were seen as indigenous people. The arrangements were negotiated during round table conferences, at which decolonization in all three colonies was prepared. Which agreements were made, what consequences did they have, and how and why did these differ across the three colonial contexts? To answer these questions, I use material from governmental archives from all three former colonial contexts. The article shows that information on the paternal ancestry of Eurasians was decisive in the allocation of European citizenship and admission to the colonizing country.