Carjacked: the Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives (book review)

Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez believe that a tipping point has been reached. While “querying voices” “are usually lost as history is written by the winners within the car system”: the sheer size of the US and global fleets and “the fact that so many more people now lose in that system means that a critique of car dependence can begin to have more of an impact.” Lutz and Lutz Fernandez are sisters and anthropology professor and investment banker turned English teacher, respectively. Their book was prompted by the death of a relative, and presents both the sustained critique that such an affective genesis would suggest, and the rounded approach implied by the authors’ backgrounds and expertise. The authors’ gender arguably gives them the additional advantage of an Archimedean point from which to critique a masculinised car culture.