Hitchhiking

The first English-language social science book to comprehensively explore hitchhiking in the contemporary era in the West, this volume covers a lot of ground—it goes to and fro, in an echo of the modus operandi of most hitchhiking journeys.  As scarification, piercings, and tattoos move from the counter-culture to popular culture, hitchhiking has remained an activity apart. Yet, with the assistance of virtual platforms and through its ever-growing memorialisation in literature and the arts, hitchhiking persists into the 21st century, despite the many social anxieties surrounding it. The themes addressed here thus include: adventure; gender; fear and trust; freedom and existential travel; road and transport infrastructures; communities of protest and resistance; civic surveillance and risk ecologies.

• material culture
• infrastructure
• landscape
• mobilities
• transportation
• consumption
• individuality
• conviviality
• cosmopolitanism
• phenomenology

“... anthropologist Patrick Laviolette, whose new book 'Hitchhiking: Cultural Inroads' turns hitching rides into a lens on society at large.” (Jen Rose Smith,The Washington Post, Oct 30 2020) 

“For five decades I have hitchhiked far and wide. Only now, thanks to Dr Laviolette's thought-provoking study, can I place the practice of getting from A to B (often via C and D) in an anthropological context. The author recognises the role of hitching in blurring the boundaries between public and private spaces, and he praises drivers who ‘resist the culture of fear and propaganda that has turned the participants of this form of adventurous travel into frightful or even endangered Others’. After a year in which hitchhiking itself has been endangered by restrictions on movement and car sharing, it is good to be reminded that thumbing – and offering – rides represents a "mutually reciprocal form of embodied trust between driver and passenger’. In an age where person-to-person contact is more precious than ever, Dr Laviolette is to be congratulated on defining the unique status of hitchhiking.” (Simon Calder, travel correspondent, The Independent) 

“Laviolette’s Hitchhiking is not intended to get you to your destination fast. If you can wait for the lift, however, you will be rewarded with stories of people and their places, enmeshed with song texts, culture theory and visual road signs. In the end, hitchhiking becomes far more than a mode of physical mobility. Rather, it’s a way of being in the world and an anthropological method—one that values the poetry and adventurousness of the journey.” (Peter Schweitzer, Professor of Anthropology, University of Vienna, Austria) 

“In this enchanting and important book, Patrick Laviolette explores the art of hitchhiking in our times. In so doing he brilliantly demonstrates how hitchhiking is linked to the shared economy, individualism, collectivism, human rights, risk, fear, existential uncertainty as well as the phenomenology of landscapes, mobile museums, and social contexts. In Hitchhiking: Cultural Inroads Laviolette demonstrates powerfully and artfully how hitchhiking is a metaphor for living—and living well—in a troubled world. This book is a model for doing anthropology in the 21st century.” (Paul Stoller, Professor of Anthropology, West Chester University, USA, and author of Yaya's Story: The Quest for Well Being in the World (2014)) 

“As someone who has hitchhiked herself a bit, back in the day, I read this monograph with great interest. Risk, adventure, and trust are three of the hearts of hitchhiking in this lively and novel book describing a fascinating cultural practice and modern form of mobility.” (Catherine Lutz, Thomas J. Watson Jr. Family Professor, Brown University, USA)

• Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, UK

  Patrick Laviolette

Patrick Laviolette holds a PhD in Anthropology from UCL. He is the co-editor of the Berghahn periodical the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures (2019/23) and the author of Extreme Landscapes of Leisure (2016) and The Landscaping of Metaphor (2011).

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