Historians of the United Kingdom generally regard the period between 1896 and 1939 as one in which the automobile became a feature of the nation’s daily life. However, the country was slow to develop appropriate infrastructure when compared to contemporaries like France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Indeed, the UK had no motorways until 1958 when the Preston By-pass was opened. Despite this initial disadvantage, by the 1960s the car had risen to become the United Kingdom’s dominant form of transportation. The automobile played a pivotal role in a number of subcultures, shaped the built environment, and exerted an influence on the nation’s artistic output. The car’s ongoing supremacy is reflected in the more than thirty million private automobiles on the country’s roads, with the overwhelming majority of these having internal combustion engines. Decarbonising private transportation is thus essential if the United Kingdom is to meet the targets that it has set itself as part of the Paris Agreement.

But what sort of transportation futures and solutions are currently being imagined in the United Kingdom? For the past decade, the Conservative Party have led the country, either in coalition or by themselves. In the near term the party’s vision for the nation’s automotive future has centred on plug-in electric vehicles. These, it is imagined, will be charged at their owners’ houses. In this presentation I contrast this Conservative government vision for the United Kingdom’s private transportation with an alternative vision that addresses the specific circumstances of post-coalonial County Durham and attends to the development of infrastructure in the area. In doing so I draw upon fieldwork that I conducted with the Durham County Council’s Low Carbon Economy team and their networks. Informed by literature from STS and anthropology I analyse the values that shape these differing national and local imaginings of the future of mobility in Britain.

Dr Chima Michael Anyadike-Danes is a Cultural Anthropologist who received his PhD from the University of California, Irvine in 2017. His current research interests concern the socio-cultural aspects of energy transitions and decarbonisation. He joined Durham University in 2020 to work with Professor Simone Abram and Dr Claire Dungey on an INCLUDE project. Over the course of a year Chima explored the efforts of Durham County Council to plan for inclusive post-carbon futures. Concurrently he worked with Simone and Miz Claire Copeland on a CESI funded project that examined local governments’ usage of energy modelling. Currently, Chima is co-authoring an ethnographic monograph based on the INCLUDE fieldwork while also researching East Durham’s post-coal communities as part of the GEMS (Geothermal Energy from Mines) project.

---

Please join in for an informal lunch with the presenter, staff and students beforehand 12.00 to 13.00 – bring your own lunch. Non-alcoholic drinks, nibbles and tea/coffee with biscuits are provided. All welcome!)

Location: G10, Department for Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol 43, Woodland Road, BS8 1UU, ground floor.
Access information: https://www.accessable.co.uk/university-of-bristol/access-guides/43-woodland-road