Mobility-Orientalism: Road Safety and the Global Politics of Automobilism

04/08/2026

AI Summary

Mobility-Orientalism: Western automobilism exported to the Global South reproduced assumptions of Western modernity and portrayed local mobility as backward.
Car-centred safety regimes failed amid layered traffic and informal systems, misreading local risk patterns and producing ineffective interventions.
Imported policies often intensified road inequalities and violence; the article demands a planetary history valuing infrastructural asymmetries and local knowledge for alternative mobility futures.

AI Summary

Extending Edward Said's critique of Orientalism into the history of technology, it argues that road safety policies exported from Europe and North America reproduced assumptions about Western modernity while treating mobility practices in the Global South as backward, inefficient, or unsafe.

Using the global history of road safety as a case study, the article shows that safety regimes designed for car-centered societies often failed in contexts characterized by layered traffic, informal mobility systems, and different patterns of risk.

By foregrounding perspectives from the Global South, the article challenges the presumed universality of Western mobility expertise and argues for a planetary history of automobilism attentive to infrastructural asymmetries, local knowledge, and alternative mobility futures.

Basic summary

Technol Cult. 2026;67(3):921-944. doi: 10.1353/tech.2026.a996504.

ABSTRACT

This article introduces the concept of mobility-Orientalism to explain how Western models of automobilism shaped both the discourse and infrastructure of global mobility. Extending Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism into the history of technology, it argues that road safety policies exported from Europe and North America reproduced assumptions about Western modernity while treating mobility practices in the Global South as backward, inefficient, or unsafe. Using the global history of road safety as a case study, the article shows that safety regimes designed for car-centered societies often failed in contexts characterized by layered traffic, informal mobility systems, and different patterns of risk. In many cases, imported policies intensified rather than reduced inequalities and violence on the road. By foregrounding perspectives from the Global South, the article challenges the presumed universality of Western mobility expertise and argues for a planetary history of automobilism attentive to infrastructural asymmetries, local knowledge, and alternative mobility futures.

PMID:42544479 | DOI:10.1353/tech.2026.a996504

Document this CPD