Moralities in mobility: negotiating moral subjectivities in Istanbul’s traffic

Yağmur Nuhrat

Mobilities, 2020, vol. 15, issue 3, 325-340

Abstract: Traffic congestion profoundly marks Istanbul’s everyday, in part, by casting drivers as competitors for time and space. Navigating traffic entails many driver maneuvers that are seemingly ‘unfair’ or ‘wrong’ such as line cutting, driving in the emergency lane, parking in prohibited areas, running lights, etc. As such, drivers carefully detail contingencies and circumstances within which some of their ostensibly problematic actions can be deemed acceptable. Within these narratives are also buried processes of emerging as moral subjects albeit filled with ambiguities and contradictions. This paper brings together mobility studies, the anthropology of traffic and the anthropology of ethics/morality to provide ethnographic detail into the everyday of experiencing automobility in Istanbul as a morally complex and formative arena. It is based on a year’s fieldwork with 45 drivers of diverse vehicles recounting their struggles as they try to maintain a sense of ‘conscience’ while they reach their destination, sometimes at the expense of others.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17450101.2020.1713543 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rmobxx:v:15:y:2020:i:3:p:325-340

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rmob20

DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2020.1713543

Access Statistics for this article

Mobilities is currently edited by Professor Kevin Hannam, Professor Mimi Sheller and Professor John Urry

More articles in Mobilities from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().