Flow and flood: mobilities, life in roads and abiotic actors of the (m)ôtô ‐cene

Abstract

Traffic in mega‐urban Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) demonstrates the transformative powers of vehicles and transport infrastructures. Like eddies of a river, traffic flows are abiotic actors – other‐than‐human physical phenomena that influence how traffic makes its way. But the liquid sense of flow in Vietnamese imaginings has unique qualities that challenge singular conceptualisations of the Anthropocene. Moving beyond human‐centredness, this paper re‐imagines traffic of metropolitan HCMC as the (m)ôtô‐cene. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I examine transformations of diurnal patterns of banal journey‐making where infrastructure routinely fails and ask how abiotic actors shape ways of inhabiting the Anthropocene and living with roads.

Social Distancing, Interaction, and (Un)crowded Public Space in Mass Transit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

“…Since it is generally a diurnal service, with most routes ending around 7 p.m., the bus is not the only mode of transport I use. In this ongoing project, I explore ethnographic moments in which interactions among highly mobile residents of HCMC in crowded and uncrowded public spaces of the Saigon Bus take place (Earl 2016(Earl , 2018(Earl , 2020b(Earl , 2021). As an empirical example, the Saigon Bus offers a lens through which to analyse the impact of the emerging biosocial paradigm of crowding on the ground.…”