The International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility: Second Annual Conference, Detroit, 4-7 November 2004

The city of Detroit, Michigan, was the venue for the second annual conference of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T²M), between 4 and 7 November 2004. Bruce Pietrykowski and Sharie Beard supervised the local arrangements, aided by Dick van den Brink, secretary of the association, which is based in the Netherlands. The University of Michigan—Dearborn hosted the conference in its admirable Fairlane Conference Center. The Motor City was highly appropriate setting for the proceedings, and sparked much comment about the particular physical and cultural importance of the automobile in American life. Many of the panels focused on the conference theme, "Mobility History and Policy," but the breadth of research interests within T²M ensured that high-quality submissions on other aspects of transport and mobility found their place at the conference as well.

T²M was formally founded at the first conference, held in November 2003 at Eindhoven. It was the culmination of several years of effort prompted by the desire to rejuvenate the academic study of transport, an area which previously has been disproportionately concerned with economic and institutional history. The association's name reflects this new research agenda. T²M is seeking to shift attention from production to the consumption of transport. This is the "mobility" of the title: the movement of people, goods, and ideas, and the social and cultural meanings attached to this circulation at the individual and societal levels. A particular intention is to encourage a more integrated approach, through transnational and transmodal analysis of transport networks. Interaction between history and other disciplines is particularly sought, in order to widen understanding and interpretation of transport, past and present.

This desire to broaden the canon manifested itself in Detroit, with papers from science and technology studies, policy makers, economists, archaeologists, geographers, sociologists, art historians, and engineers as well as historians. Since November 2003 the association has grown in membership, and representatives of sixteen countries attended the Detroit conference, from as far afield as Sweden, Australia, the Republic of Congo, and South Africa. Indeed, approximately 60 percent of the attendees came from outside North America—such was the enthusiasm for T²M. This geographic and academic diversity was a particularly valuable feature of the conference.

In keeping with the new approaches encouraged by the association, the conference employed a modern format, emphasizing discussion and the exchange of ideas. Papers were submitted by September 2004 and then sent out to all delegates on compact disk. This enabled participants to read the papers before attending the conference, giving them a chance to assess each paper critically and form more detailed questions and suggestions. Authors gave brief summaries of their papers at each session, permitting extended discussion during time that would otherwise have been spent on the presentations. With seventy-five papers spread across the four days, parallel sessions were necessary—on most days, four panels ran concurrently. Often this is an undesirable feature of conferences, as it is impossible to hear all of the papers, but the CD sent out to delegates beforehand largely compensated for this disadvantage.

The conference opened with a fascinating keynote address from David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at City University of New York, on "the fetishism of technology." Harvey made the case for the continued analytical integration of technology and social relations, and argued against attributing all-encompassing powers to technology. This was a provocative stand, and generated lively discussion, which was to become a feature of the following days. A reception followed at the Henry Ford Estate, with good food and plentiful wine—an excellent start to the conference. The first full day, a Friday, began with a plenary presentation by Bruce Seely, which neatly tied the conference theme to the transnational objectives of T²M by exploring how road engineers affected policy decisions in Europe and the United States.

Parallel sessions then followed from Friday to Sunday, addressing a variety of themes in mobility history and policy. The opening session on gender...