The first English-language social science book to comprehensively explore hitchhiking in the contemporary era in the West, this volume covers a lot of groundit goes to and fro, in an echo of themodus operandiof most hitchhiking journeys.  As scarification, piercings, and tattoos move from the counter-culture to popular culture, hitchhiking has remained an activity apart. Yet, with the assistance of virtual platforms and through its ever-growing memorialisation in literature and the arts, hitchhiking persists into the 21st century, despite the many social anxieties surrounding it. The themes addressed here thus include: adventure; gender; fear and trust; freedom and existential travel; road and transport infrastructures; communities of protest and resistance; civic surveillance and risk ecologies.

Patrick Laviolette holds a PhD in Anthropology from UCL. He is the co-editor of the Berghahn periodical the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures(2019/23)and the author ofExtreme Landscapes of Leisure (2016) andThe Landscaping of Metaphor (2011).

Start -- The Auto-Stop Diaries.- Chapter 1: Getting to the Other Ride.- Chapter 2: Dividually Driven.- Chapter 3: Carporeality, Carhesia / Whereupon the Road to Erewhon.- Chapter 4: Motorised Flânerism.- Chapter 5: Guides to the Uncanny-scapes.- Chapter 6: Thumbbuddies on the Auto Ban.- Chapter 7: The 'Carthulucene' at the End of the Road - Lost in the Ruptures Not Taken.- Fine -- Waiting for Volvo.