Description
Book SynopsisHermes on Two Wheels shows the dynamic world of the bicycle messenger through a sociological lens, based on a five-year participant observation study. Beginning with the experiences of messengers themselves and moving to describe the structural settings of those experiences, the research shows how messengers work within a political-economic system that devalues semi-skilled labor and strips people of emotional fulfillment. The voluntary risk-taking of messengers becomes a means of achieving such emotional fulfillment as well as making a living, while their stylistic expressions pay dividends in cultural scrip rather than money. Through their work, messengers help to reproduce and maintain the structures of society while also constructing a vibrant, rebellious, politicized subculture that has come to represent the new urban hipster, an image continually under threat of co-optation.
Trade ReviewWehr's Hermes on Two Wheels examines an interesting social phenomenon closely in order to derive insights about the contradictions and challenges of our accelerated era of laptop capitalism. He shows that the Internet-driven post-Fordist era cannot dispense with actual people, who dodge traffic in order to deliver important pulp documents on time. In this, he brilliantly opposes technological optimism, which assumes that utopia is a chatroom. Bicycle messengers, an edgy crew, live on the edges of our fast society and help us see it more clearly. This book is very much in the tradition of Walter Benjamin's study of the Paris Arcades project. Like Benjamin, Wehr examines fragments—tea leaves, as it were—as the resources of a critical social and cultural theory. -- Dr. Ben Agger, University of Texas at Arlington.
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 1. Introduction: Hermes on Two Wheels Chapter 3 2. Why Does Hermes Fly? Chapter 4 3. Risk, Edgework, and the Community of Danger Chapter 5 4. Visability and Invisibility: Liminality, Anarchy, and Bike-Punk Culture Chapter 6 5. Bicycle Culture, Messenger Solidarity, and Community Matters Chapter 7 6. Conclusion: The Last Non Co-opted Punk Rock Subculture Chapter 8 Methodological Appendix Chapter 9 References Chapter 10 Index
