{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":140,"pdf_page":148,"physical_index":148,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"dd69caad79fe261473044dac158e5ef85d524d822de87577d3ea36f555e56fd0"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"According to the Lynds, the automobile had come to symbolize “living, having a good time, the thing which keeps you working”—which is why the worker “clings” to it with such “tenacity” (1937, p. 245). Evidence of the importance of car ownership as rationalization for work can also be found in Eli Chinoy’s postwar investigation of autoworkers. In research conducted two decades or so after the Middletown studies, Chinoy found, much as the Lynds had, that the automobile had a central place in anchoring people to their jobs. One worker, reflecting on the reasons for his having been stuck in his factory job for so long, commented: “It’s my own fault. I was going to work here for a year after I graduated from high school, then be a printer’s apprentice. . . . But then I bought a car, and that was my downfall. I couldn’t aford to leave if I was going to have a car” (Chinoy 1955, p. 124).\n\nWhy should the car have had such significance for the Lynds’ wage earning informants? Why was owning and driving an automobile so important? At one point the Lynds mention that part of the appeal of motor cars was the opportunity driving ofered families for spending time together. Yet presumably a family stroll would be just as, if not more, efective in that regard. Of course, cars could, and sometimes did, serve as positional goods, signifying the purchasing power, and associated status, of their owners. But the power of automobiles to signify status does not by itself seem suficient to account for the obsession with them. Presumably any one of many expensive goods could serve as a sign of the wealth required to buy them—why the singular focus on cars rather than, for example, jewelry or some other commodity? A simple needs-based explanation also seems less than convincing, as the Lynds’ ethnographic work was done in a small town in the 1920s and early 1930s, before the postwar era of suburban sprawl and “mallification,” which made driving increasingly necessary on practical grounds. As noted earlier, the Lynds’ informants categorized automobiles as a luxury rather than a necessity.\n\n140\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":139,"next_page":141}